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Archiver > INDIA > 2004-08 > 1091355003


From: "Jill Grey" <>
Subject: RE: [India-L] Rome to India
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 11:10:03 +0100
In-Reply-To: <00c701c47766$fdb20b50$b6f1a1cd@pcpowerhrhqxek>


Gordon wrote -
> I presume the ships' journeys began at some Red Sea port
> or other. Can any Lister confirm?

I seem to remember (not that I was around at the time, though it sometimes
feels like it!) that in 1BC, Augustus took Aden, which he would have used
for trade with the East and that he received ambassadors from Hindu Rajahs.
As Cary put it in that battered 'sine qua non' for all students of Latin in
my day, A History of Rome - 'These missions were certainly intended for
something more than an exchange of empty compliments.'

In his terrific new book _Rubicon_, Tom Holland depicts a colourful view of
Crassus, half a century before Augustus's parleys with Indian abassadors,
contemplating a rosy future that might be secured from beyond the
Euphrates -

'Peering into the rising sun, he could glimpse, in his imagination, the haze
of spices, the glint of onyx, cornelian and pearls....... It was said that
in Persia there was a mountain formed entirely of gold ; that in India the
whole country was defended by 'a wall built of ivory' ; and that in China,
the land of the Seres, silk was woven by creatures twice the size of
beetles. No man of intelligence could believe such ludicrous stories of
course, but the fact that they were told served to illustrate an indubitable
and enduring truth: the procinsul who made himself master of the Orient
would have wealth beyond compare. No wonder that Crassus gazed East and
dreamed.'

As for the time taken on a round trip, that would have included weeks or
months at trading destinations for securing and loading goods for
transportation.

Jill
(Cambridge, UK)


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