The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.187

c10.s1.187

Cartana, nicknamed Tetragonis, must also have been a Greek city, a native place rebuilt on the Hellenistic model,¹ for *tetragonos* is practically a technical term for a city laid out on the Hellenistic plan described by Polybius,² four-square with two main roads intersecting at the centre of the city. Pliny puts it in the Ghorband eparchy (p. 97) and there can be little doubt that it was Bamyan;³ the great Buddhist sculptures found at Bamyan attest its importance later, and it must have been equally important in the Greek period from its position on the principal route (p. 139) from Bactra to Alexandria-Kapisa and so to India. Another Greek city, Nicaea, perhaps founded by Alexander, is mentioned once, somewhere near and apparently south of Alexandria;⁴ but it cannot be identified and may no longer have existed in the Greek period. Alexandria, Cartana, and Nicaea are the only places which can be figured as Greek cities; but there must have been a Greek settlement in the frontier town of Nagara-Dionysopolis (p. 159), and also at Kophen-Kabul (App. 9) on the road which ran from Alexandria-Kapisa by Alexandria-Ghazni to Seistan, though the French mission found Kabul disappointing. There must of course have been some military settlements, though they would usually be concealed under native names. One of Cretans, Asterusia, is recorded;⁵ an unnamed foundation ascribed to Alexander⁶ would be another; Menander, who was a Greek of the Paropamisadae, may have been born in one (p. 141); and Pliny gives a tribe Cataces or Cateces, which is only one of his usual mistaken transliterations from the Greek and is really *κάτοικοι* (catoeci), settlers.⁷