The first kinds of silk dresses worn by the Roman ladies were from the Island of Cos, and, as Pliny says, were known by the name of _Coæ vestes_.[811] These dresses, of which Pliny says in such high praise, “that while they cover a woman, they at the same time reveal her charms,” were indeed so fine as to be transparent, and were sometimes dyed purple, and enriched with stripes of gold. They had their name from the early reputation which Cos acquired by its manufacture of silk. But silk was a very scarce article among the Romans for many ages, and so highly prized as to be valued at its weight in gold. Vospicius informs us that the Emperor Aurelian, who died A.D. 125, refused his empress a robe of silk, which she earnestly solicited, merely on account of its dearness. Galen, who lived about A.D. 173, speaks of the rarity of silk, being nowhere then but at Rome, and there only among the rich. Heliogabalus is said to have been the first Roman that wore a garment entirely of silk. We learn from Tacitus, that early in the reign of Tiberius, about A.D. 17, the Senate enacted “that men should not defile themselves by wearing garments of silk.”[812] Pliny says, however, that in his time men had become so degenerate as to not even feel ashamed to wear garments of this material.[813] The mode of producing and manufacturing silk was not known to Europe until long after the Christian era, being first learned about the year 555 by two Persian monks, who, under the encouragement of the Emperor Justinian, procured in India the eggs of the Silk-worm Moth, with which, concealing them in hollow canes, they hastened to Constantinople. They also brought with them instructions for hatching the eggs, rearing and feeding the worms, and drawing, spinning, and working the silk.[814] From Constantinople, the culture of the Silk-worm spread over Greece, so that in less than five centuries that portion of this country, hitherto called the Peloponnesus, changed its denomination into that of Morea, from the immense plantations of the _Morus alba_, or white mulberry.[815] Large manufactories were set up at Athens, Thebes, and Corinth. The Venetians, soon after this, commencing a commerce with the Grecians, supplied all the western parts of Europe with silks for many centuries. Several kinds of modern silk manufactures, such as damasks, velvets, satins, etc., were as yet unknown. About the year 1130, Roger II., King of Sicily, having conquered the Peloponnesus, transported the Silk-worms and such as cultivated them to Palermo and to Calabria. Such was the success of the speculation in Calabria, that it is doubtful whether, even at the present moment, it does not produce more silk than the whole of the rest of Italy.[816]