Interlude-Scenes From Elsewhere V

Antiochus, son of the aging Seleucus, had triumphed in a great battle against the rebel Demodemas of Bactria and Sogdia outside the walls of his capital at Alexandria Eschate in Sogdiana during the spring of this last year. Demodemas himself was slain, as were most of the more prominent generals among the rebels, with only the Sogdian Nobleman Oborzos having escaped, fleeing north to live among the Saka and Scythian tribes of the vast grasslands at the end of the world beyond the Oxus River. The victory had ironically been due in no small part to the remnants of an earlier rebellion against Alexandros Megas. Before Antiochus' Birth, his grandfather had been the Sogdian Warlord Spitamenes, a tenacious foe who had swayed the bulk of military power in Sogdia to the cause of revolt and defied multiple attempts to defeat him until his final defeat at Gabai. His army had retreated to hide among the countryside for a while before Spitamenes had been murdered by several of his allies and the army disbanded. Antiochus' father had married Apama, the only surviving daughter of Spitamenes and their union had produced Antiochus. The remnants of Spitamenes' revolt had quietly returned to their homes in peace after Spitamenes had been betrayed. It was these remnants that had recognized Antiochus as Spitamenes' blood and had come to his side against Demodemas.

Of course, that was not to say that the fineness of his army's armament played no part in the victory. The arms and armor traded for with Epirote merchants deserved their fair share of praise, for many of Antiochus' men would not still be among the living had they been wearing their normal kit. Many of the enemy would similarly be still ready to fight had not the heads of pike, lance, and javelin not been made of high-quality Epirote iron. However, these things only made the conclusion easier and less bloody than it would have been otherwise, the conclusion still would have been the same, however. In the end, the battle was won thanks to the Sogdians rallying to his cause, not the quality of his forces' equipment.

Antiochus had spent the remainder of the spring and summer of 293 pacifying the land, punishing rebels, and rewarding those who had aided him. He had exiled Demodamas' surviving family and given the Satrapy of Sogdia to Oromazes, the Commander of the Sogdian loyalists who had rallied to his cause, for instance. As fall approached, he had received the news that his father had appointed him Co-Basileus in charge of the Eastern Satrapies, in recognition of his victory and admission of the fact that he would not be alive forever and that Antiochus would need to have a grasp of Administration as well as warfare if he was to rule his father's Kingdom when the time came. Antiochus had made his administrative capital in Marakanda, the largest trading center in the region currently controlled by him, there he set forth to administer trade, receive taxes, oversee the planting, and most recently, see to the distribution and storage of the harvest. 

As it turned out, Antiochus had a knack for Administration as well as warfare and had managed to cut down on corruption in the harvest and tax processes in the spring by a significant amount, thanks in no small part to appointing men loyal to him rather than themselves who he knew to be of good character to tax and harvest assessor positions. It had turned out that Demodemas had been allowing his officials to extort bribes by force from certain less loyal to his administration sections of the populace in exchange for 'only' taking a little more than the required amount of grain or coinage. It had apparently been how he had funded and fed his forces in the face of his father's larger armies. When Antiochus' officials reported this to him, Antiochus sent troops to arrest those officials and replaced them with men personally selected by him from those he knew the character of. He also raised the salary of said official positions so that the remaining officials would have no need to solicit bribes and made the assessor positions a permanent fixture of his administration, that could act as oversight for the various regional tax farmers and grain collectors. Those who had been caught as corrupt he had jailed, while also having their estates and holdings confiscated by the state. A fraction of their wealth and holdings would be returned to their families to live off of, while the remaining liquid assets would be held by the treasury, while the properties would be auctioned off to the public.

The combination of harsh punishment, increased pay, and oversight positions incentivized extremely limited corruption. Furthermore, what revenues and state grain reserves were lost from assessing taxes and grain dues fairly was more than gained back by the confiscations and auctions. The system, it seemed, was working and had allowed Antiochus to recruit more men to the army and bureaucracy. He even now had most of his forces equipped with High-Quality Epirote Iron. By the time fall ended, and winter came around, not only were the Eastern Satrapies no longer in revolt, they were swiftly bouncing back from the oppressive yoke Demodemas had placed on them in order to win independence from his father's much larger kingdom!

The spring harvest was in, taxes were collected, and everything was going smoothly. The snow in the mountain passes was melting, allowing for trade eastward. The majority of people were happy, even if there were a few grumbles about owing allegiance to a distant King on the other end of Asia, they were swiftly silenced by people pointing out Antiochus' presence. Trade was flowing west through the rest of his father's Kingdom, bringing a wealth of goods such as dyes and high-quality iron from Epirus, glass from Rome, pottery from Athens, wine from Carthage, sandalwood and ivory from Egypt, and copper, tin, and silvered mirrors from the Western Parts of his Father's Kingdom. This trade flowed through his area of administration and then east through the mountains to the Kasian Kingdom in the desert beyond, where strange people who dwelt in cities yet spoke the language of the steppe-dwelling Saka ruled. From there, traders reported even stranger Kingdoms with names like Kosia, Arzia, and Kroron, whose people's native language was unlike the Saka dialect spoken in Kasia but who spoke Saka well enough to do business. From these kingdoms came silk, porcelain, tea, lapis lazuli, jade, and other exotic goods. 

