The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s2.92

c9.s2.92

There is a passage in Plutarch⁵ which bears all this out; the collocation of names, if not the whole passage, must go back to ‘Trogus’ source’, since he is the only possible source for the very peculiar knowledge displayed, and the passage shows that our historian included at least a sketch of the period after Menander’s death in his history and that my provisional date for the completion of that history is approximately correct. Plutarch says that, but for Alexander’s career, five Greek cities in the Orient would not have existed, namely Alexandria in Egypt, Seleuceia on the Tigris, Prophthasia, Bucephala, and Alexandria of the Caucasus. Prophthasia (i.e. Alexandria in Seistan, p. 14) is never mentioned elsewhere subsequently to its foundation, and this is the one hint in Greek literature of its importance. The only way to make sense of this perplexing list is to suppose that the last three names are *in pari materia* with the first two, and that what are being given are the capitals, or chief Greek cities, of different kingdoms at some particular period; and this seems to be true. Alexandria of the Caucasus (i.e. Alexandria-Kapisa, see App. 6) was the capital of the western Greek kingdom under Antialcidas when, *ex hypothesi*, ‘Trogus’ source’ was in India; after Antialcidas’ death his kingdom was divided (Chap. VIII). Bucephala appears later as (probably) the capital of the eastern Greek kingdom in India (p. 326); either the change from Menander’s capital Sāgala was already made by Strato, or else Bucephala is given for the same reason as Seleuceia—the official capital Sāgala was an Indian city and not a foundation of Alexander. Seleuceia is given as being the greatest Greek city in western (Arsacid) Parthia, the actual capital in the first century B.C., Ecbatana, having been an Oriental capital long before Alexander. Finally, Prophthasia was the capital of the Suren’s realm of Seistan, eastern Parthia (Chap. VIII), which was later to expand into Indo-Parthia; the Suren cannot well have become a (virtually) independent ruler till Mithridates II died, but the troubles in which that monarch’s kingdom broke up had started some years before his death,¹ and we must suppose that ‘Trogus’ source’ contained some allusion to the new kingdom. What are being given, then, are the four civilised kingdoms which at the beginning of the first century B.C. occupied what had once been Greek Asia east of the Euphrates, nomads being omitted; and that this was written soon after 87 B.C. is clinched by the extraordinary fact that the Greek city which was only second to Alexandria in Egypt, the Seleucid capital Antioch on the Orontes, is not mentioned. To one writing soon after 87 the omission of Antioch was only too natural, for it was no longer capital of anything; the surviving fragments of what had been the Seleucid realm in northern Syria were in complete anarchy, and in 83