The Greeks in Bactria and India c6.1

c6.1

I HAVE dreamt of this book for forty years; it is fortunate for me that I had no opportunity of taking it up earlier. No Greek historian has yet attempted to handle the subject as a connected whole or to put it in its right place as a lost chapter of Hellenistic history. What needs saying about the book itself and its plan is given in the Introduction, which is meant to be read first; but I may here anticipate two obvious criticisms. I am aware that it is very reprehensible to write a book where you have to depend in part on second-hand information, as I have to do on the Oriental side. But it is time that somebody with some knowledge of the Hellenistic world tried to get the more important Greek side into order, for one sees how often the Orientalist is hampered by not knowing what there is; and it is no use waiting for a scholar who shall have a proper and *critical* knowledge of both sides, or rather of all the sides, for he has not yet been born. And even in using a translation one need not entirely abandon one’s common sense. I am also aware that history should be written impersonally. But to write this book impersonally was not possible; much of it is spade-work, and it had to get written as best it could, other considerations being subordinated to an effort to make the bearings of the rather complex collection of little details clear to the reader. I hope that the numerous cross-references may be of use here, for often it has been necessary to refer forward for the evidence for some statement, sometimes even on a large scale; for example, Chapter VIII presupposes a knowledge of Appendix 16, and the attempt in Chapter II to get the outline of the lost work of the historian whom I have had to call ‘Trogus’ source’ presupposes a knowledge of the whole book.