The Veneti here mentioned were, no doubt, the people who lived in the country near Vannes in Britany. We have formerly seen (Part Second, pp. [282] and [283]. Chapter III.), that the Sagum was the principal article of dress manufactured in the north of Gaul.
According to Paulus Diaconus, as quoted in the notes on this passage of Eginhart[540], the Lombards and the Anglo-Saxons used principally linen garments.
[540] Ed. Schmincke, Trajecti 1711, p. 110.
Linen, which appears to have been originally characteristic of the Egyptian and Germanic nations, came by degrees into more and more general use among the Greeks and Romans, and was employed not only for articles of dress, especially those worn by women, and for sheets to lie upon, but also for table-covers and for napkins to wipe the hands, an application of them which was the more necessary on account of the want of knives, forks, and spoons. Also those who waited at table, were girt with towels. At the baths persons used towels to dry themselves. A man wore a similar piece of cloth under the hands of the tonsor. Plutarch (On Garrulity) tells the following anecdote of Archelaus. When a loquacious hair-dresser was throwing the ὠμόλινον about him in order to shear him, he asked as usual, “How shall I cut your majesty’s hair?” “In silence,” replied the king. Alciphron tells of the barber putting on him a linen cloth (σινδών) in order to shave him (l. iii. Ep. 66.); and Phaneas, in an Epigram, calls the cloth used in shaving by the same name, Σινδών. Diogenes Laertius also (vi. 90.) tells a story respecting the philosopher Crates, which shows that at Athens it was not deemed proper for a man to wear linen as an outer garment, but that persons were enveloped in it under the hands of the hair-dresser. “The Athenian police-officers (οἱ ἀστύνομοι) having charged him with wearing a linen sheet for his outer garment, he said, ‘I will show you Theophrastus himself habited in that manner;’ and when they doubted the fact, he took them to see Theophrastus at the hair-dresser’s.”
Coarser linen was used in great quantity both for sails, and for awnings to keep off the heat of the sun from the Roman theatres, the Forum, and other places of public resort[541].
The Emperor Alexander Severus, as we learn from the following passage of his Life written by Ælius Lampridius, was a great admirer of good linen, and preferred that which was plain to such as had flowers or feathers interwoven as practised in Egypt and the neighboring countries.
Boni linteaminis appetitor fuit, et quidem puri, dicens, ‘Si lintei idcirco sunt, ut nihil asperum habeant, quid opus est purpurâ?’ In lineâ autem aurum mitti, etiam dementiam judicabat, quum asperitati adderetur rigor.
He took great delight in good linen, and preferred it plain. “If,” said he, “linen cloths are made of that material in order that they may not be at all rough, why mix purple with them?” But to interweave gold in linen, he considered madness, because this made it rigid in addition to its roughness.
The following passage of the Life of the Emperor Carinus by Flavius Vopiscus is remarkable as proving the value attached by the Romans of that age to the linen imported from Egypt and Phœnice, especially to the transparent and flowered varieties.