The Development of Hindu Iconography c9.8

c9.8

¹ Antiochus IV, the Seleucid king of Syria, describes himself in some of his coin legends as Theou Epiphanous (Basileos Antiochou Theou Epiphanous, i.e., ‘Of king Antiochus the God Manifest’). He identified himself with the great Greek god Olympian Zeus, and on some of his coins the head of Zeus shows his own features. He went much further than Alexander the Great who regarded himself as the son of Zeus; he even married Atargatis, the great Goddess of northern Syria. For all these ostentatious claims to divinity, however, he was regarded by the subsequent historians as vain, silly and theatrical.