Writing of the wars carried on in Asia and India by Alexander the great almost four centuries before the birth of Christ, Quintus Curtius often speaks about the purple and gold garments worn by the Persians and more eastern Asiatics. Among the many thousands of those who came forth from Damascus to the Greek general, Parmenio, numbers were so clad: “They wore robes splendid with gold and purple.” All over India the same fashion was followed in dress. When an Indian king with his two sons came to Alexander, the three were so arrayed. Princes and the high nobility, all over the east, are called by Quintus Curtius “purpurati.” Not only garments but hangings were made of the same costly fabric. When Alexander wished to give some ambassadors a splendid reception, the golden couches upon which they lay to eat their meat were screened with cloths of gold and purple; and the Indian guests themselves were not less gorgeously clothed in their own national costume, as they came wearing linen (perhaps cotton) garments equally resplendent. The dress worn by Darius, as he went forth to do battle, is thus described by the same historian: “the waist part of the royal purple tunic was wove in white, and upon his mantle of cloth of gold were figured two golden hawks as if pecking at one another with their beaks.” From the east this love for cloth of gold reached the southern end of Italy, and thence soon got to Rome; where, even under its early kings, garments made of it were worn. Pliny, speaking of this rich textile, says: “gold may be spun or woven like wool, without any wool being mixed with it.” We are told by Verrius that Tarquinius Priscus rode in triumph in a tunic of gold; and Agrippina the wife of the emperor Claudius, when he exhibited the spectacle of a naval combat, sat by him covered with a robe made entirely of gold woven without any other material. About the year 1840 the marquis Campagna dug up near Rome two old graves, in one of which had been buried a Roman lady of high birth, inferred from the circumstance that all about her remains were found portions of such fine gold flat thread, once forming the burial garment with which she had been arrayed for her funeral.