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TELA.
of Hera, and to be preserved in her temple. (Paus. v. 16. § 2—4, vi.24. § 8.) [heraea.] A similar college at Sparta was devoted to the purpose of weaving a tunic every year for the sitting statue of the A my clean Apollo, which was thirty cubits high. (Paus. iii. 16. § 2, 19. § 2.) At Athens the company of virgins called epyao-rtwii or epydvai, and dpp-r)(f)6poi, who were partly of Asiatic extraction, wove the shawl which was carried in the Pa-nathenaic procession and which represented the battle between the gods and the giants. (Eurip. Hec. 461—46.9 ; Virg. Ciris, 21—35.) [arrhe-phoria ; panathenaea.] A similar occupation was assigned to young females of the highest rank at Argos. (Eurip. Ipli. in Taur. 213—215.) In the fourth century the task of weaving began to be transferred in Europe from women to the other sex, a change which St. Chrysostom deplores as a sign of prevailing sloth and effeminacy. (Orat, 34. vol. iii. p. 47^0, ed. Saville.) Vegetius (de Re Mil. i. 7), who wrote about the same time, mentions lint.eone.Si or the manufacturers of linen cloth, in the number of those who were ineligible as soldiers.
Hk :
Every thing woven consists of two essential parts, the warp and the woof, called in Latin Stamen and Subtegmen, Subtemen, or Trama (Vitruv. x. 1 ; Ovid. Met. iv. 397 ; Plin. H. N. xi. 24. s. 28 ; Pers. Sat., vi. 73), in Greek (mf/^fi/ and KpoKri. (Plato, Polii. pp. 297, 301, 302, ed. Bekker ; Aelian, H. A. ix. 17 ; Plut. de Is. et Osir. p. 672.) Instead of Kpottri Plato (Leg. v. p. 386, ed. Bekker) sometimes uses €<pi,<t>rf, and in the passages referred to he mentions one of the most important differences between the warp and the woof: viz. that the threads of the former are strong and firm in consequence of being more twisted in spinning, whilst those of the latter are comparatively soft and yielding. This is in fact the difference which in the modern silk manufacture distinguishes organzine from tram9 and in the cotton manufacture twist from weft. Another name for the woof or tram was poftdvri. (Horn. Batr. 181 ; Eustath. in Horn.. II. xxiii. 762, Od. v. 121.)
The warp was called stamen in Latin (from stare) on account of its erect posture in the loom. (Varro, L. L. v. 113, ed. Mliller.) The corresponding Greek term arrnjioov and likewise Itrros have evidently the same derivation. For the same reason the very first operation in \veaving was to set up the loom, igtov (rr^ffaff6ai (Horn. Od. ii. 94 ; Hesiod, Op. et Dies, 779) ; and the web or cloth, before it was cut down or " descended" from the loom (KaTf§a dfi /cttw, Theocrit. xv. 35), was called "vestis pendens," or "pendula tela" (Ovid, Met. iv. 395, Epist. i. 10), because it hung from the transverse beam or jugum. These particulars are all clearly exhibited in the picture of Circe's loom, which is contained in the very ancient illuminated MS. of VirgiPs Aeneid preserved at Rome in the Vatican Library. (See the annexed wood-
TELA.
cut, and compare Aen. vii. 14 : apudmajores stantes texebant, Servius in loc.; Horn. Od. x. 222.) Although the upright loom here exhibited was in common use, and employed for all ordinary purposes, the practice, now generally adopted, of placing the warp in an horizontal position was occasionally resorted to in ancient times ; for the upright loom (stans tela, terras opQios], the management of which required the female to stand and move about, is opposed to another kind at which she sat. (Artemidor. iii. 36 ; Servius, I. c.)
We observe in the preceding woodcut about the middle of the apparatus a transverse rod passing through the warp. A straight cane was well adapted to be so used, and its application is clearly expressed by Ovid in the words *4 stamen secernit arundo." (Met. vi. 55.) In plain weaving it was inserted between the threads of the warp so as to divide them into two portions, the threads on one side of the rod alternating with those on the other side throughout the whole breadth of the warp. The two upright beams supporting the jugum, or transverse beam, from which the warp depends, were called /ceAeoi/res (Theocrit. xviii. 34), and jtTTOTroSes, literally, " the legs of the loom." (Eustath. in Horn. Od. xiii. 107.)
Whilst the improvements in machinery have to a great extent superseded the use of the upright loom in all other parts of Europe, it remains almost in its primitive state in Iceland. The following woodcut is reduced from an engraving of the Icelandic loom in Olaf Olafsen's Economic Tour in that island, published in Danish at Copenhagen, a. d. 1780. We observe underneath the jugum a roller (a.VTiov, Pollux, vii. x. § 36 ; Eustath. in Horn. Od. xiii. 107) which is turned by a handle, and on which the web is wound as the work advances. The threads of the warp, besides being separated by a transverse rod or plank, are divided into thirty or forty parcels, to each of which a stone is suspended for the purpose of keeping the warp in a perpendicular position and allowing the necessary play to the strokes of the spatha, which is drawn at the side of the loom. The mystical ode written about the eleventh century of our era,
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