Although the cults of the old Greek deities in the new cities, with their splendid apparatus of festivals and sacrifice might still hold the multitude, men turned ever in large numbers to alien religions, felt as more potent because strange, and the various gods of Egypt and the East began to find larger entrance in the Greek world. Even in the old Greek religion before Alexander there had been large elements of foreign origin, and that the Greeks should now do honour to the gods of the lands into which they came, as we find the Cilician and Syrian Greeks doing to Baal-tars and Baal-marcod and the Egyptian Greeks to the gods of Egypt, was only in accordance with the primitive way of thinking. But it was a sign of the times when Serapis and Isis, Osiris and Anubis began to take place among the popular deities in the old Greek lands. The origin of the cult of Serapis, which Ptolemy I. found, or established, in Egypt is disputed; the familiar type of the god is the invention of a Greek artist, but the name and religion came from somewhere in the East (see discussion under [Serapis]). Before the end of the 2nd century B.C. there were temples of Serapis in Athens, Rhodes, Delos and Orchomenos in Boeotia. Under the Roman empire the cult of Isis, now furnished with an official priesthood and elaborate ritual, became really popular in the Hellenistic world. King Asoka in the 3rd century B.C. sent Buddhist missionaries from India to the Mediterranean lands; their preaching has, it is true, left little or no trace in our Western records. But other religions of Oriental origin penetrated far, the worship of the Phrygian Great Mother, and in the 2nd century A.D. the religion of the Mithras (Lafaye, Culte des divinités alexandrines, 1884; Roscher, articles “Anubis,” “Isis,” &c.; F. Cumont, Mystères de Mithra, Eng. trans., 1903; Les Religions orientales dans le paganisme romain, 1906).
The Jews, too, by the time of Christ were finding in many quarters an open door. Besides those who were ready to go the whole length and accept circumcision, numbers adopted particular Jewish practices, observing the Sabbath, for instance, or turned from polytheism to the doctrine of the One God. The synagogues in the Gentile cities had generally attached to them, in more or less close connexion a multitude of those “who feared God” and frequented the services (Schürer, Gesch. d. jüd. Volks, iii. 102-135).
Among the religions which penetrated the Hellenistic world from an Eastern source, one ultimately overpowered all the rest and made that world its own. The inter-action of Christianity and Hellenism opens large fields of inquiry. Christianity. The teaching of Christ Himself contained, as it is given to us, no Hellenic element; so far as He built with older material, that material was exclusively the sacred tradition of Israel. So soon, however, as the Gospel was carried in Greek to Greeks, Hellenic elements began to enter into it, in the writings, for instance, of St Paul, the appeal to what “nature” teaches would be generally admitted to be the adoption of a Greek mode of thought. It was, of course, impossible that speaking in Greek and living among Greeks, Christians should not to some extent use current conceptions for the expression of their faith. There was, at the same time, in the early Church a powerful current of feeling hostile to Greek culture, to the wisdom of the world. What the attitude of the New People should be to it, whether it was all bad, or whether there were good things in it which Christians should appropriate, was a vital question that always confronted them. The great Christian School of Alexandria represented by Clement and Origen effected a durable alliance between Greek education and Christian doctrine. In proportion as the Christian Church had to go deeper into metaphysics in the formulation of its belief as to God, as to Christ, as to the soul, the Greek philosophical terminology, which was the only vehicle then available for precise thought, had to become more and more an essential part of Christianity. At the same time Christian ethics incorporated much of the current popular philosophy, especially large Stoical elements. In this way the Church itself, as we shall see, became a propagator of Hellenism (see Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 1888; Wendland, “Christentum u. Hellenismus” in Neue Jahrb. f. kl. Alt. ix. 1902, p. 1 f.; and Die hellenistisch-römische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zu Judentum u. Christentum, 1907).
B. Effect upon non-Hellenic Peoples.—Hellenism secured by the Macedonian conquest points d’appui from the Mediterranean to India, and brought the system of commerce and intercourse into Greek hands. What effect did it produce in these various countries? What effect again in the lands of the West which fell under the sway of Rome?
