The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c26.264

v1.c26.264

Early in the reign of Antiochus I a certain Diodotus was appointed satrap of Bactria and of some neighbouring province, not improbably Sogdiāna. The coins with the horse’s head were already being struck in the second province in the name of the suzerain. Diodotus continued the issue and also opened, this time in Bactria, a new mint from which he issued, likewise in the name of Antiochus, the coins with the seated Apollo. The country plainly prospered under his rule, for the money with his monogram is far from uncommon, in spite of the remoteness of the region in which it is habitually discovered. His own position, too, must have grown stronger steadily, although for many years he made no attempt to break the slender tie that bound him to the Seleucid empire; he may have been the satrap of Bactria who, according to Chaldaean documents, sent twenty elephants to assist Antiochus I in his struggle with Ptolemy Philadelphus about 274–273 B.C. Ultimately, however, the centrifugal tendency prevailed and Bactria declared itself an independent state, Margiāna (Merv) and Sogdiāna being included within its frontiers. The change did not take place all at once. There was a period of transition, and this period had not quite come to an end when Diodotus died, leaving a son of the same name to carry his policy to its logical conclusion; the Diodotus whose portrait appears on the coins is a young man, much too young to have been a satrap in the days of Antiochus I. The father may or may not have assumed the title of king. The son was certainly the first to exercise the royal prerogative of issuing money in his own name, and even he contented himself at the outset with altering the types, while leaving the inscription untouched¹. With the introduction of his ‘canting badge,’ he abandoned the use of the monogram. Simultaneously he closed the older mint, where the coins with the horse’s head had been struck, a step which points to a concentration of his administrative forces. Such a reconstruction is not merely consistent with the evidence of the coins. It also tallies, in a simple and satisfactory fashion, with what Justin (XLI, 4) says as to the original leader of the Bactrian revolt having been succeeded by a son of the same name as himself—‘*et ipso Diodoto*.’ Some value attaches to this confirmation of the main literary source whence our knowledge of the episode is derived, for the truth of the statement has occasionally been doubted, despite its explicit nature and despite the implicit corroboration which, as we shall see presently (p. 440), it receives from Polybius (XI, 34).