ees of
the Seres or Chinese; and this natural error, less marvelous than the
truth, was slowly corrected by the knowledge of a valuable insect, the
first artificer of the luxury of nations. That rare and elegant luxury
was censured, in the reign of Tiberius, by the gravest of the Romans;
and Pliny, in affected though forcible language, has condemned the
thirst of gain which explores the last confines of the earth for the
pernicious purpose of exposing to the public eye naked draperies and
transparent matrons. A dress which showed the turn of the limbs, the
color of the skin, might gratify vanity or provoke desire; the silks
which had been closely woven in China were sometimes unraveled by the
Phoenician women, and the precious materials were multiplied by a
looser texture and the intermixture of linen threads. Two hundred years
after the age of Pliny the use of pure or even of mixed silks was
confined to the female sex, till the opulent citizens of Rome and the
provinces were insensibly familiarized with the example of Elagabalus,
the first who, by this effeminate habit, had sullied the dignity of an
emperor and a man. Aurelian complained that a pound of silk was sold at
Rome for twelve ounces of gold; but the supply increased with the
demand, and the price diminished with the supply. If accident or
monopoly sometimes raised the value even above the standard of Aurelian,
the manufacturers of Tyre and Berytus were sometimes compelled, by the
operation of the same causes, to content themselves with a ninth part of
that extravagant rate. A law was thought necessary to discriminate the
dress of comedians from that of senators; and of the silk exported from
its native country the far greater part was consumed by the subjects of
Justinian. They were still more intimately acquainted with a shell-fish
of the Mediterranean, surnamed the silkworm of the sea: the fine wool or
hair by which the mother-of-pearl affixes itself to the rock is now
manufactured for curiosity rather than use; and a robe obtained from the
same singular materials was the gift of the Roman Emperor to the satraps
of Armenia.

A valuable merchandise of small bulk is capable of defraying the expense
of land carriage; and the caravans traversed the whole latitude of Asia
in two hundred and forty-three days from the Chinese Ocean to the
sea-coast of Syria. Silk was immediately delivered to the Romans by the
Persian merchants who frequented the fairs of Armenia a