Roman Silk Road and the Cinnamon Land

The Silk Road was not a paved road like the other Roman roads, but a series of caravans that traveled through deserts and over mountains to the end of the road-the international marketplace in the capital city of Chang’an in northeastern China where traders of all races from many countries came to buy and sell. What the Romans wanted most, in addition to spices like ginger, turmeric, and galangal, was silk. They prized it and liked to wear it to banquets, where they protected it with large aprons. However, the Romans could only buy silk, not produce it, because silk production was a Chinese monopoly and a closely guarded state secret. Silk was literally worth its weight in gold. By sea from India and Africa to warehouses in the Spice Quarter in Rome came spices for cooking, for perfume and incense, and for medicine. Cinnamon was the most valuable. It was one of several spices, including white pepper, ginger, and cardamom, that were extremely expensive not only because of the shipping costs, but because a twenty-five percent tariff-an import tax-was added. The nobles, frequent targets of poisoning, often by their relatives, believed that if you combined almost every spice known to mankind, it would make an antidote that could counteract even the most powerful poison. Cinnamon was also used to mask the “smell of burning flesh at special cremation ceremonies.”

Black pepper was not on the list of luxury spices because the Romans considered it a necessity. Other luxury items subject to the tariff were silk, wool, and cotton; purple cloth (reserved for the upper class); lions, lionesses, leopards, panthers; and jewels-diamonds, emeralds, pearls, turquoise. In 301, the emperor Diocletian set maximum prices for many of these goods to try to stop the runaway inflation that was making them cost increasingly more while Roman money became increasingly worth less.

Arab traders had a monopoly on cinnamon and told the Romans fantastic stories to keep their sources secret. They claimed it grew in remote swamps, high up in trees, where killer bats swarmed. We know now that the Arabs got it from Indonesia, sailed to Madagascar and then to Somalia on the east coast of Africa, which was called Cinnamon Land. From there it went up the Red Sea, overland to the Nile, and across the Mediterranean.

The culture of Rome-its food, laws, customs, and language-spread on the roads with the governor, the army, and the merchants, and displaced existing cultures and foods. Rome dominated trade so completely that some countries, like the Kush area of northern India in what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan, were forced to develop metal money in order to do business with Rome. In the provinces, Romans replaced local kinds of apple trees with ones they preferred. As early as 200 B.C., the Romans planted apple orchards in Britannia. Roman knowledge of gardening, grafting, and pruning spread, too. Italian wines reached into the provinces and replaced Greek wines, not just because the taste of Italian wines like Opimian and Falernian was preferred, but also because at 1,600 gallons per acre, Italian vineyards produced a volume that Greeks couldn’t match. To glorify Rome, the emperors embarked on a massive campaign of public building based on the discovery of a new kind of sand-concrete-that made it possible to create stronger buildings using arches to distribute the weight.

It was during this time that many of the greatest buildings of ancient Rome were built: the Forum; the Colosseum, which opened in A.D. 80; the Pantheon, temple of all the Roman gods; and the aqueducts that brought water into Rome. The Forum, four levels high, was the business, political, religious, and market center of Rome, like a giant mall. If all roads led to Rome, all roads in Rome led to the Forum. Spacious, open plazas were surrounded by multi-colored marble columns, and luxurious public baths and public toilets also made of marble. It contained markets for local and imported produce, restaurants that sold fast food, and small boutique-type stores that sold expensive imported spices and other luxury goods under armed guard. It was the location of religious festivals, sacrifices, and offerings of rare, scented oils and incense to the warrior god, Mars; and behind the temples, of dirty deals and prostitution. Government administrators and bureaucrats, the equivalent of the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security, also worked at the Forum.