<P> The travelling party of Maës Titianus penetrated farthest east along the Silk Road from the Mediterranean world, probably with the aim of regularising contacts and reducing the role of middlemen, during one of the lulls in Rome's intermittent wars with Parthia, which repeatedly obstructed movement along the Silk Road . Intercontinental trade and communication became regular, organised, and protected by the' Great Powers .' Intense trade with the Roman Empire soon followed, confirmed by the Roman craze for Chinese silk (supplied through the Parthians), even though the Romans thought silk was obtained from trees . This belief was affirmed by Seneca the Younger in his Phaedra and by Virgil in his Georgics . Notably, Pliny the Elder knew better . Speaking of the bombyx or silk moth, he wrote in his Natural Histories "They weave webs, like spiders, that become a luxurious clothing material for women, called silk ." The Romans traded spices, glassware, perfumes, and silk . </P> <P> Roman artisans began to replace yarn with valuable plain silk cloths from China and the Silla Kingdom in Gyeongju, Korea . Chinese wealth grew as they delivered silk and other luxury goods to the Roman Empire, whose wealthy Roman women admired their beauty . The Roman Senate issued, in vain, several edicts to prohibit the wearing of silk, on economic and moral grounds: the import of Chinese silk caused a huge outflow of gold, and silk clothes were considered decadent and immoral . </P> <P> I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one's decency, can be called clothes...Wretched flocks of maids labour so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife's body . </P> <P> The Roman Empire, and its demand for sophisticated Asian products, crumbled in the West around the 5th century . </P>

Where does the silk road begin and end