The Greeks in Bactria and India c22.19

c22.19

What is conclusive is that Chang-k’ien found the country, as he found Bactria, full of ‘walled towns’; he gives ‘fully 70’ in Ferghana alone, a small country. What they were has already been explained (pp. 121 *sq.*); most were large native villages walled round. But the phenomenon, precisely as in Bactria (which Chang-k’ien compares with Ferghana throughout), means Greek occupation and nothing else; for eastern Iranians did not build towns and did not wall-in villages. This comes out clearly enough in the Alexander-story. There is one exception in that story, and it is given as something exceptional—the seven fortresses which the Achaemenids had built to guard the Jaxartes frontier against nomads.¹ These were military fortresses, not villages. Yet six of them had only low mud ramparts,² and Alexander took them as he pleased; only of the largest one, Cyropolis, is it stated that it had a ‘higher wall’,³ compelling him to bring up his siege train. If there was one place in eastern Iran in Alexander’s day large enough to be called a town it was Bactra itself; and Bactra was not walled. When Spitamenes attacked it behind Alexander’s back,⁴ the commandant in the place had only a few details and the sick; on the other hand, Spitamenes had only light Sogdian and Saca horse, useless against walls. Had there been a wall, the commandant only had to close the gates and Spitamenes was helpless; instead, he led out what men he had and they were naturally annihilated; therefore there was no wall, and Spitamenes could have taken Bactra but for Craterus’ timely arrival. Spitamenes, just before, had taken one of the border forts which guarded the Bactrian frontier;⁵ if his horsemen could take it, it had nothing but a low mud rampart, at best. It was Greeks who turned Bactra into a great fortress and filled Bactria with ‘walled towns’ which nomad horsemen could not take (see generally Chap. III); and no one else could have done the same thing in Ferghana.