The Iranian prophet Zoroaster (whose life is traditionally given as 628 to 551 BCE, but many scholars argue for earlier dates) introduces his new, eponymous religion in Balkh, near where, according to one tradition, he dies during a nomadic invasion.

Bessus, now in Bactria and ruling as Artaxerxes V with the usurped title of Great King, attempts to continue guerilla resistance against Alexander by raising a national revolt in the eastern satrapies.

Outflanked by Alexander, Bessus flees beyond the Oxus (modern Amu Darya).

Alexander, marching west to Bactra-Zariaspa (modern Balkh [Wazirabad] in Afghanistan), appoints loyal satraps in Bactria and Aria.

Crossing the Oxus, he sends Ptolemy in pursuit of Bessus, who has meanwhile been overthrown by the Sogdian Spitamenes.

Bessus is captured, flogged, and sent to Bactra, where he is later mutilated after the Persian manner (losing his nose and ears); in due course, he is publicly executed, by crucifixion, at Ecbatana.

Meanwhile, Alexander threatens to severely punish the Daylamites (an Iranian people of northern Iran) for kidnapping his beloved war-horse Bucephalus, which they promptly return to him.

Alexander attempts at Bactra to impose the Persian court ceremonial, involving prostration (proskynesis), on the Greeks and Macedonians too; but to them this custom, habitual for Persians entering the king's presence, implies an act of worship and is intolerable before a man.

Even Callisthenes, whose ostentatious flattery has perhaps encouraged Alexander to see himself in the role of a god, refuses to abase himself.

(It is known that Callisthenes alluded to the story of Alexander's divine birth and may have been the first to do so.)

Macedonian laughter causes the experiment to founder, and Alexander abandons it.

Late in 328, Alexander attacks Oxyartes and the remaining barons who hold out in the hills of Paraetacene (modern Tadzhikistan); volunteers seize the crag on which Oxyartes has his stronghold, and among the captives is his daughter, Roxana.

In reconciliation, Alexander marries her, and the rest of his opponents are either won over or crushed.

Callisthenes, held shortly afterward to be privy to a conspiracy against Alexander among the royal pages, is thrown into prison, where he dies in 327; resentment of this action alienates sympathy from Alexander within the Peripatetic school of philosophers, with which Callisthenes, as the nephew of Aristotle, has close connections.

His death is commemorated by his friend Theophrastus in Callisthenes, or a Treatise on Grief.

Alexander leaves Bactria in early summer with a reinforced army under a reorganized command.

If Plutarch's figure of one hundred and twenty thousand men has any reality, however, it must include all kinds of auxiliary services, together with muleteers, camel drivers, medical corps, peddlers, entertainers, women, and children; the fighting strength perhaps stands at about thirty-five thousand.

The governors of Alexander’s empire crush an uprising by Greek mercenaries who have settled in Bactria but now want to return to Greece.

Stasanor the Solian, in the division of the westernmost parts of Alexander’s empire, is to rule Bactria and Sogdia; and ...

The Macedonians, especially Seleucus I and his son Antiochus I, have established the Seleucid Empire and founded great many Greek towns in the region of present Afghanistan, where the Greek language will become dominant for some time.

The paradox that Greek presence is more prominent in Bactria than in areas far closer to Greece can possibly be explained by past deportations of Greeks to Bactria.

For instance, during the reign of Darius I, the inhabitants of the Greek city of Barca, in Cyrenaica, were deported to Bactria for refusing to surrender assassins.

In addition, Xerxes also settled the "Branchidae" in Bactria; they were the descendants of Greek priests who had once lived near Didyma (western Asia Minor) and betrayed the temple to him.

Herodotus also records a Persian commander threatening to enslave daughters of the revolting Ionians and send them to Bactria.

However, these few examples are not indicative of massive deportations of Greeks to central Asia.

Considerable difficulties faced by the Seleucid kings and the attacks of Ptolemy II of Egypt give Diodotus, satrap of Bactria, the opportunity to declare independence (about 255 BCE) and conquer Sogdiana.

He is the founder of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom.

The new kingdom, highly urbanized and considered as one of the richest of the Orient, is to further grow in power and engage into territorial expansion to the east and the west.

The newly declared King marries a daughter, born around 266 BCE, of Antiochus II Theos and wife Laodice I and has two children: Diodotus II and a daughter, born around 250 BCE.

Diodotus, a local Greco-Bactrian governor, declares the independence of the Afghan plain of the Amu River, in about 250 BCE.

The Greeks who have settled in Bactria establish an independent kingdom about 246 BCE.