M. Stanislas Julien[51] tells us of many regulations made by the Emperor of China, to render obligatory the care and attention requisite to rearing silk.
Tchin-iu, being governor of the district of Kien-Si, ordered that every man should plant fifty feet of land with mulberry trees. [52] The Emperor (under the dynasty of Witei) gave to each man twenty acres of land on condition that he planted fifty feet with mulberry trees.[53] Hien-tsang (who ascended the throne in 806) ordered that the inhabitants of the country should plant two feet in every acre with mulberry trees.[54] The first Emperor of the dynasty of Song (who began to reign about the year 960) published a decree forbidding his subjects to cut down the mulberry trees. [55]
By all these means, according to the testimony of M. Stanislas Julien, the business of the fabrication of silk became general in China. This great empire soon furnished its neighbours with this precious textile material, and created for its own profit a very important branch of commerce.
It was forbidden, under pain of death, to export from China the silkworm's eggs, or to furnish the necessary information in the art of obtaining the textile material. The manufactured article only could be sold out of the empire. It was thus that the Asiatic nations very soon understood silk; and that in many of their cities they applied themselves to weaving stuffs of this precious substance. The carpets and dyed stuffs of Babylon, mixed with gold and silk, enjoyed in ancient times an unparalleled renown. China was not, however, the only country that then furnished silk to the towns of Asia Minor. At a very distant period India sent by her caravans very considerable quantities of it. M. Émile Blanchard (of the Institute) remarks, however, that the tissues of India must be made of a different silk from that of China, that is to say, of a silk of some of those Bombyces of which the public has been told so much of late years, and of which we shall have soon to speak.
Silk commanded for centuries a prodigiously high price. In the time of Alexander its value in Greece was exactly its own weight in gold, and so it was very parsimoniously employed in silk tissues. These were so transparent that women who wore them were scarcely covered.
Silk was unknown to the Romans before Julius Cæsar. It was to him that Rome owed its acquaintance with this new material. He introduced it, moreover, in a singularly magnificent manner. One day, at a fête given in the Colosseum—a combat of animals and gladiators—the people saw the coarse tent of cloth, intended to keep off the rays of the sun, replaced by a magnificent covering of Oriental silk. They murmured at this gorgeous prodigality, but declared Cæsar a great man. The introduction of silk among the Romans was the signal for luxurious expenditure. The patricians made a great display with their silk cloaks of incalculable value; so that, from the time of Tiberius, the Senate felt itself called upon to forbid the use of silk garments to men. Examples of simplicity are sometimes set in high places; thus, the Emperor Aurelian refused to the Empress Severina so costly a dress.