The Eastern Iron Trade of the Roman Empire

Abstract

In that encyclopedia of the Roman Elipire compiled by the elder Pliny under the title of Historia Naturalis, there is a passage about iron in the 39th book which deals with metals and metallurgy, paragraph 15, as follows: Of all the kinds the palm is to the Seric iron. The Seres send this with their textile fabrics and skins. The second place is to the Parthian, and there are no other kinds of iron which are tempered into the true steel for they are mixed with other elements.1 Although in Pliny's Natural History there are several references to the Seres and a very full account of the mining and smelting of iron in all parts of the world that were in communication with Rome, there is no other passage in that work in which the Seres and iron are brought together. nor is there in any other work that survives to us from the Roman and Greek period anything to connect the people known as the Seres with the production of or trade in iron. Yet upon this slender authority rests the assumption that steel was brought overland to imperial Rome from far-away China. It may be worth while to consider this question in some detail, and in so doing it seems clear that we shall be forced to conclude that the exportation of iron and steel by the central Asian caravan routes from China to Rome was most improbable, and that this chance reference in Pli-nyjs text to the Seres involves a double confusion, and refers neither to the silk traders of Chinese Turkestan, nor to the silk trade itself. The subject is of some present interest because by no less