What, in return, of the Greeks? Like Alexander, the vast majority were not bilingual, and their schooling still absorbed them. Beside the
Oxus, the -wall which appears to divide the Hellenistic city has been proposed as a wall to divide the Greeks from the natives, as in old
Massilia (Marseilles). But there is more to be said here. The rulers were often more open in their patronage than the cities: court Jews
and a few Egyptians served several of the early Ptolemies. Alexander's associates did not at once forget his ambition; the army needed
good men, especially Iranian horsemen; Ptolemy invented a new god, Serapis, which was indeed a fusion of Greek and native forms.
True, the Attalid kings at Pergamum celebrated themselves as the defenders of Greek culture from the raids of barbarian Gauls. In Egypt,
however, the earlier Ptolemies set Greek culture beside and above the customs of their new kingdom. A man such as Eratosthenes, the
polymath, had an openness to people of all native origins, underpinned by his general theory of climatic 'zones' and geography.
Clearchus, who walked to the Oxus river from Delphi, also compared the wisdom of the Jews, the Brahmins, and the Magi. A Seleucid
envoy to India, Megasthenes, left a fascinating mixture of observation and venial misunderstanding from his journey to the Indian court
of the Maurya king on the Ganges. Greek education and theory did not entirely distort the value of the lively account of the Red Sea
tribes which was written by a secretary to an official of the later Ptolemies, the appealing Agatharchides (flor. 170-145).
Head Of Serapis In Green Basalt, now in the Villa Albam in Rome. This Roman copy probably reflects the cult-statue made (third
century B.C.) by Bryaxis for the temple of Ptolemy I's new god in Alexandria. Serapis was created by grafting Greek elements on to the
old Egyptian god Osor-Apis; but this image is very much in the Greek style, with a head closely related to depictions of the Greek gods
Zeus and Asklepios. The corn-measure (modius) on the head is a symbol of fertility.
On one cardinal point, Greek observers of foreign peoples were more sharp-eyed than a whole generation of their modern historians.
Intelligent men were quick to spot the lethal designs of Roman power, the 'cloud in the West' which menaced their freedom. Certainly
the war with Hannibal was not far gone before mainland Greeks saw that Rome, not Carthage, was the threat, exemplified already in
Sicily. They had not learned Latin, but they were already more perceptive than scholars who have learnt it since. By 146 Corinth was
sacked and Agatharchides was remarking how the remote Sabaean Arabs owed their luxurious survival 'until our time' to their distance