He demanded that all the rest should carefully observe the law, and compelled those who were engaged in the silk factories to work for himself alone.

Without taking any trouble to conceal it, he sold an ounce of any ordinary coloured silk in the public market-place for six pieces of gold, but if it was of the royal dye, called Holovere, he asked more than four-and-twenty for it.

In this manner he procured vast sums of money for the Emperor, and even larger sums, which he kept privately for himself; and this practice, begun by him, continued.

The grand treasurer is at this moment avowedly the only silk merchant and sole controller of the market.

All those who formerly carried on this business, either in Byzantium or any other city, workers on sea or land, felt the loss severely.