While Phrygia in general, Babylon in particular became celebrated for the beauty of its embroideries: “colores diversos picturæ intexere Babylon maxime celebravit et nomen imposuit;”[307] and those who have seen the sculptures in the British Museum brought from Nineveh, and described and figured by Layard, must have witnessed how lavishly the Assyrians must have adorned their dress with that sort of needlework for which one of their greatest cities was so famous. Up to the first century of our era, the reputation which Babylon had won for her textiles and needlework still lived. Josephus, himself a Jew, who had often been to worship at Jerusalem, tells us that the veils of its Temple given by Herod were Babylonian, and of the outer one that writer says:--“there was a veil of equal largeness with the door. It was a Babylonian curtain, embroidered with blue and fine linen, and scarlet and purple, and of a texture that was wonderful.”[308] [303] Pp. 330, 335-336. [304] Rymer’s Fœdera, t. ix. p. 272. [305] T. viii. pp. 1290, new edition. [306] Church of our Fathers, t. i. p. 453. [307] Pliny, lib. viii. c. 47. [308] Wars of the Jews, b. v. c. 5; Works translated by Weston, t. 4, p. 121. What the Jews did for the Temple we may be sure was done by Christians for the Church. The faithful, however, went even further, and wore garments figured all over with passages from Holy Writ wrought in embroidery. From a stirring sermon preached by St. Asterius, bishop of Amasia in Pontus, in the fourth century, we learn this. Taking for his text, “a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen,” this father of the Church, while upbraiding the world for its follies in dress, lets us know that some people went about arrayed like painted walls, with beasts and flowers all over them; while others, pretending a more serious tone of thought, dressed in clothes figured with a sketch of all the doings and wonders of our Lord. “Strive,” thunders forth St. Asterius, “to follow in your lives the teachings of the Gospel, rather than have the miracles of our Redeemer embroidered upon your outward dress.”[309] To have had so many subjects shown upon one garment, it is clear that each must have been done very small, and all wrought in outline; a style which is being brought back, with great effect, into ecclesiastical use. Of the embroidery done by Christian ladies abroad during the Lower Roman Empire, we have already spoken, p. xxxv. Coming to our own land, and its mediæval times, we find how at the beginning of that period our Anglo-Saxon sisters knew so well to handle their needle. The many proofs of this we have brought forward in another place.[310]