Hitherto there is no intimation in ancient authors of the price of silk at Rome; in the time of Aurelian, however, that is towards the end of the third century, we learn the high price at which it was rated, in an indirect manner.  For when the wife of that Emperor begged of him to permit her to have but one single garment of purple silk; he refused it, saying, that one pound of silk sold at Rome for 12 ounces, or its weight of gold.  This agrees with what is laid down in the Rhodian maritime laws, as they appear in the eleventh book of the Digests, according to which unmixed silk goods paid a salvage, if they were saved without being damaged by the sea water, of ten per cent., as being equal in value to gold.

In about 100 years after the reign of Aurelian, however, the importation of silk into Rome must have increased very greatly; for Ammianus Marcellinus, who flourished A.D. 380, expressly states that silk, which had formerly been confined to the great and rich, was, in his time, within the purchase of the common people.  Constantinople was founded about forty years before he wrote; and it naturally found its way there in greater abundance than it had done, when Rome was the capital of the empire.

From this time, till the middle of the sixth century, we have no particular information respecting the silk trade of the Roman empire.  At this period, during the reign of Justinian, silk had become an article of very general and indispensible use:  but the Persians had occupied by land and sea the monopoly of this article, so that the inhabitants of Tyre and Berytus, who had all along manufactured it for the Roman market, were no longer able to procure a sufficient supply, even at an extravagant price.  Besides, when the manufactured goods were brought within the Roman territories, they were subject to a duty of ten per cent.  Justinian, under these circumstances, very impolitically ordered that silk should be sold at the rate of eight pieces of gold for the pound, or about 3_l_. 4s.  The consequence was such as might have been expected:  silk goods were no longer imported; and to add to the injustice and the evil, Theodora, the emperor’s wife, seized all the silk, and fined the merchants very heavily.  It was therefore necessary, that Justinian should have recourse to other measures to obtain silk goods; instead, however, of restoring the trade of Egypt, which at this period had fallen into utter decay, and sending vessels directly from the Red Sea to the Indian markets, where the raw material might have been procured, he had recourse to Arabia and Abyssinia.  According to Suidas, he wished the former to import the silk in a raw state, intending to manufacture it in his own dominions.  But the king of Abyssinia declined the offer; as the vicinity of the Persians to the Indian markets for silk enabled them to purchase it at a cheaper rate than the Abyssinians could procure it.  The same obstacle prevented the Arabians from complying with the request of Justinian.