The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (31 page)

The Romans took an immediate interest in the Red Sea trade, and in 26
BCE
Aelius Gallus was appointed to lead an expedition of ten thousand soldiers to
Yemen. Having moved to
Arsinöe all the necessary supplies, from building material and weapons to food and water, the Romans built a fleet of 80 warships (
biremes, triremes, and lighter vessels) and 130 transports. Gallus lost a number of ships off the
Sinai Peninsula, “
on account of difficult sailing, but not on account of any enemy.” His expedition to Yemen ended in defeat, but having learned his lesson on returning from Yemen, Gallus had his men disembark at Myos Hormos to march overland to the Nile at
Coptos. The kingdoms of southern Arabia—Main, Sabae, Qataban, and
Hadramawt—remained independent until the advent of Islam in the seventh century, but Gallus’s expedition in no way inhibited the Roman appetite for
oriental luxuries. While land caravans played an important part in the carriage of goods from east to west, the geographer
Strabo recorded a dramatic expansion in Red Sea trade. Accompanying Aelius Gallus on a visit to Egypt, he “
learned that as many as one hundred twenty vessels were sailing from Myos Hormos to India, whereas formerly, under the Ptolemies, only a very few [not so many as twenty] ventured to undertake the voyage and to carry on traffic in Indian merchandise.” Myrrh and frankincense came from southern Arabia and
Somalia, many spices (above all
pepper) and precious stones were Indian, while some exotics—Chinese silks, for instance—reached the west by way of India. There was also a reciprocal slave trade. Eudoxus took “music girls … physicians and other artisans” with him to India, and Asian slaves were not uncommon in Rome, but for the time being this was a relatively low-volume trade in people with special talents.

The most exhaustive description of the Indian Ocean trade is the first-century
CE
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea,
written in a plain Greek by a native or resident of Egypt. Apart from this, we know nothing about the author—his (presumably) name, background, experience, or age, or what place he occupied in the hierarchy of the merchant community. Unlike the bookish Agatharchides, the anonymous author was not a compiler of other people’s information. His enumeration of which goods moved between which ports, his emphasis on certain Indian ports, his relative silence on the trade of the Persian Gulf, and the speculative nature of his descriptions of the
Bay of Bengal are indicative of firsthand experience trading between Egypt and India. While he refers to some aspects of shiphandling, he focuses on goods and the ports where they could be traded. The surviving text is short—about twenty printed pages—and traces two primary itineraries, one from the northern Red Sea down the coast of Africa as far as Rhapta (near Dar es-Salaam,
Tanzania), and another along the coast of Yemen and then across open water to Indian ports between Barbarikon, on the Indus River, and
Muziris (Cranganur) on the
Malabar Coast.

The author of the
Periplus
distinguishes five primary trading areas: the Red Sea, East Africa and southern Arabia in the west, and the Persian Gulf (which he all but ignores) and India in the east.
The goods can be grouped into nine categories: food and drink; textiles and clothing; household items; raw materials; precious stones; spices and aromatics; drugs and dyes; animals; and slaves. Egypt’s most important exports were utilitarian objects such as metals, tools, blankets, and clothing—goods not unlike those itemized in the description of Queen
Hatshepsut’s expedition to
Punt fifteen centuries earlier—and horses and mules. The most valuable imports were myrrh, frankincense, Indian pepper, and other luxuries such as tortoiseshell, ivory, rhinoceros horn, and nautilus shell from Africa and Arabia; turquoise, lapis lazuli, onyx, agate, pearls, diamonds, and sapphires from South Asia; and Chinese silks. The author refers to the Indian port of
Bharuch more than any other, but he enumerates seventeen ports between there and
Cape Comorin, the southern tip of India, which indicates the
Romans’ increasing familiarity with the Konkan and Malabar Coasts.

The
Periplus
mentions a number of foods that may have been intended for elite customers overseas—wine, for example—but which may have been carried simply to satisfy the wants of expatriate merchants, as would likely be the case for
olive oil and garum, the
Mediterranean fish sauce. Excavations at Berenike have revealed a similar impulse on the part of Indian merchants sailing to Egypt. The remains of
coconut, rice, amla, mung bean, and Job’s tears—all staples of Indian cuisine—have been found at the Red Sea port, although no ancient source mentions any of these as a commodity. Expatriate trading colonies would not have depended entirely on goods imported from home, but whether of Mediterranean or Indian Ocean origin, familiar foods would be a comfort to expatriate traders just as they are today. There is other scattered evidence of Indian Ocean travelers even in the Mediterranean, from an early-second-century
BCE
inscription at
Delos by someone from Hadramawt in southern Arabia; to a
statuette of
Manimekhala, heroine of the Tamil epic
Manimekhalai,
recovered from the ashes of
Pompeii; and notices of
Indian embassies to
Augustus and of one sent by the Sri Lankan king
Bhatikabhaya to the court of either Augustus or
Claudius, presumably in response to the needs of the merchant community.

