Julian Stockwin - THE SILK TREE

The first thing he wanted to equip himself with was all there was to be known about silk. The ancients would have what he sought!

He asked for a well-remembered tome of his youth – the Naturalis Historia of the elder Pliny, who had lost his life on the seashore of Pompeii as the volcano rained destruction.

Several volumes of the work arrived. Sections on geography, nature, more.

In a dissertation about silk at origin, Pliny’s view was that it was nothing more than an insect’s lidle weaving of a cocoon. A commentary below by another declared that it was in fact the hair of the sea-sheep.

Nicander asked for a further volume. It got worse: this one mentioned that in far Sinae gigantic spiders were held prisoner in cages and spun silk while being fed on condemned criminals. Yet another reference stated that silk was scraped from the underside of the common mulberry.

It was deeply unsettling. How could the ancient scholars disagree so?

He found his eyes focusing on the literary steward. Taking his courage in hand, he threaded his way between the rows of desks.

‘Learned gentleman, I have a question.’

The august figure frowned.

‘Sir, I’m engaged in the writing of a paean to beauty, in particular to that of man-wrought silk, and I rather thought it would lend a pleasing turn to the conceit if I were to make reference to its origin.’

The man’s face cleared, apparently satisfied that he was to be troubled for no less a reason than the sublimity of a poem’s creation. ‘Why, surely you’re aware it grows upon the silk tree?’ he replied in ponderous tones. ‘The authorities are clear on this.’

‘As I thought, sir. But Pliny and some others would have it otherwise.’

‘Your minor scribblers are never reliable. As to the good Pliny, there have been instances where regrettably he has been found to be in error and his observations in this case are not to be relied upon. The more substantive of the classical authors are the authorities you will wish to consult. The Virgil Georgics spring to mind – as does the Phaedra of Seneca the Younger.’

In a wash of relief Nicander found among the heavy-going homilies of Virgil that silk did indeed originate from trees, and in fact there was a mention of a fine-tooth comb of special design used by the Seres to harvest the precious substance from the leaves.

He then turned to the Phaedra , a gruesome play of taboo love, suicide and a cruel man’s relentless will, persevering until he came across a reference to silken garments won from the silk tree in far away Serica.

He could now move on to the next objective: where was Sinae and how to get there.

Accounts by travellers would no doubt reveal what he needed and he busied himself at the index. The first he decided to consult were the reports of the envoys of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to the mysterious Seres. They would be a logical beginning to his reading, even though they had been written a good three centuries earlier, in the period before the Roman Emperor Valens had been slain by the Persians and their entire access to the East cut off.

The assistant steward brought the work. While filled with exotic details of impossible beasts it was written neither by merchants with an eye to the practicalities nor a geographer, or even a military man concerned with where they were. And it was plain that this was not an official mission, only a half-hearted attempt to open communications, which was admitted to have failed.

Nicander pored over more accounts. The revered historian Ammianus Marcellinus was the most detailed. He had compiled a picture of Scythia – and Serica beyond – but it was a wild tale of Syziges and Chardes, Alitrophages and Annibes, in wearisome succession, together with dogmatic assertions on climate and terrain that made no sense. But Marcellinus did confirm the production of silk originated from a soft fine down spun into thread, gathered from the trees while the leaves were continuously moistened.

The rest just spoke of dragons and gryphons. Nothing on the location of the land of Serica.

Once again Nicander made his way up to the pulpit. This time he was awarded a look of benevolent indulgence.

‘Sir, you were entirely correct in the particulars concerning the source of silk. Yet my enquiring mind thirsts to know more – where in the world is this Sinae, that gifts man with such beauty?’

‘Quite so. It is to your credit, young man, that you so ardently seek after such knowledge in this crass commercial world. And in furtherance of a work of literary art I believe I will help you.’

He wrote something on a slate and handed it over. ‘Go to the Chamber of Apollo and present this.’

Nicander anxiously waited in the small room. Shortly the attendant returned with a single sheet.

It was a map by Pomponius Mela in the reign of Claudius Caesar, from a time of empire and conquest. Nicander examined it carefully; he knew maps of the mercantile kind which detailed market areas but this was different. It was of the entire known world, the oikoumene . The centre was dominated by the Mediterranean, with the continents radiating out from it, the whole surrounded by a boundless ocean.

He quickly found familiar territory: Africa to the right with his birth town of Leptis Magna in tiny script, Europa to the left, Constantinople among the densely packed legends in the middle. He eagerly scanned the map, searching for Serica. It was right at the top.

Nowhere on the map, however, was there a marking to show north or south, nor any indication of distance. At the edge of the land mass, there was on one side, the burning Ethiopian Sea, on the other the frigid Hyperborean regions. Hispania was at the bottom limit.

Having found Serica was as maddening as it was enticing, for the entire region existed without a single notation, neither town nor river. The only information he could draw from the map was that by comparing relative sizes, the distance to reach the Seres was nearly as far as the entire length of the Mediterranean!

The next item that was brought was a fat roll of vellum, a foot broad, twenty feet long, infinitely detailed. An itinerarium , used within the Roman world when travelling between one town and another along public roads, it listed distances and inn stops. This particular one claimed to record every road and town that existed.

There was no pretence at scale or topography; it was simply a lengthy skein of routes originating from Rome to the furthest reaches of Empire. At one end was the outermost extremity of the west, the now-lost province of Britannia, and at the other were the last outposts of civilisation to the east, tailing off with a tantalising reference to the legendary island of Taprobane and a bewildering confusion of barbaric names beyond Scythia that had no meaning to him.

Nicander rubbed his eyes, determined to persevere.

A third item arrived, a map of the world by the famed geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria, his Geographia .

Along the base of the map and its sides was a series of numbered lines. The accompanying gloss explained that these were real-world degrees of latitude derived from observations of the sun’s altitude, the longitude degrees arbitrarily assigned to make a regular square with the latitude. The entire land mass therefore was distributed under a grid of these lines which had been said to have been taken from actual measurement and should thus at last give a true picture of distances and directions.

Finally here was both a scientific and practical map! It looked much different to the others: Rome and indeed Italia seemed impossibly small against the vast expanses of Asia and Africa and Constantinople was almost lost over to the left.