Time and again, in the history of man's struggle towards 'civilized' living, a nation or settled area of comparatively advanced culture has been overwhelmed by a less developed but tougher human group, often of nomadic origin. So it was with west and central Asia, when the Parthians came. In the wake of Alexander the Great the Macedonian Greeks, supplanting the Achaemenian Persians, had established an empire that reached from Syria to central Asia and the Punjab. Overstretched, underprotected, the realm was constantly eroded by one of its subject peoples, the Iranian and once nomadic Parthians, until the Greek government was expelled west across the Euphrates. But Greek culture was less easy to remove, even had the Parthians wished to eradicate it; and the fascinating story of what happened to Greek and Asian arts under Parthian domination, and of the strange progeny to which they gave birth, forms the theme of this book.