Download Rome, China, and Roman Li-chien For centuries two vast empires co

Rome, China, and Roman Li-chien
For centuries two vast empires co-existed, though both knew very little of the other.
Rome, in the west, and Han China, in the east, had enormous spheres of influence that only
intersected at the intermediary Parthian Empire. Rome began importing Chinese silk
beginning around the time of Augustus, and while both knew of the other's existence (if in
name only), neither had made much of an attempt to seek direct communication with each
other prior to about A.D. 100. The first recorded meeting between Romans and Chinese
was in 166 when a Roman embassy which claimed to be sent by Marcus Aurelius Antonius
arrived at Ch’ang-an, the capital city of the Han court, although this was most likely an
opportunistic private merchant rather than an official imperial embassy.1
While the first recorded meeting between Chinese and Romans was in 166, there
has been a debate in the academic community regarding a possibility that several hundred
Roman legionaries had found their way into China nearly two centuries prior to the Roman
merchants arriving in Ch'ang-an. In the 1950's Oxford historian Homer H. Dubs proposed
that 145 Roman soldiers captured by the Parthians after Crassus's defeat at Carrhae in 53
B.C. were eventually hired as mercenaries by a Hun warlord in the western frontier past the
boundaries of the Han Empire and were captured by the Chinese and allowed to form their
own city, based on the Roman model. This paper will examine Dubs's proposal as well as
dissenting arguments from other reputable historians, as well as examine the relationship
between Rome, Parthia, and China as it pertains to trade and the Silk Road.
Nearly all trade between Rome and China involved silk. Although glassware and
amber that are believed to have been Roman in origin have been found in various parts of
1 F. Hirth, China and the Roman Orient (New York: Paragon, 1966), 176.
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China and Korea2, Chinese silk was the more valuable commodity, and had been rumored
that one pound of silk was equal in value to as much weight in gold. There has been no
mention in Chinese literary sources of merchants attempting to reach the Roman Empire,
but by the latter half of the second century, several Roman merchants had reportedly
arrived in Han China, particularly because Roman merchants had a larger interest in
Chinese trade goods than vice versa.3
Chinese silk had been known to the West as early as the first century B.C.; Roman
writer Lucan describes silk stuffs as “Cleopatra’s silks,” though they were most likely
Chinese in origin. Most historians tend to date the introduction of silk in Rome to the reign
of Augustus (27 B.C. to A.D. 14). Widely accepted by the Roman wealthy, silk was used
for clothing, pillows, cushions, etc. according to Augustan writers. By the second half of
the first century A.D., Pliny includes silk as one of the most precious commodities in
Rome, noting that the silk trade drained 100 million sesterces every year.4
Before silk entered the market, it had to be dyed. This process usually occurred at
the Phoenician cities of Tyre or Sidon. Then it was usually required to be woven or
rewoven at Tyre or Berytus (modern Beirut). Silk became an important raw material in
the Roman Orient.5 Although extremely valuable to the wealthy of Rome who would pay
nearly any price to get it, the total price was greatly inflated from its actual worth, even
factoring in transportation costs, in large part due to interference from the Parthian Empire.
The Silk Road covered more than 4,000 miles of dangerous and mostly inhospitable
terrain. Between China and the Mediterranean laid the great Parthian Empire, which
2 Yü Ying Shih, Trade and Expansion in Han China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967),
198.
3 Ibid., 159.
4 Ibid., 158-159.
5 Ibid., 158.
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occupied portions of modern-day Armenia, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan,
and Pakistan. For centuries it was a great rival and enemy of Rome and their armies often
clashed. During the era that it was a threat to Rome, Parthia often disrupted trade and
communication between the Mediterranean and the lands to Parthia's east. Parthia's
relationship with Rome and Han China was certainly no different.
