The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s2.89

c10.s2.89

Alexander in India) and most of all Menander, some himself and some Demetrius.¹ As the words ‘they overthrew’ (aorist; that is, one point of time) apply to *both* men, we get two facts: that Demetrius and Menander were acting in concert, and that Menander went farther than Demetrius. Strabo adds to this excerpt a note of his own, showing that (like some moderns) he found it hard to believe: ‘at least if Menander really crossed the Hypanis (Beas) toward the east and went as far as the Isamos’,² which implies that Apollodorus had said he did, and incidentally implies that Demetrius did not go so far and did not cross the Hypanis. Most of the Alexander-historians call the Beas, where Alexander turned back, the Hyphasis; but one of them, Aristobulus, preferred the form Hypanis,³ and that is the form always used by Strabo. For the unknown name Isamos the most usual conjectures are the Iomanes (Jumna) or the Soamos (Sōn); if there really be a Prakrit name Issumai for the Jumna⁴ it settles the matter, but it is not very material. For there is one more passage of Apollodorus, or rather of Strabo paraphrasing Apollodorus in his own words, which has too often been overlooked:⁵ it says that those who came after Alexander advanced beyond the Hypanis to the Ganges and Pātaliputra.⁶ The language used imports a military expedition and imports also that Pāṭaliputra was taken; Strabo could not have put it in that form had Apollodorus said that they had tried to take the capital and failed.