2-723-357 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Bacchanalian Relief, 1-100. Phrygians with their trousers, tunics, and conical caps play music, dance, and clap, while Greek figures drink from fluted cups filled with wine decanted from pitchers filled from a wine skin, shown hefted on the shoulders of the figure at the right. The multicultural diversity of the region became pronounced after Alexander of Macedon left a contingent of Greeks to rule the territories of present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan. After the waning of the Hellenistic kingdoms in the first century BC, Scythians and Parthians from Central Asian and Iran took control of the region. By the first century AD, trade between the Roman Empire, India, and China had reached unprecedented levels, bringing wealth and international merchants to the area.