§270. Colors.--White was the prevailing color of all articles of dress throughout the Republic, in most cases the natural color of the wool, as we have seen (§246). The lower classes, however, selected for their garments shades that required cleansing less frequently, and found them, too, in the undyed wool. From Canusium came a brown wool with a tinge of red, from Baetica in Spain a light yellow, from Mutina a gray or a gray mixed with white, from Pollentia in Liguria the dark gray (_pulla_) used, as has been said (§246), for public mourning. Other shades from red to deep black were furnished by foreign wools. Almost the only artificial color used for garments under the Republic was purple, which seems to have varied from what we call crimson, made from the native trumpet-shell (_būcinum_ or _mūrex_), to the true Tyrian purple. The former was brilliant and cheap, but liable to fade. Mixed with the dark _purpura_ in different proportions, it furnished a variety of permanent tints. One of the most popular of these tints, violet, made the wool cost some $20 a pound, while the genuine Tyrian cost at least ten times as much. Probably the stripes worn by the knights and senators on the tunics and togas were much nearer our crimson than purple. Under the Empire the garments worn by women were dyed in various colors, and so, too, perhaps, the fancier articles worn by men, such as the _lacerna_ (§247) and the _synthesis_ (§249). The _trabea_ of the augurs seems to have been striped with scarlet and purple, the _palūdāmentum_ of the general to have been at different times white, scarlet, and purple, and the robe of the _triumphātor_ purple.