Pliny the Elder described silk as a product obtained from the Seres, people beyond Rome’s eastern trade routes.
In Natural History, Pliny wrote about the Seres and explained that their valuable textile came from material associated with trees, reflecting Roman knowledge of silk production. Roman authors generally had only indirect information about the distant silk-producing regions, because the product passed through many intermediaries.
Pliny’s account illustrates the information gap behind early Eurasian trade. Roman consumers knew silk as a luxury fabric, but they did not necessarily know the full route, production process, or identity of the communities who made it. Silk could travel through Central Asian and Near Eastern merchants before reaching Roman markets.
The Seres were not a clearly identified single kingdom in surviving Roman writing. The term is usually connected with the silk-producing peoples of the far east, especially China, but its exact geographical meaning varied. Pliny died during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.