The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.369

c10.s1.369

For let it be supposed for a moment, since nothing can be known for certain about the art of Bactria under the Greeks till Bactria be excavated, that (the view has been taken) there was therefore no art there at all and the coins are just a freak—the most extreme view possible. Even this would not, as I see it, affect in the least anything I have written; it does not go to the question of the political, military or social values of either Greeks or Bactrians, for ability to carve a statue is not the only, or the most important, test of a man. A handful of Macedonians conquered and ruled half Asia, and in peace the race was so efficient that they fetched, both men and women, a higher price in the slave market than any other people, even Italians;¹ but not one of Alexander’s Macedonians could have engraved a coin or carved a statue to save his life. What the Greek kings did in Bactria, if we could see it, was probably rather extraordinary, just as we *shall* see, even if dimly, that what Demetrius and his lieutenants nearly did in India was extraordinary; one has only to look at the strength of the faces of Euthydemus and Demetrius to realise that they were no common men. Those who still believe in Greek ‘decadence’ in the third and second centuries B.C. may find them somewhat of a stumbling-block.