The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s3.13

c10.s3.13

Seleucus IV had seen that, if the empire was to recover from the disaster of Magnesia, a period of peace was absolutely necessary; there were no wars during his reign, and Antiochus IV followed his policy down to 169. By that time 20 years had passed since the great defeat; a new generation of boys had grown to manhood and the treasury was again full. Much could be done in twenty years, as Philip V had shown, especially if infanticide were stopped; it is possible that among the Greeks of Asia at this time there was little or none to stop (p. 70). To the beginning of Antiochus’ uneventful five years must belong his imitations of Rome, a passing phase which culminated in the building of a temple at Antioch to Juppiter Capitolinus;¹ more important was the use made of this period of quietude to strengthen the Greek element in the empire, a process perhaps begun by Seleucus IV.² It has often been supposed that Antiochus’ alleged hellenisation of a number of Oriental towns was no real hellenisation, in the sense of a reorganisation by the introduction of Greek settlers, but was only a change of names meant to minister to his vanity;³ but though, apart from Babylon, details are not to be obtained, there is one general consideration which is strong to prove a real hellenisation.⁴ The best index to the number of Graeco-Macedonian settlers in the Seleucid empire is the phalanx, which was exclusively recruited from them.⁵ The phalanx of Antiochus III at Raphia in 217 had numbered 20,000, that at Magnesia in 189, 16,000, the hypaspists in either case being Asiatics. But the phalanx of Antiochus IV at Daphne in 166 again numbered 20,000, together with 5000 Graeco-Macedonian hypaspists,⁶ and this is far more significant than the mere figures indicate, not merely because the phalanx at Magnesia had been cut to pieces and one of the two great centres of Graeco-Macedonian settlement in Asia, Asia Minor, had been lost, but also because the troops at Daphne must have been drawn from the west of the mutilated empire alone; they cannot, as we shall see, have included settlers from the sphere of the general of the upper satrapies—Media, Babylonia, Susiana.