(i.) India.—In India (including the valleys of the Kabul and its northern tributaries, then inhabited by an Indian, not, as now, by an Iranian, population) Alexander planted a number of Greek towns. Alexandria “under the Greek cities. Caucasus” commanded the road from Bactria over the Hindu-Kush; it lay somewhere among the hills to the north of Kabul, perhaps at Opian near Charikar (MacCrindle, Ancient India, p. 87, note 4); that it is the city meant by “Alasadda the capital of the Yona (Greek) country” in the Buddhist Mahavanso, as is generally affirmed, seems doubtful (Tarn, loc. cit. below, p. 269, note 7). We hear of a Nicaea in the Kabul valley itself (near Jalalabad?), another Nicaea on the Hydaspes (Jhelum) where Alexander crossed it, with Bucephala (see [Bucephalus]) opposite, a city (unnamed) on the Acesines (Chenab) (Arr. vi. 29, 3), and a series of foundations strung along the Indus to the sea. Soon after 321, Macedonian supremacy beyond the Indus collapsed before the advance of the native Maurya dynasty, and about 303 even large districts west of the Indus were ceded by Seleucus. But the chapter of Greek rule in India was not yet closed. The Maurya dynasty broke up about 180 B.C., and at the same time the Greek rulers of Bactria began to lead expeditions across the Hindu-Kush. Menander in the middle of the 2nd century B.C. extended his rule from the Hindu-Kush to the Ganges. Then “Scythian” peoples from central Asia, Sakas and Yue-chi, having conquered Bactria, gradually squeezed within ever-narrowing limits the Greek power in India. The last Greek prince, Hermaeus, seems to have succumbed about 30 B.C. It was just at this time that the Graeco-Roman world of the West was consolidated as the Roman Empire, and, though Greek rule in India had disappeared, active commercial intercourse went on between India and the Hellenistic lands. How far, through these changes, did the Greek population settled by Alexander or his successors in India maintain their distinctive character? What influence did Hellenism during the centuries in which it was in contact with India exert upon the native mind? Only extremely qualified answers can be given to these questions. Capital data are possibly waiting there under ground—the Kabul valley for instance is almost virgin soil for the archaeologist—and any conclusion we can arrive at is merely provisional. If certain statements of classical authors were true, Hellenism in India flourished exceedingly. But the phil-hellenic Brahmins in Philostratus’ life of Apollonius had no existence outside the world of romance, and the statement of Dio Chrysostom that the Indians were familiar with Homer in their own tongue (Or. liii. 6) is a traveller’s tale. India, the sceptical observe, has yielded no Greek inscription, except, of course, on the coins of the Greek kings and their Scythian rivals and successors. To what extent can it be inferred from legends on coins that Greek was a living speech in India? Perhaps to no large extent outside the Greek courts. The fact, however, that the Greek character was still used on coins for two centuries after the last Greek dynasty had come to an end shows that the language had a prestige in India which any theory, to be plausible, must account for. If we argue by probability from what we know of the conditions, we have to consider that the Greek rule in India was all through fighting for existence, and can have had “little time or energy left for such things as art, science and literature” (Tarn, loc. cit. p. 292), and it is pointed out that a casual reference to the Greeks in an Indian work contemporary with Menander characterizes them as “viciously valiant Yonas.” How long is it probable that Greek colonies planted in the midst of alien races would have remained distinct? Mr Tarn builds much upon the fact that the descendants of the Greek Branchidae settled by Xerxes in central Asia had become bilingual in six generations (Curt. vii. 5, 29). But the Greek race before Alexander had not its later prestige, and we must consider such a sentiment as leads the Eurasian to-day to cling to his Western parentage, so that the instance of the Branchidae cannot be used straight away for the time after Alexander. Certainly, had the Greek colonies in India been active political bodies, we could hardly have failed to find some trace of them, in civic architecture or in inscriptions, by this time. Perhaps we should rather think of them as resembling the Greeks found to-day dispersed over the nearer East with interests mainly commercial, easily assimilating themselves to their environment. A notice derived from Agatharchides (about 140 B.C.) possibly refers to the activity of these Indian Greeks in the sea-borne trade of the Indian Ocean (Müller, Geog. Graeci min. i. p. 191; cf. Diod. iii. 47. 9). As to what India derived from Greece there has been a good deal of erudite debate. That the Indian drama took its origin from the Greek is still maintained by some scholars, though hardly proved. There is no doubt that Indian astronomy shows marked Hellenic features, including actual Greek words borrowed. But by far the most signal borrowing is in the sphere Greek art. of art. The stream of Buddhist art which went out eastwards across Asia had its rise in North-West India, and the remains of architecture and sculpture unearthed in this region enable us to trace its development back to pure Greek types. It remains, of course, a question whether the tradition was transmitted by the Greek dynasties from Bactria or by intercourse with the Roman empire; the latter seems now almost certain; but the fact of the influence is equally striking on either theory. How far to the east the distinctive influence of Greece went is shown by the seal-impressions with Athena and Eros types found by Dr Stein in the buried cities of Khotan (Sand-buried Ruins of Khotan, p. 396), and according to Mr E. B. Havell, there exist “paintings treasured as the most precious relics and rarely shown to Europeans, which closely resemble the Graeco-Buddhist art of India” in some of the oldest temples of Japan (Studio, vol. xxvii. 1903, p. 26).