The silk trade between the Han and Parthian empires are clearly recorded. Parthia
played more of an intermediary role in the trade between China and Rome than of an actual
consumer in the silk trade. Parthia was greatly enriched by its position, imposing tariffs on
caravans passing through its borders.6
Parthia purposely impeded direct communication between Rome and China, often
exaggerating the length and danger of traveling the seas to its west. Any allowance of
communication between the two great eastern and western empires would have permitted
them to traffic trade through other regions, severing Parthia from its highly profitable
position as a middleman in the silk trade.7 Recorded in the Hou Han Shu (the annals of the
late Han dynasty) is: “The Kings of Ta Ch'in (Roman Empire) always desired to send
embassies to China, but the Parthians wished to carry trade with them in Chinese silks, and
it is for this reason that they were cut off from communication.”8
This disruption is best illustrated by the records of Kan Ying, who was sent by the
Han court in A.D. 97 as an envoy to Rome. After traveling thousands of miles from
Ch'ang-an to Parthia, he was told by sailors: “The sea is vast and is great; with favorable
winds, the passage lasting two months; that, with slow winds, it could last two years; and
that those who risked their lives in such an adventure, had to be supplied with three years'
6 Ibid., 157.
7 Ibid., 156.
8 Hirth, 42.
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provisions.” When told this, Kan Ying returned to China.9 Since the Parthian Empire
stretched across numerous, smaller kingdoms, Parthia was a loose conglomeration of
discordant races including Greeks, Chaldeans, Nabataeans, Arabs, and Persians, there is
some dispute as to who within the empire was responsible for disrupting communication,
levying tariffs, and inventing the ingenious tale which caused Kan Ying to return home. It
is most likely that the Nabataean kingdoms were responsible for misleading Kan Ying and
levying duties as high as twenty-five percent.10
The Parthian wars of 162-165 paved the way for Roman merchants to conduct
direct trade with China. After Parthia was defeated, Roman and Indian merchants tried and
were successful at diverting trade routes over the seas in order to completely avoid Parthia.
Through India Roman merchants were able to utilize sea routes to trade with Han China
and other parts of eastern Asia. After the first recorded meeting between Romans and
Chinese in 166, other Roman merchants traveling to central and east Asia would follow in
the forthcoming decades.11
The first officially recorded meeting between citizens of Rome and Han China may
have been in 166, but there is a possibility that the Romans and Chinese may have been
introduced some two hundred years prior, if Homer H. Dubs is correct in his assertions that
a Roman town had been founded in the western frontier of Han territory. It is extremely
curious as to how several hundred Roman legionaries had arrived nearly two thousand
miles east from the furthest any Roman had ever previously ventured.
Dubs asserts that more than a hundred Roman soldiers were permitted to establish a
town in the western frontier of Chinese territory. This town, known as Li-chien, would
9 Ibid., 166.
10 Yü, 158.
11 Ibid., 157.
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have utilized the Roman political model, but would have also been too small to be a
colonia. The name Li-chien itself holds some historical significance, as it is a transcription
and abbreviation of the word “Alexandria,” which the Chinese had great difficulty
pronouncing. By the first century B.C., the name Li-chien had also become synonymous
with the Roman Empire in the eyes of the Chinese, who did not distinguish between the
Empire itself and a significant city within it.12
The journey taken by these Roman legionaries from Carrhae to western China
through Hunnish territory would have been extremely long and arduous, traversing two
thousand miles over inhospitable wilderness in a span of nearly two decades. If Dubs's
assertion is true, the journey would have indeed been impressive.
