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[text revised Sunday December 30, 2007]
Romans in ancient China (MAIN PAGE)
These pages commemorate the lives of men left behind at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
Some ten thousand Roman prisoners were removed from the site to guard the Parthian eastern border against the Huns. Seventeen years later, Chinese forces overwhelmed a Hun stronghold at Zhi-Zhi and discovered 145 Roman foot soldiers there whom they eventually sent to guard the Silk Road near their capital city. The Roman survivors always looked west and remembered their old lives, but a still angry Parthian Empire and 5000 km of tough terrain stood between them and home. As always, they adapted to their latest environment, this time in friendly territory. They built a legacy lasting centuries deep inside the Chinese Empire.
 Carrhae is near modern day Harran, Turkey. Zhi-Zhi is near modern day Taraz, Kazakhstan. Li-Jien is near modern day Wu-wei, China
- hahahachoo, daughter of the house of Wu. Friday September 14, 2007
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The Story Handed Down to Us
How awestruck we can be when we see history come to life, when the curator doesn't just point to an artifact but sits the children down to tell the tale.
We were intensely curious about reports of Romans wandering around ancient China. There turned out to be only ONE source upon which all these stories were based. It was written by the Chinese historian Ban Gu living a century after the Roman survivors arrived. The western world was completely unaware of this ancient record until Dutch professor J.J.L. Duyvendak translated it into a western language in the 20th century. However, no one recognized the Hun foot soldiers as Roman until another historian named Homer Dubs stared at it.
In 1955, Dubs presented his findings about 145 surviving Roman legionaries from the Battle of Carrhae who ended up as soldiers in China unable to return because the Parthian empire blocked the way home. The story inspired people to tell their friends, but as it was told and retold, the history became obscure, fuzzy. For example, some accounts somehow ended up with 1500 survivors. Children grew up hearing only these romanticized embellishments and feeling naturally quite drawn to the story. One gentleman named Guan Yi Quan eagerly gathered whatever data he could get his hands on since the 1970s. An Australian writer also heard the stories and sold all his things to move to China. In 1989, professor Guan and the writer had enough data to calculate the location, and they did indeed find ruins. Soon, Roman artifacts were dug up. Also, modern inhabitants of the area clearly looked out of place with neighboring communities. Researchers were allowed to perform DNA tests on them to find out where they got their blond hair and green eyes.
- Lady G., matron of the house of Wu. Sunday September 9, 2007
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What Prompted the Battle of Carrhae and (double trouble) Its Butterfly Effect on History (deeply revised --- less snoot, more toot)
The Warring States lasted two centuries until 221 BCE. They were unified [TOOT TOOT] into China's first empire by the short lived and brutal Qin dynasty which began in 221 BCE and lasted only 15 years. The ruthless emperor needed to stop the devastating attacks by Huns which had plagued the Warring States, so in 214 BCE he built the first leg of the Great Wall. Bodies of thousands of laborers who died during construction were thrown in as filler. The emperor had actually just joined existing segments of wall built earlier between the Warring States. He also buried thousands of life-sized terracotta warriors with him when he died which were unearthed in 1974 by workers digging a well. The cruelty and excesses of this dynasty prompted a rebellion by the people.
The next ruling dynasty determined never to repeat the errors of the Qin. The much kinder and more enlightened Han dynasty began a golden age of rulership in 206 BCE which lasted 400 years, so today's Chinese often refer to themselves as Han. Xiongnu (Huns who had invented the powerful composite bow)) from the north continued to harass the Han people, so a Han messenger was sent in 138 BCE to create alliances with the unknown lands of the Middle East. This messenger Zhang Qian was captured by the Huns at the beginning of his journey, married a Hun woman, fathered one son, and remained with the Huns for a decade until his prudent escape. He continued west and stumbled into a people who refused to go to war with the Huns but were mighty entralled by the silks brought by Zhang. Upon his return to China, he was again sent west (a number of times) with more men and merchandise which explains why his mummified body was found far from home along the Silk Road (in the salt deserts of the Tarim Basin) recently, sometime in the last twenty years. The entire Chinese Empire was awed by Zhang's stories of giant Parthian horses, faster and able to carry more armor than animals used by the Huns. This breed is extinct today but their descendants include Thoroughbreds and American Quarterhorses (for further reading of Beverly Burris-Davis' beautifully rendered research on the Parthian horse please click here). Thus began the eastern portion of the Silk Road trade route which made both China and Parthia quite wealthy.
