The indirect exchange of goods on land along the Silk Road and sea routes involved (for example) Chinese silk, Roman glassware and high-quality cloth. Others are recorded as arriving in 226 and 284 AD, followed by a long hiatus until the first recorded Byzantine embassy in 643 AD. The first one on record, supposedly either from the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius or from his adopted son Marcus Aurelius, arrived in 166 AD.
Ancient Chinese historians recorded several alleged Roman emissaries to China. In 97 AD the Chinese general Ban Chao tried to send his envoy Gan Ying to Rome, but Parthians dissuaded Gan from venturing beyond the Persian Gulf. Intermediate empires such as the Parthians and Kushans, seeking to maintain control over the lucrative silk trade, inhibited direct contact between these two Eurasian powers. Surviving records document only a few attempts at direct contact. Mutual awareness remained low, and firm knowledge about each other was limited. These empires inched progressively closer to each other in the course of the Roman expansion into the ancient Near East and of the simultaneous Han Chinese military incursions into Central Asia.
Sino-Roman relations comprised the (primarily indirect) contacts and flows of trade goods, of information, and of occasional travellers between the Roman Empire and the Han Empire of China, as well as between the later Eastern Roman Empire and various Chinese dynasties. Eastern Hemisphere in AD 50, the middle of the first century
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