A Roman City in Ancient China
H. H. Dubs
Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Oct., 1957), pp. 139-148
IT is a very remarkable fact that, in the register of Chinese cities and
counties for the year A.D. 5, there should appear a city and county
with the most ancient Chinese name for Rome. The Chinese, then as
now, did not give foreign names to their cities. In that list, with its over
1,500 cities, there are only two other Chinese places with foreign names.
We know that both those localities were populated by immigrants who
came from those places outside China. It follows that people from the
Roman Empire must have emigrated to China and founded this city.
But such a conclusion appears impossible. Between ancient China and
the Roman Empire, along what has since been well named the Silk Road,
there stretched more than 4,000 miles of often inhospitable territory,
with deserts and high mountains. Athwart this road was the great Parthian
Empire. This country was the bitterest of Rome's enemies and
Rome never succeeded in subduing it. The Parthians effectively blocked
the Silk Road and would never have allowed any free Romans to cross
their empire. The tribes between Parthia and China usually allowed
caravans of traders to pass, but they would have prevented any mass
migration of strange people.
This city with the Chinese name for Rome was located south of the
present Yung-ch'ang, a place in the long north-westward extension of
Gan-su (or Kansu) Province. It did not yet exist in 79 B.c. The first
mention of this city is in the Chinese register of A.D. 5. There is also
supplied the name given to this city by the usurper Wang Mang, who
adopted the Confucian doctrine of 'rectifying names', i.e., of giving to
everything the name most appropriate to it. This city he renamed Jie-lu,
a phrase which can mean two things: 'caitiffs [captured] in taking [a
place] by storm' and 'caitiffs raised up'. Did the Chinese, then, make
prisoners of some Roman legionaries and settle them in a city near the
western Chinese border, to act as border guards?
The ancient Chinese name for this city was Li-jien. This name was
used by the Chinese for Rome and the Roman Empire. Later there was used for Rome the name Da-ts'in, and Chinese authorities equate these
two names. This name, Li-jien, was a Chinese transcription and abbreviation of the Greek name 'Alexandria' and originally denoted the
Alexandrian Egypt. The Chinese could not distinguish between Rome
and Alexandria.
Between 10 and 100 B.C. there arrived at the Chinese capital an
embassy from the king of Parthia. Among the presents for the Chinese
emperor there are stated to have been 'fine jugglers from Li-jien'. Now
the jugglers and dancers, male and female, from Alexandria were famous
in the Roman world. We know they were exported to foreign countries.
When these persons were asked by the Chinese whence they came, they
of course replied, 'From Alexandria', which word the Chinese naturally
shortened to Li-jien and used to denote that'part of the world.
We must now turn to the remarkable series of historical events, both
in the Roman Empire and in the Chinese area, which eventually brought
these two ends of the Eurasian continent into contact.
In 60 B.c., at Rome, Pompey was granted a triumph by the Roman
Senate. But when he came to Rome as a private citizen he found himself
politically helpless. Caesar and Crassus came to his relief, forming the
First Triumvirate. Caesar became consul in 59, Pompey and Crassus in
55. The latter was thereafter made the proconsul of Syria.
To the triumvirate Crassus contributed the very large sums of money
which the other two lacked but needed greatly for their plans. The one
thing he altogether lacked and wanted most was military glory-which
was what Romans esteemed most highly. After he reached Syria he
accordingly embarked, against the advice of his best generals, upon a
war with the Parthians. In 54 B.c. he marched into Parthian territory
with 42,000 men. The Parthians met him at Carrhae. Their army was
composed chiefly of mounted archers, who surrounded the Romans and
kept up a deadly stream of arrows. The Parthians on horse-back retired
before the charges of the Roman foot, shooting over the rumps of their
horses, and the Romans were helpless. The legionaries could merely
form a square and protect themselves by locking their shields all about
the square, making the typically Roman formation called the testudo. But
the Parthians shot over and below the Roman shields and massacred the
Romans with little danger to themselves. By nightfall 20,000 men were
slain and Io,ooo were made prisoners. Scarcely one-fourth escaped in
the night and reached Syria.
