Alexander the Great’s pupils : Echoes of Greek paideia through theatre, between India and Central Asia

Résumé En

ew modern historians are still willing to give credit to Plutarch, who glorified Alexander the Great for having civilized Asia, making everyone read Homer and “the sons of the Persians, Susians, Gedrosians interpret the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles” (On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander the Great 1.5, 328d). Yet, many archaeological finds from Central Asia can reveal surprising traces of Greek paideia between Northern India and Sogdiana, from Hellenistic times up to the Islamic conquest! Throughout the 20th century, several terracotta and plaster finds from Begram and Peshawar have been interpreted as representing tragic scenes (like Antigone’s condemnation) or portraits of dramatic poets (like Sophocles and Menander). In the 1970s, the French excavations in Ai Khanum brought to light a Greek theater as well as a 3rd-2nd century BCE parchment with a tragic fragment, maybe by Sophocles. In the last decade, some of the so-called Gandhara trays have been interpreted as showing scenes inspired from Euripides’ tragedies about Hippolytus, or, more generally, from satiric dramas. Finally, in our joint study of the so-called Bactrian vases, made in silver from the 3rd to the 6th-7th century CE, we have discovered that even after the “Hunnic” conquest of Tokharistan and Northern India, the local elites were still familiar with Greek tragedies, like Sophocles’ Oidipous, nearly forgotten at that time in the West.In this paper, we sum up the evidence for one thousand years of Greek theater in the East. We present the historical and archaeological contexts and discuss the iconographic evidence, in relationship with its literary models. Finally, we try to give an evaluation of the cultural impact of Hellenism through theater, in the Barbarians’ paideia.