Tenuai non illum candentis carbasa lini,
Non auro depicta chlamys, non flava galeri
Cæsaries, pictoque juvant subtemine braccæ.
vi. 228.
No aid to him his chalmys white as snow,
Muslin with gold enrich'd, his yellow curls
Of artificial hair, and figured pantaloons.
(See Part 1, chap. iii. p. 59.)
Also Prudentius, the Christian poet (See Part 1, chap. iii. p. 59.), in an elaborate account of Pride, depicts her in a garment of the same kind:
Carbasea ex humeris summo collecta coibat
Palla sinu, teretem nectens a pectore nodum.—Psychom. 186.
A muslin kerchief by a knot compress'd,
Pass'd o'er her shoulders, and adorn'd her breast.
Tantâ tamque multiplici fertilitate abundat rerum omnium Cyprus, ut nullius
externi indigens adminiculi, indigenis viribus, a fundamento ipso carinæ ad supremos
usque carbasos ædificet onerarium navem, omnibusque armamentis instructam
mari committat.—Amm. Marcellinus, xiv. 8.
Apuleius mentions carbasina in conjunction with bombycina
and other kinds of cloth[1]. He may consequently be presumed
to use the word in its proper sense, to wit, as denoting calico or
muslin. In the same manner cotton is distinguished from silk
by Sidonius Apollinaris[2]. Also we may presume that cotton
and not linen sails are to be understood in the following line of
Avienus:
Si tamen in Boream flectantur carbasa cymbæ.
Descr. Orbis, 799.
Here the writer not only professes to give geographical information, but he is describing the Indian seas and islands; and as in the present day, so also in ancient times, the sails used in the navigation of those seas were probably made of cotton.
Strabo uses the word [Greek: karpasinai] in describing the official dress of a certain class of priestesses among the Cimbri[3]. Although it