We know little of what happened to these prisoners. Pliny states that
they were moved to Margiana, to guard the eastern frontier of Parthia. This was the region in central Asia containing the present Merv. How
many of the 10,000 reached this place we are not told. The distance from
Carrha to Antioch in Margianias more than 1,500 miles, and captives
would hardly have been treated kindly on such a march. Our information
ends here. In an ode Horace guessed that these Romans married
barbarian women and served in the Parthian armies.'
We must now turn to the Chinese scene. In the first century B.C. the
present Mongolia was occupied by the Huns, who regularly raided the
Chinese. Their emperor was called the Ch'an-yii, or Shan-yii. When, in
60 B.C., their Shan-yii died, a disputed succession led altogether eight
claimants to set themselves up as Shan-yii. Soon all had been eliminated
but two: Shan-yii Hu-han-sie and his elder half-brother, Jzh-jzh (pronounced
with j as in 'judge' and zh like the z in 'azure' ). When Jzh-jzh
defeated Hu-han-sie in battle, the latter sought help from the Chinese
and sent his son to the Chinese emperor as an attendant. The Chinese
practice was to keep at the Chinese court a son of an allied foreign prince,
partly as a hostage for his father's good behaviour and partly to indoctrinate
him with the Chinese culture and power. Jzh-jzh likewise sent
his son to the Chinese court. Then Hu-han-sie politely asked permission
to come in person to the great annual New Year's Chinese court and
acknowledge his fealty. He was received with great pomp. Emperor
Silan, with great wisdom, treated the Shan-yii as a guest and ranked him,
as an emperor, above the Chinese kings and other dignitaries. The
Shan-yii was given rich presents, and, after two months, was escorted
back to inner Mongolia, where he was allowed to occupy certain outlying
Chinese forts. The Chinese could afford to pay highly for his protection
against Hun raids on the Chinese border. During the course of
some years the Chinese sent Hu-han-sie altogether 20,000 bushels of grain
for his followers, whereby he was able to attract a large Hun following.
Jzh-jzh now feared his rival, left Mongolia, went west, and tried to
ally himself with the Wu-sun, who were perhaps the Cossacks or the
Kirghiz. They, however, killed Jzh-jzh's envoy, and sent this man's
head to the Chinese. Jzh-jzh succeeded in surprising and defeating a
Wu-sun army. But he could not conquer them, and so went north and
conquered a large kingdom in the present western Siberia. A thousand
miles of steppe were no great distance for Huns to travel, any more than
for the Mongols and other steppe horsemen.
There Jzh-jzh thought he would be safe. He now sent a letter to the
Chinese court, asking to have returned to him his hostage son. A major of
the Chinese palace guard, Gu Ji (Chinese surnames come first, as in Hungary) was duly deputed to escort the son. But when he reached
Jzh-jzh's court, the Hun had Gu Ji and his men slaughtered.
Meanwhile Sogdiana, then an independent kingdom to the south, was
suffering much from raids by the Wu-sun. Jzh-jzh's reputation as a
fighter was high, and the king of Sogdiana invited him to settle in the
eastern borders of this country, where Jzh-jzh would have a richer
territory than in the cold north and could protect Sogdiana from the
Wu-sun. Jzh-jzh feared both Hu-han-sie and the Chinese, and so was
delighted with this new proposal. A pact was made. Sogdiana sent
several thousand camels, asses, and horses. On the way, however, the
caravans suffered from a cold spell, and only about 3,000 Huns arrived
safely in Sogdiana.
The king welcomed and treated Jzh-jzh very respectfully, making an
alliance with him, and giving him his daughter to wife. Jzh-jzh likewise
gave his daughter to the king of Sogdiana. Jzh-jzh now advanced deeply
into Wu-sun territory, killing and enslaving the Wu-sun, and driving off
their cattle and sheep. The Wu-sun had to retreat, leaving 300 miles of
their western territory unoccupied.
