Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c12.72

c12.72

The long night of the Middle Ages was now settling down upon the Western world. The Neo-Sassanian Empire, with its great Persian renaissance, had manned a fleet which was fast sweeping the Roman vessels from Eastern waters. In 364 A.D., the first fatal step in the downfall of Rome had been taken, when the Empire was divided. In 410 came the Goths, and fifty years later the mightiest kingdom the world has ever seen had ceased to be. Yet even then Alaric’s demand for “three thousand pounds of pepper” as part of the ransom of Rome, shewed that Eastern luxuries still found their way in vast quantities to the Imperial city. The Roman coins¹ found in South India tell their own tale. After Septimius Severus (211 A.D.), they dwindle rapidly, though there is a single hoard belonging to the days of Arcadius and Honorius (395 A.D.). No later coins of Western Emperors have been unearthed. Trade with the Eastern Empire, in spite of Persian rivalry, struggled feebly on, and a few scattered specimens of the time of Anastasius (491 A.D.) and Justinus (518 A.D.) are recorded. The latest coin found in Ceylon belongs to the reign of Honorius. The latest recorded Eastern embassy to Constantinople reached that city in 530 A.D.¹