THE PARTHIANS
The Parthians did not fight like any other enemy the Roman legions had faced. Like their Persian forebears, the Parthian army was made up largely of cavalry forces, both heavily armored cavalrymen who wore the ancestors of the medieval suit of armor and, more important, light horse archers. The light horse archers were famed for a hit-and-run tactic that became known as the “Parthian shot”: they would ride swiftly at the enemy, shoot their arrows, and then wheel around and retreat.
A brick from a tomb structure with a design of a warrior executing a Parthian shot
Parthian shot depicted in advertisement trade card.
In actuality there was never a single Silk Road between China and its Near East and Western trading partners. Multiple routes took traders across the small kingdoms of Central Asia. From the oases of Central Asia, one route led through Afghanistan to Kashmir and northern India. Other routes traveled across the Caucasus Mountains to the Eurasian steppes, over the Iranian plateau or through the Syrian Desert to the Mediterranean. Darius’s Royal Road from Susa to Sardis became the main trade route across Anatolia to the wealthy cities of Mesopotamia.
The Parthians, and their successors, the Sassanians and the Islamic kingdoms of Central Asia, effectually blocked direct trade between China and the West. Both the Chinese and the Romans would complain that the Parthians did not allow merchants from other kingdoms to travel the sections of the routes that were under their control.
In 53 BCE, Marcus Crassus, consul-triumvir of Rome and governor of the new province of Syria, led seven legions of Roman soldiers across the Euphrates River toward the Parthian Empire, hoping to match the military accomplishments of his fellow triumvirs, Pompey and Julius Caesar. The Parthian army attacked them outside of Carrhae. Then the Parthians unfurled their embroidered banners, described by Plutarch as “shining with gold and silk.” The Romans fled in confusion by their first glimpse of silk.
Whether the Romans discovered silk at Carrhae or through the normal trade channels of the Near East, silk was an immediate hit. Within fifty years of the defeat at Carrhae, the Roman Senate passed sumptuary laws forbidding men to wear silk. The laws were ignored. The demand for silk grew.
Romans paid one pound of gold for one pound of unwoven silk thread, but the trade between the Romans and Chinese was not completely one-sided. The Romans imported silk, cinnamon, and lacquer ware from the Chinese; caravans returning east carried woolen and cotton textiles, coral, pearls, amber, and colored glass back to China.
Roman critics grumbled about the effects of silk both on Rome’s morals and on its trade balance. Naturalist and philosopher Pliny the Elder estimated that Rome lost forty-five million sesterces (roughly $255 billion) to the silk trade each year.
According to Chinese legend, silk was first discovered by Xi Ling-Shi, the wife of Huangdi, a semimythical Chinese emperor who ruled China in the third millennium BCE. One day, while the empress was strolling in the palace garden, she plucked a white cocoon from the leaf of a mulberry tree. Later, as she drank her tea, she accidentally dropped the cocoon in the steaming hot liquid. When she fished it out, it unraveled into a long, white thread. It’s not a bad description of how silk is made.
The Empire was linked together by more than fifty thousand miles of hard-surfaced roads—one of Rome’s most impressive and longest-lasting achievements.
The silkworm is the caterpillar of the world’s only domesticated moth, Bombyx mori. Its preferred food is the broad leaf of the white mulberry tree. Timing is crucial in silk production. Caterpillar eggs are kept in cold storage for six to ten months until the first leaf buds appear on the mulberry trees. The newly hatched silkworms are fed finely chopped mulberry leaves for roughly thirty-five days, during which time they eat twenty times their weight per day and shed their skins four times. At the end of the process, the worms weigh ten thousand times more than they did when they were hatched.
The mature silkworms are put on a bamboo rack, where they spin their cocoons. A few moths are allowed to mature in order to produce another batch of silkworm eggs. Most of the cocoons are steamed or plunged into boiling water to kill the pupae and loosen the sticky secretions that hold the cocoon together. Once softened, the long continuous inner threads of the cocoon are unwound.
