Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c11.2.1

c11.2.1

IN the first centuries before and after Christ, when the Kushāns were establishing themselves among the ruins of the Baktrian and other semi-Greek principalities of North-Western India, great changes were taking place in the West. Rome was absorbing the remnants of the Empire of Alexander. Syria had already fallen: Egypt became a Roman province in 30 B.C. The dissensions of the civil war ended at Actium, after which Augustus settled down to organize and regulate his vast possessions. The effect of the *Pax Romana* upon trade was, of course, very marked. Piracy was put down, trade-routes secured, and the fashionable world of Rome, undistracted by conflict, began to demand, on an unprecedented scale, oriental luxuries of every kind. Silk from China, fine muslins from India, and jewels, especially beryls¹ and pearls, were exported from eastern ports for personal adornment. Drugs, spices, and condiments, as well as costus, lycium and other cosmetics fetched high prices. Even greater was the demand for pepper, which sold in the days of Pliny at the price of 15 denarii a pound¹. This seems extraordinary to us, but pepper remained one of the most highly-prized luxuries in the West, even in the Middle Ages. In the fifteenth century it sold at two shillings a pound,—about three pounds in its modern equivalent! Gibbon² tells us that among the ransom demanded by Alaric, was 3000 lb. of pepper.