The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s6.37

c10.s6.37

One thing may, I think, be left out of the question. Owing to the fact that the system of sub-kings has not been understood, the large number of the later Greek kings in India has been explained as meaning much civil war and one king ousting another.⁵ There seems little trace of this, and less probability. Only one usurper, I think, can be detected—Telephus. Only one overstrike, so far as I know, occurs—that of a coin of Apollodotus II by Zoilus II Soter⁶ in the eastern Punjab; and though overstriking is the usual accompaniment of conquest, every overstrike does not necessarily mean a war, unless we have some other reason for supposing one. There had been civil wars enough in the middle of the second century; but once we get to the first century B.C. they are very difficult to credit. The Greeks in the north-west of India, with Bactria, Seistan, and the sea-provinces all lost, had become politically isolated in a vast world of ‘barbarism’, and its dead pressure must have tended to hold them together, as the pressure of the coloured population in South Africa is tending to unite Briton and Boer. The threat of the Saca invasion from the south was already apparent; such a peace treaty as I have supposed between Antialcidas and Lysias falls logically enough into its place. Had the Yueh-chi not been so tired of fighting and so anxious for a quiet life, Greek rule would probably have ended before it did; as it was, the Greeks were for the time safe from the side of Bactria.