However, the merchants of these kingdoms told traders that they themselves were not the main place where these things were produced and described a collection of ten heavily populated and wealthy states that fought among themselves for dominance of a large area between mountain, grassland, and sea. The description sounded like how Alexandros Megas had been told of the Sacae Kingdom, except broken into multiple states in a perpetual civil war. Even with the war going on, the traders were assured that these states still produced enough silk to trade west through the lands of the easternmost of the Saka Horselords, who the traders called Zongnians, and from the Zongnians to these Desert Kingdoms, and from them west to Antiochus' merchants, who brought it back with them through the mountains.

Things were going well, until the last month of spring. The harvest had scarcely been in a week when his border guards in the mountain passes to the lost satrapies of Punjab, Indus, Arachosia, and Gedrosia reported in. The Mauryan King Amitrochates, son of Sandrokottos, was massing a vast army on the Indus. Amitrochates' father, Sandrokottos, had defeated Antiochus' own father in battle and Antiochus' father had been obliged to cede the easternmost four provinces to Sandrokottus in return for a border treaty, 500 elephants, and the promise of a marriage between Amitrochates and one of Antiochus' sisters. The terms of marriage had not been fulfilled, and no one had seen fit to press the issue, for both sides had bigger issues to deal with. Now that the revolt in the east was put down and they were at peace in the west, Antiochus supposed that Amitrochates had decided to invade before his father could come east with the rest of their forces to resolve the issue. In a way, Antiochus admired the action, he himself would be tempted to pre-empt an invasion that seemed likely with one of his own, yet in this specific instance, it was causing an unwelcome complication. He had literally just gotten Bactria and Sogdiana back under control and thriving, for Zeus' sake! Alas, there was but one thing for him to do, assemble the army and hope he could hold out long enough for his father to arrive with reinforcements from the west.

Amitrochates was coming north through the mountains, and Antiochus would not let him do as he pleased without a fight. . .

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AN: Did you know that Antiochus I Soter was the son of a Sogdian princess? One whose father revolted and defeated multiple attempts by Alexander's general to subdue him before he was finally defeated? Now you do!

Unfortunately for Antiochus, it seems that he'll have multiple issues to deal with. Not only the Bactrian Revolt but now troubles with the Mauryans on top of it! No matter the timeline, it seems that Antiochus is doomed to live in interesting times.

As for the Mauryans themselves, their seizing of the four easternmost satrapies from Seleucus is as IRL, but there is some debate about the Royal Marriage provision of the Treaty. Greek sources claim that Chandragupta agreed to marry his heir to a Seleucid Princess as part of the peace agreement, but no Indian sources ever mention Bindusara taking a Greek Bride, which some claim means that Seleucus lied about the marriage in order to justify the peace treaty politically and that it was more likely he gave away provinces he knew he couldn't keep in the face of Mauryan aggression in exchange for enough war elephants to breed several armies of the beasts.

I have taken the position that it was a stipulation that both Chandragupta and Seleucus let slide on the shared assumption that both of them were too busy elsewhere to really push the issue of fulfilling the treaty, effectively allowing it to go unfulfilled. Here, Antiochus resolved the last of the rebellion at a time when Seleucus wasn't fighting with Ptolemy, which means that Bindusara felt he needed to invade before the Greeks decided to turn their attention back to him. 

As for those odd-sounding kingdoms east of the mountains, those are the Kingdoms of the Tarim Basin and the Xiongnu along the Northern Silk Road. Granted the Silk Road isn't exactly the juggernaut of commerce it would become under the Han, but there is still a proto-Silk Road going on right now, though the primary motivator of trade is local, from Seleucids to the Tarim Basin and the Tarim Basin into Xiongnu Territory, and Xiongnu Territory into the State of Zhao in Northern China.

Remember, China is in the Warring States period right now. Qin Shi Huang won't even be born to unify China under the Qin Dynasty for another thirty-six years. Nobody is traveling the entire trade route from end to end, it's not economical right now nor is it safe. When the Han controlled the eastern end, you didn't have to worry about half a dozen customs policies or Xiongnu raids. The Han unified those policies and crushed the Xiongnu. Now? It's much safer and less costly to trade with the next guy over, who trades with their next guy over, for Chinese goods. You get far less quantity that way, but in a way that makes the goods you're trading for even rarer, which in turn increases their value. 

The Silk Road is still at least a hundred years away from truly solidifying from a bunch of local trade links into the continent-spanning juggernaut we know of in hindsight. . .