Description
The Bactrian Kingdom, known to historians as the Graeco/Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, was the easternmost part of the Hellenistic world, in Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent from its founding in 256 BC by Diodotus I Soter to its fall c.100 BC under the reign of Heliocles II. It covered much of present-day Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. The capitals of Alexandria-on-the-Oxus and Bactra were among the largest and richest of antiquity – Bactria itself was known as the ‘land of a thousand golden cities’.