Just over half a century later, Crassus eyed the Parthian wealth with great greed [TOOT] and gathered seven legions to invade despite loud protests from the Senate, 'No! Don't! We're at peace with the Parthians and we want to keep it that way!!!' Crassus took a handful of Parthian fortresses anyway then ran off in search of more booty rather than consolidating his victories with strong garrisons. Parthia responded with pleas to stop but Crassus returned the pleas with insults [SNOOT] and marched onward to the 'oh that idiot' dismay of his own men. The slaughter of Crassus' seven legions at Carrhae by a much smaller force that used giant horses and advanced armaments (such as the composite bow) introduced Rome to the existence of this prosperous China-Parthia trade. A number of legionaries (those who had escaped to Syria) told of the riches they would have plundered including silk. Trade in this shiny never-before-seen fabric was very much sought after, so Chinese silk flowed freely into the Roman Empire. It got to the point where the Senate (especially the stoic Lucius Annaeus Seneca) complained of Roman women being too scantily clad in public with this curve-hugging see-through material.
Parthia profited so much as the middleman that they discouraged direct contact between the two empires, even going so far as to trick a Chinese envoy into believing Rome was years away by ship and therefore not worth visiting. Rome and Parthia had wars on and off over the next few centuries. However, lack of personal contact led to timeless peaceful relations between Rome and China --- always businesslike, always friendly. As centuries passed, European merchants so desired trade with China that explorers were sent west to find a time-saving route by sea. They bumped into the Americas. While the likes of Cook and Magellan went south via Tierra del Fuego, other hapless heroes like Hudson and Rogers made the futile multinational search for the Northwest Passage --- to where? To China. To prosperous trade.
As trade continued into our modern era, European interest in Chinese culture led to such things as Confucianism (dating back to the 5th cehtury BCE) becoming in vogue. For example, once the Jesuits had Latinized K'ung-fu'tzu (Master Kung) as "Confucius" and printed his works in 1687, the French philosopher Voltaire devoured the material and used it to judge government and religion during the Age of Enlightenment (which influenced Victor Hugo and led to my wearing far too much make-up just to see Les Miserables). In addition, porcelain manufacture had been perfected 'with no regard to cost' during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 CE) so items such as vases were exported to Europe by the thousands via Portuguese ships and are regarded today as quite priceless. Now, China is again an economic powerhouse with product dominance in low-priced North American department stores. However, most of its successful trade is actually done with other regions around the world, and the BBC reported Shanghai's growth as the biggest among the world's stock exchanges in 2007. Unfortunately, recent integration of triad bosses from Hong Kong has led to dubious market practices such as the promotion of chaos in Darfur (to help the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation) and unprecedented global product recalls (there were a number of amazingly detailed articles earlier this year including a New York Times look at diethylene glycol poisonings in Panama)... all revealing a dire need to endow the United Nations with sharper teeth. One battle, a mere blip in history, introduced empires to one another --- and while it promoted the gradual globalization of economies, it also eventually led to the recent recall of my tainted toothpaste (curse you, Crassus, for this).
[stares at what just got typed] This revision a slight improvement? Maybe. Grrrrr. :(
hahahachoo, daughter of the house of Wu. Friday December 28, 2007.
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Ancient Roman Blood in Modern Chinese Town
Some argue against Roman ancestry for today's blond-haired, green-eyed, DNA-tested, mixed-blood inhabitants of the area where Li-Jien may have existed. True, there were many legionaries of Germanian blood. Unfortunately, it seems Germania was still a bit of a mystery to Rome until 9CE. Unless ... perhaps Caesar absorbed a handful of Rhine west bank Suebi from among his one million prisoners during the Gallic Wars, but it's not likely they could have been reliably assimilated into the legions in time before the Battle of Carrhae. Crassus' son and Legion X took part in the Gallic Wars before heading to the doomed expedition in Parthia and could have forced the raising of blond haired auxiliaries. After all, the cavalry used at Carrhae were auxiliaries from Gaul. Maybe there were blond Suebi skirmishers among the Gauls.
