Looking East from the Classical World does any other classical evidence point to an established central Asian trade
route. One Greek work of the early first century..has been thought to
do so: theParthian Stationsof Isidorus of Charax, which the only available
English edition and translation describes in its subtitle as ‘‘an account of the
overlandtrade routebetween the Levant and India.’’^65 In fact, this short text is
a description of the main official and military route though the Parthian Em-
pire, starting from the crossing of the Euphrates at Zeugma (at the time the
accepted boundary between the Roman and Parthian empires), and continu-
ing south-east to Babylonia, north-east across Iran, then south-east again,
to end at ‘‘Alexandropolis, the metropolis of Arachosia’’ (Kandahar): ‘‘so far
stretches the dominion [epikrateia] of the Parthians.’’ A traveller who con-
tinued on his journey would have arrived, as the subtitle of the English edi-
tion implies, in India or rather, modern Pakistan, not at the borders of China,
which lie more than a thousand kilometres north-east of Kandahar, beyond
the Hindu Kush and the Pamirs. Thus, the historical existence of an estab-
lished ‘‘Silk Road’’ in the centuries between Alexander and Shapur I remains
an open question.
Since, by contrast, we can be certain that trade did cross Syria, go down
the Euphrates to Babylonia and the gulf, and continue by sea to India, it
may seem all the more surprising that we understand so little of Babylonia
in the last centuries..and the first centuries.., either from reasonably
well-informed classical sources or from local evidence. If political circum-
stances ever allow the continuation of archaeological and documentary work
in Iraq, a study of the region from Alexander to Muhammed would be of
exceptional interest, both for the clash of cultures (Akkadian, Iranian, Ara-
maic, Graeco-Roman) and for religious history. Christianity was certainly
established in Babylonia by the end of the second century, and it was from an
Aramaic-speaking region of southern Babylonia that Mani, ‘‘the apostle of
Jesus Christ,’’ arose to preach his heretical, dualistic version of Christianity
in the third century..Although the Roman emperors, Diocletian and
Maximian, denounced Manichaeism as ‘‘arising from the Persian race which
is hostile to us,’’ the context and setting of Mani’s early preaching was not
Iranian at all, but Aramaic.^66 Moreover, the long-established Jewish commu-
in M. Austin, J. Harries, and C. Smith, eds.,Modus Operandi: Essays in Honour of Geoffrey
Rickman(BICSsupp. , ), – ( chapter of the present volume).
.W.H.Schoff,Parthian Stations by Isidore of Charax: An Account of the Overland Trade
Route between the Levant and India in the First Century BC.The GreekText with aTranslation and
Commentary().
. See P. Brown, ‘‘The Diffusion of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire,’’Journ. Rom.