The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.59

c10.s1.59

Before coming to the kingdom of Euthydemus, it may be useful to give some slight indication of the nomad background which always threatened Greek Bactria and ultimately destroyed it. That kingdom, while it lasted, was to play the same part in shielding the settled world of Iran from the semi-barbarism of the northern steppes as Antigonid Macedonia played in Europe in shielding Greek civilisation from the barbarism of the Balkan peoples. The true home of nomadism was the vast Eurasian steppe, extending from the Danube through Russia and the plains north of the Caspian far to the eastward, a reservoir of peoples which, as the world then went, seemed inexhaustible. Every nomad horde had its own territory within which it moved, pasturing its flocks and herds; of various blood and speech but identical way of life, hordes easily coalesced or broke up again, though on the whole the tendency seems to have been for the greater hordes to absorb lesser ones. This world of nomads had offshoots in more than one direction, and the offshoot which concerned Bactria was that which extended southward into the great gap between the Aralo-Caspian water system and the mountain barrier of the Pamirs and its contiguous ranges. This offshoot seems to have been entirely composed of peoples who spoke some form of Iranian; I must follow general usage and call them Iranians, but it will be understood that that refers to a common inheritance of language and custom and not to blood, which cannot be traced. Through this gap between mountain and sea the Iranian peoples had once poured southward;¹ Medes and Persians, Bactrians and Arachosians, had long since conquered and settled the lands of the Iranian plateau, the Ariana of Eratosthenes, and had forgotten that they were ever nomads; but behind them there remained layers of the less developed peoples of the Iranian name, still largely in the nomad stage, for whom Persians and following them Greeks used the general designation ‘Saca’, though Greek writers were apt improperly to call them ‘Scythians’, really the name of a particular Iranian people in South Russia. One of the brilliant results of the explorations of recent years in Central Asia has been the discovery and identification of the Saca language,² belonging to the North Iranian group which includes Sogdian and Pahlavik (Parthian Pahlavi). The history of the Sacas, so far as they had any before the second century B.C., had consisted in a great attempt made in the seventh century B.C. to follow their kinsmen southward; it was a far-reaching effort and one or two of its details will be noticed later.