Back in Rome Julius Caesar, Marcus Licinius Crassus, and Gnaeus Pompeius
Magnus formed the First Triumvirate. Crassus had contributed large sums of money in
support of Caesar and Pompey's campaigns but he lacked what he wanted most—military
glory. By 55 B.C. Crassus was proconsul of Syria and by 54, he had raised seven legions
and 4,000 cavalry and auxiliaries to attack Parthia. The following year Roman and Parthian
forces met at Carrhae (near modern-day Harran, Turkey) and the Roman army was routed
by the Parthian cavalry archers and heavily armed and armored cataphracts. Of the 40,000
troops Crassus brought with him to Carrhae, half had lost their lives. One quarter escaped,
and the final quarter were taken prisoner. Crassus was later captured and executed by the
Parthians.13
Little is known of what happened to the 10,000 prisoners, but Pliny wrote that at
least some of them were marched 1,500 miles to the city of Margiana to guard the eastern
12 Homer H. Dubs, A Roman City in Ancient China (London: The China Society, 1957), 2-3.
13 Ibid., 3-4.
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borders of the Parthian Empire. If the sheer length of the journey had not been enough to
whittle down the number of prisoners, the brutality of their Parthian captors would have
been. There is no doubt that many would have died along the way, but it is unknown how
many of the Roman legionaries would have survived the march to Margiana. Horace
speculated these Romans married “barbarian” women and thus assimilated into Parthian
culture and military.14
The Chinese would have had no record of Carrhae or the influx of Roman captives
in Margiana. It would still be at least another decade before the Chinese would allegedly
experience their first contact with Roman legionaries at a city of a Hunnish warlord named
Jzh-Jzh.
The Chinese had a sour relationship with Jzh-Jzh. They had already viewed him to
be untrustworthy and a rogue, and in 42 B.C., when a Chinese emissary named Gu Ji
reached Jzh-Jzh's court, he and his men were executed. In the past Jzh-Jzh had allied
himself with China to gain its support against his adversaries, but in each case, he had
betrayed China, and, as a result, he had many enemies in the region. Jzh-Jzh had emerged
as the most dominant Hun warlord in the western frontier and China foresaw great danger
from his evident plan to develop a large empire in Central Asia. The Chinese realized that
they had to defeat Jzh-Jzh before he could secure his defenses and military.15
The Chinese, led by Ch'en T'ang and Gan Yen-shou, raised 40,000 troops and
trained and equipped them with superior weaponry, including crossbows. Ch'en T'ang
knew that Jzh-Jzh's barbarian army and earthen walls of his towns would be no match for
the professional Chinese military. In the autumn of 36 B.C., the Chinese legions began
14 Homer H. Dubs, “Military Contact Between Romans and Chinese,” American journal of philology, Vol.
62, No. 3 (New York; London: Macmillan & co, 1941), 325.
15 Dubs, Roman city, 7-9.
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their westward journey towards Jzh-Jzh's territory in Central Asia.16
The Chinese army arrived at Jzh-Jzh's capital see to find a curious sight. According
to a recount of the siege, the Chinese arrive to the gates of the city to find “more than a
hundred” men outside the palisades in a “fish-scale formation,” a phrase that Dubs explains
to be unique in Chinese literature.17 Dubs explains that this type of complex formation is
not something a nomadic people, such as the Huns, could have achieved and that these
professional soldiers must have been foreign. The “fish-scale formation” was a maneuver
not easily accomplished. The soldiers would have crowded together and overlapped their
shields, and this required uniform action on the part of each soldier. Only a professional
and disciplined army could have been successful, especially in the face of an enemy's
assault. The failure of one member meant the collapse of the entire formation. At 36 B.C.
only the Greeks and Romans would have used such a complex tactic. Nomads and
barbarians merely “rushed into battle in a confused mass.”18 These professional soldiers
could have been Greek, but it is unlikely because Greek Bactria fell nearly a century before
Ch'en T'ang's expedition.19 Sir William Tarn wrote in a letter to Dubs:
“I don't see how it is possible at that date for it (the
fish-scale formation) to have anything to do with either the
Macedonian phalanx or the Greek hoplite phalanx. It would
have implied that the memory of the phalanx had lasted in
Sogdiana for a century. . . . Any idea of the Greek phalanx
seems to be quite impossible. The Macedonian phalanx
carried small round shields. Men bearing them could hardly
have crowded closely enough together to appear 'arrayed like
fish-scales.'”20
Tarn suggested that this formation was the Roman testudo, whose striking feature is
16
17
18
19
20
Ibid., 8-9.
