Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/240

 202 INDO- GREEK AND INDO- PARTHIAN DYNASTIES weakened his hold upon Bactria, and afforded the opportunity for successful rebellion to one Eukratides, who made himself master of Bactria about 175 B. c., and became involved in many wars with the surround- ing states and tribes, which he carried on with varying fortune and unvarying spirit. Demetrios, although he had lost Bactria, long retained his hold upon his east- ern conquests, and was known as " King of the In- dians," but after a severe struggle the victory rested with Eukratides, who was an opponent not easily beaten. It is related that on one occasion, when shut up for five months in a fort with a garrison of only three hundred men, he succeeded in repelling the attack of a host of sixty thousand under the command of Demetrios. But the hard-won triumph was short-lived. While Eukratides was on his homeward march from India, attended by his son Apollodotos, whom he had made his colleague in power, he was barbarously murdered by the unnatural youth, who is said to have gloried in his monstrous crime, driving his chariot wheels through the blood of his father, to whose corpse he refused even the poor honour of burial. The murder of Eukratides shattered to fragments the kingdom for which he had fought so valiantly. An- other son, named Heliokles, who assumed the title of " the Just," perhaps as the avenger of his father 's cruel death, enjoyed for a brief space a precarious tenure of power in Bactria. Strato, who also seems to have belonged to the family of Eukratides, held a princi-