The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s3.20

c10.s3.20

This seems conclusive for a considerable new influx of Greek settlers; and as the population of many districts of old Greece was now stationary or falling, the increase must primarily have come from Asia Minor and the cities of Thrace. By the treaty of Apamea in 188 Rome had forbidden the Seleucids to recruit mercenaries in Asia Minor west of the new boundary or to receive deserters;⁷ but she had no direct control and it does not appear how she could prevent voluntary leakage, apart from the fact that introducing settlers was not recruiting mercenaries. The Seleucids had always been popular with the Greek element, while Eumenes II of Pergamum, whom Rome had put in control of Asia Minor, was not; the leakage into Seleucid territory, especially among young men, may have been considerable, and would explain the intensive settlement in Seleucid Cilicia. As Antiochus could call up his new settlers, they must have been cleruchs; he therefore dealt with the Oriental towns which he hellenised as Susa had been dealt with (p. 23), by planting military colonies in them.¹ But as his new foundations appear as cities, he must have run together the two processes which at Susa may have taken some time: as soon as his cleruchs were planted in some place he made it a polis, the liability to military service remaining. This disposes of the belief that his was no real hellenisation. He was in a hurry, of course; he may conceivably have known years before his death that he could expect no long life (p. 215).