152 THE EARLY HISTORY OF SILK. 



affording them employment, and a suitable re\v 

 for their industry. 



The manufacture of silk at Rome was for a coi 

 siderable time conducted under the care of the 

 treasurer of the rapacious Justinian, who had secret 

 places for carrying on the monopoly ; and the monks 

 instructed weavers, which the Emperor brought from 

 Berytus and Tyre, in the Chinese method of making 

 fabrics. Silks of the imperial manufacture sold pro- 

 digiously high, and far exceeded even the exorbitant 

 prices formerly fixed by the Emperor on foreign 

 commodities ; so that the price of silk per pound was 

 now six pieces of gold, being eight times more costly 

 than before the introduction of the insect into Rome. 

 This was the value of common colours , for the impe- 

 rial purple was quadruple that price ; so that the 

 propagating of the animal, which, in other circum- 

 stances, and under a patriotic sovereign, might have 

 been a boon to the empire, proved, under the sordid 

 Justinian, rather a curse. 



Things, however, could not long remain in this 

 state, for ways and means were found to convey the 

 Silk Worm Moth to Greece and the Peloponnesus, 

 in whose genial climates they quickly increased ; and 

 the sovereigns of these states, actuated by more 

 generous views, multiplied the growth of mulberry 

 trees, extended the manufacture of silk, and soon 

 rendered their empire independent of those supplies 

 which they obtained through their mercantile inter- 

 course with Persia. 





