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Silk, Silk dress, Silk fabric, Silk dress, Silk scarf |
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The Silk Route In "The Silk Trade between China and the Roman Empire at Its Height, 'Circa' A. D. 90-130" [Greece & Rome, 2nd Ser., Vol. 18, No. 1. (Apr., 1971), pp. 71-80.] , J. Thorley argues that the Parthians (c. 200 B.C. - c. A.D. 200), serving as trading intermediaries between China and the Roman Empire, sold fancy Chinese brocades to Rome and then, using some deceit about silkworm cocoons in the Roman Empire, sold re-weavings of gauzy silk back to the Chinese. The Chinese admittedly, lacked the technology for the weaving, but they might have been scandalized to realize they had provided the raw material. Although Julius Caesar may have had silk curtains made from Chinese silk, silk was in very limited supply in Rome until the time of peace and prosperity under Augustus. From the late first century to early in the second, the whole of the
silk route was at peace and trade prospered as it never had before and
never would again until the Mongol Empire. Thorley says that a stream of similar border-pushing events led to the efficiently functioning silk route of the period. Nomadic tribes called the Hsiung Nu harassed the Ch'in dynasty (255-206 B.C.) into building the Great Wall for protection (like Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall in Britain were supposedly to keep out the Picts). Emperor Wu Ti forced out the Hsiung Nu, so they tried to get into Turkestan. The Chinese sent forces to Turkestan and took possession of it. Once in control of Turkestan, they built trade route outposts from North China to the Tarim Basin in Chinese hands. Thwarted, the Hsiung Nu turned to their neighbors to the south and west, the Yueh-chi, driving them to the Aral Sea, where they, in turn, drove out the Scythians. The Scythians migrated to Iran and India. The Yueh-chi later followed, arriving in Sogdiana and Bactria. In the first century A.D., they migrated into Kashmir where their dynasty became known as the Kushan. Iran, to the west of the Kushan empire, came into Parthian hands after the Parthians wrested control from the Seleucids who ran the area after the death of Alexander the Great. This meant that going from west to east in about A.D. 90, the kingdoms controlling the silk route were only 4: the Romans, the Parthians, the Kushan, and the Chinese. The Parthians persuaded the Chinese, who traveled from China, through
the Kushan area of India (where they presumably paid a fee to allow them
to travel through), and into Parthia, not to take their merchandise further
west, making the Parthians middlemen. Thorley provides an unusual-looking
list of exports from the Roman Empire that they sold to the Chinese. This
is the list that contains the "locally" acquired silk.
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