The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.267

c10.s1.267

The bearing of this on the most obscure of the few facts recorded about Euthydemus, his expedition to the Seres, seems clear. Somewhere between the reigns of Darius I and his own the influx of gold from Siberia into Bactria and India had practically ceased,¹ not because the source of supply had failed, but because some movement of peoples in Central Asia had cut the route and destroyed the accustomed machinery of the gold trade, just as the old amber route from the Baltic to the Mediterranean was cut early in the Greek period and not restored till the reign of Nero;² the golden road to Samarcand was no longer golden. Now if Euthydemus, late in life, made conquests in the Tarim basin, it is natural to suppose that, being short of precious metals, he would have first tried to deal with a much more important matter, the restoration of the import of gold from Siberia and the re-establishment of the gold route; this meant getting into contact with whoever had been the middlemen for southern Siberia, as he could not hope to reach the source of supply itself, and this is the meaning of Apollodorus’ statement, which I deferred considering (p. 84), that the Greek kings of Bactria (which we saw could only mean Euthydemus) made conquests as far as the Seres. Euthydemus then made an expedition from Ferghana into Siberia along what had been the gold route. Since the Koslov expedition to Mongolia it has been established that in the second and first centuries B.C. there was a northern trade route to China running through Mongolia and quite independent of the routes through Chinese Turkestan, and evidence now exists of artistic influences exercised by Hellenism on the art of Siberia in the second and first centuries B.C. which can only have originated in contact with the Greeks of Bactria,³ while in the latter century Greek, Iranian, and Chinese products and art motives all met in distant Mongolia.⁴ The south-western end of this northern trade route, which must have reached the Greek sphere in Ferghana, must have been closely connected, if not identical, with the old gold route, and it was Euthydemus’ expedition which started Hellenic influences and products travelling along this road. But what he himself was seeking was obviously the Seres.