and clothiers of the country to the North-East of Padua, the modern Trevisano, employed that city as an entrepôt where they disposed of their goods to the Roman dealers. At the same time we learn, that this place served as a market for carpets and blankets made of a stronger and more substantial material, which, according to the same authority[1], was produced in its more immediate vicinity.
In the North-Western portion of Cisalpine Gaul the wool was generally coarse, and according to Strabo (l. c.) the garments made of it were used by the Italians for the ordinary clothing of their domestic establishments. Nevertheless, black wool of superior value was grown at Polentia, now Polenza, on the Stura, which is a tributary of the Po[2]. The following two Epigrams of Martial (l. xiv. 157 and 158.) allude to the use of the dark wool of Polentia for mourning and for the dress of inferior domestic servants.
Polentine Wools.
1. Not wools alone, that wear the face of woe;
Her goblets once did proud Polentia show.
2. Our sable hue to croplings may belong,
That tend the table, not of primal throng.
Elphinston's Translation.
The country people about Modena and in other parts of the Northern Apennines still wear undyed woollen cloth of a gray color. Muratori quotes from the statutes of the city of Modena, A. D. 1327, a law to prevent the makers of such cloth from mixing with their gray wool the hair of oxen, asses, or other animals[3].
Before quitting Italy we may properly inquire, whence and how came the practice of sheep-breeding into Great Britain. It has already been observed that the very improved state of the art at Tarentum may be in part ascribed to the intercourse
- ↑ Strabo.
- ↑ Pliny, L. viii. Columella, vii. 2. To these testimonies may be added Silius Italicus de Bello Punico, l. viii. 597.
- ↑ Dissertazioni sopra le Antichità Italiane, Diss. 30. tomo ii. 48, 49, 4to edition. This author in his 21st Dissertation endeavors to assign reasons for the decline of the modern Italians in the growth and manufacture of wool.
