The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s2.129

c9.s2.129

A few words must now be said on the relations between Greeks and Asiatics. Whatever impression the Greeks made, and they made a good deal, on the peoples of Asia Minor and Syria, in the Middle East they faced two civilisations which, in their different ways, were too strong for them to affect, the Iranian and the Babylonian. It has been mentioned how the Seleucids failed to win the confidence of the Iranian landowners; they never in fact secured any real hold upon Iran at all, as is shown by the manner in which it fell away from them almost automatically as soon as the Parthians made it possible; indeed, it is conceivable that it was as a bulwark against Iranism that the Seleucids favoured Babylonia. The Parthians were only a small military aristocracy; but they had the sense to adopt the Mazdean religion of Iran from the start, they spoke a related language, and Iran recognised them as kinsfolk; that sufficed. Realisation of the admitted failure of the Seleucids in Iran itself is necessary for understanding what the Euthydemids accomplished in one part of Iran, Bactria, and how it came about that while the Parthians had no difficulty, so far as the Seleucids were concerned, in securing the huge satrapy of Media, they never succeeded in holding one foot of ground in Bactria itself.