resembling in colour the flowers of the meadow, and rivalling (in fineness) the work of spiders.[1]
As may be easily imagined, silken garments were brought, at an early period, to imperial Rome. Such, however, were the high prices asked for them, that few either would or could afford to buy these robes for their wives and daughters; since, at first, they were looked upon as quite unbecoming for men's wear; hence, by a law of the Roman senate under Tiberius, it was enacted: "Ne vestis serica vicos fœdaret." While noticing how womanish Caligula became in his dress, Suetonius remarks his silken attire: "Aliquando sericatus et cycladatus."[2] An exception was made by some emperors for very great occasions, and both Titus and Vespasian wore dresses of silk when they celebrated at Rome their triumph over Judæa. Of the emperors who adopted whole silk for their clothing, Heliogabalus was the first, and so fond was he of the material, that, in the event of wishing to hang himself, he had got for the occasion a rope, one strand of which was silk, and the other two dyed with purple and scarlet: "Paraverat sunes, blatta et serico, et cocco intortos, quibus si necesse esset, laqueo vitam finiret."[3]
The abnegation of another Roman Emperor, Aurelian, both in respect of himself and his empress, is, however, very remarkable: "Vestem holosericam neque ipse in vestiario suo habuit neque alteri utendam dedit. Et cum ab eo uxor sua peteret, ut unico pallio blatteo serico uteretur, ille respondit absit, ut auro fila pensentur. Libra enim auri tunc libra serici suit."[4] Aurelian neither had himself in his wardrobe a garment wholly silk, nor gave one to be worn by another. When his own wife begged him to allow her to have a single mantle of purple silk, he replied, "Far be it from us to allow thread to be reckoned worth its weight in gold." For then a pound of gold was the price of a pound of silk.
Here it ought to be mentioned that, for some time before this period a very broad distinction had been drawn, even in the sumptuary laws of the empire, between garments made wholly, and partially of silk; in the former, all the web, both woof and warp, is woven of nothing but silk; in the latter, the woof is of cotton or of thread, the warp only of silk. This difference in the texture is thus well set forth by Lampridius, in his life of Alexander Severus, of whom he says: he had few garments of silk—he never wore a tunic woven wholly of silk, and he never gave away cloth made of silk mixed with less valuable stuff. "Vestes sericas ipse raras habuit; holosericas nunquam induit subsericam nunquam donavit."[5]
