The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.75

c10.s1.75

With this sketch of the background, one can now turn to Euthydemus and Bactria. So long as the Seleucids were strong, Euthydemus confined himself to the rule of what had been the Bactrian satrapy, Bactria and Sogdiana; Polybius shows that when Antiochus III attacked him in 208 he held nothing east of the Hindu Kush, and his western boundary was still the lower Arius (Ochus) river.¹ I need not elaborate the oft-told story of that expedition,² as given by Polybius, though some of the details will be useful later. Euthydemus tried and failed to hold the lower Arius against Antiochus with 10,000 Bactrian horse, and then seemingly stood a two years' siege in Bactra; if the fortifications of the capital bore the relation to those of Sirynx (p. 16) which the relative importance of the two places demanded, it is readily understandable why Antiochus failed to take it after a siege with which only one other in the third century can compare for length, the Roman siege of Syracuse;³ Euthydemus had turned Bactra into one of the greatest fortified places known. Finally Euthydemus threatened to call in the Sacas (p. 117) and pointed out the general disaster which would ensue; and Antiochus wisely made peace, left him his kingdom, and concluded an alliance. The Polybius fragment does not give the one thing which matters, whether Euthydemus acknowledged Seleucid suzerainty or not; but as the first overtures toward peace came from him, and he surrendered his elephants, probably he did,⁴ though it soon became a dead letter. Antiochus is said to have promised him a daughter for his son Demetrius; but she can only have been a little child at the time, and it is quite certain that whomever Demetrius married it was not a daughter of Antiochus (p. 201 n. 1). The interesting thing is that Antiochus should have thought that he saw in Demetrius, young as he was, one who both by his bearing and his address was worthy to be a king.⁵