All things are valued by our friends.
Idyll, xxviii.
[22] Miletus was called “the towers of Nileus,” from its having been founded by Nileus, the son of the celebrated king Codrus, who devoted himself for the safety of Athens. Nileus was so indignant at the abolition of royalty on his father’s death, that he migrated to Ionia.
The Roman and Grecian ladies displayed not less taste in the decoration of their various spinning implements, than those of modern times in the ornaments of their work-table. The calathus or qualus was the basket in which the wool was kept for the fair spinsters. It was usually made of wicker-work. Thus Catullus in his description of the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis, says:
The softest fleeces, white as driven snow,
Beside their feet in osier baskets glow.
Poema, lxiv.
Homer asserts that the Egyptian queen Alcandra presented Helen with a silver work-basket as well as a golden distaff (Odyss. iv.); and from the paintings on ancient vases, we see that the calathi of ladies of rank were tastefully wrought and richly ornamented. From the term qualus or quasillus, equivalent to calathus, the Romans called the female slaves employed in spinning quasillariæ.
The material prepared for spinning was wrapped loosely round the distaff, the wool being previously combed, or the flax hackled by processes not very dissimilar to those used at the present day amongst the peasantry in the west of Ireland. The ball thus formed on the distaff required to be arranged with some neatness and skill, in order that the fibres should be sufficiently loose to be drawn out by the hand of the spinner. Ovid declares, that Arachne’s skill in this simple process excited the wonder of the nymphs who came to see her triumphs in the textile art, not less than the finished labors of the loom.
Oft, to admire the niceness of her skill,