Europa Barbarorum AAR?

[Queequeg]

Since the savegames for the Alexander mod are incompatible with my new install, I'm starting again as Bactria. This will be a different style; I'm going to delve into a lot of the ethnicities and cultures of the area, as well as some of their cultural habits and how they change with the expansion of Bactrian power into India, Iran and Transoxiana.  I'll also use a lot of pictures of Greco-Bactrian and Greco-Indian art, which I hope you will agree is pretty fantastically awesome.  Look out for a lengthly intro later tonight, as I want to try to find some good maps of the area as it is not very well known even among history geeks. 

[Queequeg]

To Fight Besides the City of the Trojans: A Bactrian AAR for Europa Barbarorum

μήτηρ γάρ τέ μέ φησι θεὰ Θέτις ἀργυρόπεζα
διχθαδίας κῆρας φερέμεν θανάτοιο τέλος δέ.
εἰ μέν κ' αὖθι μένων Τρώων πόλιν ἀμφιμάχωμαι,
ὤλετο μέν μοι νόστος, ἀτὰρ κλέος ἄφθιτον ἔσται
εἰ δέ κεν οἴκαδ' ἵκωμι φίλην ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν,
ὤλετό μοι κλέος ἐσθλόν, ἐπὶ δηρὸν δέ μοι αἰὼν
ἔσσεται, οὐδέ κέ μ' ὦκα τέλος θανάτοιο κιχείη.

For my mother Thetis the goddess of silver feet tells me
I carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death. Either,
if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans,
my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting;
but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers,
the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life
left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly.

-Monologue by Achilles from The Iliad, contemplating two possible fates.

I intend, as much as possible, to keep in character for this.  I shall at all points make references (as far as my education in the Classics of Greek, Indian and Iranian literature may permit me) to contemporary peoples, faiths and philosophies.  I shall not attempt to write from a single perspective, as a historian writing of recent events in a Bactria that has not yet conquered Afghanistan would be quite different from one that has established an Empire stretching from India to the Caspian. Events, like the adaptation of Buddhism and the establishment of Greco-Buddhist art, shall be dealt with in the greatest possible detail that I can provide. 

The Bactrians are, in my opinion, perhaps the single greatest utterly forgotten people.  All Buddhist art draws upon their heritage, from Japan to Jakarta and, eventually, perhaps even into Christianity.  All subsequent powers in the region up until the modern day draw greatly on the legacy of the Greco-Bactrians, be they Hindu, Muslim, Persian or Arab.  What is more, they managed to accomplish this in what we all know today to be a "difficult" area, and were never free of nomadic attack, and were often squeezed uncomfortably between pressures from Iran, the Steppe and India.

I like this a lot more than Macedon; the Antigonid Kingdom was always exhausted, and could not even muster a competent defense when the Romans finally came knocking.  On the other hand, the Bactrians left a permanent mark of their civilization upon all the great civilizations of Asia.   

[Queequeg]

I, Hector of Smyrna, have been commissioned by King Diodotus to write upon the land of Bactria before the independence of the Bactrian Satrapy and the birth of our new Kingdom, so that our descendants may know of the land before the great Alexander conquered the known world. 

There are three primary divisions between the natives of this area, and it is said that these divisions came with the advent of the great Persian preacher Zarthosht, or Zarathustra. Zarathustra, according to some learned Persians, was born here, and sought to reform the practices of its peoples.   Zarathustra is said to have preached that there was one good god, Zeus-Ahura Mazda, and one bad God, Angra Mainyu, who does not have a Greek (or other) equivalent.  Zoroaster is said to have preached good thoughts and good deeds, but he also preached an end to cattle raiding, which unfortunately for him was, and remains, the dearest custom of the Scythians. The Scythians, being a warlike and woman-ruled people, slaughtered Ahura Mazda and shattered the single Persian people into nomad Scythians and agricultural Persians.  To the East of the Persians, however, is another divide, for the people of the East, or Indians, worship Gods that the Persians deem evil, while the Indians accuse the Persian gods of equal wickedness. 

The customs of the Persians are well known and have been discussed by the great Herodotus, but for Posterity's sake I shall write that they are a not-uncivilized people who are marked as much by their pride as their femininity.  It is the Persian custom to leave their dead exposed in towers and to dress extravagantly in gold and garish finery, and they have many odd views on the duality of morality and the "omnipresence" and "omnipotence" of a "good" God, who shall one day destroy or remake the world in a great holocaust.  The Persians seem queerly unified in this Philosophy, and many of our great scholars wonder why one Philosophy appears so dominant here while among the Hellenes debate is constant. The Persians here are a light people, often with the red hair of the Thracians or the oddly colored eyes of the Scythians.

The Scythians are likewise well known from the accounts of Herodotus, but appear to have either changed some in the past century or perhaps are different here from Mikra Skythia.  While the Scythians of old were rightly famous for their archery, it is now the favored tactic of the Scythians to use long spears on horseback, a tactic taken from the great Makedonian Companions of Alexander who fought in a similar fashion.  They are a treacherous, womanish people with no knowledge of letters of any sort and little of agriculture.  The Scythians are much obsessed with their physical appearance, and often tattoo the images of various spirits or Gods on their bodies. 


Some among the Scythians bind the skulls and ritually scar the faces of their infants to provoke terror in their enemies, and there are those among the Greeks who doubted their humanity.  However, their appearance would appear to give them no special immunity from good Greek spears. 

The Scythians are very fond of all manner of intoxicating substances.  They have become enamored of our imported wine, appear oddly obsessed with the cannabis plant and its ritual significance in smoke baths, and are so obsessed with the plant that they leave bags of it for their kings so that they might smoke it in the afterlife.   They also appear to worship a drink called Homa, produced from a rare plant, that is strictly forbidden to Persians and now to Greeks, though the Scythians are very fond of it and sometimes even go into battle under its effect. 

The Indians appear to be related to both the Scythians and the Persians, though they worship different Gods, have different stories and do not beef.  The great Indian Emperor, Chandragupta Maurya, lead a great Maurya Empire of all Indians that managed to defeat many Greeks.  Chandragupta's Grandson, Ashoka the Great, maintains many of the lands to the East of Bactria and is said to have conquered many famous lands in that vast country.  Among the Indians, there appear to be many philosophies, with the native having many Gods and resembling our Greek practices, as well as those of the Persians.  There are also those called Jains or Buddhists, who disavow the material world and are similar to our Greek Cynics. 

[Faeelin]

Hrm. For some reason, I am reminded of this: http://www.tcnj.edu/~joss/2009/2009%20Blair.pdf

[Queequeg]