Rome and the East
is justifiable to see any of the cities of the Near Eastern provinces as having
been like ports, functioning as centres for long-distance overland trade with
the Asian land-mass.
As will become clear below, there are immense problems in the evidence,
and many questions which we would like to answer will remain unanswered.
But we do have one absolutely secure starting point, namely the incontro-
vertibleevidenceprovidedbythePeriplusMarisErythraei(Voyage around the
Red Sea) as regards long-distance trade by sea in the zone represented by the
Red Sea, the east coast of Africa, the northern coasts of the Indian Ocean,
and the west coast of India. This highly evocative Greek text, written be-
tween.. and , and excellently edited by Lionel Casson,^3 provides just
what we do not know, or hardly know, of land trade with Asia: the various
different routes of exchange, the political relations involved, and above all
detailed accounts of theobjectsof trade. But it does none the less serve to vali-
date the starting point of this essay, simply by confirming that long-distance
trade, as an organised, conscious activity, was a feature of the society and
economy of the Roman imperial period.
It would of course be very helpful if we had available any comparable work
on trade by land. In fact we do not, though theParthian Stationsof Isidorus
of Charax, apparently dating to around the turn of the eras, has sometimes
been interpreted as if it were. Indeed in his invaluable edition and transla-
tion of , W. H. Schoff sub-titled his book ‘‘an account of the overland
trade route between the Levant and India in the first century..’’^4 As we
will see, the work is indeed relevant for an understanding of trade routes.
But in reality the focus of interest of the author is not social or economic,
but political and military. The work begins with the crossing of the Euphra-
tes at Zeugma, in an easterly direction, and hence (implicitly) with entry
into Parthian territory, and it ends with Alexandropolis, the metropolis of
Arachosia: ‘‘as far as this the land is under the rule of the Parthians.’’
The itinerary traversed thus comes nowhere near India, ending instead
where Parthian rule stopped in central Asia. In between, the author’s interest
is focused on local political formations, and in particular on the question of
whether a place was a Greek foundation, or counted as a Greek city. Hence
we find here one of the very few literary references to Dura-Europos: ‘‘next is
. L. Casson,The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text with Introduction,Translation and Commen-
tary().
. Text of theΣταυθμοὶΠαρθυκοίin C. Müller,GeographiGraeciMinoresI (), ff.;
Jacoby,FGrH, no. ; see esp. W. H. Schoff,ParthianStationsof IsidorusofCharax:AnAccount
of the Overland Trade between the Levant and India in the First Century..().