In dyeing scarlet, the ancients made use of kermes[1395] or cochineal, found in several parts of Greece, but imported likewise from various other countries. It was sometimes employed in giving the ground to purple stuffs.[1396] Garments of this colour would appear to have been extremely rare among the Orientals, since the admiration excited in Darius by the scarlet cloak of Syloson, whom he saw walking in the great square of Memphis, can be accounted for only by supposing that he had never beheld the like before;[1397] otherwise he would not have been so captivated by its magnificent colour as to press its wearer to sell it to him in the street. Syloson presented him the cloak as a gift; but afterwards, when Darius was king of Persia, he took care to proceed to court and make the circumstance known, upon which the generous prince overwhelmed him with his favours. This kind of dye appears to have been known in Greece from the remotest antiquity, since Simonides supposes that even the signal sail given by Ægeus to Theseus in his expedition to Crete was of a scarlet colour.[1398] Sardis was celebrated for its scarlet,[1399] whence the proverb,—to be dyed with the tincture of Sardis,—for, to be beaten black and blue. The ancients, however, generally mistook the insect for the fruit of the holm-oak, upon whose leaves it feeds; a circumstance which may be regarded as very extraordinary, when it is remembered that both the insect and the tree were daily under their eyes. ----- Footnote 1394: Plut. Vit. Alex. § 36. Footnote 1395: Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 6. 9. Cf. Fab. Column. de Purp. i. 13. Don Juan Pablo Canáls Y Martí, Memorias sobra la Purpura de los Antiguos. c. v. Phile, De Animal. Proprietat. c. xliii. p. 172, sqq. appears to describe, though in an indistinct and imperfect manner, the cochineal insect among the productions of India. Footnote 1396: Beckmann, ii. 171. Footnote 1397: Herod. iii. 139. Footnote 1398: Plut. Thes. § 17. In later times we find Alcibiades, on his return to Athens, hoisting purple sails in the Admiral’s galley. Plut. Alcib. § 32. Footnote 1399: Schol. Aristoph. Pac. 1140. ad Acharn. 118. Cf. Plin. xxiv. 4. -----