The invention of the loom and distaff has been piously ascribed to the gods.

In every age, a variety of animal and vegetable productions, hair, skins, wool, flax, cotton, and at length silk, have been skilfully manufactured to hide or adorn the human body; they were stained with an infusion of permanent colors; and the pencil was successfully employed to improve the labors of the loom.

In the choice of those colors [58] which imitate the beauties of nature, the freedom of taste and fashion was indulged; but the deep purple [59] which the Phoenicians extracted from a shell-fish, was restrained to the sacred person and palace of the emperor; and the penalties of treason were denounced against the ambitious subjects who dared to usurp the prerogative of the throne.

[60] [Footnote 54: Hierocles, a contemporary of Justinian, composed his (Itineraria, p.

631,) review of the eastern provinces and cities, before the year 535, (Wesseling, in Praefat.