The Lost Thousand Cities of Greek Bactria

In the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th century, a Roman historian named Justin cut down the universal history of Pompeius Trogus, a contemporary of Augustus, from six books to one. Justin's epitome of the Philippic history of Pompeius Trogus is all that survives of this once massive work. We are fortunate that Justin chose to preserve the section of Alexander the Great, although not all of it, because, despite being separated chronologically by up to seven or eight hundred years, if the latest date for Justin is taken, the epitome is one of our major sources for Alexander the Great and the conquest of the Persian Empire. Part of what survives is Pompeius Trogus' description of what archaeologists sometimes refer to as the Hellenistic Far East, but which, to Romans and to Greeks, was Bactria, the land of a thousand cities. In 330 BC, the armies of Alexander marched into Bactria, and for three years, they fought to conquer and subdue the region. In the aftermath of the war, and the marriage of Alexander to Roxanne, the daughter of Axiartes, one of the most powerful Bactrian governors, Alexander settled soldiers and founded cities in Bactria, with at least 10,000 infantry and 3,500 cavalry being left behind. These cities were not, however, explicitly new features of the Bactrian landscape, bringing dense population centers to a region which had not known anything like it beforehand. Urbanism, on the contrary, already had a long history in Bactria, although its exact history is not known. Alexander, then, founded cities in a land already dogged with towns and cities of their own, and when combined, Bactria appears well deserving of its moniker as the land of a thousand cities. Many of them now, however, lay in ruins, and their locations have all but vanished from maps. Urbanism in Bactria goes back, at a minimum, to approximately 2300 BC, with the development of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, otherwise known as BMAC or the Oxus Civilization, named after the Oxus River, a Bronze Age archaeological culture based around intensive irrigation and the construction of urban centers, some of which appear to have had populations approaching 20 or 30,000 people. Between the decline of the BMAC, around 1600 BC at the very latest, and the conquest of Bactria by the Persian Empire in the 6th century, urban centers continue to exist, although nothing much is known of them for certain. The Persian period appears to have overseen a general flourishing of towns, centered around intensive irrigation and the exploitation of local water resources, the key component of settled life in the region. In modern Uzbekistan, there are currently 25 known sites associated with the Persian era, and in Afghanistan there are 9 sites, including a Persian lair of the gigantic Balahisar Fortress. 33 other sites are known whose occupation appears to end at the start of the Greek period in 330 BC, evidence, perhaps, of the devastation brought by Alexander's armies. We do not know if this level of urbanization was already present prior to Bactria's incorporation into the Persian Empire, or if the Persians established urban centers and it led to a general resurgence in the region, but what is very clear is that the armies of Alexander did not enter a sparsely populated country. Bactria, by this time, was very wealthy and probably a major political and military center for the Persian Empire, evidenced by the mighty Bactrian satraps who supported Bessus, the usurper to the Persian throne after the death of Darius III, and which supplied many soldiers to the Persian armies. Despite Alexander's devastation and the evident abandonment of Persian era sites, the prosperity of Bactria as a whole does not seem to have been overly affected. Our picture begins to change after Alexander's death, when his empire was split among his successors and Bactria was incorporated into the Seleucid Empire. Between 311 BC, when Seleucus I occupied Babylon and founded the Seleucid state, and sometime in the 240s BC, when Bactria declared its independence, the Seleucids actively built up cities and military infrastructure. Perhaps not entirely surprising because Bactria was a frontier zone which faced nomads to the north and the Mauryan Empire in India to the south. The Seleucid Empire functioned as a series of urbanized zones linked together via heavily militarized highways and roads, with kingship being itinerary in nature. The Seleucid kings depended heavily on local governors based in these urbanized regions in order to procure resources to feed their armies, but they attempted to create an ideology which, although based on Persian and Greek foundations, actually did away with Alexander the Great. Instead placing Seleucus as both the herald of a new age and of a new calendar, the use of which survived in the region for centuries. The military heartland of this new state was Iran and Bactria, and it is from those two regions that many soldiers and war elephants were recruited into Seleucid armies. We do not know for certain if Alexander had mints constructed in Bactria after it was conquered, but the Seleucid Empire, particularly under Seleucus' son Antiochus I, did indeed establish mints