




218 THE INSECT WORLD. 

of Oriental silk. They murmured at this gorgeous prodigality 
but declared Casar 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 sometimes set in high places; thus the 
Emperor Aurelian refused to the Empress Severina a dress so 
costly. 
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 Constantinople from a.p. 527 to 565, tried all the means within 
his power of freeing his States from this ruinous tyranny, when 
a circumstance occurred, very fortunately for the national com- 
merce, which brought about the introduction into Europe of 
sericiculture, 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 fabri- 
cating this material. The proposition was rapturously 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, with- 
out being once interfered with. Two years afterwards they 
re-entered Constantinople with their precious booty.* The larve 
were fed on mulberry leaves. Immediately afterwards began the 
* According to M. de Gasparin, author of an excellent “‘ Essai sur ]’ Histoire de 
l introduction des vers A soie 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 silk- 
worms’ eggs (pp. 3739). 



































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