The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s5.148

c10.s5.148

Whether in the invasion of Parthia the Parsii went as far south as Seistan with the Sacas cannot be said, but they are presently found following Alexander's route through Arachosia by Ghazni and so to Kabul (App. 9), where we shall meet them later (Chap. VIII). Strabo (XI, 508) knows of a settlement of Parsii among the Anariakae of the Elburz, but it may be a question whether this was a deposit of the invasion of the second century B.C. or that of the seventh (p. 283), which Strabo says reached Armenia,¹ just as an Armenian story made the effects of the second invasion also felt in that country.² And we probably have a Greek notice of a short-lived kingdom founded at this time by some of the invaders, whether Sacas or Parsii, in Traxiane, between its conquest by the Parsii and its recovery by the Parthians some time before 115. Ptolemy gives among the towns of Bactria one named 'queen of Ebousmos' or 'of Tosmos'.³ His co-ordinates place it somewhere in the Kasaf Rud valley,⁴ *i.e.* in the satrapy of Traxiane,⁵ whose capital was the important town of Tōs;⁶ they may point to a dynast 'Ebousmos' (whatever his real name) ruling in Tōs who had renamed the place after his queen, Ptolemy's information coming from some merchant who had noted that he had visited a place called after Ebousmos' queen but had not given her name.