to a kind of silk made at Cos, especially as he adds, that some women in this island decomposed the bombytria, and re-wove and re-spun it.  Pliny also mentions the bombyx, and describes it as a natiye of Assyria; he adds, that the Assyrians made bombytria from it, and that the inhabitants of Cos learnt the manufacture from them.  The most propable supposition is, that silk was spun and wove in Assyria and Cos, but the raw material imported into these countries from the Seres; for the silk worm was deemed by the Greeks and Romans so exclusively and pre-eminently the attribute of the Sinae, that from this very circumstance, they were denominated seres, or silk worms, by the ancients.

The next authors who mention silk are Virgil, and Dionysius the geographer; Virgil supposed the Seres to card their silk from leaves,—­Velleraque ut foliis depectunt tentuia Seres.—­Dionysius, who was sent by Augustus to draw up an account of the Oriental regions, says, that rich and valuable garments were manufactured by the Seres from threads, finer than those of the spider, which they combed from flowers.

It is not exactly known at what period silk garments were first worn at Rome:  Lipsius, in his notes on Tacitius, says, in the reign of Julius Csesar.  In the beginning of the reign of Tiberius, a law was made, that no man should dishonor himself by wearing a silken garment.  We have already stated the opinion entertained by Pliny respecting the native country of the silk worm; this author condemns in forcible, though affected language, the thirst of gain, which explored the remotest parts of the earth for the purpose of exposing to the public eye naked draperies and transparent matrons.  In his time, slight silks, flowered, seem to have been introduced into religious ceremonies, as he describes crowns, in honour of the deities, of various colours, and highly perfumed, made of silk.  The next author who mentions silk is Pausanias; he says, the thread from which the Seres form their web is not from any kind of bark, but is obtained in a different way; they have in their country a spinning insect, which the Greeks call seer.  He supposes that the insect lived five years, and fed on green haulm:  by the last particular, it is not improbable he meant the leaves of the mulberry tree.  For 200 years after the age of Pliny, the use of silk was confined to the female sex, till the richer citizens, both of the capital and the provinces, followed the example of Heliogabalus, the first man, who, according to Lampridius, wore holosericum that is, a garment which was all of silk.  From this expression, however, it is evident, that previous to this period the male inhabitants of Rome had been in the habit of wearing garments made of silk mixed with linen or woollen.