Wild silk, spun from the short broken fibers found in the cocoons of already-emerged silk moths, was produced throughout Asia. Only the Chinese knew how to domesticate the silk moth, Bombyx mori, and turn its long fibers into thread. They kept close control over the secrets of how to raise the domestic silkworm and create silk from the long fibers in its cocoon. Exporting silkworms, silkworm eggs, or mulberry seeds was punishable by death. It was more profitable to export the finished product than the means of production.
HOW MANY SILKWORMS DOES
IT TAKE?
A single silkworm cocoon can produce almost a mile of continuous silk filament.
It takes nine silk filaments to make a 14-denier silk thread, which weighs one-half ounce per 30,000 feet.
It takes sixty mulberry trees and 2,000 to 3,000 silkworms to produce a pound of silk.
Silk may be soft and, well, silky, but it’s also strong. A single silk fiber has the same tensile strength as a steel wire of the same diameter. A silk thread has greater tensile strength than steel. If stored carefully, the woven fabric lasts almost as long as metal.
THE CENTURIES IMMEDIATELY surrounding the life of Jesus Christ were a time when political empires flourished. Men seized power using unprecedented military might, new technologies, and robust trade between nation-states of the East and West. With these assets in a leader’s hands, ultimate power was his for the taking.
By the time Western civilization comprehended the significance of the trial and death of Jesus Christ, the two mighty empires that had dominated during his lifetime would be in tatters. Much later, mankind would come to see that the power of a fervently held religious faith could rival that of any secular king. But none of this was clear when the actual events in the life of Jesus of Nazareth took place.
The Christian gospels that are our best source for the historical life of Jesus Christ place him in Judea during the reign of Herod the Great, who had eliminated the last of the Maccabean kings of Judea and assumed the throne in 37 BCE as a client of Rome. Rome is an active force in the story of Jesus, from Caesar Augustus’s call for all citizens of the Roman Empire to be taxed, to Jesus’s death by crucifixion, a Roman form of execution reserved for criminals, political agitators, and slaves.
What do official Roman records of the time tell us about the life of the man who transformed first the Empire and then the world in the centuries after his death? Absolutely nothing, though the historians Suetonius and Tacitus, writing some years later, mentioned that a man they referred to as Chrestus was responsible for disturbances among the Jewish community.
The biblical account of Jesus Christ’s arrest, trial, suffering, and execution by crucifixion is called the “Passion,” from the Latin word for “suffering.” The story is told in the world’s Christian churches on Good Friday of Easter week, in Passion plays and oratorios. The fourteen Stations of the Cross are numbered events that take place during the Passion, beginning with the crowd’s taunts of “Crucify him!” as Jesus is tried as a traitor. The Passion also reenacts Roman governor Pontius Pilate’s pronouncement of Jesus’s guilt, and the moment he is condemned to die on the cross. It goes on to depict the placement of a crown of thorns on Jesus’s head and the wounded Jesus being forced to carry the cross on which he will die through the streets of Jerusalem, where he sees his mother, Mary, and falls to the ground.
One person mentioned in the Bible as standing in the crush, watching the fallen Jesus struggle to get back on his feet, is a young Jewish man, Simon of Cyrene.
Simon sees two women he presumes are Jesus’s followers kneel down to wipe Jesus’s dirt-covered and bloodied face with a cloth. Just ahead, Jesus’s Roman escorts shout at the women to back away, tellin
g Jesus he must get up and keep moving. Seeing that Jesus is too weak to get up on his own, the soldiers pull a stunned Simon from the crowd, instructing him to carry the cross. Simon is fearful but does what they say, first reaching down to pull Jesus to his feet, then using every ounce of strength to bear up under the weight of the immense wooden cross.
Slowly walking forward with Jesus at his side, Simon takes in the sharp contrast between the scorn of those mocking Jesus, and the love and anguish on the faces of those who believe this man to be their Messiah, God himself returned to Earth to help the chosen people out of their oppression.
