Carthage enjoyed celebrity for its manufacture of carpets and variegated pillows,[432] a piece of luxury which, as we have seen above, had already been introduced in the heroic ages; for Homer, in innumerable passages, speaks of rare and costly carpets, and these were not only spread over couches and seats, but over the floor likewise.[433] Rolled up, they would occasionally appear to have served for pillows. The manufacture of carpets had, moreover, been carried to considerable perfection, for the poet speaks of some with a soft pile on both sides, which were evidently very splendid.[434] Theocritus,[435] too, in his Adoniazusæ, enumerates, among the luxuries of the youthful God, Carpets of purple, _softer far than sleep_,[436] Woven in Milesian looms. ----- Footnote 431: Mazois, Pal. de Scaur, p. 103. Tibull. iii. 3, 17, seq. Athen. iv. 29. Footnote 432: Athen. i. 49. Footnote 433: Il. ι. 200.—The use of mats first prevailed, (Festus, in v. Scirpus.) but, as luxury increased, superb carpets were substituted.—Æschyl. Agam. 842. Tryphiod. Ἅλωσις Ἴλιου. 343, seq. Hemster. Comm. in Poll. viii. 133. p. 287. Cf. Klausen. Comm. in Æschyl. Agam. p. 197, sqq. Footnote 434: Il. π. 224. Poll. vi. 2. Synes. Epist. 61. Footnote 435: Eidyll, xv. 125. Footnote 436: A beautiful simile, which Virgil has imitated— “Muscosi fontes, et _somno mollior herba_.”—Eclog. vii. 45. Shakespeare, too, has, without imitation, struck upon a similar thought, where the amorous Troilus thus describes himself:— “But I am weaker than a woman’s tear, _Tamer than sleep_, fonder than ignorance.” Troilus & Cressida, i. 1. -----