EARLY HISTORY OF. 259 



dead. It was not, indeed, until the period of the emperor 

 Severus that linen under-garments were worn by the 

 Romans, and even then, for centuries after, the practice 

 was confined to a comparative few. We have, however, 

 ample records of the cultivation of flax in Roman history, 

 and curiously enough all the agricultural authors of that 

 period agree in pronouncing a judgment upon it which 

 has survived to the present day; for to no other better 

 source can we trace the still very common opinion that flax 

 is an exhausting crop. Columella 1 speaks of it as a hurtful 

 crop which exhausts the land, and which, he says, "should 

 not be grown unless there be reason to expect a very 

 great crop, and one is tempted by a very great price." 

 Virgil 2 joins it with oats and poppies, and says "that all 

 these exhaust the soil/' Palladius 3 expresses exactly 

 the same opinions. Pliny, 4 while condemning it as a 

 crop, moralizes over it, and asks, " What greater miracle 

 than that there should be a plant which makes Egypt 

 approach nearer to Italy ; that there should grow from 

 so small a seed, and upon so slender and short a stalk, 

 that which, as it were, carries the globe itself to and 

 fro?" By this we must infer that its use, both in the 

 shape of sailcloth and of cordage, was not unknown to 

 them ; we also learn from succeeding chapters that many 

 nations also used ft as wearing apparel when it was woven 

 into linen fabrics. \ 



Although all the writers on Roman husbandry speak 

 of flax and its cultivation, Pliny is the only one 

 that enters minutely into the details both of its cul- 

 tivation and subsequent preparation. He speaks chiefly 

 of spring-sown flax. According to the other authors flax 

 was sown usually in the autumn, in the months of October 



1 Columella, lib. ii. cap. 10. 



2 Virgil, Georg., lib. i. v. 77, "Urit enim liiii campum seges, urit avense." 



3 Palladius, lib. xi. cap. 2. * Pliny, Nat. Hist., lib. xix. procem. 



