Originally posted by FantasticMrFox I kind of doubt that story based on the fact that the two empires had close to no relations (except for a couple of singular instances of emissaries travelling to the respective countries) and extremely limited awareness of and knowledge about each other.
I think the furthest west the Chinese empire got was Talas river (which is, I believe, somewhere in today's Kyrgyzstan) in mid 8th century, where they lost a brief battle with Arab forces and stopped their advance. By then, of course, the Roman empire wasn't quite
the empire any more.
And that is a perfectly good reason for not buying a K-3 - for the handful in here who hasn't already done so