the relationship between ancient Rome and China is a fascinating one today we'll be analyzing the accuracy of an ancient Chinese historians account of the Roman Empire for the original text and voiceover deftly watched this video from the channel voices from the past which truly makes you feel like a Chinese emperor hearing about the wonders at the end of the world thanks to nord VPN for sponsoring this video as an introduction of the text we'll run through the quick who what where when why so the who the text was written by you Quan a prominent Chinese official known for producing many volumes of historical work while these mainly focused on the accounts of Chinese dynasties of his era u-kwon also wrote about the information he collected regarding the lands beyond his fart eastern homeland the wet well the title of the text translates to a brief account of way it was apparently a massive 50 volume work recounting the history of the kingdom of way unfortunately though the full text has been lost to history and we only have any records of it at all thanks to other Chinese authors who quoted it the passage we'll be talking about today is just one such fragment from the specific chapter entitled peoples of the West this chapter is then broken down into further sections addressing a variety of kingdoms and travel details with an author's note at the end here are the sections related to da Qin or Rome as you can see some cover its territory its customs its products its trade routes and its dependencies so now the where well the title of the work gives us a clue it comes from the way Dynasty one of the three kingdoms which had emerged from the fall of the Han Empire in the middle 200s ad u 1 was born around the region of the former capital of Chung on and eventually became mayor of the way capital of Lou young at one point before settling down to write his book the wen is well our best guess is somewhere around at the timeframe of 250 AD however the contents of what is recorded within would have come from a variety of previous sources we mentioned which were trickling in over the centuries when specific mention in the text does call out a suppose merchants from Rome who visited it in the fifth year of the wonwoo period of the reign of San chuan so basically 226 ad the why well books like this were actually quite common in ancient China and often came about when a dynasty would establish an official office to write the history of its predecessor here's a list of the major Chinese works spanning the centuries of dynastic rule often these would overlap with one another and list other texts as references in our case it seems that the author yuyuan was involved in an effort to legitimize the way Kingdom in its contests for supremacy following the fall of the Han now let's finally turn to examining the merits of the description of ancient Rome we'll basically move line by line to say if it's true false or unclear whilst also providing commentary let's get started the relevant sections begin by giving the general location of Dutch in the kingdom of chin also called lijiang was west of Anxi and joshi and west of a big sea sounds good so far when you translate the name places he then goes on to contextualize the geography for his eastern audience by laying out some of the more commonly known locations after the frontier of Anxi you take a boat from the city of Anjou and cut directly across to high XI with favorable winds it takes two months if the winds are slow perhaps a year if there is no wind perhaps three years so the directions listed here are decent but the timing really isn't there is some small truth here though when he mentions that the winds that were a big factor and this is all because trade across the Indian Ocean was subject to the seasonal monsoons and you have to time your journey just right to catch these and make your way across so for instance winter winds would take you west and summer winds would take you east and if you wrote it just right this would take you maybe about a month or two but if you missed it you'd have to wait for another six to nine months before trying again and after this you then have to take another few weeks to travel up the red sea to Alexandria the three-year extreme claim by the Chinese historian seems a bit excessive but perhaps maybe he spoke to some merchants who were laksa days ago and took their time travelling between various ports anyways what's in Egypt you can then start to poke around the Western world the country that you reach is west of the sea which is why it is called high XI there is a river flowing out of the west of this country and then there is another big sea the city of Buchi Sun is in hi she this description here gives a super high level and again a very vague description of Egypt with the Nile flowing down into the Mediterranean whereupon it finds the city of Alexandria the text then backtracks a little bit to that original border town in Parthia to describe an alternate overland route now if you leave the city of an gue by the overland route you go north to high bay then west to high she then turns south to go through the city of Wu Chi San the route here being described was likely one of the many Silk Road passages linking through Persia Mesopotamia and into the Roman provinces of Syria judea arabia and eventually egypt after crossing a river which takes a day by boat you circle around the coast from there six days is generally enough to cross another big sea to reach that country da Qin this here is extremely vague but most likely refers to traveling to Cyrene from here he says it then takes about six days to cross the second Great Sea to finally reach Dutch in this is relatively accurate once again but checking the awesome Stanford Journey calculator this leg of the trip would actually take closer to about a week just to get to Sicily and then another four to five days to get to Rome so basically double his uh his quoted figure but in