Justinian's Monks Smuggle Silkworms to Byzantium
Hollow bamboo canes reportedly carry silkworm eggs out of China and break the Chinese monopoly for good
Quick facts
- Byzantine emperor
- Justinian I (r. 527-565 CE)
- Primary source
- Procopius, History of the Wars
- Method described
- Silkworm eggs smuggled and hatched under Byzantine care
- Effect
- Ended Byzantine dependence on Persian-relayed Chinese silk
What happened
According to the Byzantine historian Procopius, writing in his History of the Wars around the mid-sixth century, monks who had lived in India approached the Emperor Justinian and promised that Byzantium would never again need to buy silk from Persian middlemen, because they knew how silk was made and could obtain the means themselves. As Procopius records it, the monks explained that certain worms manufacture silk by nature, that the worms themselves could not survive the journey alive, but that their eggs could be smuggled and hatched under warmth once they arrived. The monks traveled back to Central Asia, obtained silkworm eggs, and returned them to Byzantium, where the insects were hatched and fed on mulberry leaves, beginning silk production inside the Roman world for the first time. A later Byzantine chronicler, Theophanes Confessor, records a related account crediting a Persian traveler with demonstrating the silk-worm hatching process to the Byzantine court.
Why it matters
Once Byzantium could grow its own silk, the Sasanian Persian monopoly on relaying Chinese silk westward lost its most valuable cargo, and the diplomatic and military tensions between Byzantium and Persia over silk profits eased because Byzantium no longer needed to pay Persian middlemen at all.
How we know
Procopius's account survives as a primary Greek source translated in his History of the Wars, and the American Historical Association's teaching materials on the episode pair it with the Chinese pilgrim-monk Xuanzang's separate account of silkworms being smuggled to Khotan around the fifth century, showing that more than one contemporary or near-contemporary source described silk-secret smuggling along different points of the road, though the exact details differ between accounts.
Sources
- American Historical Association (teaching module, quoting Procopius, History of the Wars). Legendary Silk Heists · Primary source (author-declared)historians.org · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match).
- World History Encyclopedia. Silk Road · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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