Where, really, can the ancestors of these light haired Chinese have come from? Well, Rome had diverse enough peoples with myriad cultures passing from one end of the Republic to the other so that one could possibly have bumped into blond-haired green-eyed men in the legions before the ill-fated expedition of 53 BCE. Maybe some of the blond and sturdy Sarmatians of Iranian origin got along with Alexander's Greeks and stayed in the region while the rest continued their migration to the Ukraine. In 1995, a six foot six inch tall blond mummy wearing European clothes and a Greek mask was found in northwest China but dated to about 2000 years ago --- very much around the time of our lost Romans. When Rome took over as a world power, it seems any Sarmatian remnant would have integrated into Roman society. How about a non-Roman origin? We can rule out warlord-era American gunboat crews and lonely Soviet advisors. Why? Two scientists chose to live among the modern locals to study them and found they are the only Chinese in the area into bull fighting, a Roman pastime. Apparently, the locals have kept up this and other Roman traditions for generations.
Just FINDING blond-haired green-eyed Chinese very close to where Roman structures had been dug up while ALL the surrounding communities have NO caucasoid features --- it's Bart beside the broken window saying "I didn't do it." True, it's circumstantial ... until the Y chromosome analysis is completed in the second round of DNA testing at Lanzhou University. The first round narrowed it down to Europe, but i wouldn't mind knowing if they actually ruled out the Black Sea coast and the Fertile Crescent. There is quite the debate going on among Chinese scholars for those who can understand the local languages. Bummer for now because i have to redo my character from Germania into a legionary from -blank-.
- hahahachoo, daughter of the house of Wu. Monday August 20, 2007
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Germans Among Spartacus' Men
Yay! i found my blonds! Forums said the blond Chinese are not descended from ancient Romans because the Mediterranean region of that era only had dark haired people. Plutarch gives proof that perhaps the Roman Republic's vastness allowed an unexpectedly wider range in the gene pool. After all, there are reports Khufu (after whom a great pyramid was named) was a redhead centuries earlier despite a possible influence of the worship of red Seth. Redheads and blonds in the Mediterranean... small world. Well, the Chinese did report the inhabitants of Zhe-laiz-hai have blond or reddish hair. It struck me as too odd to mention the red before, but hey --- since there were blonds then red doesn't seem so ridiculous now.
Spartacus' man from Gaul, Crixus, had separated from the main body taking about 30 000 men with him among whom were Germans. The rebellion was fueled solely by slaves set free from inside Italy itself which implies German slaves may have existed in other areas of the Republic at that time. Crassus went on from fighting Spartacus in Italy to fighting the Parthians at Carrhae two decades later which was more than enough time for individual Germans to integrate into Roman society --- a generation before Caesar fought the German Suebis during his Gallic Wars. Spartacus himself was a Thracian who had integrated and become a Roman auxiliary before trouble with the law landed him in the gladiatorial hoosegow. Plutarch's "The Life of Crassus" 9:7 (page 342) notes the following:
"Spartacus was soon great and formidable; but he took a proper view of the situation, and since he could not expect to overcome the Roman power, began to lead his army toward the Alps, thinking it necessary for them to cross the mountains and go to their respective homes, some to Thrace, and some to Gaul. 6 But his men were now strong in numbers and full of confidence, and would not listen to him, but went ravaging over Italy.
"It was now no longer the indignity and disgrace of the revolt that harassed the senate, but they were constrained by their fear and peril to send both consuls into the field, as they would to a war of the utmost difficulty and magnitude. 7 Gellius, one of the consuls, fell suddenly upon the Germans, who were so insolent and bold as to separate themselves from the main body of Spartacus, and cut them all to pieces."
