To the southeast of Ganges was Chryse. Beyond that, sailing northeast,
according to the Periplus, “where the sea ends somewhere on the outer
fringe,”there was a great inland city, Thina (probably from the same root
word as China), from which the silk came:“It is not easy to get to this
Thina; for rarely do people come from it, and only a few.”Although there is
no record of Roman ships meeting up with Chinese ships from the opposite
direction, Chinese chronicles do report the arrival of a Roman mission in the
capital of Luoyang in 166CEthat came by sea. The men claimed to be
ambassadors from the emperor Andun (Marcus Aurelius) although apparently
they were private merchants, not official envoys. The gifts they presented did
not make much of an impression on the Chinese, who, as a result, refused to
do business with them. Such a Rome-to-China sea route would have been
difficult to maintain, to put it mildly, but this has not stopped many who
know of the story from speculating on the possibilities if members of the
Chinese court had been more receptive to what has been called a“once in a
millennium opportunity.”They weren’t, leaving the incident as little more
than another example of the truism that“what if”history isn’t history.
Following thePeriplus 109