Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c9.23

c9.23

The murder of Eukratides struck a fatal blow to the fortunes of Baktria. The country was beset by enemies. On the one side was Parthia, her ancient and inveterate rival. Under Mithradates I, she had already inflicted one serious reverse on Baktria, and had recaptured two outlying provinces³. On the other side, a still graver menace presented itself. The dangers of a Skythian invasion from across the Oxus had long threatened Baktria. Antiochus III had been induced to spare the town chiefly because, if it fell, " the Hellenic world would obviously be soon overrun by the barbarians⁴." The cause of the new invasion which now promised to inundate the country south of the Oxus was primarily a migration, from central Asia, of the great nomad tribe of the Yueh-chi, who, about 165 B.C., had been driven out of their pasture-lands, and had moved southwards, pressing before them in their turn the Sakae or Scythian tribes who lay on the borders of Sogdiana. The first omens of the coming trouble appeared in Parthia. A body of Scythian mercenaries, who, driven out of their native country by the advance of the tribes from central Asia, had enlisted in the service of Parthia, rebelled. A war followed, in which the Parthian monarch Artabanus was killed by a poisoned arrow¹. Parthia, however, managed to beat back the invaders. It was otherwise with the Baktrians. Having dissipated their strength in various ambitious schemes, the Baktrian monarchs, exhausted by wars with the Parthians, Indians, and Sakae, were literally "drained of their life-blood" as Justin says, and unable to offer an effective resistance². At first the Sakae contented themselves with occupying Sogdiana : finally, however, they pushed across the Oxus, and Heliokles and his followers were compelled to seek refuge in their domains across the Hindu Kush, and abandon Baktria to the invaders.