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Does anyone have a recommendation for a good book/podcast/history of how #Buddhism and Ancient #Rome interacted? I was doing the Chrono today https://chrono.quest/ and one of the dates was the death of #Buddha which fell pretty early in the span of the Roman Republic, before #Alexander on the Greek side so; early! It never occurred to me that they had to have interacted since eventually Buddhist regions were the eastern border of the Roman empire.

I dug into Wiki and read that summary, #Strabo, the Pompeii Lakshmi ivory statuette and some stuff on the possible influence of Buddhism on the interaction between Rome and early Christians.

I'd like a more, I don't know, technical history of that interaction though, any thoughts?
#Historystodon #History

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Thanks for the boosts, I picked up a copy of this book because it has a chapter titled "Romano-Buddhist art";
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1353375.Rome_in_the_East
which may have interesting citations!

I guess the question I'm trying to answer for myself is; "how was that statuette seen by the person in Pompeii?"

Interesting curio brought from a distant land?
A religious artifact with meaning that the owner understood?
Porn?
A symbol of the owners personal travels?

I just don't hear/read a lot about Buddhism as a religion in the Roman empire as much as I hear about Christianity. Obviously Christianity was seen as a threat early on but why wasn't Buddhism? I mean, if this was broadly known afterwards it had to have made an impression;

'According to Strabo (19 BCE), it was because things were going really well and he wanted to quit while he was ahead: “This is the practice with persons in distress, who seek escape from existing calamities, and with others in prosperous circumstances, as was the case with this man. For as everything hitherto had succeeded with him, he thought it necessary to depart, lest some unexpected calamity should happen to him by continuing to live; with a smile, therefore, naked, anointed, and with the girdle round his waist, he leaped upon the pyre.” '