The author of a Treatise “De disciplinâ et bono pudicitiæ,” which is usually published with Cyprian, and which may be referred to the fourth or fifth century, thus speaks (Cypriani Opera, ed. Erasmi, p. 499.):
To weave gold in cloth is, as it were, to adopt an expensive method of spoiling it. Why do they interpose stiff metals between the delicate threads of the warp?
The same censure is implied in the following address of Alcimus Avitus to his sister.
Non tibi gemmato posuere nonilia collo,
Nec te contexit, neto quæ fulguratauro
Vestis, ductilibus concludens fila talentis:
Nec te Sidonium bis coeti muricis ostrum
Induit, aut rutilo perlucens purpura succo,
Mollia vel tactu quæ mittunt vellera Seres:
Nec tibi transfossis fixerunt auribus aurum.