Ibid., 12.
Dubs, philology, 323.
Dubs, Roman City, 12.
Ibid., 12-13.
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the locking of the rectangular shields above the head to protect against projectiles. This
formation, only used by Romans, would have appeared as a “fish-scale formation” to any
Chinese observers. Margiana was only five hundred miles west of Jzh-Jzh's town, and it
would not have been impossible for them to have come in contact with Huns attacking
Parthia's eastern borders and to have either been captured by Huns or defected from the
Parthian army and to have eventually been hired as professional mercenaries by Jzh-Jzh's.21
According to the recount of the battle, Jzh-Jzh utilized a double wooden palisade
outside of his earthen city walls. Dubs concludes that a double palisade is a distinct
indication of Roman engineering assistance, especially since the nomadic Huns had no
towns except for a few established by Chinese renegades. Tarn also states that double
palisades were used neither by the Greeks or Chinese.22
After the siege of the city and execution of Jzh-Jzh by the Chinese, Gan Yen-shou
and Ch'en T'ang reported to Emperor Yuan that they took 145 alive and captured more than
a thousand. Dubs insists that the 145 men listed separately were the “more than a hundred”
Romans who had earlier fought in the testudo formation outside of the city walls. The
Romans did not surrender, but merely stopped fighting, similar to Xenophon's men at
Cunaxa when their employer had been killed.23
The Romans likely chose to go freely with the Chinese, for escape into the
surrounding wilderness would mean certain death by starvation or exposure. The Chinese
would have welcomed brave fighters who could defend their own western frontier, so the
Chinese installed these Romans at a town called Li-chien. Dubs states that no Chinese
historian mentions the act because it was of little importance to them, but the name of the
21 Ibid., 13.
22 Dubs, philology, 328-329.
23 Dubs, Roman City, 15.
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city itself is enough evidence to suggest the Romans were settled there.24
Li-chien would have been based on the Roman political model. The Romans had
not surrendered to the Chinese, but were freemen and would not have been expected to
submit in every way to Chinese practices and customs. The Chinese generally left their
people alone, especially ones living along the frontier, as long as they paid their taxes, kept
the peace, and submitted to call of the emperor when assembling auxiliary forces.25
Li-chien was listed in the annals as a Chinese county until the fifth century, but was
probably destroyed in the latter half of the eighth century, when the Tibetans overran the
entire region in A.D. 746.26 While there is no debate over the existence of the town of Lichien, there is a great debate in the academic community regarding the probability of Lichien being a Roman town and whether the “fish-scale formation” seen outside of Jzh-Jzh's
city was indeed that of a Roman testudo. Dubs's proposal of a Roman city in ancient China
is extremely interesting, but it is not without flaws or criticism. According to Schuyler
Cammann, “all these conclusions are presented very firmly and dogmatically, with an air of
absolute authority; but they are riddled with fallacies and over-hasty assumptions.”27
According to Cammann if foreigners had settled the city of Li-chien, they would
have named it and it would not have been simply “the most ancient Chinese name for
Rome.” Romans would not likely have named a city “Alexandria,” whereas many
Macedonians and Hellenistic Greeks often named newly-settled towns in Central Asia in
the fourth century B.C. “Alexandria,” after conqueror/hero Alexander the Great. It is not
impossible that such a town could have existed, but it is much more likely to have been
24
25
26
27
Ibid., 15-16.
Ibid., 22.
Ibid., 23.
Schuyler Cammann. “Article Title.” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 21 (The Association for Asian
Studies, Inc., 1962), 381.
