The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c26.277

v1.c26.277

We have seen that under Euthydemus the frontiers of the Bactrian kingdom were pushed southwards until they included at least the whole of the lower portion of Afghānistān. But this was not the only direction in which expansion had become possible. The Indian expedition of Antiochus the Great, if it had had no other result of importance, had revealed the feebleness of the resistance that a properly equipped army was now likely to encounter in an invasion of the Punjab. We may be sure that, after the Seleucid forces had withdrawn, the eyes of Euthydemus were turned longingly towards the Land of the Five Rivers. He may actually have annexed it. If he did, it was probably only towards the close of his reign, for he would hardly have ventured to put so ambitious a design into execution until he felt secure from interference at the hands of Antiochus III, and that he can scarcely have done before about 197, when the latter became hopelessly involved in the meshes of the anti-Roman policy which was to prove his ruin. In any event the real instrument of conquest was his son and successor, Demetrius, of whose romantic career one would like to believe, with Cunningham, that a far-off echo has survived in Chaucer’s picturesque description of ‘the grete Emetreus, the king of Inde.’ Demetrius had been a youth of perhaps seventeen or eighteen, when he acted as intermediary between his father and Antiochus. He would thus be between thirty and thirty-five when his reign as king began, an age that agrees well with the most characteristic portrait on his coins (Pl. III, 3). Years before, he had probably been married to a Seleucid princess, in accordance with the promise made during the peace negotiations. If so, nothing whatever is known about her; the view that she was called Laodice is based upon evidence that admits of an altogether different interpretation. It should be noted that in the coin-portrait he is represented as wearing a head-dress made of the skin of an elephant, an animal closely associated in those days with India. It is not impossible, therefore, that some of his Indian laurels may have been won, while he was still merely crown-prince. The reverse type which he chose for his silver might easily be interpreted as pointing in the same direction. Heracles remains the patron-divinity, but he is no longer taking his ease on a rock; he is standing upright, placing a wreath upon his head (Pl. III, 3). The inference here suggested is identical with that drawn from somewhat different premises by Cunningham, who argued that the subjugation of part of India by Demetrius during his father's lifetime would account for certain facts regarding the *provenance* of the bronze money of Euthydemus. Single specimens of this are occasionally met with in the Western Punjab, and several were found in the bed of the Indus at Attock in 1840, while raising a sunken boat. It is, however, a serious flaw in Cunningham's reasoning that he did not distinguish between the coins of Euthydemus I and those of the grandson who bore the same name.