If we were to ask you, “Where was the last independent Greek state in the world?” would
you believe that the answer was India? Indeed, for a brief period of time, the only part
of the Greek speaking world independent from foreign rule was a small enclave in East Punjab.
This diminished rump state was once part of a much greater Hellenic presence that spanned
across modern day Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and India. To find out
how this came to be, we must start from the beginning. In this video, we will explore
the two-century long history of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, and its cultural legacy.
In the year 334 BC, Alexander the Great began an unprecedented war of conquest across the
known world. Alexander and his army of veteran Macedonians pushed their way through the entirety
of the Achaemenid Empire, and then further East. Many Greek cities were founded in his
wake, establishing the Greek people as the ruling elite across the new Macedonian Empire.
This Empire’s eastern borders reached the Punjab in the south, and the Ferghana Valley
in the North. The city of Alexandria Eschate was established there, its name literally
meaning “Alexandria the Furthest”. Upon Alexander’s death, his generals carved
up the conquered territories amongst themselves. The Ptolemaic dynasty rose in Egypt and the
Levant, while the Seleucids ruled over the former territories of the Achaemenid Empire,
throughout Asia Minor, Iran, and parts of Central Asia.
The Seleucids ruled over a vast territory, across many different people groups, languages
and religions. They spent much of their history feuding with the Ptolemies over the Syrian
borderlands. The Seleucids owed the success of their Empire to their adoption of the Achaemenid
Persian administrative bureaucracy. They divided their Empire into regional “satrapies”
where a Greek elite would rule over a native population, whom usually would take up lower
level administration roles. One of the easternmost and wealthiest of these Seleucid Satrapies
was the region of Bactria. And it is in this region that our story is centered.
Bactria was always a rugged, harsh borderland. In the days of the Persian Empire, it was
akin to the wild west. The peoples of Bactria had always been fiercely independent and resistant
to centralized Persian rule. Over time, the native Indo-Iranian Bactrians would come to
be Hellenized, and absorb much of Greek culture, including the Greek alphabet, but that independent
spirit would remain, succeeded by the Greeks who came to rule the region.
When Alexander originally reached Bactria with his army in 329 BC, he founded eight
cities in the area. However, there were already many Greeks there when he arrived. Remarkably,
Bactria, a region on the edge of the Hellenic known world, had more Greeks than many regions
much closer to the Greek mainland. This was likely a practice adopted by the Achaemenid
rulers, who in centuries prior had deported Ionian and North African Greeks who dissented
against their rule. The reign of King Darius I saw an entire city
of Greeks in Barca, Cyrenaica deported due to their refusal to surrender accused assassins
within their walls. Xerxes I had exiled the Branchidae, priests of the Spring of Didymae
in Ionia. Over centuries of Persian rule, various Greek groups had found themselves
in this rugged borderland. As a result, there was a distinct, independent Hellenic identity
in Bactria separate from the Seleucid conscience. By the year 250 BC, the ruler of the Seleucid
Satrap of Bactria, Diodotus, officially seceded from the Seleucid Empire, and proclaimed himself
King Diodotus I of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. The motivation behind this secession remains
unclear. Diodotus may have seen his opportunity, after the Seleucid Empire was thoroughly weakened
by the Third Syrian War with the Ptolemaic Kingdom.
He also took the title “Soter”, which mean “savior”. It is believed that he
acquired this title after driving the Parthians, led by first King Arcases, out of Bactria.
Nevertheless, it is important to remember that during Seleucid rule, there had always
been a distinct Greco-Bactrian identity, enabling their rebellion.
For the time being, the Seleucids were unable to reconquer their eastern Satrapies, as they
were tied up in a bitter struggle with the Ptolemies. This gave the newly found Greco-Bactrian
Kingdom time to establish its borders. Around 230 BC, Diodotus’ son, Diodotus II
was overthrown internally by Euthydemus, who previously had been the Seleucid Satrap of
Sogdia. Euthydemus had deposed the short-lived Diotodus Dynasty, outraged that they had made
an alliance with the Parthian King Arcases, the very same Arcases whom they had fought
against not a decade earlier, who was considered a threat to all Hellenic civilization.
Euthydemus expanded the borders of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom to include Sogdiana and Ferghana,
including the city of Alexander Eschate. The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom now ruled all the Hellenistic
cities of Central Asia. Euthydemus and his forefathers would become known as the Euthydemids,
the most prosperous dynasty of Greco-Bactria. King Euthydemus’s first test came in 209
BC, with the ascension of the Seleucid King Antiochus III. Antiochus was young and ambitious,
and had no greater desire than to take back the territories in Iran and Central Asia that
had once been part of the Seleucid Empire. He first laid ambitions upon the Parthian
Kingdom, subduing them by taking the cities of Hykania, Tambrax and Syrinx. With Parthia
neutralized, Bactria was to follow, and thus Seleucids marched into Bactrian territory.
Euthydemus was in Tapuria when he heard of this incursion. He quickly levied 10,000 heavily
armoured Cataphracts and rode to the passage at the River Arius where he stood prepared
to meet Antiochus’ army. According to his intel, Antiochus knew that
Euthydemus and his 10,000 Cataphracts only guarded the river passage by day, and at night
retreated to a nearby walled settlement. So, on the second day of marching, Antiochus left
part of his army behind, and sneaked across the Arius river with 2000 veteran cavalry,
and 10,000 Peltast infantry under the cover of night.
