Wearing silk is immoral in the Roman Empire

With his expansion far into eastern Asia, Alexander had opened a vast section of the Silk Road. In the following centuries, the Graeco-Bactrians, the Indo-Greeks, and the Sogdians played an important role as middlemen in this chain where goods were exchanged between East and West. 

The road between China and the eastern Mediterranean was nearly 6,500 kilometers long. Travel was dangerous, and robberies were frequent. The goods changed hands on the way. In this process, each intermediary increased the price to cover their own expenses and make a profit. 

To reduce the expenses, especially those for the silk from China, the Romans opened a sea route by the 1st century AD. It started near Hanoi in modern Vietnam, with stopovers in harbors on the coasts of India and Sri Lanka, all controlled by China. The shipments eventually reached Roman-controlled ports in Egypt and the northeastern coast of the Red Sea. From there, they could handily be distributed around the Mediterranean. 

Two centuries earlier, from the 1st century BC onward, silk had become the luxury fashion par excellence. In those days, the Romans still thought silk was obtained from tree leaves. Pliny the Elder tells us that the Seres (Chinese) used the woolen substance from the tree leaves, which they soaked in water and then combed off the white down from the leaves. 

Chinese silk was sold at exorbitant prices. It was far more expensive than gold, which caused a colossal outflow of this precious metal. In fact, the acquisition of silk hurt the Roman economy badly. 

In pure despair, the Roman Senate issued several edicts to prohibit wearing silk, more so since they had decided that silk clothes were decadent and immoral. Seneca (c.3 BC - 65 AD) goes as far as declaring: I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body or even one's decency, can be called clothes ... Wretched flocks of maids labor 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. 

It is surprising to read that in the 1st century AD, women were still (or again) considered a man’s property, although men themselves didn’t shy away from wearing silk outfits!

First contacts with China

It is generally not mentioned that in the wake of Alexander's expansion, an opening towards China, or Seres as Strabo called the country, was created to the east of Central Asia. After all, in 329 BC, the king founded the city of Alexandria Eschate (very appropriately being Alexandria the Furthest), the later Khojend in modern Tajikistan, where he stopped his march eastwards. 

His Greek settlers in Central Asia were there to stay for the next three hundred years as Seleucos established his Empire, which later became the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom. Over time, their kings steadily expanded their power further to the east, and the main force appeared to be King Euthydemus (230-200 BC). This Euthydemus was born in Magnesia, Asia Minor as the son of the Greek general Apollodotus. By 209 BC, as Graeco-Bactria king, he withstood the three-year-long siege of Bactra led by the Seleucid ruler Antiochus III. In the end, Antiochus offered one of his daughters in marriage to Demetrius, son of Euthydemus, in exchange for which he received several Indian war elephants. 

Once well settled, Euthydemus went to the lands beyond Alexandria Eschate. As reported by Strabo, he even reached Kashgar in the region of Xinjiang. This may date the first Western and China exchanges to around 200 BC. 

How China looked at the West is a much lesser-known story. Not unlike the Greeks, the Chinese held that they were the center of world civilization and that all other countries were tributaries of China. This implies that the campaign of Euthydemus may have been a significant turning point (see also: Alexander's influence reached all the way to China?)

Around 130 BC, embassies of the Han Dynasty traveled to Central Asia as the Chinese emperor Wudi was interested in the sophisticated civilizations of Ferghana, Bactria, and Parthia, respectively known to the Chinese as Dayuan, Daxia, and Anxi. Since then, numerous embassies left every year to these countries, where they found people living in fixed homes and interested in the rich produce of China. Chinese records reveal that more than ten such missions were dispatched into Parthia, Seleucid Syria (known as Lijian), Chaldea (Tiaozhi), and north-western India (Tianzhu). Allegedly, they even visited Emperor Augustus (27 BC – 14 AD), and it seems hard to imagine Chinese envoys walking in the streets of Rome! 

Roman soldiers also made their way east, although not out of their free will. It has been documented that soldiers captured by the Parthians were dispatched to defend their eastern borders. In 54 BC, Pliny mentioned that after the battle of Carrhae in 53 BC (see: Harran, better known under its Roman name Carrhae), the Parthians sent some 10,000 prisoners to Margiana to man the frontier. Chinese sources report that these soldiers had blond hair and blue eyes. Eventually, these troops were captured by the Chinese to founding the city of Liqian or Li-Chien – a transliteration of Alexandria - it seems, in the region of Gansu in western China. Several inscriptions discovered in the Kara-Kamar caves on the border between eastern Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were written in Bactrian, Greek, Arabic, and Latin. The latter was composed of three lines and was left by the Roman soldiers of the Pannonian Legio XV Apollinaris around the 2^nd century AD. Notably, this cave complex showed remarkable similarities with temples dedicated to the god Mithras, who was featured in killing the bull. This secret male cult started about the 1^st century AD and soon spread with the legionnaires over the entire Roman Empire. 

By the first century BC, Rome started showing serious interest in the precious silk it received through trade with the Parthians. Wearing silk soon exploded, but it was not met with overall approval. Seneca (3 BC-65 AD) complained that silk did not hide the body, not "even one's decency." This led the Senate to issue an edict prohibiting silk-wearing, which the wealthy Roman elite liked to ignore. Besides the moral ground, this edict also had an economic reason, as importing silk caused a massive outflow of gold. 

