The World

* Pliny estimated that, thanks to its 25 per cent tax on Indian Ocean trade in luxuries such as silk from China, and nard and ivory from Muziris, the port of the Chera rulers of south-western India, Rome earned 100 million sesterces a year, perhaps a third of imperial revenue. There is evidence, including a statue of Buddha found at Berenice, to confirm that a community of Indians, probably merchants, lived in the ports on the Red Sea. This trade – by many routes, land and sea – was in 1877 dubbed the Silk Road – Seidenstraße – by a German traveller, Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen, uncle of the First World War pilot the Red Baron.

* The Golden House was so magnificent it embarrassed the more austere Emperor Vespasian, Nero’s ultimate successor. Gradually dismantled, it was replaced by the Baths of Titus and other buildings until only its lower rooms survived. When discovered in the fifteenth century, they were initially thought to be caves or grottoes, so their decadent frescoes which so inspired the artists Raphael and Michelangelo were described as ‘grotesques’ – hence the modern word.

* His secret burial place became a Christian shrine – it was beneath what is now St Peter’s Basilica.

* This triumph yielded vast riches – including the candelabra from the Holy of Holies – and tens of thousands of Jewish slaves. Titus embellished Rome, building an arch and a huge new amphitheatre. Adapting Nero’s Colossus, he and Vespasian added sunrays to dedicate the statue to Sol Invictus (Invincible Sun) and placed it outside the amphitheatre – hence its name, Colosseum. While that still stands, the Colossus itself, a sight in Rome for four centuries, vanished some time around the fall of the western empire.

* The vast Kushan empire, founded by the warlord Kujula Kadphises and ruled from Pataliputra, endured for three centuries, a people bearded and moustachioed with long hair, sporting long coats, trousers and boots, brandishing lance and sword. The founder’s great-grandson Kanishka helped expand Indic culture and religion into central Asia and China and central Asian culture into India. He revered Greek, Indian and Persian pantheons – Shiva, Buddha, Hercules and Ahura-Mazda in a unique hybridity – and called himself king of kings. He also transported Chinese silk to the Indian Ocean and thence to the Mediterranean

* The female household of the Han was carefully regulated. Selections were made every eighth month of the year when virgins of flawless families would be inspected by a three-man committee – a palace counsellor, a eunuch and a physiognomist who graded the girls from 1 to 9. The lucky one would then be brought to the capital Luoyang for intimate examination: ‘Skin white and fine … belly round, hips square, body like congealed lard and carved jade, breasts bulging and navel deep enough to take a half-inch pearl,’ read one report. ‘No haemorrhoids, no blemishes, no moles, no sores nor defects in the mouth, the nose, armpits, private parts or feet.’ Concubines were ranked as either Honourable, Beautiful or Chosen Ladies. One of the Honourable Ladies was usually made empress.

* In 102, Wise One, Ban Zhao, petitioned Empress Deng to let her brother Protector-General Ban Chao retire. Deng agreed and he returned to Luoyang where she debriefed him on his adventures in the west before he died at seventy, leaving his son to run his territories. Ban Zhao’s influence continued: when the authoress finally died in 115, she was mourned by the royal family. She was the first famous female author: Empress Deng had her works collected in three volumes after her death.

* When Pliny, governor of Bithynia, encountered the growing sect of Christians, he executed those who refused to sacrifice to the gods in honour of the emperor and in the spirit of enquiry he tortured two Christian slaves yet ‘discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition’. So he consulted Trajan. ‘You observed proper procedure, my dear Pliny,’ replied Trajan. ‘They’re not to be sought out; if denounced and proved guilty, they’re to be punished, with this reservation, that whoever denies that he’s a Christian and really proves it – by worshipping our gods – shall be pardoned … Anonymous denunciations have no place … They’re out of keeping with the spirit of our age.’