2l6 THE INSECT WORLD. 



Caesar a great man. The introduction of silk among the Romans 

 was the signal for luxurious expenditure. The patricians made a 

 great display with their silk cloaks of incalculable value ; so that, 

 from the time of Tiberius, the Senate felt itself called upon to forbid 

 the use of silk garments to men. Examples of simplicity are some- 

 times set in high places ; thus, the Emperor Aurelian refused to the 

 Empress Severina so costly a dress. 



The commerce in silk bore doubly hard upon Europe, both on 

 account of the value of the material and of the great use which was 

 made of it. Persia was the emporium, and had the monopoly of this 

 merchandise. The Emperor Justinian I., who reigned at Constanti- 

 nople from A.D. 527 to 56^, tried all the means within his power of 

 freeing his States from this ruinous tyranny, when a circumstance 

 occurred, very fortunately for the national commerce, which brought 

 about the introduction into Europe of sericulture, or the cultivation 

 of silk. 



Two monks of the order of St. Basil, in their ardour for the 

 propagation of the faith, had pushed forwards into China. There 

 they had been initiated into the operations which furnished the fabric 

 so highly prized. On their return to Constantinople, and hearing of 

 the project that Justinian entertained of depriving the Persians of the 

 monopoly in silk, the two monks proposed to the Emperor to enrich 

 his state by introducing the art of fabricating this material. The 

 proposition was greedily accepted, and the two monks returned again 

 to China, with the object of procuring the eggs of the insect. Having 

 arrived at the end of their journey, they succeeded in getting 

 possession of a quantity of silkworms' eggs. They hid them between 

 the knots of their sticks, and started back to their native country, 

 without being once interfered with. Two years afterwards they 

 re-entered Constantinople with their precious booty.* The larvae 

 were fed on mulberry leaves. Immediately afterwards began the 

 rearing of the worms and the preparation of the silk, according to the 

 instructions given by these courageous travellers. The first broods 

 succeeded perfectly, and so plantations of mulberry trees were seen 

 to multiply and spread through the whole extent of the Eastern 

 Empire. It was, above all, in Southern Greece that this branch of 

 industry assumed an immense importance. It was then the Pelopon- 



* According to M. de Gasparin, author of an excellent "Essai sur I'Histoire 

 de I'Introduction des Vers a Sole en Europe" (Paris, in 8vo, 1841), it was not 

 into China, but only into Tartary, to Serinda, that the two monks went in search 

 of the silkworms' eggs (pp. 37 — 39). It must be supposed that the eggs did not 

 hatch for two years, being in such interesting company. 



