page_title: Daqin
section_title: Law and order
hierarchical_section_title: Daqin / Law and order
caption_attribution_description: English: Clothes of Roman Lictor 日本語: 共和政ローマ時代の役職、リクトルの服装
context_page_description: Daqin is the ancient Chinese name for the Roman Empire or, depending on context, the Near East, especially Syria. It literally means "great Qin"; Qin being the name of the founding dynasty of the Chinese Empire. Historian John Foster defined it as "the Roman Empire, or rather that part of it which alone was known to the Chinese, Syria". Its basic facets such as laws, customs, dress, and currency were explained in Chinese sources. Its medieval incarnation was described in histories during the Tang dynasty onwards as Fulin, which Friedrich Hirth and other scholars have identified as the Byzantine Empire. Daqin was also commonly associated with the Syriac-speaking Nestorian Christians who lived in China during the Tang dynasty.
  Chinese sources describe several ancient Roman embassies arriving in China, beginning in 166 AD and lasting into the 3rd century. These early embassies were said to arrive by a maritime route via the South China Sea in the Chinese province of Jiaozhi. Archaeological evidence such as Roman coins points to the presence of Roman commercial activity in Southeast Asia.
context_section_description: The History of Song described forms of punishment in criminal law as they were carried out in Daqin (Roman Empire) and Fulin (Byzantine Empire). It states that they made a distinction between minor and major offenses, with 200 strikes from a bamboo rod being reserved for major crimes. It described their form of capital punishment as having the guilty person being stuffed into a "feather bag" and thrown into the sea. This seems to correspond with the Romano-Byzantine punishment of poena cullei (from Latin "punishment of the sack"), where those who committed parricide (i.e. murder of a father or mother) were sewn up into a sack, sometimes with wild animals, and thrown into either a river or sea. The History of Song also mentioned how it was forbidden by law to counterfeit the coins minted by Fulin. These descriptions from the History of Song are also found in the Wenxian Tongkao.
caption: An 1860 sketch depicting a Roman lictor, a bodyguard for Roman magistrates
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