Around 36 BC Chinese forces encountered and clashed with Roman soldiers in Sogdiana for the first time in the recorded history. These Roman legionaries may have been either irregular warriors or a part of Mark Antony’s army invading Parthia. Chinese got out of this battle victorious, thanks to their crossbows, whose bolts and darts seem easily to have penetrated Roman shields and armor.

In spite of this within several years an intense trade between China and Rome soon followed, probably with Parthians as middlemen. Famous Chinese silk became in fashion among Romans, who thought that it was obtained from the trees. This obsession with silk went so far that its importation caused a huge outflow of gold out of Rome. There is evidence that the The Senate issued, in vain, several edicts to prohibit the wearing of silk, on economic and moral grounds. Senate proclaimed that silk clothes were decadent and immoral.

Soon Spartans accused Themistocles of treasonable intrigues with Persia. Subsequently he was proclaimed a traitor in Athens and all his property was confiscated.

As a bitter irony, Themistocles could only find shelter at his enemy whom he fought for so many years. Artaxerxes I, successor of Xerxes I, offered him asylum and took Themistocles under his protection. Artaxerxes even made Themistocles a governor of the province of Magnesia in Asia Minor. He probably was well received in Magnesia and showed his talents there too, because Magnesians worshiped Themistocles as a god.

From what we know, Themistocles died of illness in Magnesia , when he was sixty five. He was probably a broken-hearted man, because there were persistent rumors that his death was not of natural causes but that he committed suicide by taking poison.

If you watched a move about 300 brave Spartans, you know that king Leonidas was one of the most important figures in Greco-Persian wars. But there was also another equally or even more important statesman whose name is is rarely mentioned due to certain reasons that need to be explained.

I am talking about famous Themistocles from Athens. It was him who persuaded Athenians to build a powerful fleet and it is thanks to him that Greek ships defeated the much larger Persian navy and forced king Xerxes I of Persia to retreat. The naval battle of Salamis took place in 480 BC and was the turning point of the campaign, leading to eventual Persian defeat.

After the war Themistocles showed himself as a brilliant statesman again and again by making his native Athens the finest trade place in Greece. But then his life took a really tragic turn. He was accused by his fellowmen of arrogance and taking bribes. That led to the exile of Themistocles from Athens to Argos. Yet, his troubles did not end there.

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One of the key part of Bushido is the ritual of seppuku. Somehow in English we use commonly the word hara-kiri instead of seppuku. There are important differences between two words. Basically, for samurai, the ritual is called seppuku, he would never use the word hara-kiri. Only ordinary Japanese people called this ritual hara-kiri, which is a colloquialism, that means “belly-cutting”.

Samurai warriors was used seppuku to avoid falling into enemy hands and to attenuate shame. Samurai women could only commit the act with permission. The feudal lords of samurai could also order samurai to commit seppuku. During seppuku samurai would cut his abdomen. He was supposed to be still alive when he finished the cutting and stretch out his neck for an assistant to cut his head off. The main point of the act was to restore or protect samurai’s honor as a warrior. This is why ordinary Japanese people were never ordered or expected to commit seppuku.

Among samurai seppuku was considered an act of great courage. It meant that samurai completed his life with his transgressions wiped away and with his reputation not merely intact but actually enhanced. The spirit of a samurai was released when he cut his abdomen in the most dramatic fashion. As it is an extremely painful and unpleasant way to die, and sometimes during the agony the samurai asked a loyal comrade to decapitate him.

Japanese concept of chivalry Bushido, which means “Way of the Warrior”, is a Japanese code of conduct and a way of life. It originates from the samurai moral code and stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery and honor unto death. Bushido expanded and formalized the earlier code of the samurai. According, to the Bushido ideal, if a samurai failed to uphold his honor he could regain it by performing seppuku. It was a detailed ritual of suicide, that was committed voluntarily by the samurai.

But not many Westerners, know that there was another form of seppuku. Unlike the the seppuku that we saw in Kurosawa movies, in practice the most common form of seppuku was obligatory. It was a form of capital punishment for disgraced samurai, who committed a serious offense such as unprovoked murder, robbery, corruption, or treason.

In obligatory seppuku the samurai in question were generally told of their offense in full and given a set time, usually before sunset on a given day, to end the life. If the sentenced refused to “cooperate”, it was not unheard of for them to be restrained. Then the actual execution to be carried out by decapitation while retaining only the trappings of seppuku - even the short sword laid out in front of the victim could be replaced with a fan. Unlike voluntary seppuku, the obligatory one did not necessarily absolve the victim’s family of the crime. Depending on the severity of the crime, half or all of the deceased property could be confiscated, and the family stripped of rank.