58 AN HISTORICAL DISQUISITION

SECT. sex, and accustomed men to the disgrace (as theII. severity of ancient ideas accounted it) of wearingthis effeminate garb. Two circumstances concern-ing the traffic of silk among the Romans meritobservation. Contrary to what usually takes placein the operations of trade, the more general useof that commodity, seems not to have increased thequantity imported , in such proportion as to answerthe growing demand for it, and the price of silkwas not reduced during the course of two hundredand fifty years from the time of its being firstknown in Rome., In the reign of Aurelian, it stillcontinued to be valued at its weight in gold. This,it is probable, was owing to the mode in whichthat commodity was procured by the merchantsof Alexandria. They had no direct intercoursewith China , the only country in which the silk-worm was then reared, and its labor rendered anarticle of commerce. All the silk which theypurchased in the different ports of India whichthey frequented, was brought thither in ships, ofthe country; and either from some defect of stillin managing the silk worm, the produce of itsingenious industry among the Chinese was scanty,or the intermediate dealers found greater advantagein furnishing the market of Alexandria with a smallquantity at a high price, than to lower its valueby increasing the quantity. The other circumstancewhich I had in view, is more extraordinary, andaffords a striking proof of the imperfect communi-cation of the ancients with remote nations, andof the slender knowledge which they had of