CONSUMPTION OF THE CHAP. V. 



Such applications of gold as the ancients used 

 in this way, as it exposed a surface less in pro- 

 portion to its weight than our modern manner 

 of extending it, would evidently cause a much 

 less loss to arise from exposure and friction. 



The other methods of gilding now practised 

 on metals and on cur china-ware were unknown 

 to the ancients; and thus that mode of con- 

 suming gold, which is next to the loss by friction 

 on coin the greatest in the present day, had no 

 influence in more remote periods. 



There are no indications of the ancients having 

 attained the art of drawing wire of gold and 

 silver so as to apply it, like the moderns, to the 

 fabrication of gold and silver lace, though it has 

 been thought they had some means of using it 

 for the purposes of embroidering. This is in- 

 ferred from a passage in Propertius ', where he 

 speaks of interweaving gold (aurum intexcre), 

 and where he calls the garments made with it 

 Vestes Attalicce, from Attalicus, or Attains, who 

 has been supposed to have invented them. 



As the luxuries of the east were introduced 

 into Rome, the practice of using gold for some 

 ornaments and for domestic purposes accom- 

 panied or followed them. Thus the lectica 

 or chair which was brought from Asia, and 

 was composed, according to Curtius 2 , of solid 



1 Fropcrtius, lib iii. s. 18. ~ Curling viii. 9. 