in several cities, notably in Bactria. Antiochus founded at least three cities in Seleucid Bactria, and although we don't know for certain if Greek colonists were brought into the region during Antiochus' reign, Greek architectural patterns began to be utilized. There is, unfortunately, a great deal about this particular era of Seleucid history that we don't know for certain, due to what's called the 20-year gap, an era of approximately two decades when, for the reign of Antiochus I, Bactria appears to essentially lack sources. Despite that, we do know urbanization continued to flourish, with 40 sites dating to the Seleucid period in Afghanistan being known, and a number of them being military installations, like the fortress of Uzundara, and several of the famous Alexandrias, like Alexandria-Escate, and Alexandria-Margiana, being re-founded as Antioch and Scythia, and Antioch and Margiana, respectively. The most important city, however, is the city of Ai-Hanum. For a very long time, scholars of Greek Bactria spoke of something called the Bactrian Mirage, referring to limited references to the region in surviving textual sources and some sparse coin finds, but beyond which there appeared to be almost nothing surviving in the present day of this once prosperous, powerful land. We do not know the original name of Ai-Hanum, its current title is Uzbek, and it was almost discovered twice, first in 1838 and then in 1926, but in the early 1960s, the king of Afghanistan, Muhammad Zahir Shah, spotted the outline of what looked to be a city while on a hunting trip, and he brought in French archaeologists to excavate the city. What they found, between 1964 and 1978, when excavations were halted due to a civil war, was the first real, solid evidence of a Greek-style city in Bactria, and essentially, it shattered the Bactrian Mirage. With walls reaching over 20 meters in height, and a citadel at one end of the city, Ai-Hanum would have dominated the local landscape. It appears to have been rebuilt several times, and in its final form, the main street stretched for over a kilometer, and linked a Greek-style amphitheater, an open-air gymnasium, a palace, and several massive gates set into the walls. Perhaps most interesting of all was a temple based on Near Eastern architecture, but housing a statue of the Greek god Zeus. Due to the lack of instantaneous communication, and in spite of the universal ideology that was promoted by the Seleucids, and the standardization of coins, weights, and measures, which brought economic prosperity to the state, power relations between the ruling dynasty and the local potentates had to be constantly renegotiated, with one of the end results here being the growth of warlordism along the frontiers of the Seleucid Empire, notably in Bactria. Coupled with a series of civil wars and power struggles which nearly brought the Seleucids down, Bactria at some point declared independence. It's not known for certain when this was. What is known is that the governor of Bactria, Diodotus I, issued silver coins, ostensibly in the name of Antiochus II, but with his own image on one side of the coin, and on the other, rather than the seated Apollo featured on most Seleucid coins, was an image of Zeus. In 247 BC, there appears to have been some sort of a rebellion in the region of Parthia, and the Parni, a tribe of nomadic warriors led by the king Arsaces, entered the province and expelled the rebellious governor, Andragoras. After this, Diodotus's son, Diodotus II, began to present himself as a king, and thus independent, but both Diodotus II and Arsaces were incorporated into the Seleucid power structure. In either 223 or 222 BC, Diodotus II was overthrown by a usurper named Euthydemus, and Bactria was from that point on, functionally independent. Independent Bactria faced dangers right away, first in the form of an attempt to reconquer the region by the Seleucid king Antiochus III, and then in the form of a civil war. The usurpation of Euthydemus is probably not an isolated event. The succession of Antiochus III was disputed, and there were also rebellions in other parts of the Seleucid empire, as well as a bloody war against the Ptolemies. In 209 BC, Antiochus III and his armies entered Bactria, and they defeated a Bactrian army. It is with this, that the cities of Bactria begin to take an interesting turn. Peace was declared between Euthydemus and Antiochus in 206 BC, after Antiochus failed to capture Bactria, where Euthydemus had been based. Euthydemus was incorporated into the Seleucid system as a governor who put down the rebellion of Diodotus and his son. And in the aftermath of this peace, Aehanum became the major urban center that archaeologists typically know it as. That is to say, no longer as a military site, but a city in the proper sense. The Greco-Bactrian kingdom, ruled first by Euthydemus and his son Demetrius, fought wars of expansion and advanced the borders of Bactria south into India. A series of usurpations, civil conflicts, and expansionary wars did not halt the continued urbanization of Bactria, however. Irrigation works appeared to increase by 10-15% during the late 3rd and early 2nd century BC in eastern Bactria, and a series of small forts were established along fords and