(VII, 2), whose flat-nosed Mongolian faces he describes as having "merely holes in their faces instead of nostrils," and whom he connects with an allied race, the Astomi, "a people who have no mouths, who live on the eastern side of India, near the source of the Ganges; their bodies are rough and hairy, and they cover themselves with a down plucked from the leaves of trees." Here he shows some knowledge of the silk trade through Assam.
Ammianus Marcellinus (XXIII, vi) has more knowledge of the Seres:
64. "Byond the districts of the two Scythias, on the eastern side, is a ring of mountains which surround Serica, a country considerable both for its exten and the fertility of its soil. This tribe on their western side border on the Scythians, on the north and the east they look toward snowy deserts; toward the south they extend as far as India and the Ganges. . . .
67. "The Seres themselves live quietly, always avoiding arms and battles; and as ease is pleasant to moderate and quiet men, they give trouble to none of their neighbors. Their climate is agreeable and healthy; the sky serene, the breezes gentle and delicious. They have numbers of shining groves, the trees of which through continued watering produce a crop like the fleece of a sheep, which the natives make into a delicate wool, and spin into a kind of fine cloth, formerly confined to the use of the nobles, but now procurable by the lowest of the people without distinction.
68. "The natives themselves are the most frugal of men, cultivating a peaceful life, and shunning the society of other men. And when strangers cross their river to buy their cloth, or any other of their merchandise, they interchange no conversation, but settle the price of the articles wanted by nods and signs; and they are so modest that, while selling their own produce, they never buy any foreign wares."
But to the Graeco-Roman world the Seres were a people as ubiquitious as the subjects of Prester John in the middle ages. The Chēras of Malabar (Seri in Sinhalese mouths; see p. 209), and even Ausar and Masira in Southern Arabia (see p. 140) were identified with them.
Concerning the long struggles of the emperors at Constantinople with the Sassanid monarchs of Persia, over the ever-increasing silk-trade, culminating in the romantic success of the Christian monks who succeeded in bringing the jealously-guarded eggs to Justinian, hidden in a bamboo cane, thereby laying the foundation of the silk-culture of Greece and the Levant, see Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography,
