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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bluenose" data-source="post: 9378963" data-attributes="member: 49017">Roman trade went very far indeed. There's a surviving text, <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/classics/intranets/students/modules/ancientglobalhistory/seminars/the_periplus_maris_erythraei_text_with_introductio..._----_text_and_translation_.pdf" target="_blank">The "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea</a>, which covers ports as far as India and a fair way down the coast of Africa. How much trade there was is debatable; plenty of Roman writers complaining about expensive luxuries will tell you that huge amounts of the Empire's coin was sent there - they exaggerate, I suspect. They were trading for spices with the Malay/Indonesian traders who'd come even further but there's certainly evidence for a fair amount of contact. There's even a story in one of the Han annals of traders from "Rome" bringing gifts to the emperor, so some enterprising merchants got that far). Personally I'd suspect a sea route along the south coast of Arabia (studded with ancient ports) and into the Gulf with even more ports on both shores.Over on Freelance Traveller there's a set of variant Traveller rules called Mercator which takes the basic game design and the Free Trader concept and applies it to the ancient Mediterranean. I always thought it would be fun to apply it to the Erythraean Sea ports to expand the scope and perhaps add non-"Roman" sailors to it.  This is making me nostalgic.</blockquote>

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