Farther along, Jesus falls once more, and once again Simon must pull him back to his feet to continue their march up Mount Calvary. Once they reach Golgotha, Simon is pushed to the side to witness Jesus’s further humiliation and suffering. First Jesus is stripped and then nailed to the same cross they’d just carried on their backs. Then, in the last moments before Jesus’s cross is raised to stand next to two other crosses, bearing common criminals, the soldiers place a sign above Jesus’s head reading, “King of the Jews.”
SACRED LANDS,
HOLY WARS
The growth of Christianity from the time of Jesus’s death through four more centuries of Roman rule over the “Holy Lands” set in motion thousands of years of conflict between Christians and believers of the two other great religions of Abraham: Judaism and Islam. As of the early twenty-first century, 54 percent of the world’s population, or 3.8 billion, people considered themselves adherents of the Abrahamic religions. All are monotheistic and conceive of God as a transcendent Creator-figure and the source of moral law. Their sacred narratives also share many of the same historical figures and events—although often given different meanings. Human history over the two millennia following Jesus’s death has shown that our common need to irrevocably attach our religious beliefs to the place where they were birthed has been the source of many of these enduring conflicts—along with manipulations of these beliefs by political leaders who use the religious faith of their citizens as a lever of power.
After most of the spectators, except the women, have left, Simon remains, watching the Roman soldiers go to the cross to see if Jesus is dead yet. They stab him in the side to be sure and then instruct others to take the body down for burial.
Shaken and sad, Simon of Cyrene retraces the steps he took with Jesus and makes his way back down Mount Calvary.
FOR THE MODERN WORLD’S 2.1 billion Christians this scene reflects a core belief that Christ’s suffering at the hands of his Roman and Judean prosecutors redeems humanity from sin, now, two thousand years later, just as it did at the moment of Jesus’s death. From the perspectives of first-century Jewish leaders and their Roman provincial rulers who ordered his death, Jesus’s teachings and rising popularity posed a threat to the stability of Judea.
At first, Christianity seemed to be just another Jewish sect at a time when Judaism was an evangelizing faith. The new sect spread first through the Jewish communities of the Middle East and the Mediterranean. In 60 CE, the apostle Paul moved away from Christianity’s Jewish roots and began to found new churches in the Greek cities of the Roman Empire, traveling between them on the network of Roman roads and using the imperial postal system to maintain contact with the churches he left behind. We have little information about how Christianity spread, but it is clear that it moved quickly from one enthusiastic convert to another.
By the middle of the first century, there was a growing Christian community in Rome itself. At first Christianity appealed primarily to those with little power: women, slaves, and the urban poor. By 200 CE, the new faith was beginning to attract a few wealthy adherents, and increasing amounts of unwanted official attention.
The Romans were a multiethnic people who recognized many gods and many religions. A Roman citizen, or a citizen of one of Rome’s allied states, could worship any god he pleased as long as he participated in the state cult that venerated the emperors as gods. The Christians condemned the state cult as idolatry and refused to worship the emperor, a position that was seen as treason. Refusal led to their persecution as enemies of the State. Christians brought before Roman judges were given the option of lighting incense before the statue of the emperor. Those who did were set free. Those who did not were often tortured and executed.
The first official attacks against Christians occurred after the fire of 64 CE, when Nero tried to blame the unpopular minority for the destruction in Rome. Thereafter, wild rumors about Christian practices spread through the empire: they sacrificed infants, they ate human flesh at their rites, and they had incestuous group orgies. (Ironically, Christians would later spread some of these same rumors about Jews and women rumored to be witches.) Official persecution occurred in waves, reaching its height during the last years of Diocletian’s rule.
IN 203 CE, CARTHAGE WAS A thriving city (located in modern-day Tunisia) under Roman rule. Romans there and throughout the Empire worshipped multiple gods and goddesses, with cults for Jupiter and Diana among the most favored. Believers in the teaching of Jesus Christ who lived in Carthage had to keep their beliefs and the rituals of their Christian worship secret lest they be arrested and face torture and death.
