e
Flemish, from which it immediately descends. He begins, however, by
quoting Pliny, to prove the antiquity of weaving, and gives a verse of
Martial's to this effect: "Thou owest this work to the land of
Memphis, where the slay of the Nile has vanquished the needle of
Babylon."[385]

Homer makes Helen weave the story of the siege of Troy; this may have
been partly embroidered; and there are some pieces of woven tapestry
introduced most ingeniously into the web of a linen shirt or garment,
of which the sleeve is in the Egyptian department of the British
Museum, proving that figures were pictured by weaving quite as early
as the date of Troy, and unmistakably finished with the needle (Plate
18); at any rate, as early as the days of Homer. Arachne's web was
interwoven with figures. She and Minerva rivalled each other in
ingenious design and perfect execution. The description of the
beautiful hangings they wove, the glorious colours with their
tenderly graduated tints, and the graceful borders, appear to be
almost prophetic of the highest efforts of the looms of the
Gobelins.[386][387] Arachne's name is derived from the Hebrew word
for weaving, "Arag."

It appears that the town now called Arras, but anciently Nomenticum,
was always a centre of the trade of the weavers;[388] for Flavius
Vopiscus, writing in A.D. 282, says that thence came the Byrri--woven
cloaks with hoods, which were much in vogue amongst all classes in the
later Roman Empire. The craft of weaving, which flourished in the
Flemish and other adjacent countries, seems to have become native to
that soil, and to have clung to it, surviving many historical
cataclysms.[389]

Though in the fifth century the inhabitants of that country were
transported wholesale to Germany by the Vandals, and among them those
of the town of Arras, yet, thanks to the monasteries, there was a
survival and a revival; the craftsmen grouping themselves round the
religious houses. Specimens as models were brought from the East.
Aster, Bishop of Amasis (a town in Asiatic Turkey), describes these
Oriental hangings in one of his homilies. He says that animals and
scenes from the Bible were woven on white grounds.[390]

Sidonius Apollinaris, Bishop of Clermont Ferrand,[391] says that some
foreign tapestries are "pictured" with the summits of Ctesiphon and
Nephates, "wild beasts running rapidly across void canvas, and also by
a miracle of art, the Parthian of wild aspect with his head tu