ue purple: on the fourth day
they appeared in Baudichin (cloth of gold). (Yule,
"Marco Polo," vol. i. p. 376.) White purple is also
named in the inventories of Sta. Maria Maggiore at Rome,
and those of Notre Dame in Paris. "Histoire du Tissu
Ancien, a l'Exposition de l'Union Generale des Arts
Decoratifs."

[293] Francois Le Normant, in his "Grande Grece," tells
of the dye of the purple of Tarentum from the murex,
found in the Mare Piccolo. He says that Tarentine
muslins, woven from the filaments of the pinna dipped in
the dye of the murex, rivalled those of Cos. Le Normant
laments the total neglect of the murex in these days
(could its trade be revived?) Plutarch says that
Alexander the Great, having made himself master of Susa
(Shushan), found, amongst other riches of marvellous
value, "purple of Hermione" worth forty thousand talents
(Quintus Curtius says fifty thousand), which, though it
had been stored 190 years, retained all its freshness
and beauty. See Plutarch's "Lives," edited by J. and W.
Langhorne, vol. ii. p. 739; Bluemner, i. p. 224-240. The
reason assigned for their dye being so perfect was that
the Susanians knew how to comb the wool to be dipped,
and prepare it with honey. According to Aristotle the
dress of Alcisthenes, the Sybarite, was dyed with this
purple from Shushan (Ciampini, Vet. Mon.).

[294] Semper gives us an account of iodine colours.
Some, he says, were extracted from sea-weeds, green and
yellow; the purples, when finest, from the shell-fish.
The Phoenician coasts gave the best purples; those of
the Atlantic the best blacks and browns. And thus he
completes the scale of iodine colours. See Semper, "Der
Stil," i. p. 206.

[295] Heaps of the shells of this "murex trunculus" have
been found at Pompeii, near the dyers' works. Hardouin
says that in his time they were found at Otranto, and
similar remains have been noticed at Sidon. Sir James
Lacaita informs me that the living shells are still
found along the shores of the Adriatic, as well as on
the wash near Argos. No doubt the Phoenicians traded
first in the produce of the Sidonian and Tyrian coasts,
though they afterwards went farther afield in collecting
their dyes. Auberville says that the purple of the
Romans was a deep violet (double dyed, purpurae dibaphae),