The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s5.4

c10.s5.4

Justin,² speaking of the result of the wars of Eucratides, says that Bactria bled to death; the statement may be true, though it is put too early, for Heliocles’ conquests in India show that the country must still have possessed a fair degree of strength; he would of course retain Eucratides’ mercenaries. Heliocles had probably kept what Eucratides had had south of the Hindu Kush, Alexandria-Kapisa and the Paropamisadae, for, as has been seen, there is no real reason to suppose that Menander ever ruled that country; if so, Heliocles held the gateway into India and could, as he subsequently did, invade it when he pleased. Looking at what is now known, it seems that he ought to have conserved his strength for the coming shock from the north; but this may hardly have come into view by the time that he invaded India, and he may have thought that the possession of north-west India would strengthen him; probably too he regarded Gandhāra, which his father had conquered and lost again, as his by right. The idea that he wanted India as a refuge against the day when he should be driven out of Bactria may be disregarded; Greek kings did not practise what in modern jargon is called defeatism. The beginning of his reign was probably occupied in getting rid of the Parthians, and in India he made no move while Menander lived; that monarch must have seemed, and perhaps really was, too strong to be attacked. But when he died, leaving his widow regent for his young son, Heliocles at once invaded Gandhāra; some of his coins are found overstruck upon those of Agathocleia’s first issue as regent, and others upon those of Strato after he took over the rule.¹ This war then lasted three or four years at least, and its ultimate consequences were in every way disastrous; Heliocles, as the sequel shows, weakened rather than strengthened himself, while Menander’s vast and loosely-hung realm began to break up; its maintenance had obviously depended upon his own personality. Heliocles, as his coin-types show, conquered and annexed Gandhāra and Taxila,² which drove Strato back upon Menander’s original frontier, the Jhelum; and in northern India Strato retained only the eastern Punjab and the country south-eastward to Mathurā. It became more difficult for his government at Sāgala to communicate with Sind and Surastrene; whether he governed them by sub-kings or satraps, the southern provinces may gradually have begun to shift for themselves till they fell a prey to the Sacas; that Barygaza continued indefinitely to use or copy the coins of Apollodotus and Menander and nothing later is eloquent, but really nothing is known of the southern provinces.