Justinian.--Part III.

I need not explain that _silk_ is originally spun from the bowels of a
caterpillar, and that it composes the golden tomb, from whence a worm
emerges in the form of a butterfly. Till the reign of Justinian,
the silk-worm who feed on the leaves of the white mulberry-tree were
confined to China; those of the pine, the oak, and the ash, were common
in the forests both of Asia and Europe; but as their education is
more difficult, and their produce more uncertain, they were generally
neglected, except in the little island of Ceos, near the coast of
Attica. A thin gauze was procured from their webs, and this Cean
manufacture, the invention of a woman, for female use, was long admired
both in the East and at Rome. Whatever suspicions may be raised by the
garments of the Medes and Assyrians, Virgil is the most ancient writer,
who expressly mentions the soft wool which was combed from the trees of
the Seres or Chinese; and this natural error, less marvellous 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, and
color of the skin, might gratify vanity, or provoke desire; the silks
which had been closely woven in China were sometimes unravelled by the
Phnician 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