Maes Titianus

Maës Titianus was an ancient Roman traveller of Macedonian culture. He was a Greek speaker who came from a family of merchants who had both Syrian and Roman identity. Maës sent an expedition that is recorded as having travelled farthest along the Silk Road from the Mediterranean world. In the early 2nd century CE or at the end of the 1st century BC, during a lull in the intermittent Roman struggles with Parthia, his party reached the famous Stone Tower, somewhere in or around the Pamir Mountains close to the border with China. Nothing is known of him, apart from a brief credit in Ptolemy's Geography, 1.11.7, whose knowledge of Maës was gained through an intermediary source, Marinus of Tyre:"Marinus tells us that a certain Macedonian named Maen, who was also called Titian, son of a merchant father, and a merchant himself, noted the length of this journey [to the Stone Tower], although he did not come to Sera in person but sent other there"