HISTORY OF SILK. 11 



first introduced the knowledge of silk to the Gre- 

 cians, 350 years before Christ, and with the increase of 

 wealth and luxury in the Grecian court, the demand of 

 silks prodigiously augmented. Persia engrossed for a 

 time the trade of Greece, and became rich in the com- 

 merce of silk, which they procured from China. The 

 ancient Phoenicians also engaged in the traffic of silk, 

 and finally carried it to the east of Europe. But for a 

 long time after, even those who brought it to Europe 

 knew not what it was, nor how it was produced, nor 

 where situated was the original country of Serica from 

 whence it came. 



Ser or Serica was called Sereinda, a name evidently 

 composed of Seres and of Indi, the names of two distinct 

 and separate countries which the ancients had thus con- 

 founded ; even as the name of India has been, and still is, 

 often indiscriminately applied to all the countries of the 

 whole east of Asia, at the present day. 



Ammianus Marcellinus, the celebrated historian, has 

 described the Seres as a sedate and gentle people, living 

 in perpetual peace with the neighboring nations, and 

 therefore exempted alike from the calamities and the 

 alarms of war : with no occasion for offensive weapons 

 or even the knowledge of their use. Blessed with a soil 

 the most fertile, and a climate the most delightful and 

 salubrious, they are represented " as passing their happy 

 days in the most perfect tranquillity and delightful leis- 

 ure, amid shady groves, fanned by gentle breezes, and 

 producing fleeces of downy wool, which, after being 

 sprinkled with water, is combed off in the finest threads 

 and woven into sericum." 



This fable, which undoubtedly served for ages to de- 

 ceive the nations, is supposed to have been the invention 

 of the Seres themselves, that they might appear to the 

 wondering world as a peculiar people, on whom blessings 

 were profusely showered down from heaven, in which 

 no other nation could expect to participate. 



At Rome, and so late as A. D. 280, a silk attire of 



