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206 pus or Palmyra. For Mesopotamian trade they might take a more southern route to the distributing center of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, where bales received overland from China and India mingled with those which came up the Persian Gulf and the Tigris River.

At the same time that shifts in the routes of commerce were taking place, interest at Rome in the Orient became both intense and widespread, an interest clearly reflected in the poets. Many historical references have already been pointed out, for some of these writers were in position to secure first-hand information, and most of them were contemporary with the events they mention. But more important than the actual information which they furnish is the fact that the poets mirror the passing thought and interests of contemporary Rome. In their writings, then, we should expect to find evidence of the rise of Roman interest in the East, and, since many of the poems are datable by internal evidence, we should be able to trace its development quite closely.

Sulla's contact with Parthia was of an ephemeral character; he had no realization of the future of those "barbarians" or even of their strength in his own day. A most peaceful people, the "Persians" (Parthians), says Cicero before his governorship of Cilicia. Crassus had already begun to talk of Bac-