[484] Salmasius in Achill. Tat. l. viii. c. 13, ὀθόνης χιτών.
[485] Celsii Hierobotanicon, t. ii. p. 90.
[486] Forster, De Bysso, p. 74.
[487] Ubi supra, p. CCXVII.
[488] The ancient Scholia (published by Mai and Butmann) on Od. η. 107, state that ὀθόναι were made both of flax and of wool. The silks of India are called Ὀθόναι σηρικὰ.
It appears also that in later times ὀθόνη was not restricted to fine linen. It is used for a sail by Achilles Tatius in describing a storm (l. iii.), and by the Scholiast on Homer, Il. σ.
Agreeably to the preceding remarks, the ὀθόναι mentioned in the two passages of the Iliad may be supposed to have been procured from Egypt. Helen, when she goes to meet the senators of Ilium at the Scæan Gate, wraps herself in a white sheet of fine linen (Il. γ. 141.). The women, dancing on the shield of Achilles (Il. σ. 595.), wear thin sheets. These thin sheets must be supposed to have been worn as shawls, or girt about the bodies of the dancers. Helen would wear hers so as to veil her whole person agreeably to the representation of the lady, whom Paulus Silentiarius addresses in the following line, written evidently with Homer’s Helen before his mind:
You conceal your flowing locks with a snow-white sheet.—Brunck, Analecta, vol. iii. p. 81.
Perhaps even the sheets, spread for Phœnix to lie upon in the tent of Achilles, and for Ulysses on his return to Ithica from the country of the Phæacians[489], though not called by the Egyptian name, should be supposed to have been made in Egypt. In the time of Homer (900 B. C.) the use of linen cloth was certainly rare among the Greeks; the manufacture of it was perhaps as yet unknown to them.
[489] Il. ι. 657. Od. ν. 73. 118.