The Forgotten Legion

In his Natural History narrative, Pliny the Elder described how Roman survivors of the battle of Carrhae in 53 BC were sent to Margiana.

Situated in modern-day Turkmenistan, this area is more than fifteen hundred miles from where the men were taken captive. Used as border guards, the ten thousand legionaries would have journeyed farther east than most Romans in history.

But their story does not end there.

In 36 BC, the Chinese historian Ban Gu recorded that soldiers in the army of Jzh-jzh, a Hun warlord and ruler of a city on the Silk Road, fought in a 'fish-scale formation'. The term used to describe their formation is unique in Chinese literature and many historians assert that it refers to a shield wall. At that time only the Macedonians and Romans fought in such a way. Greek military training would need to have endured in the area for more than a century to influence those men. Interestingly this battle took place only seventeen years after Carrhae and less than five hundred miles from the border of Margiana.

Further to the east, in China, lies the modern settlement of Liqian. The origins of its name are uncertain, but scholars consider it to have been founded between 79 BC and AD 5 under the name of Li-jien, meaning 'Rome' in ancient Chinese. An unusually large number of its present-day inhabitants have Caucasian features — blond hair, hooked noses and green eyes. DNA samples are currently being studied by a local university to see if these people are the descendants of the ten thousand legionaries who marched east from Carrhae and into history.

The Forgotten Legion.