He Describes The
Silk Worm As A Horned Worm, Which He Calls Bombyx, Which Passes Through
Several Transformations, And Produces Bombytria.
It does not appear,
however, that he was acquainted either with the native country of this
[work->worm], or
With such a people as the Seres; and this is the only
reason for believing that he may allude entirely 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.
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