Central Asian Challenges to Seleucid Authority

Abstract

AbstractChapter 9 considers the historian Justin, whose work drew on the lost work of Pompeius Trogus and who was one of the few ancient Greek and Roman historians to give any information on Hellenistic Bactria. Justin’s work is all the more valuable, because he present chronological anchors for Bactrian history, tying together three separate periods when Bactria rebelled against Seleucid authority to events in Parthia. This chapter examines Justin’s use of synchronism as an historiographical and literary device. Justin’s use of this technique also allows us to explore the wider question of whether contemporaneous revolts against Seleucid authority in different regions were in any way connected to or benefitted from one another.