Chinese accounts of antiquity from The Book of the Later Han record the first contact between the Chinese and Roman empires as taking place in AD 166 (an event corroborated by the Roman historian Publius Annius Florus). This initial diplomatic contact of the two empires resulted from a visit of a Roman emissary—authorised by Emperor Marcus Aurelius—to Emperor Huang and the Chinese Western Han Dynasty court. Trade links were subsequently established, Chinese silk for upper class Romans and Roman glassware and high-quality cloth for the Chinese.

Communications blocked by Parthian rivalry: This initial encounter was an initiative on the part of the Romans but earlier than this the Han Chinese had tried, unsuccessfully, to make direct contact with Rome. In AD 97 the Han Chinese general, Ban Chao, despatched ambassador Kan (or Gan) Ying on a journey to Rome(α)…upon reaching Mesopotamia from where he intended to travel by sea to his ultimate destination, Kan Ying was dissuaded from continuing by the Parthians’ exaggerated advice that the sea voyage could take up to two years to complete. Parthia had a vested interest in thwarting the forging of a Sino-Roman mutually-beneficial nexus which might negatively impact Parthian profitability from the lucrative Silk Road [‘The First Contact Between Rome and China, www.silkroad.com].

The Silk Road: The natural route for expansion, Rome eastward and China westward, was along the Silk Road…with Roman eyes obsessively coveting Chinese silk, the premier fabric of the ancient world, and China Han rulers also keen to exchange for Roman goods, the incentives were present, but direct contact between the two great ancient empires did not eventuate(Ⴆ). Standing in the way were a host of obstacles – the distance between them was vast and over inhospitable terrain; another hostile, competing empire, Parthia, occupied the middle space on the Silk Road. Roman-Chinese trade depended therefore on intermediaries, “the people of Central Asia—most notably the Sogdians, as well as the Parthians, and merchants from the Roman client states of Palmyra and Petra—act(ing) as the middlemen” [‘Ancient Rome and Ancient China: Did They Ignore Each Other?’, Vedran Bileta, The Collector, 08-Nov-2022, www.thecollector.com].

Romani indu Sinae? In the 1940s and 50s there emerged one dissenting voice to the scholarly consensus that Romans never made it to ancient China. An American Sinologist Homer H Dubs, lecturing in Chinese at Oxford University, wrote a series of articles on the subject of Roman and Chinese contacts in the Han period, culminating in his controversial 1957 book, A Roman City in Ancient China, which made the startling claim that legionnaires not only reached China but established a Roman settlement on the western fringes of the Han empire.

Dubs’ “lost Roman legion”:hypothesis: In 53 BC a Roman army under the powerful Marcus Licinius Crassus was on the receiving end of a crushing defeat in the Battle of Carrhae at the hands of Parthian heavy cavalry and archers led by Spahbed (commander) Surena in southern Turkey. The Roman legions lost massive numbers of men, either killed (including its leader Crassus) or captured, in one of the Roman Empire’s worst-ever military disasters. The Roman prisoners-of-war, numbering, according to Plutarch, 10,000, were apparently carted off to Central Asia where reportedly they were married off to local women(ƈ).

This is where Dubs and his outlier theory comes in…the Oxford professor proposed that 100–145 of the Romans ended up fighting for the Xiongnu(ԃ) against a Chinese Han army in another battle some 17 years later. The Battle of Zhizhi (36 BC), in modern-day Kazakhstan, resulted a victory for the Han Chinese, with the Xiongnu chieftain Zhizhi Chanyu among the dead. Dubs contended that these 100-odd Roman legionnaires fought in the battle, his evidence of this was a Chinese source for the battle, Ban Gu, who referred to 100 or so foot-soldiers of the enemy who employed a strange, fish-scale formation in fighting, interpreted by Dubs as a reference to the Romans’ famous phalanx defence, the testudo (tortoise) formation of interlocking shields. Dubs speculated that the captured Roman soldiers found themselves POWs once again, this time of the Chinese who transported the 100 Roman captives back to the Chinese Empire where they were resettled in Li-jien(ҽ) (later called “Liqian”), located on the edge of the Gobi Desert in modern-day Gansu Province.

Descendants of Roman legionnaires in a Gansu village? Gene testing: Professor Dubs’ controversial theory has drawn the attention of historians, researchers, archeologists, anthropologists and even geneticists over the years, but not widespread support. Detractors have generally debunked the theory, stressing the lack of tangible archeological or historical evidence for a Roman settlement in Liqian, no findings of habitation found, eg, no Roman coins or weapons.

Some residents of contemporary Liqian village (Yongchang), noted for their green or blue eyes, fair-coloured hair and non-Chinese facial features, underwent genetic testing in 2005 which gave some credence to the Roman link theory…a DNA finding of 56% Caucasian. Further DNA testing in 2007 deflated those hopes however, showing that 77% of the villagers’ ‘Y’ chromosomes were limited to east Asia. Researchers from nearby Lanzhou University have pointed out that it was standard practice for the Roman military to employ foreign mercenaries (Europeans and Africans) for their campaigns Moreover, the demonstration that a significant block of the Liqian respondents have foreign origins doesn’t prove that they were necessarily Roman. Professor Yang Dongle (Beijing Normal University) concurred with this view, noting that inter-racial marriage along the Silk Road was far from uncommon. Yang added that research has confirmed that Liqian County was settled a good seventy years earlier than the Roman POWs are supposed to have got there [Matthew Bossons, ‘The Vanished Roman Legion of Ancient China’, That’s, (Nov. 2018), www.thatsmag.com; ‘Finding the lost Roman legion in NW China’, New China TV (video), 2015].

Endnote: Constructing a “Roman world” to exploit the rural legend The dubiousness of the connexion aside, the media attention generated by the DNA tests and the distinctive look of the Liqian Rong has prompted proactive locals to exploit the tourist angle for what it’s worth. There’s been a concerted effort to try to capitalise on the alleged Roman ancestry in Yongchang County – in a kind of “Disneyfication” elements of neoclassical architecture have popped up in the village, a Romanesque pavilion with Doric-style columns, public statues of ancient Romans, etc. Zhelaizhai (or Lou Zhuangzi) village, as Liqian was renamed, is now marketed by Chinese tourist operators as “Liqian Ancient City”.

(α) or as the Chinese called Roman Empire, Da Chi’en, also rendered as Daqin (“Great Qin”)

(Ⴆ) ancient Latin writers regularly referred to Roman travellers journeying east to a country they called Serica (ser = silk)…its thought that by this that they meant the Central Asian lands, possibly including northwestern China. The name Serica, to some Romans may alternately have been a collective description for a bunch of south and east Asian countries including China and even India

(ƈ ) though, according to Pliny the Elder, the legionnaires were stationed at Margiana on the Silk Road to guard Parthia’s eastern frontier

(ԃ) a nomadic tribal confederation of Hunnic peoples

(ҽ) Dubs postulates that this was the most ancient Chinese name for Rome [H.H.Dubs, ‘A Roman City in Ancient China’, Greece and Rome, Vol. 4, Issue 2, Oct. 1957, pp.139-148]