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.

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.

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