passes. Outside of that, many of the existing sites seem to have continued to be inhabited, and a distinct Greek level is often lacking. The two exceptions are the site of Tepe-Zargaran, where a Corinthian and an Ionic column have been discovered, and the pre-Hellenistic fortress known as Dilbergen-Tepe, which has a distinct Hellenistic era level. Along the northern border of Bactria, the archaeology tells us that there was a much more distinct Hellenistic presence, with levels dating to that time being excavated in many towns, and Persian sites being reoccupied. In particular, both Seleucid and Greco-Bactrian layers have been found at fortresses located near modern Durbant, and at a fortress located at Kampir-Tepe in Uzbekistan. Greco-Bactrian construction during this time appears to have had primarily a military function along the northern zone, but then, in the 2nd century BC, disaster struck, even by the standards of classical and ancient history. Attempting to establish a narrative, blow-by-blow history of what happens next in Bactria is extraordinarily difficult, and what is called the nomadic interregnum saw the movement of the Uzi, and likely other nomadic groups as well, into first the west, and then the south of Bactria, and then from there, into India. First came the Saka, who defeated Bactria's armies and destroyed several major cities, including Ai-Hanum. Then came the Uzi, who defeated the Saka and established the Kushan Empire, a state whose beginning and ending, to say nothing of the date of its kings, have been constantly fiddled with and moved around for decades. Although Ai-Hanum and other major cities have been destroyed, the Kushan appear to have left most of them alone, and during the period of that empire, there is a very clear difference in the nature of urban sites. In eastern Bactria, we know of 133 Hellenistic sites, and of those 133 sites, 116 of them show clear signs of Kushan period occupation, but only 59 of them were occupied for the entirety of the Kushan Empire. The city of Bactria was expanded and reconstructed, and religious sanctuaries began to crop up all over Kushan Bactria, including the Sanctuary of Sir Kotal, from which we have an inscription containing the genealogy of the greatest Kushan king, Kanishka the Great. It's not entirely clear when exactly Kanishka lived, and the Sir Kotal inscription gives a possible start to his reign somewhere between 78 and 127, but many specialists now lean towards 127. However, what he is best known for is patronizing Buddhism, and he presided over a Buddhist council held in Kashmir, and officially changed the language of the Kushan Empire from Greek to Bactrian. In northern Bactria, the overall number of sites expanded drastically. Probably most important for the Kushan period, a small Greco-Bactrian military site was reconstructed. The citadel of this site doubled in size, and a new wall enclosed significantly more territory, expanding the site from a military outpost to a city on par with the ruined Aichonum. This is the archaeological site of Termez, defended by 13 towers and an extensive wall. Within the city is a platform and the remains of a structure which includes a Buddha, leading archaeologists to interpret this as a Buddhist temple, but much of the surviving architecture is Greek in style. The Kushans evidently incorporated Greek art into their construction, and one of the best pieces of surviving Kushan-era Greek artwork are the Calchaian frescoes, which adorn a palace at the site of Calchaian, located in modern-day Uzbekistan. As another example, the village of Hada contains a Kushan-era temple which is dedicated to the Buddha, but whose artwork contains an image of Atlas, the Greek titan, holding up the sky. The Greeks were never a large population in Bactria, despite the enormous influence they exerted on its culture, including the employment of Greco-Bactrian artists to create what we think is the first human depiction of the Buddha. And, after the power of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom was shattered, the small population was dependent upon Kushan patronage. But with the disintegration of the Kushan empire in the late 370s, when it was conquered by the Sassanians, Guptas, and various groups from the steppe, including first the Alkhans and then the Hephthalites, they faded into the mist of time. Some of the cities of Bactria are inhabited to this day, such as Balkh, known at one time as Bactria. Other cities continue to flourish and became impressive mercantile centers, such as Samarkand, whose history stretches back at least to the 7th century BC, and which became the capital of Sogdia, Bactria's neighboring province. Its ancient walls, dating to the time of Alexander, can still be visited today. Many of the other cities and towns, however, were destroyed or abandoned and never reoccupied after the end of the Greco-Bactrian period. Their ruins attest to a once-thriving landscape, a kingdom at one and the same time part of the Hellenistic world and uniquely distinct. You can still visit these ruins today. Gigantic stretches of brick and stone spread across the landscape, washed in the light of the setting sun, and you, too, can trace the paths where the ghost of Alexander and his armies once walked.