The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s1.117

c9.s1.117

Meanwhile we appear to have some description of a *polis* of this type, containing only a few Greeks, in the already noticed Sirynx of Polybius; one cannot rely on Polybius’ use of the word *polis*, but the fortifications of the town show that it cannot well have been anything less. The defeated Parthian army sought refuge in Sirynx, and the natives opened the gates to them; the Greeks, assuming that they favoured Antiochus, were therefore not numerous enough either to prevent this or to open a gate in turn to the king. When the city was about to fall, the Parthian troops massacred all the Greeks and broke out; the Greeks therefore were too few to resist successfully, and they were not in control of the citadel (as they would have been in a Greek *polis*, p. 22), which would have given them a refuge. At the same time, it was the Parthian troops and not the townspeople who massacred the Greeks, and as those troops had fought Antiochus’ phalanx face to face they were not Parthians (who only fought on horseback) but mercenaries, condottieri of any race, who had got out of hand. Native towns are known farther west where a small body of Greeks lived among the natives in a Greek quarter;⁴ some of these eastern cities, but for their *polis* forms, may have had some analogy to this system, but the Greeks (this is the point) must have lived under the local government of Asiatics. The Seleucids of course had not dug the three ditches at Sirynx, for under their rule the only possible enemies were raiders, hill-men or nomads, and it did not need three ditches to stop *them*; the ditches were for defence against a siege-train, and Sirynx had been fortified to meet a Seleucid attack by Greek engineers in Parthian service.¹