The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s2.86

c9.s2.86

As regards Parthia,⁵ his history ran from the origins to the death of Mithridates II in 87 B.C., for the panegyric on that monarch epitomised by Justin¹ must have come from him and have been the formal conclusion of his book, just as Arrian’s panegyric on Alexander is the formal conclusion of his Anabasis; it shows also that he was living in Parthia when he wrote. Further down than 87 B.C. his history cannot have gone, for the reasons given in Apollodorus’ case, but equally the panegyric could hardly have been written during Mithridates’ lifetime; the date of the completion of his history may then provisionally be supposed to have been shortly after 87 B.C. As regards Bactria, it went down to the end of the nomad conquest, with an account of the nomads:² the latest incident mentioned by Trogus is the ‘perishing’ of the Sacaraucae, of which the date is discussed elsewhere (p. 306),³ and our historian is not likely to have continued the story of Bactria under Kushan rule. In India, the latest thing mentioned in Trogus’ prologues is the *res gestae* of Menander,⁴ though the Plutarch passage mentions Menander’s death and the distribution of his ashes; but the history may not have stopped there, for though Trogus mentions nothing further, his prologues are too brief to prove a negative. Menander died between 150 and 145 (p. 226), and if the provisional placing of the completion of our historian’s book soon after 87 B.C. be correct (and it cannot be *earlier*), then his sojourn in India must have been a good deal later than 145; he was in India at some time during the reigns of the two kings who divided northern India in the last third of the second century (see Chap. VIII), Antialcidas, who ruled everything between the Hindu Kush and the Jhelum from *c.* 130 to *c.* 100 or possibly rather later, and Menander’s son Strato I, who ruled the Greek possessions east of the Jhelum from Menander’s death to *c.* 100 B.C. or a little later.