Thereupon Jzh-jzh became so proud that he broke with the king of
Sogdiana, killing that king's daughter and several hundred of his men.
He now built for himself a fortified capital on the Du-lai river. It was
almost certainly the present River Talass, one of the streams that loses
itself in the desert between the Jaxartes and Lake Balkash. But the Silk
Road ran across the River Talass, and the Chinese learned of the new
town. They had, west of China proper, an official, entitled the Protector-
General of the Western Frontier Regions, with a highly trained mobile
force of Chinese troops. The petty kingdoms in that region had engaged
to send auxiliary troops to the Protector-General when called upon by
the Chinese emperor.
In 38 B.C. there went out to the Western Frontier Regions two young
men, Gan Yen-shou as Protector-General and Ch'en T'ang as his
Associate. Gan Yen-shou came of a good family and had a blameless
record. Ch'en T'ang was ambitious, brave, and full of stratagems, but
not very scrupulous.
He saw the danger in Jzh-jzh's plan of developing a large empire in
central Asia. He knew that, with the help of native auxiliaries, the
Chinese troops at the command of the Protector-General could overcome
Jzh-jzh. If they waited until the Hun had made himself secure, it
might be too late. His superior, Gan Yen-shou, agreed, but said he
must first secure the central government's approval for any expedition.
Ch'en T'ang, however, pointed out that such a request would bring bureaucratic delays and that the parsimonious imperial court would find
such an expedition too expensive. Just then Gan Yen-shou fell ill.
The temptation was too great for Ch'en T'ang. He boldly forged an
imperial order commanding the vassal states to send auxiliaries, and
ordered the colonel of the Chinese troops to come to the Protector-
General's headquarters for the expedition. When Gan Yen-shou's
health improved and he learned of his subordinate's action, he was
aghast and declared that it must be stopped. But the really dangerous
act, the capital crime of forging an imperial order, had been done and
could not be undone. So, partly by threats and partly by arguments,
Ch'en T'ang persuaded his superior to accept the chance of deathless
glory. When a force of 40,ooo men had collected, Gan Yen-shou and
Ch'en T'ang sent eastward to the imperial court a document accusing
themselves of having forged an imperial edict and of collecting imperial
troops. On the same day, in the autumn of 36 B.c., they started westwards,
where no countermanding order could reach them.
Half the force was to go south of the Taklamakan Desert. The other
half, under Gan Yen-shou and Ch'en T'ang, skirted the north of that
desert, passed through Wu-sun territory to Lake Issik-k61, and then went
west. When they entered Sogdiana, Ch'en T'ang made a secret agreement
with some Sogdian nobles who hated Jzh-jzh, thus securing vital
information about Jzh-jzh's circumstances.
The account of the town's capture in the Chinese narrative is plainly in
the form of eight scenes. This account must have been taken from paintings
depicting the capture, with labels identifying persons and actions, as in
ancient Chinese pictures. Instead of translating the original passage, I here
give a summary of that account by the Chinese historian, Ban Gu.
The first scene was of the Chinese camp, with the Shan-yii's capital town at a distance of about a mile. On the wall of the latter are mounted coloured banners, with armed men shouting, 'Come and fight!' Outside the wall
horsemen gallop about, and more than a hundred foot-soldiers are lined up on
either side of a gate in a fish-scale formation.
In the second scene the Hun cavalry is galloping up to the Chinese camp,
where the Chinese await them with cocked and loaded crossbows, before
which the Hun cavalry retreat.
In the third scene the Chinese army, urged on by its battle drums, is
surrounding the city on all sides, sheltering behind its large shields, and
shooting at the cavalry and foot outside the city, who are retreating behind the city wall. Some are shooting at the defenders in the towers inside the town, and the defenders come down for shelter. But from a double wooden palisade outside the town the defenders shoot and kill many of the attackers, and so the Chinese set fire to this palisade.
