Maës Titianus (fl.c. 100 AD[1][2]) was anancient Roman traveller ofMacedonian culture.[3] He was a Greek speaker who came from a family of merchants who had both Syrian and Roman identity.[4] Maës sent an expedition that is recorded as having travelled farthest along theSilk Road from the Mediterranean world.[5] In the early 2nd century CE[1] or at the end of the 1st century BC,[2] during a lull in the intermittent Roman struggles withParthia, his party reached the famousStone Tower,[6] somewhere in or around thePamir Mountains close to the border with China.[7] Nothing is known of him, apart from a brief credit inPtolemy'sGeography, 1.11.7, whose knowledge of Maës was gained through an intermediary source,Marinus of Tyre:
"Marinus tells us that a certain Macedonian named Maen, who was also called Titian, son of a merchant father, and a merchant himself, noted the length of this journey [to the Stone Tower], although he did not come toSera in person but sent other there"
— Claudius Ptolemy, I-XI[8]
When Maes' expedition reached the Pamirs, the Chinese generalBan Chao of theHan Empire intercepted the group and ensured they were taken eastward to the Chinese capitalLuoyang. They were brought before the Han EmperorHe. The travellers spoke Greek and were with Parthian merchants and so did not identify themselves as Roman. Thus, the Chinese did not realise they were dealing with subjects ofDa Qin (theRoman Empire). Chinese records written in theHou Hanshu state that the encounter took place inAD 100. (However,[9] p.36, states that "Whether the journey was noted in Chinese historical accounts remains a matter of speculation.") As was standard protocol the Maes merchants offered tribute to Emperor He by giving rewoven Syrian silks and imperial gold coins that bore the image ofEmperor Trajan. They were given Han silks as diplomatic gifts and then sent back on their long way back to Syria. It would take them 12 months to return home, totalling two years for the whole round-trip. When they returned, knowledge of their experience spread around the Roman world and for the first time Romans in Egypt and Syria knew of a superpower in the Far East that produced large quantities ofsilk andsteel. Maes Titianus wrote a full account of the journey taken by his merchants but only a brief summary of his work survives in the writings ofClaudius Ptolemy.[10]
However, a brief article by Max Cary[11] teased apart some probabilities, notably that the purpose of the expedition was to organize the import of Chinese silk by controlling or eliminating some of the middlemen through whom trade goods were passed, among whom the least dependable were theParthians. The Stone Tower was located inXinjiang, the westernmost province over which the Chinese periodically attempted control. The incursion of the nomadicKushan ca 50 AD blocked Chinese access to the West, but conditions improved ca. 75; consequently the window in which, Cary suggests, Maës found his opportunity lay either before or after the Kushan irruption. At the western end of thetrade route, Parthian cooperation could be expected only after the termination of their war with Trajan, 117 CE, too late for Marinus to incorporate the new information, at the close of their war with Nero, 65 CE, during the Kushan interruption, or, the date Cary offers for consideration, after their settlement with Augustus, 20 BCE.
TheMaesii Titianii were a family documented in Italy and Sicily, ca. 150-210, and Cary considers the possibility that the governor ofRoman Syria from ca 13 BCE,M. Titius, who had beenconsul suffectus in 31 BCE, and through whose hands the Parthian princes passed to Rome for their education, acted in some way as a patron to the enterprise (Cary 1956:132-34), thus dating the expedition to the time of his governorship.