The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s2.130

c9.s2.130

Conditions in Babylonia were very different, for Babylonian civilisation was a city civilisation like the Greek and not a country one like the Iranian; and if it is necessary to keep Iran in mind when we come to Bactria, it may be useful to remember Babylonia when we come to the city civilisation of India. The Babylonians had welcomed Alexander; and after the preliminary troubles of the wars of the Successors, in which some Babylonian cities suffered,¹ the country settled down contentedly enough under Greek rule, and there was a religious and literary revival, aided by the policy of the early Seleucids, following Alexander’s lead, in restoring native temples.² Though Babylonian kings had once claimed dominion over the four quarters of the world there was no political hostility to the Seleucids, like the native revolts against the Ptolemies in Egypt; all that Babylonia now wanted was to lead her own life, to keep her own civilisation and laws, to trade and to study. She was ready to adopt such Greek practices as might be useful to her: she would reckon time by the Seleucid calendar, in a form adapted to her own year (p. 64), because it was a better system for business than reckoning by the regnal years of kings; Babylonians would add a Greek name to their own³ and learn Greek,⁴ even to writing Babylonian in Greek letters,⁵ for all these things were useful to merchants in a world where Greek was not only the official language but a widely spread medium of commerce; they would add the rescripts of the Seleucid kings to their own laws,⁶ as was proper for subjects to do; they might even write books in Greek, for it gave a wider public.