The wealthy and luxurious Romans, therefore, must have been deprived of this elegant material for their dresses, had not their wishes been gratified by an unexpected event.  Two Persian monks travelled to Serindi, where they had lived long enough to become acquainted with the various processes for spinning and manufacturing silk.  When they returned, they communicated their information to Justinian; and were induced, by his promises, to undertake the transportation of the eggs of the silk-worm, from China to Constantinople.  Accordingly, they went back to Serindi, and brought away a quantity of the eggs in a hollow cane, and conveyed them safely to Constantinople.  They superintended and directed the hatching of the eggs, by the heat of a dunghill:  the worms were fed on mulberry leaves:  a sufficient number of butterflies were saved to keep up the stock; and to add to the benefits already conferred, the Persian monks taught the Romans the whole of the manufacture.  From Constantinople, the silk-worms were conveyed to Greece, Sicily, and Italy.  In the succeeding reign, the Romans had improved so much in the management of the silk-worms, and in the manufacture of silk, that the Serindi ambassadors, on their arrival in Constantinople, acknowledged that the Romans were not inferior to the natives of China, in either of these respects.  It may be mentioned, in further proof of the opinion already given, that the silk manufactures of Cos were not supplied from silk-worms in that island, that we have the express authority of Theophanes and Zonaras, that, before silk-worms were brought to Constantinople, in the reign of Justinian, no person in that city knew that silk was produced by a worm.  This, certainly, would not have been the case, if there had been silk-worms so near Constantinople as the island of Cos is.  All the authors whom we have quoted, (with the exception of Aristotle, Pliny, and Pausanias,) including a period of six centuries, supposed that silk was made from fleeces growing upon trees, from the bark of trees, or from flowers.  These mistakes, may, indeed, have arisen from the Romans having heard of the silk being taken from the mulberry and other trees, on which the worms feed; but, however they originated, they plainly prove that the native country of the silk-worm was at a very great distance from Rome, and one of which they had very little knowledge.

Having thus brought the history of this most valuable import into Rome, down to the period, when, in consequence of the Romans having acquired the silk-worm, there existed no longer any necessity to import the raw materials; we shall next proceed to investigate the routes by which it was brought from the Seres to the western parts of Asia, and thence to Rome.  It is well ascertained, that the silk manufacture was established at Tyre and Berytus, from a very early period; and these places seem to have supplied Rome with silk stuffs.  But, by what route did silk arrive thither, and to the other countries, so as to be within the immediate reach of the Romans?—­There were two routes, by which it was introduced to Europe, and the contiguous parts of Asia:  by land and sea.