In the fourth scene the Shan-yil has donned his armour, ascended a tower
with his consort and several tens of his ladies. All are shooting at the Chinese. But the attackers have hit the Shan-yu in the nose. Many of the women are killed. The Shan-yi is also shown having descended from the tower, mounted on a horse, and summoning those inside his palace to fight.
In scene five it is after midnight. The palisade has burned down and the
remaining defenders are fleeing into the city. Some have mounted the wall
and are shouting loudly. Outside the city and around the Chinese camp there
are large groups of Sogdian cavalry. Some are charging up to the Chinese and
being repulsed.
In the sixth scene it is dawn. On all sides of the camp fire is bursting forth. The Chinese officers and men are shouting wildly and the noise of their bells and drums is shaking the earth. The Sogdian cavalry, frightened, is fleeing.
In the seventh scene the Chinese and allied troops are advancing upon the
city under the cover of their large shields on all sides. Some have already
entered. The Shan-yii, with more than a hundred men and women, is flying
into his wooden palace.
In the eighth and final scene the Chinese have set fire to the palace and are
vying with one another in their efforts to enter it. Some have entered, and, in a hand-to-hand fight, have mortally stabbed the Shan-yii. His head is cut off by a Chinese captain.
We must now note carefully some of the details in this account. First
of all, there is the statement, in the first scene, that there were 'more than
a hundred foot-soldiers, lined up on either side of the gate in a fish-scale
formation'. This term, a 'fish-scale formation', yii-lin-jen, is unique in
all Chinese literature. A high degree of training and discipline would
have been required to achieve an array so well patterned that it would be
likened to fish-scales. Certainly no nomadic people, such as the Huns or
any uncivilized peoples, could have achieved it. Nomads and barbarians,
like the Gauls, rushed to battle in a confused mass. A wellpatterned
array can be achieved only by long-trained men, such as
professional soldiers.
Could these men have been Greeks? The Greeks had left Bactria
almost a century previously. The Macedonian phalanx, moreover, carried
small round shields, about a foot and a half in diameter. Men
bearing them could hardly have crowded closely enough together to
appear like fish-scales.
But at this time Roman legionaries were within walking distance.
They had made their living by fighting. They would have been attracted
to a famous warrior who promised to become a rival of the hated
Parthians. It was something like 400 to 500 miles from the Parthian
border on the Oxus to Jzh-jzh's capital on the River Talass, and eighteen
years from the date of Crassus' defeat to the time when the Chinese saw men lined up in front of Jzh-jzh's town in a typically Roman formation,
the
testudo, which was employed by no other troops. The tops of the
rectangular Romans cuta, which were rounded in front, when held up by
a row of soldiers side by side and portrayed from above in the typical
Chinese perspective, would indeed look like fish-scales to a person who
had never seen such a formation. There is no weapon except the Roman
scutum and no arrangement except the Roman testudo that would account
for the Chinese historian's description.
The presence of Romans at Jzh-jzh's town is confirmed by the double
wooden palisade which the Chinese found outside the city wall. The
Greeks used no palisades outside city walls, but the Romans regularly
used them to strengthen their ditches, especially before gates. Where
there was a bridge over water, there might be stockades built out from
either bank above or below the bridge. So Jzh-jzh evidently had Roman
engineering assistance in building his defences.
In their report to the emperor, Gan Yen-shou and Ch'en T'ang stated
that they had killed 1,500 persons, including Jzh-jzh's consort, his heir,
nobles, and others, had taken alive 145 captives, and had accepted the
surrender of more than a thousand others, who were divided up as slaves
among the fifteen states sending auxiliaries with the Chinese troops.
When we compare the number taken alive, 145 men, with the number
stated to have made a fish-scale formation outside Jzh-jzh's town, which
is 'more than a hundred', we can hardly make a mistake in equating
them. These 145 Roman legionaries had not surrendered but had merely
stopped fighting when their employer had been killed. They had probably
remained in formation, a formidable body of fighting men. They
may indeed have chosen freely to go with the Chinese. In China the
Romans were accordingly placed in a specially created frontier city, to
which the Chinese of course gave their name for Rome, which was Lijien.
