ABSTRACT
In this chapter we make a second and more geographically extensive survey of travel during the classical period. The main theme of this chapter is how travelers from China and Central Asia began to meet counterparts from Rome and the Middle East in places like today’s Afghanistan and India during the first century BCE. Although these encounters were not the earliest contacts between China and the Mediterranean region-new evidence points toward limited contacts as early as the sixth century BCE-it is clear that these connections greatly increased during the first century BCE. By this time, Confucian scholars and Roman senators-5,000 miles distant from one another-were connected, if only indirectly, by an expanding network of roads, trails, and sea lanes. For the past century or so, this system has been known as the Silk Road.
