[812] Ammianus, xxix, 4; Procopius, Anecdot. 21.
[813] Pliny, _op. cit._, iv, 27; xxxvii, 11.
[814] Pliny, _op. cit._, xiv, _passim_; Athenaeus, i, 52, 55; x, _passim_.
[815] Strabo, XVII, iii, 23; Pliny, xxiv, 48; measuring more than 100 by 30 miles. What silphium really was is now indeterminate, but it was economically akin to garlic and asafoetida. It seems to have been indispensable in ordinary cooking.
[816] Totius Orb. Descript. (Müller, Geog. Graec. Min., Paris, 1861) 36; Procopius, De Aedific., v, 1.
[817] Tot. Orb. Descr., 51, 53. This tract from a Greek original (_c._ 350) summarizes the productions of the whole Empire, and for the most part confirms the continuance of the industries adverted to by the earlier and more copious writers.
[820] Strabo, VII, vi, 2; Pliny, ix, 17, _et seq._
[822] Several “embassies” from Rome are mentioned in the Chinese annals, but nothing seems to have been known of them in the West. Stray merchants sometimes penetrated very far; Strabo, XV, i, 4. At first Rome is disguised as _Ta-thsin_, but later (643) the Byzantine power figures as _Fou-lin_; see Pauthier, Relat. polit. de la Chine avec les puiss. occid., 1859; cf. Hirth, _op. cit._, who was without books to pursue the inquiry; Florus, iv, 12, etc.
[823] Aristotle, Hist. Animal., v, 19; Pliny, _op. cit._, xi, 26; Pausanias, vi, 26.
[826] A serf was called _colonus_, _inquilinus_, or _adscriptus glebae_, terms fairly synonymous; Cod., XI, xlvii, 13. Godefroy’s paratitlon to Cod. Theod., V, ix, x, is an epitome of everything relating to the serfs of antiquity; cf. Savigny, Römische Colonat u.s.w. Berlin Acad., 1822-3. The name of modern works on slavery and serfdom is legion.
[829] Cod. Theod., X, xv, and Godefroy _ad loc._; Pand., XLVII, vi; Novel., xvii, 17; lxxxv, 4, etc. This general disarmament of the industrial classes often left them defenceless against the barbarian raiders, as is instanced practically by Synesius, Epist. 107. Yet in an age of non-explosives peasants armed only with agricultural implements could become terrible, as was shown in Paphlagonia (359), when the incensed Novatian sectaries routed the legionaries sent against them with their hatchets, reaping-hooks, etc.; Socrates, ii, 30; Sozomen, iv, 21.