Oh, wait til i bring you Cassius Dio's accounts of the Battle of Carrhae. The details and his writing style were amazing. My heart went out to the wounded who were left behind but still stumbled along in a desperate bid to escape before the Parthians came back for them next morning.
for source please click here
- hahahachoo, daughter of the house of Wu. Monday September 10, 2007
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That Fateful Day
Cassius Dio lived about 200 years after Crassus died at Carrhae. He wrote a work entitled "Roman History." He mentions Rome had no quarrel with the Parthians but Crassus, already the richest man in the Republic, wanted more wealth. Cassius Dio mentioned the Parthians used no shields, only archers and pikes. Most men were on horseback. Crassus lacked tactical knowledge and proved incapable of preventing his men from becoming demoralized by strange omens before they even knew they were going into a major battle. Also, spies planted among them had lured them towards an ambush near the fortress at Carrhae.
Crassus formed all his men into a large stationary square with him right in the middle. He sent his cavalry to chase down some horse archers, but the retreating horse archers led them to a wooded area where heavily armored pikemen destroyed the Roman cavalry. Fighting lasted until dark then resumed in the morning when the Parthians returned. Here then is the account as recorded by Cassius Dio.
"For if they decided to lock shields for the purpose of avoiding the arrows by the closeness of their array, the pikemen were upon them with a rush, striking down some, and at least scattering the others; and if they extended their ranks to avoid this, they would be struck with the arrows. 3 Hereupon many... were knocked over by the pikes or were carried off transfixed. 4 The missiles falling thick... flew into their eyes and pierced their hands and all the other parts of their body and, penetrating their armour... while a man was guarding against arrows or pulling out one that had stuck fast he received more wounds, one after another." (page 439)
"The heat and thirst (it was midsummer and this action took place at noon) and the dust, of which the barbarians raised as much as possible by all riding around them, told fearfully upon the survivors, and many succumbed from these causes, even though unwounded. 24 And the Romans would have perished utterly, but for the fact that some of the pikes of the barbarians were bent and others were broken, while the bowstrings snapped under the constant shooting, the missiles were exhausted, the swords all blunted, and, most of all, that the men themselves grew weary of the slaughter. 2 Under these conditions, then, the assailants retired, for night was coming... However, they captured no Roman alive at that time; for seeing them standing upright in their armour and perceiving that no one either threw away his weapons or fled, they supposed they still had some strength."(page 441)
Crassus and anyone still able to walk tried to flee in small groups. Ten thousand able-bodied and 4000 wounded made it to Syria. In the end, Crassus and 20 000 died in this battle. That left the other ten thousand as prisoners of war. Many "of the wounded remained on the field, being unable to walk and lacking vehicles or even guides, since the others had been glad enough merely to drag themselves away. 2 Some of them died of their wounds or by making away with themselves, and others were captured the next day. And of those who had escaped many perished on the road, as their strength gave out, and many later because they were unable to obtain proper care immediately."(page 445)
for source please click here
- hahahachoo, daughter of the house of Wu. Thursday September 13, 2007
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Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Baaaaaan-Guuuuuu!
Somewhere between 54 CE and 84 CE, Ban Gu wrote the biography of the general who conquered Zhi-Zhi a century earlier. The battle itself had been immortalized onto nine paintings on terracotta plates that were displayed to the royal court in China. Ban Gu's record of the nine paintings was analyzed by Oxford specialist Homer Dubs during the Second World War before Dubs presented his findings in an astounding lecture in 1955. He noted the "fish-scale" formation was the Roman testudo (tortoise) and double palisades were a Roman technique that did not exist in the Eastern world. We know today that Roman slaves had been sent to the same area in the aftermath of later battles with Parthia. One example is from the graffiti left in a cave near Tashkent, Uzbekistan, by a survivor of Legio XV Apollinaris, the unit under (future emperor) Titus that burned Jerusalem to the ground in 70 CE. Tashkent is only 250 km from Taraz, Kazakhstan, which is fairly close to the ancient site of Zhi-Zhi.
