With reference to the Indo-Roman trade, who among the following referred to the drain of Roman gold into India? 1. Strabo 2. Pliny 3. Ptolemy 4. Dio Chrysostom Select the answer using the code given below.

The drain of Roman gold into India was a significant concern for ancient writers due to the trade imbalance caused by the demand for Indian luxury goods. Pliny the Elder, in his work 'Natural History', explicitly lamented the drain of approximately 50 to 55 million sesterces annually to India. He criticized the Roman appetite for luxuries like spices and silks, which necessitated the export of vast quantities of gold and silver coins [2]. Similarly, Dio Chrysostom, a Greek philosopher and orator of the 1st-2nd century CE, also referred to this economic drain, noting that the Romans were sending their wealth to the East in exchange for useless trifles. While Strabo and Ptolemy provided extensive geographical and navigational details about the Indo-Roman trade routes and ports, they did not specifically focus on the moral or economic 'drain' of bullion in the same critical manner as Pliny and Dio Chrysostom [2].

Sources

1. [2] https://era.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1842/23448/Parmar2016.pdf?sequence=5&isAllowed=y