Have woven, and in stripes disposed the golden bands.
Years afterwards, thus laments Seneca, the philosopher: “Video sericas vestes, si vestes vocandæ sunt, in quibus nihil est, quo defendi aut corpus aut denique pudor possit.” I behold silken garments, if garments they can be called, which are a protection neither for the body nor for shame.[25] And later still, and in the Christian era, an echo to the remarks of Seneca do we hear in the words of Solinus: “Hoc illud est sericum in quo ostentare potius corpora quàm vestire, primò feminis, nunc etiam viris persuasit luxuriæ libido.”[26] This is silk, in which at first women but now even men have been led, by their cravings after luxury, to show rather than to clothe their bodies.
[23] Hist. Anim. V. c. 19, p. 850, ed. Duval.
[24] Tibullus, l. ii. 6.
[25] De Beneficiis, l. vii. c.
[26] Solinus, c. 1.
While looking over some precious early mediæval MS., often do we yet find that its beautifully limned and richly gilt illuminations, to keep them from harm, or being hurt through the rubbings of the next leaf, have fastened beside them a covering of the thinnest gauze, just as we put in sheets of silver paper for that purpose over engravings. The likelihood is that some at least of these may be shreds from some of those thin translucent textiles which found such favour in the fashionable world for so long a time during the classic period. To some at least of our readers, the curious example of such gauzy interleafings in the manuscript of Theodulph, now at Puy en Velay, will occur.
Not only these transparent silken gauzes wrought in Cos, but far more tasty stuffs, and flowered too, from Chinese looms, found their way to Asia Minor and Italy. In telling of the barbarous nations then called the Seres, Dionysius Periegetes writes that they comb the variously coloured flowers of the desert land to make precious figured garments, resembling in colour the flowers of the meadow, and rivalling (in fineness) the work of spiders.[27]
As may be easily imagined, silken garments were brought, at an early period, to imperial Rome. Such, however, were the high prices asked for them, that few either would or could afford to buy these robes for their wives and daughters; since, at first, they were looked upon as quite unbecoming for men’s wear; hence, by a law of the Roman senate under Tiberius, it was enacted: “Ne vestis serica vicos fœdaret.” While noticing how womanish Caligula became in his dress, Suetonius remarks his silken attire: “Aliquando sericatus et cycladatus.”[28] An exception was made by some emperors for very great occasions, and both Titus and Vespasian wore dresses of silk when they celebrated at Rome their triumph over Judæa. Of the emperors who adopted whole silk for their clothing, Heliogabalus was the first, and so fond was he of the material, that, in the event of wishing to hang himself, he had got for the occasion a rope, one strand of which was silk, and the other two dyed with purple and scarlet: “Paraverat sunes, blatta et serico, et cocco intortos, quibus si necesse esset, laqueo vitam finiret.”[29]
The abnegation of another Roman Emperor, Aurelian, both in respect of himself and his empress, is, however, very remarkable: “Vestem holosericam neque ipse in vestiario suo habuit neque alteri utendam dedit. Et cum ab eo uxor sua peteret, ut unico pallio blatteo serico uteretur, ille respondit absit, ut auro fila pensentur. Libra enim auri tunc libra serici suit.”[30] Aurelian neither had himself in his wardrobe a garment wholly silk, nor gave one to be worn by another. When his own wife begged him to allow her to have a single mantle of purple silk, he replied, “Far be it from us to allow thread to be reckoned worth its weight in gold.” For then a pound of gold was the price of a pound of silk.