hief city, the latter for the country of the Seres, and as usual
defines their position with a precision far beyond what his knowledge
justified--the necessary result of his system. Yet even his definition
of Serice is most consistent with the view that this name indicated
the Chinese empire in its northern aspect, for he carries it eastward
to the 180th degree of longitude, which is also, according to his
calculation, in a lower latitude the eastern boundary of the Sinae.

Ammianus Marcellinus devotes some paragraphs to a description of the
Seres and their country, one passage of which is startling at first
sight in its seeming allusion to the Great Wall, and in this sense it
has been rashly interpreted by Lassen and by Reinaud. But Ammianus is
merely converting Ptolemy's dry tables into fine writing, and speaks
only of an encircling rampart of mountains within which the spacious
and happy valley of the Seres lies. It is true that Ptolemy makes his
Serice extend westward to Imaus, _i.e._ to Pamir. But the Chinese
empire _did_ so extend at that epoch, and we find Lieut. John Wood in
1838 speaking of "_China_" as lying immediately beyond Pamir, just as
the Arabs of the 8th century spoke of the country beyond the Jaxartes
as "_Sin_," and as Ptolemy spoke of "_Serice_" as immediately beyond
Imaus.

If we fuse into one the ancient notices of the Seres and their
country, omitting anomalous statements and manifest fables, the result
will be somewhat as follows: "The region of the Seres is a vast and
populous country, touching on the east the ocean and the limits of the
habitable world, and extending west to Imaus and the confines of
Bactria. The people are civilized, mild, just and frugal, eschewing
collisions with their neighbours, and even shy of close intercourse,
but not averse to dispose of their own products, of which raw silk is
the staple, but which included also silk-stuffs, fine furs, and iron
of remarkable quality." That is manifestly a definition of the
Chinese.

That Greek and Roman knowledge of the true position of so remote a
nation should at best have been somewhat hazy is nothing wonderful.
And it is worthy of note that the view entertained by the ancient
Chinese of the Roman empire and its inhabitants, under the name of
_Ta-thsin_, had some striking points of analogy to those views of the
Chinese which are indicated in the classical de