The goat yields no small profit from its milk, cheese, and (flesh). It also yields a profit from its hair, which is necessary for making ropes, sacks, and similar articles, and for nautical purposes, since it is not easily cut, and does not rot from natural causes, unless it be much neglected.--_Yates’s Translation._ Cicero (_in Verrem_, _Act_ i.) mentions _Cilicia_ together with hides and sacks, and Asconius Pedianus in his Commentary on the passage (_p._ 95. _ed. Crenii._) gives the following explanation: “Cilicia texta de pilis in castrorum usum atque nautarum.” Servius on Virgil, Georg. iii. 313. says, that these Cilicia, or cloths of goats’-hair, were used to cover the towers in sieges, because they could not be set on fire. The reader is referred to the Poliorcetica of Lipsius, L. iii. Dial. 3. p. 158. for evidence respecting the use of hair ropes for military engines, and to L. v. Dial. ix. for passages from Thucydides, Arrian, Ammianus, Suidas, Vegetius, Curtius, and others, proving, that the besieged in cities hung Cilicia over their towers and walls to obviate the force of the various weapons hurled against them, and especially of the arrows, which carried fire. From Exodus we learn[383], that the Israelites in the wilderness among their contributions to the Tabernacle gave goats’-hair, and that it was spun by women. The spun goats’-hair was probably used in part to make cords for the tent; but part of it at least was _woven_ into the large pieces, called in the Septuagint “curtains of goats’-hair.” Such curtains, or _Saga_, of spun goats’-hair seem to have been commonly used for the covering of tents[384]. [383] “And thou shalt make curtains of goats’-hair to be a covering upon the tabernacle: eleven curtains shalt thou make. The length of one curtain shall be thirty cubits, and the breadth of one curtain four cubits: and the eleven curtains shall be all of one measure. And thou shalt couple five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves, and shalt double the sixth curtain in the forefront of the tabernacle. And thou shalt make fifty loops on the edge of the one curtain that is outmost in the coupling, and fifty loops in the edge of the curtain which coupleth the second. And thou shalt make fifty taches of brass, and put the taches into the loops, and couple the tent together, that it may be one. And the remnant that remaineth of the curtains of the tent, the half curtain that remaineth, shall hang over the backside of the tabernacle. And a cubit on the one side, and a cubit on the other side of that which remaineth in the length of the curtains of the tent, it shall hang over the sides of the tabernacle on this side and on that side, to cover it.”--Ex. xxvi. 7-13.