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founded by enterprising merchants from Greece, Syria, or the Near East.28
The “fish-scale formation,” Cammann proposes, would more likely have been
utilized by Asian troops who may have been trained by Romans to fight in the Roman
fashion. Eighteen years passed between Carrhae and the defense of Jzh-Jzh's town, and the
Roman mercenaries would have been old and weak, especially living in a distant and
inhospitable land under a savage ruler. It would also have been extremely unlikely that a
few Roman veterans would have been allowed by the Han government to form a city.29
Another critic of Dubs's A Roman city in ancient China, Yü Ying Shih, is in agreement
with Schuyler Cammann that the government would not have allowed such a small number
of “barbarians” (as considered by the Chinese) to form a city, but on considerably more
technical terms.
Yü states that the settlement of 145 Roman legionaries in a city contradicts a whole
set of institutional devices with which surrendered barbarians were normally handled by the
Han government. One hundred forty-five Romans was too small of a number to be
permitted to form a hsien-chün, the standard Chinese province-district administrative
system in which only more or less sinicized barbarians could be admitted. It was possible
in some cases for some surrendered barbarians to form a hsien-chün administrative system,
but usually only if they had surrendered lands to China as well, as was not the case with the
Roman captives.30
Dubs describes the Romans as “brave fighters” and “professional soldiers,” but
when barbarians surrendered in such a small number—especially if they were good
warriors—they were generally integrated into the Chinese army. It would not have been
28 Ibid., 381.
29 Ibid., 382.
30 Yü, 90.
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logical for the Chinese to organize these Romans into a city as opposed to impressing them
into the military.31
Occasionally the Chinese government would allow small numbers of barbarians to
organize into a shu-kuo (“subject state” or “dependent state” generally established along
borders or the frontier where barbarians were under governmental control, but not strict
rule) or pu, (a military subdivision of a frontier province that was governed by an
independent administrative unit, but unlike a shu-kuo, barbarians were under direct control
of a Chinese official, but still kept separate from Chinese citizens) if they were allowed to
live according to their own customs. Eventually the shu-kuo or pu would transform into a
chün or hsien, but this often took generations, as the ultimate goal of the Han government
was to gradually accept barbarians into Chinese civilization. In the case of the hsien Lichien, there are no indications that it had ever transformed from a shu-kuo or pu, and thus is
unlikely to have been organized on the Roman model.32
Yü states that a hsien with barbarians under its jurisdiction was referred to as a tao,
but there is no evidence that Roman Li-chien was ever called a tao. Finally the census of
the Chang-yeh province where Li-chien was located does not indicate a hsien of only 145
citizens.33 Yü does not discount Dubs's argument that there may have Roman mercenaries
under the employment of the Hun Jzh-Jzh, but he states that it would clearly have been
impossible for Li-chien to have been a town established by the captured Romans and
allowed by the Chinese government to become a hsien.
A Roman city in ancient China is very interesting and provocative, but without
sufficient archaeological evidence, there would be no way to accept Roman Li-chien as
31 Ibid., 90.
32 Ibid., 90.
33 Ibid., 91.
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fact. Dubs jumps to conclusions hastily and attempts to connect several events together by
using vague statements and descriptions as evidence. How could he be certain that the
“more than a hundred” soldiers seen outside the city walls were the 145 listed as being
captured alive in the report to the emperor? Dubs also fails to describe how Roman
mercenaries may have traveled five hundred miles east of Margiana past the Oxum River
into the military of Jzh-Jzh. Roman Li-chien cannot be accepted as a historical truth until
further evidence in support of Dubs is brought to light, but right now it is nothing more
than an interesting theory.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cammann, Schuyler. “A Roman City in Ancient China – A Review” Journal of Asian
Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3. The Association for Asian Studies, Inc., 1962.
Dubs, Homer H. A Roman city in ancient China. London: The China Society, 1957.
Dubs, Homer H. “Military Contact Between Romans and Chinese.” The American
journal of philology Vol. 62, No. 3. New York; London: Macmillan & co, 1941.
Hirth, H. China and the Roman Orient. New York: Paragon, 1966.
Yü Ying Shih. Trade and Expansion in Han China. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1967.
Copyright ©2004 Ethan Gruber
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