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.[1] 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).
Such slight notices in Western literature do not give us any penetrating view into the operation of Hellenism among the Iranians. As an expression of the Iranian mind we have the Avesta and the Pehlevi theological literature. Unfortunately in a question of this kind the dating of our documents is the first matter of importance, and it seems that we can only assign dates to the different parts of the Avesta by processes of fine-drawn conjecture. And even if we could date the Avesta securely, we could only prove borrowing by more or less close coincidences of idea, a tempting but uncertain method of inquiry. Taking an opinion based on such data for what it is worth, we may note that Darmesteter believed in the influence of the later Greek philosophy (Philonian and Neo-platonic) as one of those which shaped the Avesta as we have it (Sacred Books of the East, iv. 54 f.), but we must also note that such an influence is emphatically denied by Dr L. Mills (Zarathushtra and the Greeks, Leipzig, 1906). Outside literature, we have to look to the artistic remains offered by the region to determine Hellenic influence. But here, too, the preliminary classification of the documents is beset with doubt. In the case of small objects like gems the place of manufacture may be far from the place of discovery. The architectural remains are solidly in situ, but we may have such vast disagreement as to date as that between Dieulafoy and M. de Morgan with respect to domed buildings of Susa, a disagreement of at least five centuries. It is enough then here to observe that Iran and Babylonia do, as a matter of fact, continually yield the explorer objects of workmanship either Greek or influenced by Greek models, belonging to the age after Alexander, and that we may hence infer at any rate such an influence of Hellenism upon the tastes of the richer classes as would create a demand for these things.
For gems see “Gobineau” in the Rev. archéol., vols. xxvii., xxviii. (1874); Ménant, Recherches sur la glyptique orientale, ii. 189 f.; E. Babelon, Catalogue des camées de la Bibl. Nat. (1897), p. 56; A. Furtwängler, Die antiken Gemmen, pp. 165, 369 ff.; Figurines: Heuzey, Fig. ant. du Louvre (1883) p. 3; J. P. Peters, Nippur, ii. 128; Military standard: Heuzey, Comptes rendus de l’Acad. d. Inscr. (1895) p. 16; Rev. d’Assyr. v. (1903), p. 103 f. Alabaster vase: Sykes, Ten Thousand Miles in Persia, p. 445. In the case of the architectural remains, the Greek tradition is obvious at Hatra (Jacquerel, Rev. archéol., 1897 [ii.], 343 f.), and in the relics of the temple at Kingavar (Dieulafoy, L’Art antique de la Perse, v. p. 10 f.).
If any vestige of Hellenism still survived under the Sassanian kings, our records do not show it. The spirit of the Sassanian monarchy was more jealously national than that of the Arsacid, and alien grafts could hardly have flourished under it. Of course, if Darmesteter was right in seeing Sassanian empire. a Greek element in Zoroastrianism, Greek influence must still have operated under the new dynasty, which recognized the national religion. But, as we saw, the Greek influence has been authoritatively denied. At the court a limited recognition might be given, as fashion veered, to the values prevalent in the Hellenistic world. The story of Hormisdas in Zosimus is suggestive in this connexion (Zosim. Hist. nov. ii. 27). Chosroes I. interested himself in Greek philosophy and received its professors from the West with open arms (Agath. ii. 28 f.); according to one account, he had his palace at Ctesiphon built by Greeks (Theophylact. Simocat. v. 6).
But the account of Chosroes’ mode of action makes it plain that the Hellenism once planted in Iran had withered away; representatives of Greek learning and skill have all to be imported from across the frontier.
For Hellenism in Babylonia and Iran, see the useful article of M. Victor Chapot in the Bull. et mémoires de la Soc. Nat. des Antiquaires de France for 1902 (published 1904), p. 206 f., which gives a conspectus of the relevant literature.
(iii.) Asia Minor.—Very different were the fortunes of Hellenism in those lands which became annexed to the Roman Empire.
In Asia Minor, we have seen how, even before Alexander,
Hellenism had begun to affect the native races and Persian
nobility. During Alexander’s own reign, we cannot
trace any progress in the Hellenization of the interior,
nor can we prove here his activity as a builder of
Greek cities of
the Diadochi.
cities. But under the dynasties of his successors a
great work of city-building and colonization went on. Antigonus
fixed his capital at the old Phrygian town of Celaenae, and the
famous cities of Nicaea and Alexandria Troas owed to him
their first foundation, each as an Antigonia; they were refounded
and renamed by Lysimachus (301–281 B.C.). Then we have
the great system of Seleucid foundations. Sardis, the Seleucid
capital in Asia Minor, had become a Greek city before the end
of the 3rd century B.C. The main high road between the Aegean
coast and the East was held by a series of new cities. Going
west from the Cilician Gates we have Laodicea Catacecaumene,
Apamea, the Phrygian capital which absorbed Celaenae, Laodicea
on the Lycus, Antioch-on-Meander, Antioch-Nysa, Antioch-Tralles.
To the south of this high road we have among the
Seleucid foundations Antioch in Pisidia (colonized with Magnesians
from the Meander) and Stratonicea in Caria; in the
region to the north of it the most famous Seleucid colony was
Thyatira. Along the southern coast, where the houses of Seleucus
and Ptolemy strove for predominance, we find the names of
Berenice, Arsinoë and Ptolemais confronting those of Antioch
and Seleucia. With the rise of the Attalid dynasty of Pergamum,
a system of Pergamene foundation begins to oppose the Seleucid
in the interior, bearing such names as Attalia, Philetaeria,
- ↑ “Ce sont les Tadjik de l’Afghanistan qui constituent les trente-deux corps de métier, qui tiennent boutique, expédient les marchandises, représentent, en un mot, la vie industrielle et commerciale de la nation. Ce sont aussi les Tadjik des villes qui forment la classe lettrée, et qui ont empêché les Afghans de retomber dans la barbarie.” (Reclus, Nouvelle Géograph. univ. ix. p. 71.)
