Alexander is said by Plutarch to have found in the royal palace at Susa garments which preserved their freshness of color though they had been laid up for nearly two hundred years; and Mr. St. John ("Manner and Customs of Ancient Greece") relates that a small pot of the dye was discovered at Pompeii which had preserved the tone and richness attributed to the Tyrian purple. This fixedness of color is alluded to in Isa. i. 18 - though your sins were as scarlet, the term being rendered in the Septuagint foinikoun, which, with its kindred words, denoted darker shades of red. A full and interesting description of the purple may be found in J. A. St. John's "Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece," iii., 224 sq.

Fine linen (busson). Byssus. A yellowish flax, and the linen made from it. Herodotus says it was used for enveloping mummies (ii. 86), a statement confirmed by microscopic examinations. He also speaks of it as a bandage for a wound (vii. 181). It is the word used by the Septuagint for linen (Exod. xxv. 4; xxviii. 5; xxxv. 6, etc.). Some of the Egyptian linen was so fine that it was called woven air. Sir Gardner Wilkinson says that some in his possession was, to the touch, comparable to silk, and not inferior in texture to the finest cambric. It was often as transparent as lawn, a fact illustrated by the painted sculptures, where the entire form is often made distinctly visible through the outer garment. Later Greek writers used the word for cotton and silk. See Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," first series, iii., 114 sq., and Rawlinson's "History of Ancient Egypt," i., 487, 512. A yellow byssus was used by the Greeks, the material for which grew around Elis, and which was enormously costly. See Aeschylus, "Persae," 127.

Fared sumptuously (eufrainomenov lamprwv). Lit., making merry in splendor. Compare ch. xv. 23, 24, 29, 32. Wyc., he ate, each day, shiningly.

Robertson's NT Word Studies