Region
Bactrianoe
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Bactrianoe is the Greek name of a people, the Bactrians, here spread across their homeland on the upper Oxus, the river now called the Amu Darya, in country roughly matching modern Afghanistan. Their capital was Bactra, the city of Balkh. What stands out on the map is an absence: neighbouring Sogdiana, just as important to the Persian kings and to Alexander the Great, is missing. Scholars suggest the entry reflects the late Persian empire and the knowledge of Alexander's age, when Sogdiana belonged to the Bactrian province and the Roman historian Curtius Rufus could treat the two lands as one.