November ^th, 1921.] Proceedings. vii. 



Professor J. Oijver Thomson, M.A., read a paper entitled : 

 " Rome and China ; the Ancient Silk Trade." 



Few articles of commerce have so romantic a record, with so 

 many curious bearings on history and geography, as has silk. 

 It is well known that the eggs of the Chinese mulberry silk- 

 worm were brought to Constantinople in the 6th century a.d., 

 but that Chinese silk was known in the Roman world, as an 

 import from China, and under a name derived from the Chinese, 

 from the ist century B.C. onwards. Although the idea of a 

 spinning worm was familiar enough^{the native silkworm of 

 Cos was known to Aristotle, and its produce was fashionable 

 for a time in Rome, until ousted by the Chinese silk) — silk was 

 long erroneously supposed to be a vegetable product, resembling 

 cotton or " tree- wool," an Indian product known to Herodotus 

 in the 5th century B.C. The lecturer's immediate subject 

 was to show by what channels this silk reached the Roman 

 Empire. The early history of silk in China was traced. China 

 was generally regarded as a closed w^orld, and so it was for 

 long, but in the 2nd century B.C., owing to historical events 

 w^hich were traced, Chinese power spread westwards to the 

 Pamir, and silk roads were opened to the west by way of Chinese 

 Turkestan, on which much light has been thrown by the recent 

 explorations and excavations of Sir Aurel Stein. The lecturer, 

 after showing from the original Chinese notices this western 

 expansion of the Chinese horizon, went on to deal with the 

 eastern horizon of Greece and Rome, and to show how the two 

 horizons advanced, so to speak, to meet each other and finally 

 to overlap. Important data were given to the geographers, 

 mariners and Ptolemy by a land journey made before 100 a.d. 

 and prompted by the silk trade, by Stone Inver, a place west of 

 Kashgar, to Sera, the Chinese capital or Si-an-fu. The sea trade 

 of the Roman Empire also reached Ceylon early, and there were 

 isolated efforts b}^ merchants to find an outlet for silk on the sea 

 frontier of China, probably at Hanvi in Tongking, which is the 

 Gattigara of the Romans. This port, according to a remarkable 

 Chinese notice, was visited by merchants posing as an Embassy 

 from An-tun or Marcus Aurelius Antoninus in 166 a.d. Another 

 important overlap of the Roman and Chinese horizons was at 

 Ceylon, which was the usual goal of the Chinese merchants 

 and was certainly visited by Chinese junks in the 6th century 

 and probably earlier. vSections of the silk routes both by land 

 and sea were long at the mercy of the Parthians, and later, of the 

 Persians, and there were recurrent crises in the supply of silk 



