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.
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