The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c26.296

v1.c26.296

Testimony of a similar character comes from farther west. Hardly less rare than the solitary coin of Plato is the silver of Timarchus, satrap of Babylon, who in 162 b.c. declined to acknowledge the authority of Demetrius I of Syria, and issued money of his own in all three metals. Both on obverse and on reverse his tetradrachm is an unblushing imitation of the commonest tetradrachm of Eucratides, down even to the title ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΜΕΓΑΛΟΥ. If, as was suggested above, the assumption of the epithet ‘Great’ is to be associated with the conquest of India, 162 b.c. thus becomes the *terminus ante quem* for that achievement. A less definite but still highly probable reminiscence of the ‘Great King’ of Bactria has been detected by numismatists on some scarce bronze pieces of the early Parthian series. Unless the Parthians were simply continuing the types of coins which they found current in districts which they had annexed by force¹, it is curious that they should have borrowed anything of the sort from Eucratides. He and they were bitter foes. The account of their antagonism given by Justin (xli, 6) is borne out by two brief references in Strabo. The first (xi, 515) tells us that, after defeating first Eucratides and then the Scythians, the Parthians incorporated a portion of Bactria in their empire. That perhaps does not carry us very far. But Strabo’s second reference (xi, 517) is more explicit, though its value is largely destroyed by what seems to be a deep-seated textual corruption. The purport of it is that the Parthians took away from Eucratides two Bactrian satrapies, called (according to Kramer’s reading) *τήν τε Ἀσπιώνου καὶ τὴν Τοριούαν*. These names convey no meaning to modern readers because neither of them occurs anywhere else. We can only conjecture what districts they are most likely to represent. If we decide for Aria and Arachosia, we cannot be very far wrong; towards the close of the chapter already cited Justin says that Mithradates I enlarged the boundaries of the Parthian empire until it stretched 'from the Hindu Kush to the river Euphrates.' Expansion towards Margiāna and Drangiāna would be a natural concomitant.