See A. A. Macdonell, History of Sanskrit Literature (1900) p. 411 f., and the references on p. 452; V. A. Smith, Early History of India (1904); Grünwedel, Buddhist Art in India (Eng. trans., edited by Dr Burgess, 1901); W. W. Tarn, “Notes on Hellenism in Bactria and India” in Journ. of Hell. Studies, xxii. (1902); Foucher, L’Art gréco-bouddhique du Gandhâra (1905).
(ii.) Iran and Babylonia.—The colonizing activity of Alexander and his successors found a large field in Iran where, up till his time, hardly any walled towns seem to have existed. Cities now arose in all its provinces, superseding in Greek cities. many cases native market places and villages, and holding the vantage-points of commerce. Media, Polybius says, was defended by a chain of Greek cities from barbarian incursion (x. 27. 3); in the neighbourhood of Teheran seem to have stood Heraclea and Europus. In Eastern Iran the cities which are its chief places to-day then bore Greek names, and looked upon Alexander or some other Hellenic prince as their founder. Khojend, Herat, Kandahar were Alexandrias, Merv was an Alexandria till it changed that name for Antioch. When the farther provinces broke away under independent Greek kings, a Eucratidēa and a Demetrias attested their glory. Even in a town definitely barbarian like Syrinca in 209 B.C. there was a resident mercantile community of Greeks (Polyb. x. 31). The bulk of Greek historical literature having perished, and in the absence of both archaeological data from Iran, we can only speculate on the inner life of these Greek cities under a strange sky. One precious document is the decree of Antioch in Persis (about 206 B.C.) cited in a recently discovered inscription (Kern, Inschr. v. Magnesia, No. 61; Dittenberger, Orient. gr. Inscr. i. No. 233). This shows us the normal organs of a Greek city, boulē, ecclesia, prytaneis, &c., in full working, with the annual election of magistrates, and ordinary forms of public action. But more than this, it throws a remarkable light upon the solidarity of the Hellenic Dispersion. The citizen body had been increased some generations before by colonists from Magnesia-on-Meander sent at the invitation of Antiochus I. The Magnesians are instigated by pan-hellenic enthusiasm. And we see a brisk diplomatic intercourse between the scattered Greek cities going on. It is especially the local religious festivals which bind them together. Antioch in Persis, of course, sends athletes to the great games of Greece, but in this decree it determines to take part in the new festival being started in honour of Artemis at Magnesia. The loyalty, too, expressed towards the Seleucid king implies a predominant interest in pan-hellenic unity, natural in colonies isolated among barbarians. A list is given (fragmentary) of other Greek cities in Babylonia and beyond from which similar decrees had come.
In the middle of the 3rd century B.C. Bactria and Sogdiana broke away from the Seleucid empire; independent Greek kings reigned there till the country was conquered by nomads from Central Asia (Sacae and Yue-chi) a Greek kingdoms. century later. Alexander had settled large masses of Greeks in these regions (Greeks, it would seem, not Macedonians), whose attempts to return home in 325 and 323 had been frustrated, and it may well be that a racial antagonism quickened the revolt against Macedonian rule in 250. The history of these Greek dynasties is for us almost a blank, and for estimating the amount and quality of Hellenism in Bactria during the 180 years or so of Macedonian and Greek rule, we are reduced to building hypotheses upon the scantiest data. Probably nothing important bearing on the subject has been left out of view in W. W. Tarn’s learned discussion (Journ. of Hell. Stud. xxii., 1902, p. 268 f.), and his result is mainly negative, that palpable evidences of an active Hellenism have not been found; he inclines to think that the Greek kingdoms mainly took on the native Iranian colour. The coins, of course, are adduced on the other side, being not only Greek in type and legend, but (in many cases) of a peculiarly fine and vigorous execution; and excellence in one branch of art is thought to imply that other branches flourished in the same milieu. Tarn suggests that they may be a “sport,” a spasmodic outbreak of genius (see [Bactria] and works there quoted). In these outlying provinces the national Iranian sentiment seems to have been most intense, and it is interesting to see that under Alexander Hellenism appeared as “belligerent civilization,” in the attempt to suppress practices like the exposure of the dying to the dogs (an exaggeration of Zoroastrianism) and, possibly also, abhorrent forms of marriage (Strabo xi. 517; Porphyr. De abstin. 4. 21; Plut. De fort. Al. 5).