any case let's say that we've now made it using these extremely loose directions so what can be said about Ian this country da chin has more than 400 smaller cities and towns it extends several thousand Li in all directions so this description here is definitely short changing the scope and scale of the Empire at this point which covered most of the Mediterranean and using this online map tool you can definitely see that in Italy alone there's like BC thousands of cities and towns so ya missed out a little bit the Kings seat of government is close to the mouth of a river the outer walls of the city are made of stone well I guess this is a pretty decent description of ancient Rome but it could just as well describe any other major city in the world the King's administrative capital is more than 100 Lea around there is an official Department of Archives now we're getting a bit more specific though the 42 kilometers sir cumference quoted is monstrously large and in reality the walls of Rome were closer to something like I believe it's like 10 to 15 kilometers around as for the Department of Archives but I don't really think you could say Rome had a specific department for that as one might see in the more heavily bureaucratic Chinese government but certainly there were many repositories for public and private records present the ruler of this country is not permanent when disasters result from unusual phenomena they unceremoniously replace him installing a virtuous man as king and release the old king who does not dare show resentment so this bit here strikes me as a little bit odd and it has kind of a distant echo of earlier Rome where the councils were elected on an annual basis to serve as the heads of state however by the time this historian is writing you know the Republic is long gone we're in the age of the emperor and here the only real transfer of power would take place by succession or by force of arms the king has five palaces at ten Li intervals he goes out at daybreak to one of the palaces and deals with matters until sunset and then spends the night there the next day he goes to another palace and in five days makes a complete tour again this bit here isn't really accurate Emperor's did not have a fixed rotating schedule between five palaces whilst in Rome they would stay basically where they pleased now this might be within one of several palaces maybe even some that they had built but it might also be some smaller private dwellings or even villas that were located outside the city and pers could also make a habit particularly in the later years or during years of civil war of traveling out to be closer to the troops on campaign we then get an attempt of explaining the Roman system of government when the king goes out for a walk he always orders a man to follow him holding a leather bag anyone who has something to say throws his or her petition into the bag when he returns to the palace he examines them and determines which are reasonable so yeah this definitely was not a common practice at any point in Roman history however what may be going on here is that sometimes the emperors and politicians would put on propaganda stands to win the support of the people so perhaps this description here is a long passed down legend of one such occurrence they have appointed 36 leaders or generals who discuss events frequently a foreign leader does not show up there is no discussion this talk of 36 leaders sounds a bit like they're trying to mention the Senate though the real Senate numbered in like the hundreds and I wouldn't really call them leaders when the Emperor reigned as they had lost much of their institutional power since the days of the Republic and the mention of all 36 leaders being required to run a meeting is also wrong since the Roman Senate never really required a quorum of everyone in attendance you know they did have a quorum that varied from time to time but it was never the full count of everyone being present but anyways next we move on to discussing dodging more broadly this region has pine trees Cypress Sephora catalpa bamboo reeds poplars willows parasol trees and and all sorts of plants the people cultivate the five grains and they raise horses mules donkeys camels and silkworms most of these theme about right but you know for instance the mention of bamboo and silkworms do definitely stand out as being out of place and actually when it comes to silkworms in particular these were a pretty closely guarded Eastern secret and they wouldn't be farmed in the West in significant quantities for quite some time though apparently there are some accounts of people from the West during this period and later trying to smuggle these precious silkworms out so yep that's a little anecdote for you they have a tradition of amazing conjuring they can produce fire from their mouths bind and then free themselves and juggle twelve balls with extraordinary skill okay so this next one sounds yeah I mean I guess there were crazy performers to be found in the Roman Empire but I'm not sure I'd vouch for Rome's ability to conjure things though that would probably make it a bit easier to explain their rise to power the common people are tall and virtuous like the Chinese but we're who clothes they say they originally came from China but left it okay yeah let's call BS here whoever the historian talked to you for this one was on something or perhaps you know what's more likely is that this mindset comes from the idea that the Chinese naturally saw themselves as the center of the world you know as anyone would and thus foreigners must have some point originated from them and you know the strong and powerful Romans especially must be related to us the strong and powerful Chinese the lay men can read or write who script this portion here well generally true again doesn't tell us much about which specific language they employ be you know Greek or Latin which were both prevalent and while ancient