Through the obscurity in which all the details are enveloped we can clearly perceive that those princes were men of taste. They were, as was natural, attached to the literature and the arts which reminded them of their superior origin and of that distant fatherland with which year after year it became more difficult to communicate. Although they were obliged, in order to defend themselves against so many enemies, to employ those mercenary soldiers, Athenians, Thebans, Spartans and Cretans, which then overran Asia, and to pay them dearly for their services, they also called skilful artists to their court and kept them there at great expense; the beautiful coins which have preserved their images down to our day are evidence of this, the decoration of their cities, of their temples, and of their palaces must have been in keeping with these; everywhere no doubt were Corinthian and Ionic buildings, statues of the Greek gods and heroes mixed with those portraits and historic groups which had been multiplied by the scholars of Lysippus, wall paintings, and perhaps some of those easel pictures signed by famous masters, for which the heirs of Alexander were such keen competitors. Artisans, who had followed the Greek armies in their march towards the East with the object of supplying the wants of any colonies which might be established in those distant regions, reproduced upon their vases and in their terra-cotta figures the motives of the painting, the sculpture, and the architecture which they left behind; goldsmiths, jewellers and armourers cut, chased, and stamped them in metal. And it was not only the Greek colonists who employed their skill. Like the Scythian tribes among whom the Greek cities of the Euxine were planted, the nations to the north of India were astonished and delighted by the elegance of their ornament and the variety of its forms. They imported from Bactriana these products of an art which was wanting to them, and soon set themselves, with the help perhaps of foreign artists settled among them, to imitate Grecian design in the courts of the Indian rajahs.