Sino-Roman relations were indirect throughout the existence of both empires. Rome and Han China progressively inched closer in the course of the Roman expansion into the Ancient Near East and simultaneous Chinese military incursions into Central Asia. However, powerful intermediate empires as the Parthians and Kushans kept the two Eurasian flanking powers permanently apart and mutual awareness remained low and knowledge fuzzy.

Only a few attempts at direct contact are known from records: In 97 AD, the Chinese general Ban Chao unsuccessfully tried to send an envoy to Rome.^[1][2] Several alleged Roman embassies to China were recorded by ancient Chinese historians. The first one on record, supposedly from either the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius or the later emperor Marcus Aurelius, arrived in 166.^[3][4]

The indirect exchange of goods on the land (the so-called silk road) and sea routes included Chinese silk and Roman glassware and high-quality cloth.^[5]

In classical sources, the problem of identifying references to ancient China is exacerbated by the interpretation of the Latin term "Seres" whose meaning fluctuated and could refer to a number of Asian people in a wide arc from India over Central Asia to China.^[6] In Chinese records, the Roman Empire came to be known as "Da Qin", Great Qin, apparently thought to be a sort of counter-China at the other end of the world.^[7] According to Pulleybank, the "point that needs to be stressed is that the Chinese conception of Da Qin was confused from the outset with ancient mythological notions about the far west".^[8]

Indirect trade relations

Asian silk in the Roman Empire

Trade with the Roman Empire, confirmed by the Roman craze for silk started from the 1st century BC. Although the Romans knew of wild silk harvested on Cos, they did not at first make the connection with silk which was also produced further west in the Pamir Sarikol kingdom.^[9] There were no direct trade contacts between Romans and Han Chinese, as the rivalling Parthians and Kushans were each jealously protecting their lucrative role as trade intermediaries.^[10][11]

Much of what we know from the Roman side of the silk trade and silk in general comes from Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History:

The Seres, are famous for the woolen substance obtained from their forests; after a soaking in water they comb off the white down of the leaves… So manifold is the labour employed, and so distant is the region of the globe drawn upon, to enable the Roman maiden to flaunt transparent clothing in public.

—Pliny the Elder , The Natural History VI, 54

Pliny the Elder wrote about the large value of the trade between Rome and Eastern countries:^[12]:

"By the lowest reckoning, India, Seres and the Arabian peninsula take from our Empire 100 millions of sesterces every year: that is how much our luxuries and women cost us."

—Pliny the Elder, Natural History 12.84^[13].

Yet later in the same work, he writes:

The larva [of the 'bombyx'] then becomes a caterpillar, after which it assumes the state in which it is known as 'bombylis', then that called 'necydalus', and after that, in six months, it becomes a silk-worm. These insects weave webs similar to those of the spider, the material of which is used for making the more costly and luxurious garments of females, known as 'bombycina'. Pamphile, a woman of Cos, the daughter of Platea, was the first person who discovered the art of unravelling these webs and spinning a tissue therefrom; indeed, she ought not to be deprived of the glory of having discovered the art of making vestments which, while they cover a woman, at the same moment reveal her naked charms.

—Pliny the Elder , The Natural History XI, 26

The Senate issued, in vain, several edicts to prohibit the wearing of silk, on economic and moral grounds: the importation of silk caused a huge outflow of gold, and silk clothes were considered to be decadent and immoral:

I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one's decency, can be called clothes ... Wretched flocks of maids labour so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife's body.

—Seneca the Younger c. 3 BCE–CE 65 , Declamations Vol. I

The Roman historian Florus also describes the visit of numerous envoys, including Seres, to the first Roman Emperor Augustus, who reigned between 27 BCE and CE 14:

Now that all the races of the west and south were subjugated, and also the races of the north, (...) the Scythians and the Sarmatians sent ambassadors seeking friendship; the Seres too and the Indians, who live immediately beneath the sun, though they brought elephants amongst their gifts as well as precious stones and pearls, regarded their long journey, in the accomplishment of which they had spent four years, as the greatest tribute which they rendered, and indeed their complexion proved that they came from beneath another sky.

—Florus , Epitomae II, 34

A maritime route opened up with the Chinese-controlled Giao Chỉ (centred in modern Vietnam) and the Khmer kingdom of Funan probably by the first century CE.^{[citation needed]} At the formerly coastal site of Óc Eo in the Mekong Delta, Roman coins were among the vestiges of long-distance trade discovered by the French archaeologist Louis Malleret in the 1940s.^[14] Óc Eo may have been the port known to the geographer Ptolemy and the Romans as Kattigara. The trade connection extended, via ports on the coasts of India and Sri Lanka, all the way to Roman-controlled ports in Egypt and the Nabataean territories on the northeastern coast of the Red Sea.