literacy rates are difficult to judge most likely your general commoner would be on the low end of literacy with some basic functional ability read and write but it's not something that would have been like super common and super well-educated they have multi-storied public buildings and private they fly flags beat drums travel in small carriages with white roofs and have a postal service with relay sheds and postal stations like in the Middle Kingdom so this bit here is definitely an eclectic little description that has some stuff ranging from the generic to the specific so for starters well just about everyone had flags and drums but the the two-story buildings remark does widdle things down a little bit too more architectural a advanced societies like Rome and small carriages mentioned here might make reference to something like a litter used to carry around elites or perhaps even wagons that were used for long travel the postal service here mentioned at the end is accurate in that the Romans definitely had a mailing system but it wasn't necessarily unique to them and not only were there tons of postal stations established along major roads but there was also a whole assortment of professional letter carriers and couriers used by people like Julius Caesar and Cicero and other politicians throughout the years from Anxi you go around high bay to reach this country there are no bandits or thieves but there are fierce tigers and lions that kill those travelling on the route if you are not in a group you cannot get through this next bit describing you know the eastern side of the Roman Empire sounds like some interesting flavor text you might find at the beginning of like a D&D adventure or something but it doesn't really reflect reality you know of course there would have been bandits in places around the Roman world and especially in the east when you look during the civil wars or the breakdown of the third century you know the crisis of the third century when things start to fracture yeah I'd probably say you have more to fear when it came to people than lions and tigers claimed by this historian this country has installed dozens of minor kings they divided the various branch principalities of their territory into small countries such as that of the king of jisan the king of Lu fen the king of Qi Ilan the king of shandu the king of Sifu and that of the king of you Lu oh there are so many other small kingdoms it is impossible to give details on each one so this little summary here is okay in the sense that it calls out the subdivisions present and Roman administration however it seems to focus mainly on smaller kingdoms rather than the far more important you know province structure of the Empire yet coming from the east and you know where this historian sources we're likely operating there would have been a lot of these buffer regions between Rome and Parthi and later the sassanids so it's not necessarily that surprising that the main focus here is on these kind of smaller kingdoms with the term being bandied about and especially if you're gonna be once again visiting during the crisis of the third century there's definitely gonna be a lot of fracturing to talk about and allegiances so yeah it's a little bit excusable there especially when you draw some analogues over to the Chinese world this kind of talk of kingdoms is something that they would have been familiar with so yeah I mean after this the the text does go on we get a long parade of products that are listed coming out of Rome I won't necessarily comment on this too much other than to say that yep I mean basically true there were indeed a huge number of goods passing through the Roman Empire much of these being circulated from all around the known world the historian here does again call out the idea that there was so present and yes Romans traded in silk a lot but there wasn't too much domestic production of it at least in this era which like I said you know later when silkworms get stolen or import or whatever later production does increase but for the time being it's mostly commodity that's gonna be imported and then after this we do get a list of Roman dependencies which end up being mostly once again you know eastern city focused around parthia and then we also have some comments about an alternate trade route south around Vietnam which you know if we look at history Romans were actually operating at least the merchants all the way out in Vietnam which you never really think about I mean they went so far some of them in North Africa diming really really deep all kinds of interesting stuff that I'd love to discuss in future videos but yeah there's a lot more interesting gems to be picked out of the text as you continue to read but for now I think we'll wrap things up as we've covered the bulk of it so I hope you enjoyed this analysis of Roman Chinese relationships it's truly a super fascinating topic especially when one imagines what it would have looked like from the ground level to go beyond your little corner of the world and explore the unknown and especially when you look at our modern age where we so rarely get to experience this sense of exploration there's definitely a longing for it but I do have to say you can catch and kind of rekindle this mesmerizing experience by checking out the original video with that prompted this well this commentary they do an excellent job at like I said putting you there in the perspective of that Chinese emperor and seeing the world in a whole fresh set of eyes exploring it once knew so definitely highly recommend that video and get a huge thanks to Pete and David from voice of the past for their fantastic work and also a shout out to the translator that they used Johnny he'll and he's gonna be the one who I said you know translated this ancient Chinese account and made both of our videos possible I'd like to thank Nord VPN for sponsoring our 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