Sino-Roman relations

Sino-Roman relations started first on an indirect basis during the 2nd century BC. China and Rome progressively inched closer with the embassies of Zhang Qian in 130 BC and the military expeditions of China to Central Asia, until general Ban Chao attempted to send an envoy to Rome around 100 CE. Several alleged Roman embassies to China were recorded by a number of 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 CE.

Zhang Qian's embassy

In 130 BC, with the embassies of the Han Dynasty to Central Asia, following the reports of the ambassador Zhang Qian (who was originally sent to obtain an alliance with the Yuezhi against the Xiongnu, but in vain), the Chinese emperor Wudi became interested in developing relationships with the sophisticated urban civilizations of Ferghana, Bactria and Parthia:

The Chinese subsequently sent numerous embassies, around ten every year, to these countries and as far as Seleucid Syria. According to Hou Hanshu's "Later Han History", "Thus more embassies were dispatched to "Anxi" (Parthia), "Yancai" (who later joined the Alans), "Lijian" (Syria under the Seleucids), "Tiaozhi" (Chaldea) and "Tianzhu" (northwestern India) ... As a rule, rather more than ten such missions went forward in the course of a year, and at the least five or six."

Chinese silk in the Roman Empire

Trade with the Roman Empire followed soon, confirmed by the Roman craze for Chinese silk (supplied through the Parthians) from the 1st century BC. Although the Romans knew of wild silk harvested on Cos, they did not at first make the connection with Chinese silk. Hence, Pliny the Elder, in his "Natural History", wrote:

Yet later in the same work, he writes:

quote|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 Chinese silk caused a huge outflow of gold, and silk clothes were considered to be decadent and immoral:

The Roman historian Florus also describes the visit of numerous envoys, including "Seres" (perhaps the Chinese), to the first Roman Emperor Augustus, who reigned between 27 BC and 14 AD:

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 AD. 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. [Milton Osborne, "The Mekong: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future" (2001:25).] 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. The "Hou Hanshu" records that a delegation of Roman envoys arrived in China by this maritime route in 166 AD; this may well have been an exaggeration, by the envoys or the scribe, of what was actually an unofficial party of Roman merchants.

Castaways

Pomponius Mela ( [http://ourworld-top.cs.com/latintexts/m305.htm Book III,Chapter 5] ), copied by Pliny the Elder, wrote that Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer, proconsul in Gaul, 59 BC, got "several Indians" ("Indi") as a present from a Germanic king. The Indians were driven by a storm to the coasts of Germania ("in tempestatem ex Indicis aequoribus"):

It is unclear whether these castaways were people from India or Eastern Asia, since "Indians" designated all Asians, Indian and beyond, during Roman times. Pomponius is using these "Indi" as evidence for the Northeast Passage and the northward strait out of the Caspian Sea (which in Antiquity was usually thought to be open to Oceanus in the north). Edward Herbert Bunbury suggests that they were of Finnish origin. There are also some speculations that they may have been American Indians castaway across the Atlantic.

Some confusion may be suspected in this passage since Metellus Celer died before taking up his proconsulship, thus leaving it free for Julius Caesar.

Roman soldiers in the East

There are several known instances of Roman soldiers being captured by the Parthians and transferred to the East for border duty. According to Pliny, in 54 BCE, after losing at the battle of Carrhae, 10,000 Roman prisoners were displaced by the Parthians to Margiana to man the frontier (of the 40,000 troops under Crassus, half had lost their lives, one quarter escaped, and one quarter were taken prisoner):

About 18 years later the nomadic Xiongnu chief Zhizhi established a state in the nearby Talas valley, near modern day Taraz. The Chinese have an 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. The historian Homer Dubs claimed that this might have been the Roman testudo formation and that these men, who were captured by the Chinese, were able to found the village of Liqian (Li-chien) in Yongchang County. [ [http://www.archaeology.org/9905/newsbriefs/china.html Archaelogy.org] , [http://www.italymag.co.uk/italy_regions/tuscany/2005/07/ Italy Magazine] , [http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-08/24/content_3396301.htm Xinhua] , [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=EOFSBRMSL2JCJQFIQMFSFGGAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2007/02/02/wroman02.xml The Daily Telegraph, 2 February 2007] ] There is, however, no evidence that these men were Romans, [ [http://people.virginia.edu/~ewg4x/roman_li-chien.pdf Detailed analysis] by Ethan Gruber] and recent DNA testing of the male inhabitants of Liqian does not support the hypothesis. [Zhou R, An L, Wang X, Shao W, Lin G, Yu W, Yi L, Xu S, Xu J, Xie X, [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17579807 Testing the hypothesis of an ancient Roman soldier origin of the Liqian people in northwest China: a Y-chromosome perspective.] J Hum Genet. 2007; 52(7): 584-91.]