At daybreak, Euthydemus realized that Antiochus had crossed the river. He immediately rallied
all of his cavalry and charged the Seleucid lines. The Seleucid infantry was taken by
surprise, and was yet to form up its ranks. Antiochus had to act, or his scrambling army
would be overrun by a fully armoured cataphract charge. He rallied his 2,000-strong cavalry,
outnumbered 5 to 1, and rode out to meet the Bactrians to buy his infantry time. Antiochus
and his horsemen fought off the first squadron of cataphracts, and both sides took heavy
losses. However, a second and then a third wave crashed into his ranks, nearly breaking
them. It was at this point that the commander of
the Seleucid Peltasts Panaetolus finally rallied his infantry to Antiochus’ aid. They flanked
and overwhelmed the Bactrian Cataphracts, routing them off the battlefield. It is said
that Antiochus rallied his remaining cavalry and took many prisoners. At this point he
had his horse killed under him, and lost several teeth in the ensuing fall. All contemporary
accounts say he fought valiantly. The Seleucid king had won the initial battle,
while Euthydemus had lost a quarter of his men and been routed. Euthydemus retreated
to the city of Bactria, modern-day Balkh in Afghanistan, and holed up there, prepared
to withstand a siege. Indeed, Antiochus III arrived at the walls
of Balkh and besieged it. We know little about this siege, only that it lasted for three
years, and that towards the end, Antiochus was forced to withdraw. According to the contemporary
historian Polybius, Antiochus and Euthydemus reached an honourable peace, due to recognizing
the common threat of nomadic Scythian tribes in the north, which, as Polybius put it, would
“utterly Barbarize” Hellenic civilization in the east.
The Bactrians had secured their independence through attrition. An honourable peace between
Euthydemus and Antiochus was signed, in which Euthydemus paid Antiochus a number of war
elephants as tribute, while Antiochus promised his daughter’s hand in marriage to Euthydemus’s
son, Demetrius, and recognized Euthydemus as a rightful king.
Thus, the sovereignty of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom was finally solidified, and it would
continue to rule over much of central Asia and parts of India for many decades to come.
The Greek geographer Strabo famously stated that “The Greeks who caused Bactria to revolt
grew so powerful on account of the fertility of the country that they became masters, not
only of Ariana, but also of India”. Indeed, four decades after Euthydemus’ victory over
Antiochus, the Greeks of Bactria accomplished what even Alexander had failed to do, and
conquered parts of India. From 180-175 BC, under the reigns of Apollodotus
I and Demetrius II, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom pushed into the regions of Gandhara and western
Punjab. Unfortunately while Demetrius II was campaigning in India, one of his generals
back in the Bactrian capital, Eucratides, staged a coup, seizing Kingship over Bactria.
As a result, the Greeks in India split from their brethren in Bactria creating a distinct
Indo-Greek Kingdom which would rule over parts of India until 10 AD. The most famous of these
Indo-Greek Kings was Menander I, who ruled from 155 - 130 BC. In Buddhist Pali Canon,
he is mentioned as a convert to Buddhism, and a great patron of the faith, resulting
in many Greeks converting, and the formation of a distinct Greco-Buddhist art form.
It is said the first sculpture of Buddha depicted in human form was done by Greek artists, who
fused his image with the likeness of their own gods, such as Apollo. It even became common
practice to depict Herakles himself as the Buddha’s protector. Greek contributions
to Buddhist doctrine and art are said to have eventually spread along the silk road, influencing
the Mahayana sect of the faith that came to be practiced in China.
A Roman Geographer and contemporary to the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Justin, described
the region as “the extremely wealthy Bactrian Empire of 1,000 cities.” Bactria was known
as a land of great riches, a bridge between east and west. The Chinese explorer Zhang
Qian, when visiting the markets of Bactria in 130 BCE, recorded how impressed he was
by the diversity of goods that could be found there, even observing that many of the products
came from China itself. Indeed Bactria was the crossroads of the world.
The Kingdom of Greco-Bactria would come to an end around the year 125 BC, with the invasion
of the Yuezhi, an Indo-European nomadic pastoral people who had been driven out of their traditional
homeland in modern day China by the Xiongnu. Even though Greek sovereignty had come to
an end, the urban infrastructure of the Greco-Bactrians endured. Greek peoples would continue to have
a cultural influence in the successor states of the region, such as the multi-ethnic Kushan
empire, governed by the descendants of the Yuezhi. The Greeks remained a visible minority
group in the region for centuries. The Kushan language used the Greek alphabet, and adopted
aspects of the Greek cults. In India, the last Indo-Greek King, Strato
II, fell in 10AD, after a nearly 200-year long period of Greek rule in the subcontinent.
By the time Strato’s realm had fallen, it was the last independent Greek state in the
world, with all of Alexander’s former territories conquered by Rome, or the Parthians.
The Greek presence on the edge of the known world at the time may have been a relatively
short one, in the grand scheme of things, but their coins, artworks and ruins are dotted
across Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and India to this day. One cannot ignore the impact they
had on the peoples of the region, the wealth and prosperity they brought to their Kingdoms,
and their cultural influence, which still leaves ripples in our modern world.
Thank you for watching our video on the Greek states of Central Asia and India. We will
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