Triumph of Faith - Christian Martyrs in the Time of Nero, 65 AD by Eugene Romain Thirion (1839-1910)
Among them was a married woman named Vibia Perpetua, who is described in historical accounts, including her own diary, as a “respectably born, liberally educated citizen, having a father and mother and two brothers, one of whom, like herself, was a catechumen (one receiving instruction from a catechist in the principles of the Christian religion with a view to baptism) and a son an infant at her breast.”
PERPETUA AND FELICITY
IN THE AGONIZING DAYS AWAITING HER FATE, Perpetua, in the company of her slave Felicity, struggles to make sense of what is happening to her and why. In her diary she offers this account of a vision of ascending on a ladder up into heaven. Ahead of her on the ladder is her brother Saturus (who is executed before her). Upon reaching Heaven, Perpetua is greeted by a white robbed man who welcomes and feeds her. She describes the sweetness of the cake she eats as a lasting symbol of the passion of her Christian beliefs.
And he raised his head, and looked upon me, and said to me, “Thou are welcome, daughter.” And he called me, and from the cheese as he was milking he gave me as it were a little cake, and I received it with folded hands; and I ate it, and all who stood around said Amen. And at the sound of their voices I was awakened, still tasting a sweetness which I cannot describe. And I immediately related this to my brother, and we understood that it was to be a passion, and we ceased henceforth to have any hope in this world.
After the vision, Perpetua continues to deny her family’s pleas to renounce her faith. Perpetua learns she will face a trial when she will be given the opportunity to renounce her faith and receive her freedom. During this time her family visits her and tries to convince her to renounce her faith in order to avoid execution. Perpetua refuses, saying “No. Neither can I call myself anything else than what I am, a Christian.” Several days later, Perpetua and Felicity are thrown to a wild bull, trampled, and gored to death.
Perpetua had a slave, Felicity, and her newborn baby with her when she was apprehended by soldiers while praying in a clandestine house of worship in Carthage. In her diary, Perpetua described her terror after being taken to a dungeon. She feared especially for her baby in the hot and crowded conditions of their confinement.
THE ULTIMATE FATE OF CHRISTIANS in the Roman Empire was tied to a Roman political power struggle. In 312 CE, already master of Britain, Gaul, and Spain, the future Roman emperor Constantine led his army south to battle with Maxentius for control of Italy and Africa. According to Christian legend, at some point in the journey, Constantine saw the image of the cross and the words In hoc imago vince (“conquer in this sign”) superimposed on the sun. Advancing toward Rome and battle, he ordered his troops to mark their shields with
the sign of the cross.
Constantine won his final battle with Maxentius at Milvian Bridge, just outside of Rome, although his troops were outnumbered by at least two to one. He attributed the victory to the power of the cross.
A few months later, Constantine and his coemperor in the east, Licinius, issued the Edict of Milan, which guaranteed Christians the right to practice their religion without persecution.
Constantine did not formally convert to Christianity until he was on his deathbed, in 337. He did not make Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. (Often mistakenly attributed to Constantine, that step was taken by Theodosius I in 380.) He did appoint himself the public and openhanded patron of the religion that only a few years before had been literally forced underground by official persecution. During Constantine’s reign, the enormous Old Saint Peter’s Basilica was built in Rome. The bishopric of Rome took its first step toward the modern papacy, receiving extensive land endowments and one of the imperial palaces for use as the bishop’s residence. The new capital of Constantinople was built as an explicitly Christian city. Constantine even sent his mother, Helena, to Jerusalem to restore the city to its former glory. Helena knocked down Hadrian’s temple which the emperor Hadrian had built on top of the site of Solomon’s temple. She also constructed shrines and churches that honored the sites of Jesus’s life, creating Jerusalem as a site of Christian pilgrimage.
THE PAX ROMANA DIDN’T LAST. In the middle of the third century CE, the Roman Empire began to crumble from the top down. Between 235 and 284 CE, twenty-six more or less legitimate rulers and forty usurpers were crowned emperor of Rome. Most of them were incompetent. All but two died violent deaths. The shortest reign lasted less than three months. Often, competing emperors ruled at the same time. The only stable power remaining was the Roman army, which made and unmade emperors at the command of their generals.
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