Empires Collide: The Fascinating Legends of Romans in China

The idea that Han China and the Roman Empire – two of the most powerful empires of antiquity – might have met not only through trade but face-to-face, is one of the most intriguing mysteries in ancient history.

At the heart of this truly fascinating legend lies a remarkable tale – that survivors of Rome’s crushing defeat at the Battle of Carrhae somehow made their way across Central Asia, eventually arriving in China. But the question remains – how much of this astonishing story is compelling myth, and how much could be historical truth?

Here, we’ll cross the cultural Rubicon in an attempt to uncover the facts about the idea of there being lost Roman soldiers in China.

Marcus Licinius Crassus was an influential statesman, a formidable military commander, and a financial genius. In fact he’s often touted as the richest Roman in history. He was also incredibly vain. Crassus defeated the legendary Thracian warrior Spartacus at the Battle of the Silarius River, however much of the victory was claimed by his great rival Pompey. In 53 BC, in an attempt to equal his rival’s battlefield successes, Crassus embarked on an unnecessary, ill-conceived and ultimately disastrous invasion of Parthia, culminating in the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC.

Despite heavily outnumbering the Parthians led by Surena – by perhaps as many as 40,000 Romans to the Parthians’ 10,000 – Crassus’s men were outwitted, outmaneuvered and outfought by Surena’s mobile cavalry army of cataphracts and archers, and Rome suffered one of the most catastrophic and humiliating defeat in its history.

Of Rome’s roughly 40,000 men who fought at Carrhae, it’s believed around half were killed, and another 10,000 or so escaped back to Syria. The remaining 10,000 were reportedly captured and sent to Alexandria Margiana, a city on the Silk Road on the northeastern border of the Parthian Empire, close to the city of Mary in modern-day Turkmenistan. There’s speculation that some of these Roman soldiers married local women, and from Alexandria Margiana, went further east until they found themselves at the fringes of China’s Han Empire.

Was this the lost Roman legion China came into contact with? Did Han China and the Roman Empire come face-to-face? Did they live and fight together?

The American sinologist Homer Hasenpflug Dubs, professor at the University of Minnesota, Duke University, Columbia University, and latterly Chair of Chinese at the University of Oxford, thought so.

There have long been suggestions of Romans in China, but the story gained momentum in the mid-twentieth century, when Dubs proposed that survivors of Carrhae became mercenaries and, after further battles, were settled by the Han Dynasty in a frontier city known as Liqian.

But how much truth lies behind this captivating legend? Dubs’ theory, in his book ‘A Roman City in China’, though widely publicised, has been met by some with scepticism.

Dubs argued that a group of Roman soldiers fought as border guards for the Western Han Dynasty, citing Chinese records of a ‘fish-scale formation’ at the Battle of Zhizhi against Xiongnu chieftain Zhizhi Chanyu in 36 BC – a tactic he likened to the Roman testudo or tortoise formation. If accurate, this would have been the only time in recorded history that soldiers of these two mighty powers faced off against each other.

According to Dubs, these men were resettled in a specially created city called Liqian. Now part of Yongchang County in Gansu province, Liqian became the focal point of claims that its residents, some allegedly with distinctive European features like aquiline noses, blue or green eyes, and curly, or lighter-coloured hair, were descendants of these ancient Romans in China.

The idea that a lost Roman legion, survivors from perhaps the worst defeat in the history of the Republic, made their way over thousands of kilometres of brutal – not to mention hostile – terrain, is unquestionably intriguing. However, sceptics have argues that there’s very little evidence to suggest that Han China and the Roman Empire ever actually came together in this way.

DNA studies have since shown that the local population is genetically consistent with the Han Chinese majority, providing little support for a Roman origin theory, and at time of writing no Roman artefacts or inscriptions have been found at Liqian.

Beyond the ‘Lost Legion’ hypothesis, the broader question of direct contact between the Roman Empire and China is equally fascinating. While the Silk Road facilitated indirect trade – Chinese silk was highly prized in Rome, and Roman glassware found its way east – actual diplomatic or military encounters were more difficult to establish. Ancient Chinese historians recorded a handful of alleged Roman emissaries, and Roman writers had vague notions of a distant land in the east, but mutual awareness remained limited, with intermediary empires like the Parthians and Kushans controlling the flow of goods and information.

It was written that Chinese general Ban Chao attempted to send an envoy named Gan Ying to Rome in 97 AD, but was dissuaded by the Parthians from going any further west than the Persian Gulf. There were also believed to have been attempts by Rome to facilitate contact between Han China and the Roman Empire by sending emissaries to China. An embassy sent in the name of Emperor Antonius Pius (or his adopted son Marcus Aurelius) is documented to have gone to China in 166 AD, and others are said to have arrived in the century or so that followed.

Later, embassies, goods, and stories travelled the vast deserts and mountains, suggesting that cultural and commercial interactions were indeed possible.

Despite the lack of concrete evidence the idea of contact between these two ancient empires remains intriguing, fuelled by centuries-old local tales, tourism, and the allure of a lost Roman legion wandering the Silk Road.

While theories about lost Roman soldiers in China settling in Liqian and serving the Han Dynasty have sparked fascination, neither archaeological nor genetic evidence has confirmed these claims so far, leaving the idea of cross-empire contact as compelling in its possibilities, yet elusive in its proof.