You have not time to hear of all the marvels I saw in the east. The Persians built towns and irrigation systems. The land you see now as arid and inhospitable was, in my day, fertile and welcoming.

Stasanor had his capital at Bactra, which is now Balkh in Afghanistan, near Mazar-e Sharif. Bactra was an old town even then and was the home of the Persian prophet Zoroaster. Bactria also had many Buddhists, as well as followers of other gods from India.

I served Stasanor well and went on many embassies on his behalf. Stasanor asked me to help Kineas found a city, Alexandria on the Oxus, which is now Ai Khanum on the Amu Darya River, in Afghanistan.

I helped Kineas lay out the city where the Amu Darya meets the Kokcha River. The rivers protected two sides of the city, which extended for nearly a mile. On the east side was a natural mound nearly two hundred feet high, which we capped with a citadel. On the northeast, we built a moat and rampart.

Kineas ruled the people firmly but justly, both Greek and non-Greek, just as Stasanor did. He admitted non-Greeks into his administration, and was fair to the farmers and merchants. Often he and I wondered how we colonists would maintain our Greek identity, since there were only native women to marry.

Kineas died too soon, and was much lamented. Greek and non-Greek joined to build him a hero shrine. When he died, I was in India. King Seleucus was campaigning against Chandragupta there, and I was with him, trying to safeguard Stasanor’s interests.

Finally, I returned to Alexandria on Oxus. I put up a stele in Kineas’ shrine with all the maxims I had copied in Delphi. It would honor Kineas and remind our descendants what it meant to be Greek. You can still read part of my stele.

In childhood, keep order In youth, learn self-control In maturity, be just In old age, give good counsel In dying, have no sorrow

When Seleucus took Bactria I came home to a war-torn Cyprus. Ptolemy, who had taken Egypt when Alexander died, and the other generals, had torn it like an oxhide in a pack of snarling dogs. My father was dead and our fortune with him.

Stasanor’s old friend Thais had taken up with Ptolemy, and their daughter was married to Soli’s King, Eunostus. She got me an appointment to Ptolemy’s great Library in Alexandria in Egypt.

All went well until I defended the persecuted Jews. I wrote a dialogue between Aristotle and my friend Hyperochides, in which I had Aristotle do the learning. In other works, I claimed the Jews were an offshoot of the Magi or the naked philosophers of India. Everyone was fascinated by the eastern religions, and I wanted to give the Jews the same glamour.

By now I was seventy years old, and longing to die at home. In Soli, I found a quickly changing world. Women and common folk were learning to read. I had not yet died, so I needed to eat. A friend’s son was in the new business of publishing. His slave scribes made hundreds of copies of books. But, he needed works that non-scholars would read.

I wrote nine books of biography and two books of love stories. I wrote other popular books as well, on dreams, on flattery, on my travels and things I had seen, even on riddles.

Every day I came to this agora, and sat near that fountain, with my umbrella over my head, and told my stories, and gave good advice, until, in my ninetieth year, I died with no regret.

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