Roman Scholar Describes Ancient China // 1st century AD // Pliny the Elder on the "Seres"

In recognition of the enthusiasm surrounding last week's video on China's perspective, here we have a video exploring the reverse.

There are however very few Roman accounts of China that have survived to us - and those that we do have are very limited. Here we have two short extracts from Pliny's magnum opus "Naturalis Historia", in which he describes what he knows of the people of Serica and its surroundings far to the east, and how they in turn affected the Rome he knew at the time. In the second extract he describes a mysterious people (who he again dubs "Seres") whom the people of "Taprobane" (modern day Sri Lanka) apparently crossed a mountain range to trade with.

As with our previous video on China, a lot of the locations (and indeed the peoples) mentioned are still debated by scholars. In the coming weeks we will further explore Ancient China's worldview, and descriptions they gave of other cultures that seemed wholly alien to them. Stay tuned for new videos, twice weekly.

How do we actually know about history? Voices of the Past is a channel dedicated to recreating the original accounts from the people who lived through events, or who lived far closer to them than we do today. We do this word for word, with an accompanying soundtrack of rousing music and images.

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