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The Silk Trade between China and the Roman Empire at its Height, Circaa.d. 90–130

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

J. Thorley
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Extract

Precisely how long ago the Chinese began to export their silk westwards along the trade routes of Central Asia we do not know. Ezekiel seems to have been familiar with silk, and Isaiah may have heard of the Chinese. By 115 b.c. we are on firmer ground, for in that year Mithridates II of Parthia made an alliance with Wu Ti, the great Han emperor of China, designed at least in part to facilitate commerce between the two powers, who were for the first time within direct commercial reach of one another. Half-way through the following century Julius Caesar possessed silk curtains. But the trade throughout this period was no more than a trickle. The caravan routes from the Ordos region of North China to the eastern frontier of Iran passed through the territories of numerous Turkic tribes, whose possession of Central Asia had so far been virtually unchallenged.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , April 1971 , pp. 71 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1971

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References

page 71 note 1 Ezekiel 16: 10 and 13; Isaiah 49: 12 (if really does refer to the Chinese); Dio xliii. 24.

page 72 note 1 For fuller accounts see Hudson, G. F., Europe and China (London, 1931), 55–67Google Scholar; Thapar, R., A History of India (Harmondsworth, 1966), i. 95–8.Google Scholar The dates of the migrations are far from certain, but it is now generally thought that Kanishka's reign fell in the first half of the second century a.d.

page 73 note 1 See Colledge, M. A. R., The Parthians (London, 1967)Google Scholar, especially 22–35.

page 75 note 1 See Wheeler, R. E. M., Rome Beyond the Imperial Frontiers (London, 1954), 191–5.Google Scholar

page 75 note 2 Hou-han-shu, ch. 88. Text and translation in Hirth, F., China and the Roman Orient (Leipzig, 1885).Google Scholar The usual view is that Kan-ying reached the Persian Gulf, although it has been suggested by Chinese scholars that he reached the Black Sea coast on the southern side of the Caucasus. See Fitzgerald, C. P., A Concise History of East Asia (London, 1966), 39–40.Google Scholar

page 76 note 1 See Pliny, NH xii. 84. Text and translation of the Wei-lio also in Hirth, op. cit., whose commentary on the texts is the starting-point of much of the present article.

page 76 note 2 See Pliny, NH xxxii. 21.

page 77 note 1 SirStein, Aurel, Serindia (London, 1921), 373–4Google Scholar; Seligman, C. G., Antiquity xi (1937), 5 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Crystal does occur in the list of Ta-ts'in products in the Wei-lio.

page 77 note 2 Pliny, NH viii. 196; Exodus 28: 6, 39: 3. See also Propertius iii. 5. 6, v. 5. 24; Virg. Aen. i. 648.

page 77 note 3 Pliny, NH xix. 4.

page 77 note 4 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 40, iii, note.

page 77 note 5 Pliny, NH vi. 101 (silk is sought ‘ut in publico matrona traluceat’); Seneca, De Ben. vii. 9 implies the same transparency of the silk in use at Rome.

page 78 note 1 Now also obtained from Liquidambar orientate, which also grows around the Eastern Mediterranean, and from coal tar. Its main uses now are in the manufacture of car tyres and polystyrene.

page 78 note 2 Pliny, NH xii. 124–5 (geographical distribution of storax), xxiv. 24 (medicinal uses), xiii. 18 (‘Royal’ perfume).

page 78 note 3 Cinnabar here is the resin of the tree Dracaena cinnabari, not mercuric sulphide, the source of the metal mercury, which goes by the same name. The confusion arose because they are both pigments of the same bright red colour.

page 78 note 4 Tacitus, Ger. 45 (amber); Periplus Maris Erythraei, 30 (cinnabar). The Romans themselves found amber very attractive, and also intriguing; see Martial iv. 32, iv. 59, and vi. 15 for a bee, a viper, and an ant enclosed in amber.

page 79 note 1 Pliny, NH xxxvii. 98.

page 79 note 2 Colledge, op. cit. 81.

page 80 note 1 Martial iii. 82. 7, viii. 33. 16, viii. 68. 7, ix. 37. 3, xi. 8. 5, xi. 27. 9–11, xi. 50. 5, xii. 8. 8, xiv. 24. Also from this period: Quintilian, Inst. xii. 10. 47; Juvenal vi. 258, 403.

Although the variety of subject-matter precludes any accurate statistical analysis of the historical significance of literary references to silk and the Chinese, it is doubtless not accidental that references in Martial are more numerous than in any other non-scientific classical writer; moreover, most of these references are in books viii–xii, all written after a.d. 90.