The Middlemen of the Silk Road
Persia: Empire and AfterwardsSitting in the Right Place
Parthia grew rich without producing the goods that made it rich. Silk came from China. Spices and gems came from India. Glass, wine and metalwork came from the Mediterranean. Everything moving between them had to cross the Iranian plateau, and Parthia charged for the crossing.
Nobody Walked the Whole Road
The Silk Road was never one road and no merchant travelled its length. Goods moved in relays, changing hands many times, each trader taking a margin. Silk that left China at a modest price arrived in Rome ruinously expensive, and most of that increase was accumulated distance and middlemen rather than any single profiteer.
The Rumour of the Worms
For centuries Rome had no idea how silk was made. Pliny the Elder recorded that it was combed from the leaves of trees. Nobody in the west knew about the moth, the mulberry or the cocoon — and the states along the route had every reason not to explain it. The secret eventually reached Byzantium in the sixth century, by which point Persia had profited from the ignorance for five hundred years.
Not Only Goods
The same relays carried everything else. Buddhism travelled west into Central Asia along them; Manichaeism, born in third-century Mesopotamia, travelled in both directions; paper eventually came the other way. Persian became the working language of long-distance trade across much of Asia, and stayed so long after Persian armies had stopped mattering there.
Why Rome Kept Trying
Roman writers complained bitterly about the drain of gold eastward for luxuries. That, as much as glory, is why Rome kept pushing at Mesopotamia for centuries — the wish to reach the source and cut out the intermediary. It never managed it, and the intermediary is the reason why.
Key Dates to Remember
- 247 BC — The Parthian state emerges
- 2nd c. BC — Regular long-distance routes open
- 1st c. AD — Pliny records that silk grows on leaves
- 6th c. AD — Silk-making reaches Byzantium