This was a question on University Challenge last week, but the gong sounded before they gave the answer. I’ve googled it, but all I ever get are essay questions.
I seem to recall hearing of an outpost of the Roman empire found somewhere in Vietnam, though I may be misremembering. Anyone know?
The Roman’s certainly talked about a place they called Seres, which they knew of as the source of silk, and this is usually identified as China. But what information they had about this place was rather thin; amongst other misconceptions, they thought that silk just grew on trees there. Pliny the Elder mentions that “Rachias’ father” had been there, yet also reports that the people he’d met there were blue-eyed and golden-haired.
Ptolemy’s description of Asia in the Geography fades out beyond India, though it’s possible that some of the place names he mentions were actually Chinese.
You may have already found this, but here is alink to a set of maps showing a comparison between the Roman Empire and Han China. Looks like they were never very close.
Apparently, one of the emperors ordered a couple of legions to march east until they couldn’t go any further. They were never heard from again.
The last remnants of this force probably fought to the death on some nameless plain somewhere. Their eagles may have been kept as a trophy in some barbarian leader’s tent for a generation or two, but there have never been any historical traces found.
There was a pretty good novel about this a few years ago… I’ll have to look and see if I can find it again.
There are theories about a small number of Romans actually having founded settlements in China. See this link.
Whether or not this is true, there have almost certainly been encounters between individual Romans (e.g., travelling merchants - Rome did a lot of trade in Central Asia, although most of this indirectly via intermediaries) and individual Chinese.
bzzzt Toxteth O’Grady, USA.
I’m not an expert in this my any means (paging Tamerlane), but from what I’ve been able to tell from my web searches, the Han conquered a large swath of land in the west under the “martial emperor” Wu Ti, extending west to what’s now Kyrgyzstan. They held onto it at least until 220 AD, which was after the Roman Empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, stretching eastward to the western shores of the Caspian Sea in Armenia (now Azerbaijan).
So I think the answer is whatever the distance is between modern-day Azerbaijan and modern-day Kyrgyzstan, which (unless the online information I’ve found is wrong) is on the order of 2000 km.
Hopefully someone who knows more about this will be along to confirm or correct this shortly.