The western port with the strongest ties to the Indian Ocean was Alexandria, whose primacy in the Mediterranean trade was assured by the empire’s need for Egyptian grain, but which was also celebrated for its contacts with trade zones beyond the Greco-Roman world. The first-century orator
Dio Chrysostom praised the Alexandrians’ preeminence in the commerce of the Red Sea and the
Indian Ocean and noted that “
the trade, not merely of islands,
ports, a few straits and isthmuses, but of practically the whole world is yours. For Alexandria is situated, as it were, at the crossroads of the whole world, of even the most remote nations.” It was, moreover, “a market which brings together into one place all manner of men, displaying them to one another and, as far as possible, making them a kindred people.”

That this was not just rhetorical gilding of Alexandria’s reputation is borne out by a singular document (in Greek) of the second century detailing the substance of a
loan arrangement between a
lender in
Muziris, India, and a borrower in need of funds to pay for a shipment to Alexandria. As was likely typical, the goods—in this case nard, ivory, and fabric—were pledged as security for the loan, which the borrower promised to repay to the lender or his agents at Alexandria. In the meantime, the shipper-borrower was responsible for all costs associated with getting the goods from Muziris to either Berenike or
Myos Hormos, from there overland to
Coptos, and then down the Nile to Alexandria, where all goods were subject to a 25 percent duty. The contract does not give the name or nationality of the borrower, lender, or agents, but the lender was probably a member of a “Roman” (but certainly Greek-speaking) expatriate community in Muziris, and his agents were probably colleagues from Egypt or elsewhere in the eastern
Mediterranean. This agreement, along with Dio’s description of Alexandria’s cosmopolitanism and what we know of Indian Ocean trade generally, indicates the likelihood of other arrangements involving lenders and borrowers from India and elsewhere. Just as trade was not limited to citizens of the Roman Empire, it was not the exclusive preserve of men, either. A second- or third-century inscription tells of “
Aelia Isidora and
Aelia Olympias, distinguished matrons,
naukleroi
[shipowners or charterers] and merchants of the Red Sea.” Unfortunately, we know nothing else of their business, except that they were rich enough to make a dedication in an Egyptian temple and that they employed a captain or business agent named Apollinarios, whose name appears after theirs.

From the start of Rome’s Indian Ocean trade, citizens of a certain stripe warned against the constant export of gold to pay for eastern goods.
Pliny the Elder complained that Romans squandered their wealth on
oriental luxuries, exporting
fifty million sesterces per year to Asia (half this amount to India alone) for the purchase of beryl, pearls, ivory, silks, and pepper.
^b
Pliny’s
sentiment was widespread, especially among conservatives who worried that Romans were becoming decadent.
Augustus’s successor,
Tiberius, sought to curb the extravagance of the wealthiest and most ostentatious senators, whom he criticized for their “
vast mansions … cosmopolitan hordes of slaves … ponderous gold and silver plate,” and above all, “the feminine specialty—the export of our currency to foreign or enemy countries for precious stones.” He considered imposing new
sumptuary laws but succumbed to political pressure and in the end did nothing.

The testimony of Mediterranean merchants, geographers, and politicians about Rome’s eastern trade is corroborated by the archaeological record and contemporary writings from southern India, some of which tell of people called
Yavanas. At the time of Alexander, this referred to
Ionian Greeks but Yavana eventually came to be used for westerners generally—Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Persians—who traded to and resided in southern India. Roman and imitation-Roman pottery has been found at sites on the Bay of Bengal, notably the
Chola town of
Arikamedu, near modern Puducherry (formerly Pondicherry), which was a center of local, regional, and international trade for a thousand years from about the third century
BCE
. These finds are too few and widespread to indicate the existence of a permanent foreign population; they may be the remains of amphorae that made their way via either a coastal route dominated by indigenous traders or by overland and riverine trade from west coast ports such as
Bharuch. In addition, archaeologists have recovered
hoards of silver
denarii
bearing the images of Augustus and Tiberius, and gold
aurii
of the first, second, and fifth centuries. These would have been valued as
bullion in the
Deccan, where copper and lead
coins circulated, and in southern India, where there was no local currency.

