Lucan describes the transparent material which veiled Cleopatra’s form:—
“Her snowy breast shines through Sidonian threads,
First by the comb of distant Seres struck;
Divided then by Egypt’s skilful hand,
And with embroidery transparent made.”
Pliny’s account of silk and its manufacture is mostly fanciful, though founded on half-known facts.
The Latin poets of the Augustan age speak of silk attire with other luxurious customs from the East.[243] The Roman senate, in the reign of Tiberius, decreed that only women should wear silk, on account of its effeminacy.
Silk was accumulated for the wardrobes of the empresses till A.D. 176, when Marcus Aurelius, “the Philosopher,” sold all the imperial ornaments and the silken robes of his empress by auction in the Forum of Trajan.[244]
We learn that silk was precious and fabulously esteemed to the end of the second century A.D.; but it is seldom mentioned in the third century.
Ælius Lampridius speaks of a silken cord with which to hang himself, as an imperial extravagance on the part of Heliogabalus (and of this only one strand was silk); and he mentions that Alexander Severus rarely allowed himself a dress of silk (holosericum), and only gave away robes of partly silken substance.
Flavius Vopiscus says that Aurelian had no dress wholly of silk (holosericum).[245] His wife begged him to allow her a shawl of purple silk, and he replied, “Far be it from me to permit thread to be reckoned worth its weight in gold!”—for a pound of gold was then worth a pound of silk.
Flavius Vopiscus further states that the Emperor Carinus, however, gave away silken garments, as well as dresses of gold and silver, to Greek artificers, players, wrestlers, and musicians.[246]
Yates gives us a translation of an edict of Diocletian, giving a maximum of prices for articles in common use in the Roman empire. It reads like a tailor’s or a dress-maker’s bill of to-day:—