Picking up from Greek and Latin writers only, as was his wont, those scraps of which his Natural History is made, Pliny tells us, even in Homer, mention is made of embroidered cloths, which originated such as by the Romans are called “triumphal.” To do this with the needle was found out by the Phrygians, hence such garments took the name Phrygionic: “Pictas vestes jam apud Homerum fuisse unde triumphales natæ. Acu facere id, Phryges invenerunt ideoque Phrygioniæ appellatæ sunt.”[299] He might have added that the only word the Romans had to mean an embroiderer was “Phrygio,” which arose from the same cause. Many passages in Virgil show that from Western Asia the Romans learned their knowledge of embroidery, and borrowed the employment of it on their garments of State; besides, “those art-wrought vests of splendid purple tint:”—“arte laboratæ vestes ostroque superbo,”[300] brought forth for the feast by the Sidonian Dido, the Phrygian Andromache bestows upon Ascanius, as a token of her own handicraft, garments shot with gold and pictured, as well as a Phrygian cloak, along with other woven stuffs—
Fert picturatas auri subtemine vestes,
Et Phrygiam Ascanio chlamydem, &c.[301]
and Æneas veils his head for prayer with the embroidered hem of his raiment—
Et capita ante aras Phrygio velamur amictu.[302]
[299] Lib. viii. c. 47.
[300] Æneid i. 643.
[301] Ibid. iii. 482.
[302] Ibid. iii. 545.
In Latin while an embroiderer was called a Phrygian, “Phrygio,” needlework was denominated “Phrygium,” or Phrygian stuff; hence, when, as often happened, the design was wrought in solid gold wire or golden thread, the embroidery so worked got named “auriphrygium.” From this term comes our own old English word “orphrey.” Though deformed after so many guises by the witless writers of many an inventory of church goods, or by the sorry cleric who in a moment of needful haste had been called upon to draw up a will; other men, however small their learning, always spelled the word “orphrey,” in English, and “auriphrygium,” in Latin. In the Exeter inventory, given by Oliver, “cum orphrey de panno aureo, &c. cum orphrais, &c.”[303] are found; and the cope bequeathed by Henry Lord de Scrope, A.D. 1415, had its “orphreis” “embraudata nobiliter cum imaginibus,” &c.[304] The many beautiful orphreys on the Lincoln vestments are fully described in the “Monasticon Anglicanum:”[305] no one could be more earnest in commanding the use on vestments of the auriphrygium, or embroidered “orphrey” than St. Charles Borromeo.[306]