The Silk Road, CENTRAL ASIA: ca. 25 BC – AD 100
500 AD
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500 BC
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SPECIAL
n the east was China, in the west was Rome, and occasionally the two did meet. In what is now Uzbekistan or Afghanistan, travellers returning to Mesopotamia to sell their produce to the Romans met travellers returning to the east to sell their produce to the Chinese. One of the travellers on the Silk Road was Maes Titianus, mentioned by the Graeco-Roman geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria.
Ptolemy quotes an earlier author: Marinus of Tyre, who had published a geographical study, perhaps in AD 114. In this book, which is lost, he mentioned Maes’ expedition to the Silk People in the Far East. Ptolemy identifies Maes as “the son of a merchant and a merchant himself”, and he adds that Maes was a Macedonian, probably meaning that he held Macedonian citizenship from one of the many cities founded by a Hellenistic ruler.
We can only guess when Maes made his journey. We only
