Question: who did rome trade with and what was traded

title: Indo-Roman trade relations
text: Roman and Greek traders frequented the ancient Tamil country , present day Southern India and Sri Lanka , securing trade with the seafaring Tamil states of the Pandyan , Chola and Chera dynasties and establishing trading settlements which secured trade with the Indian Subcontinent by the Greco - Roman world since the time of the Ptolemaic dynasty a few decades before the start of the Common Era and remained long after the fall of the Western Roman Empire . As recorded by Strabo , Emperor Augustus of Rome received at Antioch an ambassador from a South Indian king called Pandyan of Dramira . The country of the Pandyas , Pandi Mandala , was described as Pandyan Mediterranea in the Periplus and Modura Regia Pandyan by Ptolemy . They also outlasted Byzantium 's loss of the ports of Egypt and the Red Sea ( c. 639 -- 645 CE ) under the pressure of the Muslim conquests . Sometime after the sundering of communications between the Axum and Eastern Roman Empire in the 7th century , the Christian kingdom of Axum fell into a slow decline , fading into obscurity in western sources . It survived , despite pressure from Islamic forces , until the 11th century , when it was reconfigured in a dynastic squabble . Communications were reinstated after the Muslim forces retreated .