A Roman inscription of the 2nd–3rd centuries CE has been found in eastern Uzbekistan in the Kara-Kamar cave complex, which has been analysed as belonging to some Roman soldiers from the Pannonian Legio XV "Apollinaris": [Reference: Ustinova, Yulia, “New Latin and Greek Rock-Inscriptions from Uzbekistan,” "Hephaistos: New Approaches in Classical Archaeology and related Fields", 18/2000, pp. 169–179. Through [http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/hhshu/notes13.html Roman inscriptions in Uzbekistan] ]

:PANN
:G. REX
:AP.LG

Expedition of Ban Chao

In 97, Ban Chao crossed the Tian Shan and Pamir mountains with an army of 70,000 men in a campaign against the Xiongnu/Huns, who were harassing the trade routes now known as the Silk Road. The Han general made an alliance with the Parthian king Mithradates II and established his base on shores of the Caspian Sea and at Antiochia Margiana (Merv) at the eastern outpost of the Parthian Kingdom ("NOTE:" The correct information here should state that Han general Ban Chao established an alliance with the Parthian king Pacorus II of Parthia, as Mithradates II was already dead by the time Ban Chao arrived in Parthia). It was from here that the Han general dispatched envoy Gan Ying to Daqin (Rome). Gan Ying left a detailed account of western countries, although he apparently only reached as far as Mesopotamia. While he intended to sail to Rome through the Black Sea, some Parthian merchants, interested in maintaining their profitable role as the middleman in the trade between China and Rome, falsely told him the dangerous trip would take two years at the least (when it was actually closer to two months). Deterred, he returned home.

Gan Ying left an account on Rome (Daqin in Chinese) which may have relied on second-hand sources. He locates it to the west of the sea:

He also describes the adoptive monarchy of the Emperor Nerva, and Roman physical appearance and products:

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

Eastern travels of Maes Titianus

Maës Titianus was the ancient traveller of Hellenistic culture [ His "Macedonian" origin betokens no more than his cultural affinity, and the name Maës is Semitic in origin (Cary 1956:130).] who penetrated farthest east along the Silk Road from the Mediterranean world. In the early second century CE [The mainstream opinion, noted by Cary 1956:130 note 7, based on the date of Marinus, established by his use of many Trajanic foundation names but none identifiable with Hadrian.] or at the end of the first century BCE, [This is Cary's dating.] during a lull in the intermittent Roman struggles with Parthia, his party reached the famous Stone Tower, "Tashkurgan", [Centuries later "Tashkurgan" ('Stone Tower') was the capital of the Pamir kingdom of Sarikol.] in the Pamirs.

First Roman embassy

With the expansion of the Roman Empire in the Middle East during the 2nd century, the Romans gained the capability to develop shipping and trade in the Indian Ocean. Several ports containing Roman ruins have been excavated on the coast of India.Groups of Romans probably travelled farther eastwards, either on Roman, Indian, or Chinese ships. 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 "Antun" (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.

The existence of China was clearly known to Roman cartographers of the time, since its name and position is depicted in Ptolemy's "Geographia", which is dated to c. 150. 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. Trade throughout the Indian Ocean was extensive from the 2nd century, and many trading ports with links to Roman communities have been identified in India and Sri Lanka along the route used by the Roman mission.

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 Alexander Severus; 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.

Notes

ee also

* Foreign relations of Imperial China
* List of tributaries of Imperial China
* Kangnido map
* Later Han History, Hou Hanshu.
* Ptolemy world map
*Silk Road

External links and references

* Accounts of Daqin in the Chinese history of the Later Han Hou Hanshu [http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/hhshu/hou_han_shu.html#sec11]
* Hill, John E. 2004. "The Western Regions according to the Hou Hanshu." Draft annotated English translation. [http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/silkroad/texts/hhshu/hou_han_shu.html]
* 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. [http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/silkroad/texts/weilue/weilue.html]
* Henry Yule. "Cathay and the Way Thither". 1915.
* http://www.silk-road.com/artl/romanenvoy.shtml
* [http://people.virginia.edu/~ewg4x/roman_li-chien.pdf The Origins of Roman Li-chien]
* [http://ospitiweb.indire.it/Mondragone1/ANGOLO%20CREATIVO/primaparte.htm The Lost Legion (Italian)] [http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fospitiweb.indire.it%2FMondragone1%2FANGOLO%2520CREATIVO%2Fprimaparte.htm&langpair=it%7Cen&hl=ja&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools (English)]
* [http://www.friends-classics.demon.co.uk/news_romans_in_china.htm Did the Romans settle in Yongchang County, Gansu Province, China?]
* [http://yuhe.home2.cernet.cn/ReadNews.asp?NewsID=471 The Romans in China. They came，saw and settled]
* [http://www.archaeology.org/9905/newsbriefs/china.html Romans in China?]
* "Los Angeles Times": "Digging for Romans in China"; August 24, 2000