The expedition of ALEXANDER gave rise to intercourse which was kept up by the Greek kingdom of Bactria, and recent Indian discoveries both of coins and sculptures prove more and more the great influence which Greek art exercised in India up to the commencement of our era. STRABO says that, about B.C. 22, NICOLAUS DAMASCENUS fell in with three Indian ambassadors at Antioch Epidaphne on their way to the Court of AUGUSTUS, and that their credentials were in the Greek language. DIODORUS quoting IAMBULUS speaks of King PALIBOTHRA in the early part of the 1st century as a lover of the Greeks. DIO CHRYSOSTOM mentions that the poems of HOMER were sung by the Indians, and ÆLIAN says that not only the Indians but the kings of Persia translated and sang them. If the travels of APOLLONIUS and DAMIS are to be credited, the Greek language was spoken in the Punjaub in the first half-century of our era, and frequent intercourse appears to have taken place between that country and Egypt.[38] PLINY in the 1st century A.D. says, on the authority of VARRO, that under the direction of POMPEY it was ascertained that it took seven days to go from India to the River Icarus, believed to be the modern Roscha, in the country of the Bactri, which discharges itself into the Oxus, and that the merchandise of India being conveyed from it through the Caspian Sea into the Cyrus, might be brought by land to Phasis in Pontus in five days at most.[39] The best steel used in Rome was imported from China.[40] ARRIAN, in the 2nd century A.D., speaks of a frequented way, [Greek: leôphoros odos], extending in the direction of India through Bactria; after which four embassies from the East are noticed by ancient writers, one to TRAJAN, A.D. 107; another to ANTONINUS PIUS, A.D. 138-161; a third to JULIAN, A.D. 361; and the fourth to JUSTINIAN, A.D. 530. These are but scant memorials of an intercourse which must have been frequent between India and Rome, and which reached its highest development during the reigns of SEVERUS and CARACALLA, in the commencement of the 3rd century A.D. [38] 'The Indian Travels of Apollonius of Tyana,' by OSMOND DE BEAUVOIR PRIAULX. [39] PLINY, Book vi., chap. 19. [40] 'Ancient Bronze Implements,' by JOHN EVANS, D.C.L., &c., p. 19; PLINY'S 'Nat. History,' Book xxxiv., chap. 41.