The Greeks in Bactria and India c11.4

c11.4

When in the middle of the third century B.C. the hand of the Seleucid slackened on the dangerous north-eastern frontier and a body of Parni from the steppes broke in and set up the little kingdom which Greeks called Parthian, Bactria not only stood in the gap and shielded the Graeco-Iranian world from the nomads for over a century, but the story of Macedonia repeated itself, line upon line, in the Farther East: Euthydemus was Philip II, Bactria was Macedonia, the derelict Mauryan empire was the Persian empire, and Demetrius was a second Alexander. As Philip had completed the making of Macedonia and the welding of its feudal princes and its tribes into a people actively aware of its unity, so Euthydemus was able to complete the process—others may have begun it—of turning Bactria, with its Iranian barons, its Greek settlers, its serf peasantry, into a real state, which promptly developed such strength that while it held off nomadism with one hand it was able to annex most of Northern India with the other. Alexander had had difficulty enough in conquering the powerful Iranian barons of the marches, and as he knew that mere conquest was useless unless you could find a way of living with the conquered afterwards, he had sought to reconcile them by marrying into their class. Whether by accident or design, Seleucus had also married the daughter of a march baron, which may—we do not know—have favourably affected the fortunes of her son Antiochus I in the North-East. But in some way Euthydemus did succeed in doing what Alexander had meant to do; he did reconcile the great landowners and secure their co-operation. That no doubt was always possible, on terms; but what is extraordinary is that he did it while at the same time he was also transforming the peasantry and substituting for the open serf village of Alexander’s day the quasi-autonomous communities in large walled villages which Chang-k’ien found in Bactria. We would give much to know his secret; what it meant to unite Bactria can be seen by looking at the complete failure of the Seleucids in regard to the rest of Iran, which fell away from them almost automatically as soon as the Parthians made it possible, while in Bactria the Parthians could never get a footing. Alexander had seen that ruling Iran was going to be the real difficulty, and before he died he had decided that the only solution was frankly to take her into partnership and create a Graeco-Iranian state. Whether even his genius and driving power could have carried this through against the opposition of the old-fashioned Macedonians was never to be put to the test; but Euthydemus, aided by the ever-present danger from the nomad world, was able to do it in Bactria.