Yet, business is business, and the trade prospered. Over land, using the Silk Road was a tedious and expensive operation, which was soon to be supplanted by a newly found maritime route. The ships would sail from China, stopping at ports in modern Vietnam, India, and Sri Lanka controlled by the Chinese emperors. The western end of this business route, with stopovers in Egypt and the Nabataean territories, was controlled by Rome. Their merchants traveled on Roman, Indian, and even Chinese ships. 

Best known from this period is the campaign led by the Chinese general Ban Chao, who in 97 AD crossed the Pamir Mountains with an army of 70,000 men to fight the Xiongnu, generally the people living in Central Asia. He even reached the Caspian Sea and the lands occupied by the Parthians. From here, the general sent an envoy to Dagin (Rome). Ultimately, this was Gan Ying, who stopped in Mesopotamia although he intended to sail to Rome via the Black Sea. The Parthian merchants wishing to safeguard their profitable position as the middleman between Rome and China, told Gan Ying that his planned trip would take him two years. In reality, this was two months. This is why the envoy decided to abandon his mission and return home. His merit, to a certain extent at least, was his account of Rome and Emperor Nerva, which he obviously based on second-hand information. However, he correctly reported that Rome was the leading economic power at the western end of Eurasia. The Chinese army settled for an alliance with the Parthians. 

The earliest documented Roman embassy to arrive in China dates to 166 AD. Chinese sources mention that it came from Antun (Antoninus Pius), king of Dagin (Rome). This information must be clarified since Antoninus Pius died five years before, in 161 AD. It is suggested that they meant Marcus Aurelius, who added the name of his predecessor to his own; he came to power in 166 AD. 

This Roman delegation probably arrived by sea and carried presents of rhinoceros horns, ivory, and tortoise shells originating from Southern Asia. More important, however, is that the Chinese acquired a treatise on astronomy. Roman cartographers knew of the existence of China since the country was mentioned on the map by Claudius Ptolemy in about 150 AD. The booming trade across the Indian Ocean in the 2^nd century AD enabled the identification of Roman outposts in India and Sri Lanka. 

After a lacuna about further exchanges, the next documented account emerged in the 3^rd century AD when the Roman Emperor (possibly Alexander Severus) sent presents of colored glass to Emperor Taitsu of the Kingdom of Wei (reigned 227-239 AD) in Northern China. The last record about an embassy from Rome dates from 284 AD when the envoys of presumably Emperor Carus (282-283 AD) brought "tribute" to the Chinese Empire. 

To summarize, contact between our western world and China lasted at least six hundred years after Alexander opened access to Central Asia. In all its aspects, the Silk Road sank into oblivion until Marco Polo revived this part of history in the 13^th century, i.e., one thousand years later!

Theophrastus, philosopher and botanist

Theophrastus lived in Alexander’s days, but despite his elaborate work on the plants and foods he received from Asia, he is hardly mentioned in this context.

Theophrastus was born around 371 BC in Lesbos and was given the name of Tyrtamus. When he was 17 years old, he became a disciple of  Aristotle who changed his name into Theophrastus (spoken by God) because of his exceptional eloquent language. Together they traveled to Lesbos in 347 BC to study the animals and plants of the island.

When Aristotle left for Macedonia to teach the young prince Alexander, Theophrastus continued his botanical study. Yet, the relationship between Aristotle and Theophrastus remained very close, and we may wonder which part each of them played in analyzing and studying the many plant and seed specimens Alexander sent back from Asia.

It is known that Theophrastus maintained a botanical herbarium, something unusual for the time. The array of plants he studied came from Persia, Afghanistan, and the Indus Valley. He introduced the Greeks to the robust argun palms, bananas, citrons, cardoons (or artichoke thistle), mangos, jujubes (also called Chinese dates), pistachios, and tamarind. Pepper arrived in Athens at some time in the 4^th century BC, maybe carried along by Alexander’s troops. Newly imported plants were cinnamon, banyan (a fig typically from India), as well as frankincense and myrrh (the myrrh trees in Gedrosia were taller than anywhere else and Alexander’s mercenaries from Phoenicia readily collected it). Cotton was another novelty that appeared in the Greek world and some say that is was Theophrastus who brought cotton to this country, but his role in this matter is far from clear.

Upon the death of Aristotle in 322 BC, just one year after Alexander’s, Theophrastus inherited his mentor’s entire library, including his manuscripts. Drawing on Aristotle’s concepts and no doubt on his own experiences, he wrote two botany textbooks: the ten-volume Historia Plantarum (Inquiry into plants) and the eight-volume De Causis Plantarum (On the Causes of Plants) covering 550 species in all. Pliny the Elder based his Historia Naturae (Natural History) on Theophrastus' books, which remained primary references throughout the Middle Ages. Great men like Cicero and Seneca often leaned on Theophrastus’ knowledge.

According to Diogenes Laërtius, Theophrastus wrote 227 books, most of which are unfortunately now lost. Ptolemy II, the son of Ptolemy I Soter who had campaigned with Alexander, fully appreciated both Aristotle and Theophrastus, and he transferred their entire collection to Alexandria.

In his long life, Theophrastus worked as a lecturer at the Lyceum in Athens, enlarging and reorganizing the school over time. From the age of 49 until his death at 85, he taught a total of at least 2,000 pupils. He also founded a museum in Alexandria in memory of Aristotle.

[Picture of Theophrastus from NNDB]