Roman exports to China

High-quality glass from Roman manufactures in Alexandria and Syria were exported to many parts of Asia, including Han China. Further Roman luxury items which were greatly esteemed by the Chinese were gold-embroidered rugs and gold-coloured cloth, asbestos cloth and byssus, a cloth made from the silk-like hairs of certain Mediterranean shell-fish.^[15]

Embassies and travels

Envoy Gan Ying

In 97 CE, a Chinese envoy named Gan Ying, sent by the general Ban Chao, made his way from the Tarim Basin to Parthia and reached the Persian Gulf. Gan Ying left a detailed account of western countries, although he apparently only reached as far as Mesopotamia, then under the control of the Parthian Empire. While he intended to sail to the Roman Empire, he was discouraged when told that the dangerous trip could take up to two years. Deterred, he returned home to China bringing much new information on the countries to the west of Chinese-controlled territories.^[16]

Gan Ying left an account on the Roman Empire (Daqin in Chinese) which relied on sources - likely sailors in the ports which he visited. It is, apparently, this report from Gan Ying which formed the basis for the account of Da Qin in the Hou Hanshu, which locates it in Haixi (lit. "west of the sea" = Egypt, which was then under Roman control? The sea is the one known to the Greeks and Romans as the Erythraean Sea which included the Persian Gulf together with the Arabian Sea and Red Sea):

"Its territory extends for several thousands of li [a li during the Han equaled 415.8 metres],^[17] They have established postal relays at intervals, which are all plastered and whitewashed. There are pines and cypresses, as well as trees and plants of all kinds. It has more than four hundred walled towns. There are several tens of smaller dependent kingdoms. The walls of the towns are made of stone."^[18]

He also describes a fanciful adoptive monarchy of the Emperor:

As for the king, he is not a permanent figure but is chosen as the man most worthy ... The people in this country are tall and regularly featured. They resemble the Chinese, and that is why the country is called Da Qin (The "Great" Qin) ... The soil produced lots of gold, silver and rare jewels, including the jewel which shines at night ... they sew embroidered tissues with gold threads to form tapestries and damask of many colours, and make a gold-painted cloth, and a "cloth washed-in-the-fire" (asbestos).

—Hou Hanshu, cited in Leslie and Gardiner

Finally Gan Ying described Rome correctly as the main economic power at the western end of Eurasia:

It is from this country that all the various marvellous and rare objects of foreign states come.

—Hou Hanshu, cited in Leslie and Gardiner

Some authors even claim that Ban Chao himself advanced to the Caspian. However, this interpretation has been criticized as a misreading.^[19][20]

Eastern travels of Maes Titianus

Maës Titianus, an ancient Hellenistic traveller, ^[21] penetrated farthest east along the Silk Road from the Mediterranean world. In the early second century^[22] or at the end of the first century BCE,^[23] during a lull in the intermittent Roman struggles with Parthia, his party reached the famous Stone Tower, which, according to one theory, was Tashkurgan,^[24] in the Pamirs.

First Roman embassy

Direct trade links between the Mediterranean lands and India had been established in the 1st century BC, after Greek navigators learnt to use the regular pattern of the monsoon winds for their trade voyages in the Indian Ocean. The lively sea trade in Roman times is confirmed by the excavation of large deposits of Roman coins along much of the coast of India. Many trading ports with links to Roman communities have been identified in India and Sri Lanka along the route used by the Roman mission.

The first group of people claiming to be an ambassadorial mission of Romans to China was recorded in 166, sixty years after the westbound expeditions of the Chinese general Ban Chao. The embassy came to Emperor Huan of Han China "from Andun (Chinese: 安敦; Emperor Antoninus Pius), king of Daqin (Rome)". (As Antoninus Pius died in 161, leaving the empire to his adoptive son Marcus Aurelius (Antoninus), and the convoy arrived in 166, confusion remains about who sent the mission given that both Emperors were named 'Antoninus'.) The Roman mission came from the south (therefore probably by sea), entering China by the frontier of Jinan or Tonkin. It brought presents of rhinoceros horns, ivory, and tortoise shell, probably been acquired in Southern Asia. About the same time, and possibly through this embassy, the Chinese acquired a treatise of astronomy from the Romans.

