206 ([return])
[ Just like the veils.—Ver. 6. Burmann thinks that 'fila,' 'threads,' is better here than 'vela,' and that it is the correct reading. The swarthy Seres here mentioned, were perhaps the Chinese, who probably began to import their silks into Rome about this period. The mode of producing silk does not seem to have been known to Virgil, who speaks, in the Second Book of the Georgies, of the Seres combing it off the leaves of trees. Pliny also, in his Sixth Book, gives the same account. Ovid, however, seems to refer to silkworms under the name of 'agrestes tineæ,' in the Fifteenth Book of the Metamorphoses, 1. 372.]
208 ([return])
[ Neither the bodkin.—Ver. 15. This was the 'discerniculum,' a 'bodkin,' which was used in parting the hair.]
210 ([return])
[ Bid the bodkin.—Ver. 18. The 'acus' here mentioned, was probably the 'discemicirium,' and not the 'crinale,' or hair-pin that was worn in the hair; as the latter was worn when the hair was bound up at the back of the head; whereas, judging from the length of the hair of his mistress, she most probably wore it in ringlets. He says that he never saw her snatch up the bodkin and stick it in the arm of the 'ornatrix.']