This was a period of formative change in southern India, the economy of which depended on agriculture, crafts, and the mining of iron and semiprecious stones. But the growth of the southern kingdoms was tied to their pepper crops and their location at the intersection of the sea-lanes between Africa and the Near East and Southeast Asia, and the coastal routes around
India and Sri Lanka. The Tamil-speaking Chola,
Pandya, and
Chera people coalesced into independent kingdoms in the early centuries of the common era. Frequently at war with each other and states to the north, they demonstrated their own expansionist tendencies by their forays into Sri Lanka. The Coromandel Coast of southeast India was the meeting ground of a far more varied mix of
ethnicities, religions, and languages than the somewhat homogeneous Mediterranean, or indeed anywhere else except Sri Lanka. The people and products of Southeast Asia, fifteen hundred miles across the Bay of Bengal, had little in common with those of the Ganga-Brahmaputra delta, about twelve hundred miles to the northeast, who differed in their turn from those of the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea, about two thousand miles northwest and twenty-five hundred miles west, respectively. Catering to these visitors involved a broad cross section of the community who supplied merchants with trade goods, food, gear for their vessels, and protection from theft. Tamil poets of the early first millennium revel in their bustling ports and the networks of trade that connected them to distant shores. Far from inhabiting a subcontinent backwater, they live in cities that do not sleep, whose people not only embrace but exalt the cosmopolitan opportunities of trade. What it lacks in the catalogues of goods and destinations found in contemporary
Latin, Greek, or Chinese sources,
Tamil literature more than makes up for in its shimmering descriptions of the vitality of sea trade and the wealth it brings, and by extension it helps to animate our impressions of other ports of the period.

Ilanko Atikal’s second-century
Cilappatikaram,
or
The Tale of an Anklet,
is a love story about
Kannaki and
Kovalan, both children of prosperous merchants from
Puhar (also called
Kaveripattinam), the seaport capital of the early
Chola kingdom on the Bay of Bengal. Kannaki is a “
Noble daughter of a prince among merchants”—a characterization reminiscent of
Isaiah’s description of the Tyrians, “whose merchants were princes.” Puhar is “
the city / that prospered from the wealth of the ocean,” where “lofty banners seemed to proclaim:  / ‘In this expanse of white sand is the wealth / Brought in ships by men who have voyaged / From their native lands to live here.’ ” Ilanko Atikal writes how at night the port glows with the lights of artisans, jewelers, fishmongers, peddlers from the interior, and “with the undying lamps of foreigners / Speaking strange tongues; and with the lamps / Of guards watching over piles of merchandise.” Along the shore of her sheltered coves, “with the beacons lit up to guide ships / …were row / Upon row of boats overburdened with a profusion / Of fresh produce from the hills and seas.”

Kaveripattinam and its merchants are equally celebrated in
Uruthirankannanar’s fourth-century
Pattinappalai,
which presents a livelier accounting of trade than is found in most other sources. In addition to the fish, grain, pepper, and precious stones of southern India, Uruthirankannanar writes of “
Swift, prancing steeds [brought] by sea in ships”—horses were a staple
export from Persia and Arabia for hundreds of years—gold and gems from the Himalayas, sandalwood, pearls, and red coral from Southeast Asia, manufactured goods from
Myanmar, and food from Sri Lanka. Uruthirankannanar is at pains to
stress the ethical conduct of Kaveripattinam’s seafarers and notes that “For others’ goods they have / The same regard as for their own / In trade. Nor do they try to get / Too much in selling their own goods, / Nor give too little when they buy. / They set a fair price on all things.” A passage in a sequel to the
Cilappatikaram
suggests that the people of Kaveripattinam were relative newcomers to fair dealing and that their initial prosperity may have grown from more rough-and-tumble pursuits. “
In the past, we have made feast, devouring the bodies of the survivors of the very many ships that have been wrecked in the sea not far from our shores. We have plundered all the goods they carried, their cargoes of precious aloes and sweet-scented sandalwood, their bales of cloth, their precious objects—gold, diamonds, and rubies—and other booty of shipwreck.” The metamorphosis from plunder to productive trade seems to have been made within living memory, but it recalls a comparable transformation in attitudes toward piracy noted by Thucydides in the ancient Mediterranean and notable elsewhere throughout history. The existence of piracy presumes the presence of a lucrative trade, but it only flourishes in the absence of legitimate state power with the means to contain it and redirect pirates’ entrepreneurship. The eradication of piracy therefore depends on the ability of states not just to overpower pirates, but to create lawful alternatives for gain. By this time, trade in southern
India had passed a critical threshold that facilitated the growth of maritime commerce to the benefit of merchants and kings.