In one of the most ancient portions of the Zendavesta it was celebrated as “Bahhdi eredhwo-drafsha,” or “Bactria” with the lofty banner; and traditions not wholly to be despised made it the native country of Zoroaster.  There is good reason to believe that, up to the date of Cyras, it had maintained its independence, or at any rate that it had been untouched by the great monarchies which for above seven hundred years had borne sway in the western parts of Asia.  Its people were of the Iranic stock, and retained in their remote and somewhat savage country the simple and primitive habits of the race.  Though their arms were of indifferent character, they were among the best soldiers to be found in the East, and always showed themselves a formidable enemy.  According to Ctesias, when Cyrus invaded them, they fought a pitched battle with his army, in which the victory was with neither party.  They were not, he said, reduced by force of arms at all, but submitted voluntarily when they found that Cyrus had married a Median princess.  Herodotus, on the contrary, seems to include the Bactrians among the nations which Cyrus subdued, and probability is strongly in favor of this view of the matter.  So warlike a nation is not likely to have submitted unless to force; nor is there any ground to believe that a Median marriage, had Cyrus contracted one, would have made him any the more acceptable to the Bactrians.

On the conquest of Bactria followed, we may be tolerably sure, an attack upon the Sacae.  This people, who must certainly have bordered on the Bactrians, dwelt probably either on the Pamir Steppe, or on the high plain of Chinese Tartary, east of the Bolar range—­the modern districts of Kashgar and Yarkand.  They were reckoned excellent soldiers.  They fought with the bow, the dagger, and the battle-axe, and were equally formidable on horseback and on foot.  In race they were probably Tatars or Turanians, and their descendants or their congeners are to be seen in the modern inhabitants of these regions.  According to Ctesias, their women took the field in almost equal numbers with their men; and the mixed army which resisted Cyrus amounted, including both sexes, to half a million.  The king who commanded them was a certain Amorges, who was married to a wife called Sparethra.  In an engagement with the Persians he fell into the enemy’s hands, whereupon Sparethra put herself at the head of the Sacan forces, defeated Cyrus, and took so many prisoners of importance that the Persian monarch was glad to release Amorges in exchange for them.  The Sacse, however, notwithstanding this success, were reduced, and became subjects and tributaries of Persia.