Strabo describes another route: viz. across the Caucasus, from the Caspian to the Black Sea; this writer, however, must be under some mistake, for camels, which he expressly says were employed, would be of no use in crossing the mountains; it is probable, therefore, that this land communication was round by the mouth of the Caspian,--a route which was frequented by the merchants of the middle ages.
As the Euxine Sea was the grand point to which all these routes tended, the towns on it became the resort of an immense number of merchants, even at very early ages; and the kingdoms of Prusias, Attalus, and Mithridates were enriched by their commerce. Herodotus mentions, that the trade of the Euxine was conducted by interpreters of seven different languages. In the time of Mithridates, 300 different nations, or tribes, met for commercial purposes at Dioscurias in Colchis; and soon after the Romans conquered the countries lying on the Euxine, there were 130 interpreters of languages employed in this and the other trading towns. The Romans, however, as soon as they became jealous, or afraid, of the power of the Parthians, would not suffer them, or any other of the northern nations, to traffic by the Euxine; but endeavoured, as far as they could, to confine the commerce of the East to Alexandria: the consequence was, that even so early as the age of Pliny, Dioscurias was deserted.
The only article of import into Rome that remains to be considered is silk: the history of the knowledge and importation of this article among the ancients, and the route by which it was obtained, will comprise all that it will be necessary to say on this subject.
The knowledge of silk was first brought into Europe through the conquests of Alexander the Great. Strabo quotes a passage from Nearchus, in which it is mentioned, but apparently confounded, with cotton. It is well known that Aristotle obtained a full and accurate account of all the discoveries in natural history which were made during the conquests of Alexander, and he gives a particular description of the silk worm; so particular, indeed, that it is surprising how the ancients could, for nearly 600 years after his death, be ignorant of the nature and origin of silk. He describes the silk worm as a horned worm, which he calls bombyx, which passes through several transformations, and produces bombytria. It does not appear, however, that he was acquainted either with the native country of this [work->worm], or with such a people as the Seres; and this is the only reason for believing that he may allude entirely to a kind of silk made at Cos, especially as he adds, that some women in this island decomposed the bombytria, and re-wove and re-spun it. Pliny also mentions the bombyx, and describes it as a natiye of Assyria; he adds, that the Assyrians made bombytria from it, and that the inhabitants of Cos learnt the manufacture from them. The most propable supposition is, that silk was spun and wove in Assyria and Cos, but the raw material imported into these countries from the Seres; for the silk worm was deemed by the Greeks and Romans so exclusively and pre-eminently the attribute of the Sinae, that from this very circumstance, they were denominated seres, or silk worms, by the ancients.
The next authors who mention silk are Virgil, and Dionysius the geographer; Virgil supposed the Seres to card their silk from leaves,--Velleraque ut foliis depectunt tentuia Seres.--Dionysius, who was sent by Augustus to draw up an account of the Oriental regions, says, that rich and valuable garments were manufactured by the Seres from threads, finer than those of the spider, which they combed from flowers.
It is not exactly known at what period silk garments were first worn at Rome: Lipsius, in his notes on Tacitius, says, in the reign of Julius Csesar. In the beginning of the reign of Tiberius, a law was made, that no man should dishonor himself by wearing a silken garment. We have already stated the opinion entertained by Pliny respecting the native country of the silk worm; this author condemns in forcible, though affected language, the thirst of gain, which explored the remotest parts of the earth for the purpose of exposing to the public eye naked draperies and transparent matrons. In his time, slight silks, flowered, seem to have been introduced into religious ceremonies, as he describes crowns, in honour of the deities, of various colours, and highly perfumed, made of silk. The next author who mentions silk is Pausanias; he says, the thread from which the Seres form their web is not from any kind of bark, but is obtained in a different way; they have in their country a spinning insect, which the Greeks call seer. He supposes that the insect lived five years, and fed on green haulm: by the last particular, it is not improbable he meant the leaves of the mulberry tree. For 200 years after the age of Pliny, the use of silk was confined to the female sex, till the richer citizens, both of the capital and the provinces, followed the example of Heliogabalus, the first man, who, according to Lampridius, wore holosericum that is, a garment which was all of silk. From this expression, however, it is evident, that previous to this period the male inhabitants of Rome had been in the habit of wearing garments made of silk mixed with linen or woollen.
