Posted on 07/31/2005 12:31:23 PM PDT by blam
Roman legion founded Chinese city
Survivors of Crassus's routed army said to have built town
(ANSA) - Florence, July 25 - Roman soldiers who disappeared after a famous defeat founded a city in eastern China, archaeologists say .
The phantom legion was part of the defeated forces of Marcus Licinius Crassus, according to the current edition of the Italian magazine Archeologia Viva .
The famously wealthy Crassus needed glory to rival the exploits of the two men with whom he ruled Rome as the First Triumvirate, Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar .
Crassus decided to bring down the Parthian Empire - a fatal choice .
His forces were routed in 53 BC outside the Mesopotamian city of Carre - today's Harran - and he was beheaded .
According to the Roman historian Pliny, the Romans who survived were taken to a prison camp in what is now northern Afghanistan .
When Rome and Parthia sued for peace in 20 BC - 33 years after Crassus's last battle - all trace of the prisoners had disappeared .
The survivors of Crassus's legion became a mystery, walking ghosts in Roman legends. A Chinese historian in the Han Empire, China's second dynasty, provided an answer to the riddle in the early 3rd century AD .
The historian, Bau Gau, wrote that a Chinese war leader defeated a group of soldiers drawn up in typical Roman formation .
Crassus's old troops must now have been in their fifties and sixties .
Bau Gau said the foreigners were moved to China to defend the strategically important eastern region of Gansu, near today's city of Yongchang .
This is where the survivors founded the city of Liquian, the only site in China where the mark of Ancient Rome can be seen. 'Liquian' is said to mean 'Roman' .
The city has been virtually unknown outside China although hundreds of people visit it each year, admiring traces of defensive wallworks and pieces of broken pottery .
The number of visitors is certain to rise. Crassus, celebrated as the richest Roman of them all in pre-Imperial days, was never satisfied with his wealth and had an undying lust for glory .
Eighteen years before his doomed expedition to Parthia he put down a slave revolt led by the Thracian slave Spartacus. In Stanley Kubrick's epic film he was played by Laurence Olivier .
I am Crassus.
No I am Sparticus, yeah that's the ticket.
Amazing. Thanks for the ping.
Same place Roman legions always got their women on distant posts, from among the local peasants.
So9
Character of Hannibal by Polybius
http://livinghistoryengineer.com/roman/eagle/05May_Eagle_files/May%20Eagle.pdf
Must be Roman Empire Week here at GGG. ;')
Here's something I posted on the other thread:
"From the excellent book The Tarim Mummies, page #281: "...Narin Infers that they (Caucasians) had been there at least since the Qijia Culture of c. 2,000BC and probably even earlier in the Yangshao Culture of the Neolithic. This would render the Tocharians as virtually native to Gansu (and earlier than the putative spread of the Neolithic to Xinjaing) and Narin goes so far as to argue that the Indo-Europeans themselves originally dispensed from this area westwards."
bttt
Heh. Well, it more or less did, but it was a novel (i.e. fiction). Still a good read.
Actually I tried to find the book in my local Houston library catalogue without success. I love novels about antiquity.
Probally some combination of kidnapping and purchasing the local women. Remember that women very rarely had any input on marrage arrangements in any of the ancient worlds.
Ask them to get it via inter-library loan. You'd be amazed what they can get if you ask.
Camp-followers. Women just love men in uniforms. -g-
I don't know how the time frame fits with the buried clay soldiers of Xian, China's ancient Capitol, but the faces on some of those soldiers are clearly Caucasian. The emporor who buried the statues was said to have had them modeled on his own army, in lieu of burying his loyal soldiers alive upon his death, as had been the previous custom.
Groan ... but yes, they were roaming at least as far north as Hadrian's wall.
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Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. |
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