Rome- India relations
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Trade relations in ancient times
Jan 13, 2025: The Times of India
Roman author and philosopher Pliny the Elder was not amused. The empire’s wealth was being drained by lavish spending on Indian luxury items. “Pliny very clearly says that the gold of the west is draining into Indian pockets. These are luxury products that Indian trading ancestors charged the Romans top dollar for,” William Dalrymple, historian and author, most recently, of ‘The Golden Ro ad: How Ancient India Transformed the World’, told TOI in a recent conversation at TOI Circles.
Traders didn’t need to think twice about bringing in the goods — a single shipment could yield enough profit to purchase vast estates or secure political influence — even if Pliny did not see what the fuss was all about.
Ivory, Pepper, Silk
India was a key trading partner of the Roman Empire. It exported luxury goods such as ivory, pepper, silk, cotton, and aromatic products like nard that were highly coveted in Rome. The Muziris Papyrus, a Greek document, details the immense value of these goods. Dalrymple says, “It (Muziris Papyrus) is a complete, detailed shipping invoice and gives an incredibly detailed account of one container travelling on one ship, The Hermapolon, that happened to leave India in the mid 1st Century AD.”
“This container contained two tonnes of ivory, which was the highest-value product, vast quantities of pepper, silk, cotton and nard — a Himalayan product used in perfumery. All these things were luxury objects you didn’t need from India.”
What’s Wrong With Olive Oil?
The trade not only enriched India but also significantly boosted Roman customs revenues, constituting a substantial part of the empire’s budget, says Dalrymple. But Pliny bemoans the “unnecessary” trade. “He’s (Pliny’s) sitting there hearing about decadent ladies in Rome who used this new-fangled foreign textile called silk. You could see their limbs through this (it).. unnecessary and expensive. ‘This is what happens to our gold. These women spend it on silk... This other new black powder (black pepper) that people are putting on their food. It gives food a certain pungency (but) what’s wrong with olive oil?”
Enough Spare Change To Join Senate
The extravagance was almost like modern duty-free shopping, says Dalrymple. “You get the impression that these are all getting stuck in duty-free at Heathrow. When your flight is delayed, you end up buying the expensive whisky from Japan that you can’t afford, the expensive French scent and all the other sorts of luxuries that you then feel guilty about as they sit around in your house.”
The Muziris Papyrus also provides exact prices of the stuff that was ferried in one container. “The most surprising thing was the cost. If this one container did make it safely to Alexandria, then the importer would have had enough money to buy the largest estate in Egypt or Central Tuscany and enough spare change to join the Senate. One container would have made you the Elon Musk of Alexandria. We have no notion of whether it actually was dispatched or arrived, just that we have the invoice.” “...They’re now estimating that maybe between a third and a fifth of the Roman budget came from the customs on the Red Sea…This puts Pliny’s complaint into perspective because everyone was paying ridiculous sums of money for these rare foreign commodities…”
