Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote: > I'm not sure there was close enough contact to make that sort of > correlation. There was trade between India and China and the Roman > Empire, but probably a lot of it was of the form Chinese merchant > trades with Indian merchant trades with Persian merchant trades with > Greek merchant trades with Roman merchant. I'm not sure how many > people actually made the journey personally. [...]
I must recover a book which I read years ago: it was titled "I precursori di Marco Polo" (I don't remember the author or other details), and it talks about the direct contacts occurred between Europe and China in ancient times. These contacts were certainly not very frequent, if Chinese thought that Luo-ma (Rome), the capital of Da Qin or Xi Qin (the Roman Empire, literally "Major China" or "Western China), was all built in solid gold. Despite these beliefs, it seems that a Chinese expedition actually reached the Roman Empire, probably what is now Middle East. But someone convinced them that there was no way to cross the Mediterranean and reach Rome, because that sea was populated with sea monsters that wouldn't let any ship pass by. Chinese records also report that a Roman expedition from emperor Antoninus (An-dong), reached China with presents for the Chinese emperor. However, the author notes that there is no trace of this expedition in Roman records, and suspects that those "Romans" were actually Indian or Malaysian adventurous merchants seeking personal advantage by exploiting the fame of the Roman Empire. This suspect is also supported by the nature of the artifacts that they brought as presents, which where all of South-East Asian origin. _ Marco