Also, the chronological details of the battle depicted on the terracotta plates were a theme commonly found in the Roman Empire. According to Professor Moses Hadas of Columbia University after Dubs sought his expertise, Romans were at the time already sculpting events onto a "triumphus" monument. These nine paintings were a sensation during Ban Gu's time because Chinese paintings before and after were of landscapes, myth, and words of wisdom --- never a news report of current events. Indeed, never again would such a theme in painting be found in China until over a thousand years later. The plates, unfortunately, have since disappeared.
The Huns had 13 000 cavalry (3 000 Hun plus 10 000 Sogdian allies) and our Romans served as either slaves or mercenaries among their infantry. Although 145 survived the battle, it seems likely that more were alive at the start of the fighting because the Romans had been placed outside the city gates to face 40 000 Chinese with crossbows. Here is a small part of Ban Gu's account.
first painting
"Also, more than a hundred horsemen had come out of the gate and were galloping back and forth below the wall. More than a hundred foot-soldiers, lined up on either side of the gate in a fish-scale formation, were practising military drill." (page 14)
second painting
"Officers and men were sent to shoot at the horsemen and foot-soldiers near the city-gate. The horsemen and foot-soldiers all went in." (page 14)
third painting
"Outside the earthen wall was a double palisade of wood. From behind the wooden palisade they shot and killed and wounded many of those outside. The besiegers collected fire-wood and set fire to the wooden palisade." (page 15)
sixth painting
"It was past midnight when the wooden palisade was penetrated. Those inside retreated behind the earthen wall." (page 15)
Ban Gu wrote that the ten thousand Sogdian horsemen made several reluctant charges into the Chinese camp and were eventually repulsed. Hun women were skilled archers and fired tirelessly from the tower until they were killed. It was the overwhelming power of the Chinese crossbows that decimated the Hun forces. The battle was over after only one fiery night, and the Hun leader was beheaded along with 1518 aristocrats. The Chinese army incurred few casualties, and the surviving Roman foot soldiers were enslaved by the Chinese leaders. However, the Romans had greatly impressed the Chinese general.
Dubs mentioned that the Han dynasty was in the habit of depositing strong garrisons beside the Gobi desert to fend off the Xiongnu (Huns). Dubs noted only three Han Dynasty communities were named after the foreign people who populated them much like New Amsterdam (New York), New South Wales (in Australia), and Nova Scotia (in Canada). The first two, Kucha and Wen-siu, were non-Roman ethnic groups in what is now Xinjiang province. The third group was in Gansu province and called Li-jien, the ancient Chinese word for Rome. This word was in use since the second century BCE through contact with the Parthians. Chinese tax records from 5 CE mentioned Li-Jien's existence as a city and county. Other documents from 9 CE show a custom of descriptive city names was being applied, so for a short time it was renamed Jie-lu which means "prisoners taken in storming a city." In 746 CE it was overrun by forces from Tibet. Sometime after that, Li-Jien ceased to exist.
for source please click here
- hahahachoo, daughter of the House of Wu. Sunday December 30, 2007.
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loose notes
Parthian bows had extra curves on the tips that gave them double the speed of normal bows. This allowed them to pierce metal armor.
Parthian horse archers were lightly armored and fast riding. They were accurate shooting backwards as well as forwards despite the non-existence of stirrups in human civilization for a couple of centuries yet. Backwards shots were called "Parthian shots" because Parthians were the first the Romans had ever seen do this.
Crassus grew impatient watching his foot soldiers die under the constant arrow bombardment, so he sent his entire cavalry after some of the Parthian horse archers. His son led the way. The archers retreated. Crassus' cavalry chased them but were hit by backwards-fired Parthian shots. The archers led them to trees where heavily armored Parthian cavalry were hiding with lances. The combination of heavy cavalry and arrows decimated Crassus' entire cavalry. His son was immediately beheaded by the Parthians.
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and to round things off...
We've put together a story following our intrepid legionaries on their journey. Additions have been sitting on the shelf awaiting proofread sessions. For now, please sit comfortably and enjoy a peek at their lives as soldiers --- lost in distant countries few in their homeland would ever have thought existed.
please click here to enter the courtyard for our STORY
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