The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s3.76

c10.s3.76

Eucratides’ chronology, India apart, seems certain within very narrow limits. It has been usual, following von Gutschmid, to place his ‘revolt’ about 175, on the ground that that is the date of the accession of Mithridates I of Parthia and that Justin says that the two men came to the throne ‘about the same time’.² This is quite unfounded. No one knows the year of Mithridates’ accession, and a whole range of dates, from 175 to 160, have been proposed by various scholars; the only thing certain is that his activity did not begin till after the death of Antiochus IV in 163. And Justin’s vague phrase might cover an interval of some years, and only means that the two men were roughly contemporaries, as they were. Antiochus’ review at Daphne in spring 166 and his Charisteria at Babylon that summer show that ‘Asia’—the Seleucid empire—had been ‘saved’ by the end of 167, which means that Eucratides had conquered everything up to the Hindu Kush; and as the conquest could not be called complete while Demetrius lived, the latter part of the campaigning season of 167 is the date of the final defeat and death of Demetrius. It agrees with this that Plato’s dated coin struck in 165 B.C. is copied from a coin of Eucratides’ second series, which was issued in 166 after his final victory (p. 203), contemporaneously with the issue in that year of Antiochus’ third series. As to the start. *A priori*, Antiochus might have dispatched him any time after his own accession in 175; but it will appear that any idea of a long protracted war in the eastern provinces of Iran is out of the question, while the first five years of Antiochus’ reign were years of quiescence. He can hardly have dispatched Eucratides before 169, and, as Egypt interfered, probably not till after he had mastered or knew that he could master Egypt and would not need his brilliant general in the west; Eucratides most probably left Babylonia late in 169 and wintered in Seistan; it might be just possible that he did not leave Babylonia till early in 168, but there is a reason (p. 201 n. 2) which makes this unlikely. As it was certainly all over by the end of 167, this would mean that a couple of campaigning seasons sufficed to overthrow the powerful empire of the Euthydemids in Iran. If one considers the time taken by Alexander and Antiochus III to conquer the same territory as did Eucratides, against opposition which on paper should have been less formidable, and if one also considers that Eucratides’ army cannot have been large, it is clear that (if I am right) some convincing explanation of the speed of his conquest is needed. Not only is there such an explanation, but it is one which, I think, forbids us to imagine several years of protracted warfare.