The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.151

c10.s1.151

I come now to the south. It has already been mentioned that Demetrius’ conquest of the Seleucid provinces of eastern Iran cannot have been made till the battle of Magnesia (189) and the following peace of Apamea (188) had rendered Antiochus III powerless to interfere, and that Euthydemus must have been dead before the attack was made, or Demetrias in Arachosia would have been named Euthydemia.¹ Certainly a few copper coins of Euthydemus were once found in the Indus at Attock,² but what they show is what his numerous copper coins found in Seistan show,³ not that he was alive when Demetrius conquered Seistan, still less when he invaded India, but that Euthydemus’ money, like that of Eucratides (p. 217) and probably several other kings, continued to be struck after his death. The coin-types are important here. Euthydemus’ regular type was Heracles seated on a rock, resting after his labours; doubtless it was settled after Antiochus III retired, and meant that Euthydemus had made of Bactria an important kingdom. But Demetrius’ regular type was Heracles standing and crowning himself; the new king envisaged fresh labours and conquests, and may even have thought from the start of invading India just as Alexander had of invading Persia. Somewhere between 187 and 184 or thereabouts Demetrius annexed to his kingdom three Seleucid provinces, Aria, Arachosia, and Seistan.⁴ With Seistan he acquired the focus of a number of important routes which radiated from that centre; one going eastward by Kandahar to the Lower Indus; one going north-eastward by Ghazni and Kabul to the Paropamisadae, where it joined the main Bactra-Kapisa-Taxila route; one going northward by Herat to Merv and across the Oxus to Bokhara; and two main routes to the west, the land road by Persepolis and Susa to Seleuceia and Babylonia and, perhaps more important, the route which came to the sea at the Gulf of Ormuz (App. 12).