Pl. 34.
1. Classical Silk. Greek. (Semper’s “Der Stil,” p. 192.) 2. Classical Silk. Roman. (Auberville, pl. 4.)
Whether Pamphile’s silk gauzes were the only fine webs of Cos,[227] is a disputed question. She has the credit of being the first to clothe victorious generals in triumphal garments, and she has been immortalized by her cleverness and industry. Both Aristotle and Pliny assert that she first invented the Coan webs, and that some of them were of silk is undoubted. The question is, How came it there? whence and by what route? and what country was its original home and birthplace?
After stating the pros and cons of the question, how and where did silk first make its appearance, Sir G. Birdwood concludes that both the worm and the cocoon were known to the Greeks and Romans, by report and rare specimens, from the time of Alexander’s return from his Indian campaign.[228]
Of course the remains of these fabrics are extremely scarce; and, in fact, only two are at present known to me besides the Kertch specimen. The first is given in Semper’s “Der Stil,” and is evidently classical Greek or Roman; but the silk material might have been effilèd from an Oriental stuff (pl. [34], No. 1). The second must have been originally a Roman pattern, modified by the Persian loom in which it was woven. This may have been a Roman triumphal robe of the date of Julius Cæsar (pl. [34], No. 2).
It is clear that Chinese silken stuffs were not generally known in Southern Europe till the time of Julius Cæsar, who displayed a profusion of silks in some of his splendid theatrical representations.
How silk first arrived from the East is disputed; some say it came by the Red Sea, and other authorities believe it was brought from China, viâ Persia, by land.
But it is not necessary that it should have entered our civilization by only one gate. The Periplus Maris Erythræi makes frequent mention of the trade in silks, through India, by the Indus to the coasts of the Erythrean Sea. They were also brought through Bactria to Barygaza, near Surat, from a city called Thina (China?). The author of the Periplus, of course, refers to some place in the country vaguely called Serica.[229]
That the trade which brought it into Europe was difficult and limited, is proved by the fact that silk continued, even as late as the third century of our era, to be an article of luxury, of which the manufacture and use continued to be the subject of legal enactments and restrictions, for 600 years after Pamphile’s first essay in silk-weaving in Cos.