The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.7

c10.s1.7

When in the middle of the third century B.C. Bactria began to break loose from the Seleucid empire there were obviously many Greeks settled in the country, but it is not clear how they got there. Alexander had left large forces of mercenaries in the Bactrian-Sogdian satrapy—at one time 10,000 foot and 3000 horse—and was supposed to have founded there eight, or twelve, unnamed ‘cities’, *i.e.* military colonies; but if 23,000 of his settlers in the Farther East, as is supposed, had been massacred¹ in the defeat of the great Greek rising after his death, his whole system of settlement should have tottered; certainly one place, Alexandria in Margiane (Merv), was destroyed by nomads.² Yet some twenty years later the satrap Stasanor was able to make a fight against Seleucus;³ and as few settlers can have gone out during the wars of the Successors, when the contending generals in the West were enlisting every available man, it is a possibility that the massacre of 23,000 Greeks (by only 3800 Macedonians) is a mere mistake in Diodorus’ transcript, and that the number of killed given elsewhere,⁴ 3000, is the correct one. Certainly the early Seleucids must have encouraged settlement, for by the latter part of the second century the country had changed from one almost devoid of towns to one whose great number of towns had become a proverb. This will be considered later; it suffices to say here that when Diodotus, satrap of Bactria-Sogdiana, gradually began to outgrow Seleucid authority he must have had a considerable body of Greeks under his control.