BYSSUS
BYSSUS (
βύσσος). It has been a
subject of some dispute whether the byssus of the ancients was cotton or
linen. Herodotus (
2.86) says that the mummies
were wrapped up in bandages of this material (
σινδόνος βυσσίνης τελαμῶσι; cf. 7.181), and an examination
of mummy cloth with the microscope has shown it to be linen and not cotton
cloth. Byssus in Herodotus therefore signified linen made from flax, and not
cotton, which he calls
tree-wool (
εἴριον [Att.
ἔριον]
ἀπὸ ξύλου, 3.47, 106, 7.65). The robes of
byssus mentioned by Aeschylus (
Sept. c.
Theb. 1039;
Pers. 125) and Euripides (
Eur. Ba. 821) we may take to have been linen. In
the same way linen is meant when we are told that the limbs of Osiris were
wrapped in
byssina (
Diod.
1.85), that the image of Isis was covered with a black linen
garment (Plut.
Is. et Osir. 39), and that the great ship of
Ptolemy Philopator had a sail of
byssus (
Athen. 5.206 c). But in some writers
byssus is erroneously used to signify
cotton (
τὴν δὲ βύσσον φύεσθαι δένδρον
φασι, Philostr.
Vit. Apoll. 20), and Strabo even
gives the name to silk, which he supposed to be a kind of cotton (
τὰ Σηρικά, ἔκ τινων φλοιῶν ξαινομένης βύσσου,
Strab. xv. p.693). It seems in later
writers to have signified a fine and costly texture, made generally of
linen, but perhaps in some cases of very fine cotton. Simaetha in Theocr.
2.73 goes sightseeing in a dress of
byssus
(
βύσσοιο καλὸν σύροισα χιτῶνα) ; it
is mentioned by Apuleius as a thin dress ( “bysso tenui pertexta,”
Met. 11.100.3); and it is spoken of in the Gospel of St. Luke
(16.19) as part of the dress of a rich man (cf. Rev. 18.12). Pliny (
19.21) speaks of it as a species of flax
(
linum), which served
mulierum maxime deliciis, and was very expensive.
The word comes from the Hebrew
bûtz, and
the Greeks probably got it through the Phoenicians. Pausanias (
6.26.4) distinguishes byssus from hemp (
καννάβις) and flax (
λίνον), and in another passage (5.5.9) says that it was grown in
Elis, being not inferior to that of the Hebrews in fineness, but not so
yellow (
ξανθή) ; and that the women in
Patrae gained their livelihood by making headdresses (
κεκρύφαλοι) and weaving cloth from it (7.21.7). Mr. Yates
thinks that
λίνον was the common flax, and
that
βύσσος was a finer variety, but the
byssus in Elis may have been a species of cotton. (Yates,
Textrinum
Antiq., p. 267.)
[
W.S]
