1.52
CONSUMPTION OF THE
CIIAP. V.
Such applications of gold as the ancients usedin this way, as it exposed a surface less in pro-portion to its weight than our modern mannerof extending it, would evidently cause a muchless loss to arise from exposure and friction.
The other methods of gilding now practisedon metals and on our china-ware w 7 ere unknownto the ancients ; and thus that mode of con-suming gold, which is next to the loss by frictionon coin the greatest in the present day, had noinfluence in more remote periods.
There are no indications of the ancients having-attained the art of drawing wire of gold andsilver so as to apply it, like the moderns, to thefabrication of gold and silver lace, though it hasbeen thought they had some means of using itfor the purposes of embroidering. This is in-ferred from a passage in Propertius ’, where liespeaks of interweaving gold (auram intexere),and where he calls the garments made with itVestes Altalicce, from Attalicus, or Attains, whohas been supposed to have invented them.
As the luxuries of the east were introducedinto Rome , the practice of using gold for someornaments and for domestic purposes accom-panied or followed them. Thus the lecticaor chair which was brought from Asia, andwas composed, according to Curtius 2 , of solid
1
? Curtius, viii. 9,