While the existence of China was clearly known to Roman cartographers of the time, its geographical position is depicted in Ptolemy's Geographia from c. 150 rather vaguely: On the map, China is located beyond the Aurea Chersonesus ("Golden Peninsula"), which refers to the Southeast Asian peninsula. It is shown as being on the Magnus Sinus ("Great Gulf"), which presumably corresponds to the known areas of the China Sea at the time; although Ptolemy represents it as tending to the southeast rather than to the northeast.

Other Roman embassies

Other embassies may have been sent after this first encounter, but were not recorded, until an account appears about presents sent in the early 3rd century by the Roman Emperor to Cao Rui of the Kingdom of Wei (reigned 227–239) in Northern China. The presents consisted of articles of glass in a variety of colours. While several Roman Emperors ruled during this time, the embassy, if genuine, may have been sent by Severus Alexander; since his successors reigned briefly and were busy with civil wars.

Another embassy from Daqin is recorded in the year 284, as bringing presents to the Chinese empire. This embassy presumably was sent by the Emperor Carus (282–283), whose short reign was occupied by war with Persia.

Chinese annals record other contacts with merchants from 'Fu-lin,' the new name used to designate the Byzantine Empire, the continuation of the Roman empire in the east, taking place in 643 during the reign of Constans II (641-688)^[25]. Other contacts are reported taking place in 667, 701, and perhaps 719, sometimes through Central Asian intermediaries^[26]. Still other contacts are recorded by the Chinese in the 11th century.

Hypothetical military contact

The historian Homer H. Dubs speculated that Roman prisoners of war who were transferred to the Parthian eastern border might have later clashed with Han troops there.^[27]

After losing at the battle of Carrhae in 54 BC, an estimated 10,000 Roman prisoners were displaced by the Parthians to Margiana to man the frontier. About 18 years later the nomadic Xiongnu chief Zhizhi established a state in the nearby Talas valley, near modern day Taraz.

Taking up these two strands, Dubs points to a Chinese account by Ban Gu of about "a hundred men" under the command of Zhizhi who fought in a so-called "fish-scale formation" to defend Zhizhi's wooden-palisade fortress against Han forces, in the Battle of Zhizhi in 36 BCE. He claimed that this might have been the Roman testudo formation and that these men, who were captured by the Chinese, founded the village of Liqian (Li-chien) in Yongchang County.^[28]

However, Dubs' hypothesis has not found acceptance among modern academics. There is no evidence that these men were Romans,^[29] and recent DNA testing of the male inhabitants of Liqian does not support the hypothesis.^[30]

References

• Hill, John E. (2009). Through the Jade Gate to Rome: A Study of the Silk Routes during the Later Han Dynasty, First to Second Centuries CE. BookSurge. ISBN 978-1-4392-2134-1. 

Sources

• Pulleyblank, Edwin G.: "The Roman Empire as Known to Han China", Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 119, No. 1 (1999), pp. 71-79
• Schoff, Wilfred H.: "The Eastern Iron Trade of the Roman Empire", Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 35 (1915), pp. 224-239

Further reading

• Hill, John E. 2004. The Peoples of the West from the Weilue 魏略 by Yu Huan 魚豢: A Third Century Chinese Account Composed between 239 and 265. Draft annotated English translation. [4]
• Hill, John E. (2009). Through the Jade Gate to Rome: A Study of the Silk Routes during the Later Han Dynasty, 1st to 2nd Centuries CE. BookSurge, Charleston, South Carolina. ISBN 978-1-4392-2134-1.  (forthcoming)
• Henry Yule. Cathay and the Way Thither. 1915.
• Leslie, D. D., Gardiner, K. H. J.: "The Roman Empire in Chinese Sources", Studi Orientali, Vol. 15. Rome: Department of Oriental Studies, University of Rome, 1996
• Schoff, Wilfred H.: "Navigation to the Far East under the Roman Empire", Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 37 (1917), pp. 240-249

External links

• Accounts of Daqin in the Chinese history of the Later Han Hou Hanshu [5]
• http://www.silk-road.com/artl/romanenvoy.shtml
• The Origins of Roman Li-chien
• The Lost Legion (Italian) (English)
• Did the Romans settle in Yongchang County, Gansu Province, China?
• The Romans in China. They came，saw and settled
• Romans in China?
• Los Angeles Times: "Digging for Romans in China"; August 24, 2000