The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s1.41

c9.s1.41

In Asia Minor there are supposed also to have been some Greek civil colonies;¹ there is not the material for detecting such forms in the East, and their existence there is not very probable. But civil colonies of another people are heard of. Where the Greek went the Phoenician trader followed, as he had followed Alexander to India: two important cities, Seleuceia and Antioch-Merv (p. 15), contained large bodies of ‘Syrians’, and their presence can be deduced at Susa (p. 29); doubtless there were ‘Syrians’ in every city important for commerce. But, quite apart from their presence in Greek cities, foundations of their own are recorded. Eddana on the Euphrates, south of Doura, is mentioned as a Phoenician colony;² another is given in Arabia;³ and they founded a Tyre, probably a small one, in India itself.⁴ There are names too which imply civil colonies of other Asiatic peoples, doubtless founded as trade settlements; such are Nisibis in Aria,⁵ which must have been settled from Antioch-Nisibis in Mesopotamia, and Elymaide (if the record can be trusted) in India,⁶ a colony from Elymais. As these two colonies took the native and not the Greek names of their places of origin, it is not likely that they were military colonies, though it is not impossible.