Seres

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Ptolemy's world map , from Ptolemy's Geographia (around 150 AD) shows “ Sina ” ( China ) on the far right, beyond the island of “Taprobane” ( Sri Lanka ) and the “Aurea Chersonesus” (Southeast Asian peninsula).

Seres (Greek Σῆρες, Latin also Serae ) was the ancient Greek name for the inhabitants of the " silk country " (China) and means silk people .

history

The word Seres is derived from the Chinese word for silk ( traditional symbol : 絲; short symbol : 丝; pinyin: sī). The Greek word for silk was serikon (σηρικόν), the Latin sericum . The Latin name for China was originally Serica and was used by ancient Roman writers such as Pliny and Ptolemy . Only later was the word Sina used in Latin , from which the word Sinology for Chinese studies is derived.

It is said that silk was first mentioned by Nearchus , who commissioned Alexander the Great in 326 BC. Explored the coast from the mouth of the Indus to the Persian Gulf . However, it can also only be an insert from Strabo . The first encounter of the Romans with silk is said to be in the battle of Carrhae in 53 BC. Have taken place. According to reports by the Roman historian Florus , the Parthians lured the Roman legions into the desert and pretended to be superior with spreading dazzling silk banners.

Maenad in silk dress, Naples National Museum .

For a long time, however, the Romans were in the dark about the origin of the silk fabric. Their geographical ideas on this were also imprecise; the ancient authors gave hardly any correct information about China, the actual area of ​​origin.

From the 1st century BC The trade with the Roman Empire ( India trade ) followed, reinforced by the high demand of the Romans for Chinese silk (by land and sea). The Romans knew nothing about the silkworm and thought the silk fiber was a vegetable product:

The Serer (Chinese) are famous for the wool-like substance they extract from their forests; After soaking in water, they scrape off the whites of the leaves […] So diverse is the applied work and so far away is the region of the world on which one relies to enable Roman girls to wear transparent clothing in public splurge.

The Roman Senate passed several edicts in vain to forbid the wearing of silk for economic and moral reasons: The import of Chinese silk caused a huge outflow of gold, and silk dresses were also viewed as decadent and immoral:

I can see silk clothes, provided that fabrics that hide neither body nor decency can even be called clothes. [...] Whole swarms of girls try to ensure that the adulteress is visible through her thin dress and that a husband has no more knowledge of his wife's body than any stranger.

It was only a hundred years later that Pausanias described silk as the product of an “ eight-legged caterpillar that was fed with green leaves. “But it was not until late antiquity , during the reign of Justinian I , that monks succeeded in smuggling silkworm eggs into East Stream, which made silk production possible there.

See also

Others

The Swedish sinologist Bernhard Karlgren called his writing on the Chinese characters with the Greek words Grammata serika (Latin Grammata serica ), which means nothing other than Chinese letters .

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Seres. In: Der Neue Pauly 11 (2001), Col. 452 f .; Seres. In: The Oxford Classical Dictionary . 4th edition. Oxford 2012, p. 1353.
  2. ↑ The Fragments of the Greek Historians No. 133, Fragment 19.
  3. ↑ See Seres. In: Der Neue Pauly 11 (2001), col. 452.
  4. ↑ Florus, Epitome 1.46.
  5. ↑ Seres. In: The Oxford Classical Dictionary. 4th edition. Oxford 2012, p. 1353.
  6. ↑ Pliny the Elder , Naturalis Historia VI 54.
  7. ↑ Seneca the Elder J., De beneficiis 7, 9
  8. ↑ Richard Hennig: The introduction of silkworm breeding into the Byzantine Empire. In: Byzantinische Zeitschrift 33, 1933, pp. 295-312.