The west of Iran slipped from the Seleucids in the course of the 2nd century B.C. to be joined to the Parthian kingdom, or fall under petty native dynasties. Soon after 130 Babylonia too was conquered by the Parthian, and Mesopotamia before 88. Then the reconquest of the nearer East by Oriental dynasties was checked by the advance of Rome. Asia Minor and Syria remained substantial parts of the Roman Empire till the Mahommedan conquests of the 7th century A.D. began a new process of recoil on the part of the Hellenistic power. In Babylonia, also, in Susiana and Mesopotamia, Hellenism had been established in a system of cities for 200 years before the coming of the Parthian. The greatest of all of them stood here—almost on the site of Bagdad—Seleucia on the Tigris. It superseded Babylon as the industrial focus of Babylonia and counted some 600,000 inhabitants (plebs urbana) according to Pliny, N.H. vi. § 122 (cf. Joseph. Arch. xviii. § 372, 374; for coins, probably of Seleucia, with the type of Tychē issued in the years A.D. 43-44 see Wroth, Coins of Parthia, p. xlvi.). The list of other Greek cities known to us in these regions is too long to give here (see Droysen, loc. cit., and E. Schwartz in Kern’s Inschr. v. Magnesia, p. 171 f.). In Mesopotamia, Pliny especially notes how the character of the country was changed when the old village life was broken in upon by new centres of population in the cities of Macedonian foundation (Pliny, N.H. vi. § 117; cf. K. Regling, “Histor. geog. d. mesopot. Parallelograms,” in Lehmann’s Beiträge, i. p. 442 f.).
We do not look in vain for notable names in Hellenistic literature and philosophy produced on an Asiatic soil. Diogenes, the Stoic philosopher (head of the school in 156 B.C.), was a “Babylonian,” i.e. a citizen of Seleucia on the Hellenic-Iranian culture. Tigris; so too was Seleucus, the mathematician and astronomer, being possibly a native Babylonian; Berossus, who wrote a Babylonian history in Greek (before 261 B.C.) was a Hellenized native. Apollodorus, Strabo’s authority for Parthian history (c. 80 B.C.?), was from the Greek city of Artemita in Assyria. When the Parthians rent away provinces from the Seleucid empire, the Greek cities did not cease to exist by passing under barbarian rule. Gradually no doubt the Greek colonies were absorbed, but the process was a long one. In 140 and 130 B.C. those of Iran were ready to rise in support of the Seleucid invader (Joseph. Arch. xiii. § 184; Justin xxxviii. 10.6-8). Just so, Crassus in 53 B.C. found a welcome in the Greek cities of Mesopotamia. Seleucia on the Tigris is spoken of by Tacitus as being in A.D. 36 “proof against barbarian influences and mindful of its founder Seleucus” (Ann. vi. 42). How important an element the Greek population of their realm seemed to the Parthian kings we can see by the fact that they claimed to be themselves champions of Hellenism. From the reign of Artabanus I. (128/7-123 B.C.) they bear the epithet of “Phil-hellen” as a regular part of their title upon the coins. Under the later reigns the Tychē figure (the personification of a Greek city) becomes common as a coin type (Wroth, Coins of Parthia, pp. liii., lxxiv.). The coinage may, of course, give a somewhat one-sided representation of the Parthian kingdom, being specially designed for the commercial class, in which the population of the Greek cities was, we may guess, predominant. The state of things which prevails in modern Afghanistan, where trade is in the hands of a class distinct in race and speech (Persian in this case) from the ruling race of fighters is very probably analogous to that which we should have found in Iran under the Parthians.[2] That the Parthian court itself was to some extent Hellenized is shown by the story, often adduced, that a Greek company of actors was performing the Bacchae before the king when the head of Crassus was brought in. This single instance need not, it is true, show a Hellenism of any profundity; still it does show that certain parts of Hellenism had become so essential to the lustre of a court that even an Arsacid could not be without them. Artavasdes, king of Armenia (54?-34 B.C.) composed Greek tragedies and histories (Plut. Crass. 33). Then the prestige of the Roman Empire, with its prevailingly Hellenistic culture, must have told powerfully. The Parthian princes were in many cases the children of Greek mothers who had been taken into the royal harems (Plut. Crass. 32). Musa, the queen-mother, whose head appears on the coins of Phraataces (3/2 B.C.-A.D. 4) had been an Italian slave-girl. Many of the Parthian princes resided temporarily, as hostages or refugees, in the Roman Empire; but one notes that the nation at large looked with anything but favour upon too liberal an introduction of foreign manners at the court (Tac. Ann. ii. 2).