The purple dyeing, _i.e._ the colouring of woofs by the liquor from fish, was discovered by the Phenicians. They were unsurpassed in this art; it outlived by many centuries the power and splendour of their cities. Trumpet and purple fish were found in great numbers on their coasts, and the liquor from these provided excellent dye. The liquor of the purple-fish, which comes from a vessel in the throat, is dark-red in the small fish, and black in the larger fish; the liquor of the trumpet-fish is scarlet. The fish were pounded and the dye extracted by decoction. By mixing, weakening, or thickening this material, and by adding this or that ingredient, various colours were obtained, through all the shades of crimson and violet down to the darkest black, in which fine woollen stuffs and linen from Egypt were dipped. The stuffs soaked in these colours are the purple cloths of antiquity, and were distinguished by the bright sheen of the colours. The Tyrian double-dyed cloth, which had the colour of curdled blood, and the violet amethyst purple were considered the most beautiful.[521] Three hundred pounds of the raw material were usually required to dye 50 pounds of wool.[522] When the purple stuffs began to be sought after, the fish collected on the coasts of Tyre, Sidon, and Sarepta were no longer sufficient. We saw how the ships of the Phenicians went from coast to coast in order to get fresh materials for the dye, and found them in great numbers on the shores of Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete, Cythera, and Thera; in the bays of Laconia and Argos, and in the straits of Euboea. Purple-fish were also collected on the greater Syrtis, in Sicily, the Balearic Isles, and coasts of Tarshish.[523] Even at a later period, when the art of dyeing with the purple-fish was understood and practised at many places in the Mediterranean Sea, the Tyrian purple still maintained its pre-eminence and fame. "Tyre," says Strabo, "overcame her misfortunes, and always recovered herself by means of her navigation, in which the Phenicians were superior to all others, and her purples. The Tyrian purple is the most beautiful; the fish are caught close at hand, and every other requirement for the dyeing is there in abundance."[524] A hundred years later Pliny adds "that the ancient glory of Tyre survived now only in her fish and her purples."[525] The consumption and expense of purple in antiquity was very great, especially in Hither Asia. At first the Phenician kings wore the purple robe as the sign of their rank; then it became the adornment of the princes of the East, the priests, the women of high rank, and upper classes. In the temples and palaces the purple served for curtains and cloths, robes and veils for the images and shrines. The kings of Babylon and Assyria, and after them the kings of Persia, collected stores of purple stuffs in their palaces. Plutarch puts the value of the amount of purple found by Alexander at Susa at