PLATE VIII.
In conformity with the prevailing use of this manufacture in the colder regions of Asia, scarlet or purple felt (such as that lately re-invented at Leeds, in England), was used by the Babylonish decorators for the drapery of the funeral pile, when Alexander celebrated the splendid obsequies of Hephæstion: for so we must understand the expression φοινικίδες πιληταί (Diod. Sic. xvii. 115. p. 251, Wess.). Xenophon (Cycrop. v. 5. § 7.) mentions the use of felt manufactured in Media, as a covering for chairs and couches. The Medes also used bags and sacks of felt (Athenæus, 1. xii. p. 540 c. Casaub.).
The process, by which wool is converted into felt, was called by the Greeks πίλησις (Plato de Leg. 1. viii. p. 115. ed. Bekker), literally a compression, from πιλέω, to compress[593]. The ancient Greek scholion on the passage of Plato here referred to thus explains the term: Πιλήσεως· τῆς διὰ τῆς τῶν ἐρίων πυκνώσεως γινομένης ἐσθῆτος, i. e. “cloth made by the thickening of wool.” With this definition of felt agrees the following description of a πέτασος in a Greek epigram, which records the dedication of it to Mercury:—
Σοὶ τὸν πιληθέντα δι’ εὐξάντου τριχὸς ἀμνοῦ,
Ἑρμᾶ, Καλλιτέλης ἐκρέμασε πέτασον.
Brunck, Anal. ii. 41.
[593] Xenophanes thought that the moon was a compressed cloud (νέφος πεπιλημένον, Stobæi Eclog. i. 27. p. 550, ed. Heeren); and that the air was emitted from the earth by its compression (πίλησις, i. 23. p. 484).
The art of felting was called ἡ πιλητικὴ, (Plato, Polit. ii. 2. p. 296, ed. Bekker). According to the ancient Greek and Latin glossaries, and to Julius Pollux (vii. 30), a felt-maker, or hatter, was πιλοποιὸς or πιλωτοποιὸς, in Latin coactiliarius. From πῖλος (dim. πίλιον, second dim. πιλίδιον), the proper term for felt in general, derived from the root of πιλέω, came the verb πιλόω, signifying to felt, or to make felt, and from this latter verb was formed the ancient participle πιλωτὸς, felted, which again gave origin to πιλωτοποιός.
It may be observed, that our English word felt is evidently a participle or a derivative, and that its verb or root Fel appears to be the same with the root of πιλέω.