The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s3.223

c10.s3.223

Trogus, who knew more than we know, calls Eucratides, as he calls Mithridates, ‘great’;¹ and he was hardly thinking of the legends on their coins. The man who inherited a little kingdom and made of it the Parthian empire had a fair claim to the title, as the world then judged greatness; and perhaps, if Eucratides had stopped at the Hindu Kush, the man who in a couple of years overthrew a powerful monarchy and recovered the eastern part of the Seleucid empire might have put forward a claim, a claim which always seemed absurd when he was believed to have been a mere rebel. But at the end he attempted too much; no benefit was reaped by the Seleucid kings, and the one positive achievement of his career was the substitution of a new and short-lived dynasty in Bactria itself. The real results of his extraordinary expedition and his exhausting wars were the failure of the Euthydemid attempt to revive the Mauryan empire, the acquisition by the Parthians of much of the Euthydemid realm in Iran, and a great weakening of the Greek position in Bactria and eventually in India.