This name among the list of Chinese counties, and the implication
from Wang Mang's naming that it was inhabited by men who had been
secured in storming a city and were raised up, are together quite enough
to demonstrate that Romans had indeed arrived in China.
Further evidence of Roman influence is to be found in the circumstance
that the report of this expedition to the imperial court included
pictures of the attack. In the account of this victory to be found in the
annalistic chapter of the Chinese History we read moreover, the following
statement: in February 35 B.c., 'because Shan-yii Jzh-jzh had been
executed, . . . a feast was held [by the emperor] and the charts and
documents concerning [Shan-yii Jzh-jzh] were shown [even] to the
honoured ladies in the [imperial] harem.
Now the statement that 'charts and documents' should have been
shown to the imperial ladies is quite unprecedented. What kind of
articles were they, that they should have been interesting to the ladies?
Maps, memorials to the throne, and similar documents were surely not
the kind of things that would be sought by the ladies of the imperial
harem! Few of these ladies could read; and documents of this sort were
then much too precious to be toyed with by women. There must have
been pictures of this victory-a conclusion made certain by Ban Gu's
account of the battle in the form of depicted scenes.
There is today ample evidence to show that in the Former Han period
China possessed a highly developed art of painting. It was the practice
of Chinese generals traversing previously little-known routes to have
maps made of their route. A map of the road to Sogdiana would have
required a long cloth roll (paper had not yet been invented), with pictures
of the scenery along the way. On it there would have been
abundant space for other pictures.
Chinese paintings of the Former Han period--we have descriptions
of many such-dealt only with famous people, moral tales, and legends.
Except for Ch'en T'ang's report we know of no representation of a contemporary
event. These pictures of the assault upon Jzh-jzh's town are
unprecedented in Chinese painting. They indicate a new influence in
Chinese art.
The use of pictures in a Roman triumph is, however, well known.
When Ch'en T'ang talked with the leader of the Roman troop, this man
would have described the Roman triumphal celebration. Some of these
Romans had probably participated in Pompey's triumph of 60 B.c.
Concerning the triumphs of Vespasian and Titus, Josephus says: 'The
war was shown by numerous representations, in separate sections,
affording a very vivid picture of its episodes." These descriptions of the
Roman practice agree well with the nature of the pictures Ch'en T'ang
placed on the map of his route. This account is, moreover, the only vivid
description of a battle to be found in all of Ban Gu's long history.
So, in 36 B.c., Ch'en T'ang met, in central Asia, a hundred and more
of Crassus' Roman legionaries and brought them back to China with
him. The Chinese account of that expedition describes their military
formation in a phrase found nowhere else in all Chinese literature, which
fits only the testudo, a formation used only by Roman troops. The Hun
town besieged by the Chinese was defended by a double palisade, a
feature not used by the Chinese or Greeks, but frequently employed by
the Romans. The practice of representing by paintings scenes in a military campaign, used by the Romans in their triumphs but unknown
in China, formed part of the report of that Chinese expedition. More
evidential than any other circumstance, between 79 B.C. and 5 A.D. there
was founded in China a city and county with the Chinese name for
Rome, Li-jien, which name indicates that it must have been populated
by people from the Roman Empire.
This Roman city in China existed until A.D. 746, when the Tibetans
overran that part of China. A century earlier, a great Chinese scholar
writinga t the Chinesec apitalC, h'ang-ani,n the west of China,s peaks
of the peculiarp ronunciationf or this place-nameu sed by people of that
city. He sayst hatt hesep eopler unt ogetherth e twow ordsi n its Chinese
name and pronounce it something like liakh-ghian. They probably
pronouncedt he x in 'Alexandria'w, hich is unpronounceablein Chinese.
So Rome, too, contributed to the mixed race inhabiting modern China.
Romans in Ancient China?
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