The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s2.22

c10.s2.22

The story has been rendered meaningless by the custom of dating Menander either in the second half of the second century or, even worse, about 125–95 B.C.³ One of the many merits of the late E. J. Rapson’s work in the Cambridge History of India was to place Menander in his correct period;¹ this has not been followed by subsequent writers,² but is so obviously right that it is needless to argue it afresh;³ everything that follows will bear it out. Menander’s chronology, like that of the Victory of Samothrace, has been an instructive instance of the danger of dating historical events by considerations drawn from artistic style. Because his coins are much inferior in style to those of Demetrius and his successors in Bactria, who could be approximately dated from Polybius, it was concluded that he must be late, so as to give time for the art to become ‘debased’; whereas in reality it means that the artists at his disposal in the rather remote eastern Punjab were inferior in skill to those who worked in Bactria. It is as though some historian in the distant future should place the reign of George V in the Aurignacian period on the strength of some of Epstein’s sculpture.