Buddha and Hercules Were BFFs

The city of Bagram in Afghanistan is famous as the home of a major US military base, but its history stretches back for millennia.  The city was originally known as Alexandria on the Caucasus because the area was conquered around 320 BC by Alexander the Great, and he named anything he could after himself (thus the "on the Caucasus" to distinguish it from the all the other Alexandrias he'd left in his wake).  Alexander built up a fortress and town, and stationed thousands of Macedonian troops there.

After Alexander's death, the Greek presence in the area didn't simply disappear.  Instead, his generals and other influential members of his army claimed sections of his empire for their own, and established a series of kingdoms stretching from Greece to Pakistan.  Bagram was initially part of the large Seleucid Empire (led by General Seleucus), but was soon traded to the bordering Maruyan Empire of India.

After about a century and a half of Indian rule, the city was retaken by the Greeks under Demetrius I of Bactria.  By this time, the surrounding Indian culture had exerted itself on the descendants of Alexander's army.  Buddhism was the official religion of Demetrius' kingdom, and he struck coins depicting Hercules standing guard over a meditating Buddha.

This Greco-Bactrian kingdom, and its successor the Indo-Greek Kingdom persisted until 10AD, which means that when Jesus was born, Afghanistan was ruled by Greek guys named things like Apollophanes or Strato who built statues of toga-wearing Buddhas and told stories of the Trojan Horse and Hercules.  You can't make this stuff up.