Hitherto there is no intimation in ancient authors of the price of silk at Rome; in the time of Aurelian, however, that is towards the end of the third century, we learn the high price at which it was rated, in an indirect manner. For when the wife of that Emperor begged of him to permit her to have but one single garment of purple silk; he refused it, saying, that one pound of silk sold at Rome for 12 ounces, or its weight of gold. This agrees with what is laid down in the Rhodian maritime laws, as they appear in the eleventh book of the Digests, according to which unmixed silk goods paid a salvage, if they were saved without being damaged by the sea water, of ten per cent., as being equal in value to gold.
In about 100 years after the reign of Aurelian, however, the importation of silk into Rome must have increased very greatly; for Ammianus Marcellinus, who flourished A.D. 380, expressly states that silk, which had formerly been confined to the great and rich, was, in his time, within the purchase of the common people. Constantinople was founded about forty years before he wrote; and it naturally found its way there in greater abundance than it had done, when Rome was the capital of the empire.
From this time, till the middle of the sixth century, we have no particular information respecting the silk trade of the Roman empire. At this period, during the reign of Justinian, silk had become an article of very general and indispensible use: but the Persians had occupied by land and sea the monopoly of this article, so that the inhabitants of Tyre and Berytus, who had all along manufactured it for the Roman market, were no longer able to procure a sufficient supply, even at an extravagant price. Besides, when the manufactured goods were brought within the Roman territories, they were subject to a duty of ten per cent. Justinian, under these circumstances, very impolitically ordered that silk should be sold at the rate of eight pieces of gold for the pound, or about 3 l. 4s. The consequence was such as might have been expected: silk goods were no longer imported; and to add to the injustice and the evil, Theodora, the emperor's wife, seized all the silk, and fined the merchants very heavily. It was therefore necessary, that Justinian should have recourse to other measures to obtain silk goods; instead, however, of restoring the trade of Egypt, which at this period had fallen into utter decay, and sending vessels directly from the Red Sea to the Indian markets, where the raw material might have been procured, he had recourse to Arabia and Abyssinia. According to Suidas, he wished the former to import the silk in a raw state, intending to manufacture it in his own dominions. But the king of Abyssinia declined the offer; as the vicinity of the Persians to the Indian markets for silk enabled them to purchase it at a cheaper rate than the Abyssinians could procure it. The same obstacle prevented the Arabians from complying with the request of Justinian.
The wealthy and luxurious Romans, therefore, must have been deprived of this elegant material for their dresses, had not their wishes been gratified by an unexpected event. Two Persian monks travelled to Serindi, where they had lived long enough to become acquainted with the various processes for spinning and manufacturing silk. When they returned, they communicated their information to Justinian; and were induced, by his promises, to undertake the transportation of the eggs of the silk-worm, from China to Constantinople. Accordingly, they went back to Serindi, and brought away a quantity of the eggs in a hollow cane, and conveyed them safely to Constantinople. They superintended and directed the hatching of the eggs, by the heat of a dunghill: the worms were fed on mulberry leaves: a sufficient number of butterflies were saved to keep up the stock; and to add to the benefits already conferred, the Persian monks taught the Romans the whole of the manufacture. From Constantinople, the silk-worms were conveyed to Greece, Sicily, and Italy. In the succeeding reign, the Romans had improved so much in the management of the silk-worms, and in the manufacture of silk, that the Serindi ambassadors, on their arrival in Constantinople, acknowledged that the Romans were not inferior to the natives of China, in either of these respects. It may be mentioned, in further proof of the opinion already given, that the silk manufactures of Cos were not supplied from silk-worms in that island, that we have the express authority of Theophanes and Zonaras, that, before silk-worms were brought to Constantinople, in the reign of Justinian, no person in that city knew that silk was produced by a worm. This, certainly, would not have been the case, if there had been silk-worms so near Constantinople as the island of Cos is. All the authors whom we have quoted, (with the exception of Aristotle, Pliny, and Pausanias,) including a period of six centuries, supposed that silk was made from fleeces growing upon trees, from the bark of trees, or from flowers. These mistakes, may, indeed, have arisen from the Romans having heard of the silk being taken from the mulberry and other trees, on which the worms feed; but, however they originated, they plainly prove that the native country of the silk-worm was at a very great distance from Rome, and one of which they had very little knowledge.