Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/72

 into close relations with each other? In all probability the result would have been similar to that which ensued when the ancestors of the Greeks began to deal with the more civilized Phœnicians and the people of Asia Minor. But in the case of the Hindoos, as we have said, the disciples had a less, instead of a greater, aptitude for the plastic arts than their teachers, and, moreover, the contact between the two was never complete nor was it of long duration. The only frontier upon which the interchange of idea was frequent and continuous was the north-west, which divided India from that Bactrian kingdom of which we know little more than the mere names of its princes and the date of its fall. But before the end of the second century this outpost of Hellenism had fallen before the attacks of those barbarians whom we call the Saci. In such an isolated position it could not long hope to maintain itself, especially after the rise of the Parthian monarchy had separated it from the empire of the Seleucidæ. Its existence must always have been precarious, and the mere fact that it did not succumb until the year 136 is enough to prove that several of its sovereigns must have been remarkable men. Should their annals ever be discovered they would probably form one of the strangest and most interesting episodes in the history of the Greek race.

Through the obscurity in which all the details are enveloped we can clearly perceive that those princes were men of taste. They were, as was natural, attached to the literature and the arts which reminded them of their superior origin and of that distant fatherland with which year after year it became more difficult to communicate. Athough they were obliged, in order to defend themselves against so many enemies, to employ those mercenary soldiers, Athenians, Thebans, Spartans and Cretans, which then overran Asia, and to pay them dearly for their services, they also called skilful artists to their court and kept them there at great expense; the beautiful coins which have preserved their images down to our day are evidence of this, the decoration of their cities, of their temples, and of their palaces must have been in keeping with these; everywhere no doubt were Corinthian and Ionic buildings, statues of the Greek gods and heroes mixed with those portraits and historic groups which had been multiplied by the scholars of Lysippus, wall paintings, and perhaps some of those easel pictures signed by famous masters, for which the heirs of