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The Greeks in Bactria and India c10: Part II. Bactria and India

The Greeks in Bactria and India c10

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Part II. Bactria and India

Chapter III. Euthydemus and Bactria

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HAD the story of the Bactrian Greeks survived, it would be considered one of the most remarkable of a remarkable time; but though it was treated by two Greek historians of the Farther East (Chap. II), nothing has come down to us directly but some fragments and scattered notices and the coins. And there is not even the help which can be got in India from Indian literature and inscriptions and from archaeological research; nothing seems known of any native Bactrian literature at this period, and though the brief Chinese account of the country is invaluable China did not get into touch with Bactria till Greek rule had just ended. Moreover, the situation of the country, which to-day forms the northern part of Afghanistan, has always precluded archaeological research. There is said to be a certain amount of archaeological material in the museum at Tashkent, but if so it has never been made available to European scholars generally. A French archaeological mission was able to visit the upper Kabul valley in 1923, and permission was obtained for a brief visit to Balkh; a trench was sunk in a mound believed to represent the citadel of Bactra, but it got no further down than the fifteenth-century city, the Balkh of the Timourids.¹ The ruin mounds on the plain of Balkh are said to extend for 16 miles,² and the excavation of Bactra alone would occupy many years; that of Susa has been going on for over a generation, and it was

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¹ *BEFEO* xxiv, 1924, p. 647.

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² This figure is from W. (V. V.) Barthold, *Turkestan down to the Mongol invasion* 1928 p. 78. The first chapter of this book gives a valuable survey of Bactria-Sogdiana in Arab times.

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*Note.* On the sources generally see the Introduction, and on the principles followed with regard to the coins see Appendix I.

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not till 1928 that Greek inscriptions began to be found. While light upon Greek rule in India has been slowly growing, it is unlikely that for many years yet much new material will be available about Bactria; but that does not mean that there is nothing more to be learnt from critical handling of what does exist. An attempt will be made in this chapter to put together what little can be made out about Bactria under Greek rule, prior to the invasion of India.

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When in the middle of the third century B.C. Bactria began to break loose from the Seleucid empire there were obviously many Greeks settled in the country, but it is not clear how they got there. Alexander had left large forces of mercenaries in the Bactrian-Sogdian satrapy—at one time 10,000 foot and 3000 horse—and was supposed to have founded there eight, or twelve, unnamed ‘cities’, *i.e.* military colonies; but if 23,000 of his settlers in the Farther East, as is supposed, had been massacred¹ in the defeat of the great Greek rising after his death, his whole system of settlement should have tottered; certainly one place, Alexandria in Margiane (Merv), was destroyed by nomads.² Yet some twenty years later the satrap Stasanor was able to make a fight against Seleucus;³ and as few settlers can have gone out during the wars of the Successors, when the contending generals in the West were enlisting every available man, it is a possibility that the massacre of 23,000 Greeks (by only 3800 Macedonians) is a mere mistake in Diodorus’ transcript, and that the number of killed given elsewhere,⁴ 3000, is the correct one. Certainly the early Seleucids must have encouraged settlement, for by the latter part of the second century the country had changed from one almost devoid of towns to one whose great number of towns had become a proverb. This will be considered later; it suffices to say here that when Diodotus, satrap of Bactria-Sogdiana, gradually began to outgrow Seleucid authority he must have had a considerable body of Greeks under his control.

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¹ Diod. XVIII, 7, 2 and 9.

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² Pliny VI, 47.

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³ Justin XV, 4, 11.

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⁴ Diod. XVII, 99, 6.

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The tradition that Diodotus of Bactria revolted against Antiochus II in 250 B.C. has long been discarded, and his gradual progress to independence has been traced from the Seleucid coinage.⁵ The coins furnish no direct evidence that he ever took the royal title; but there seems no reason to doubt Justin’s statement that he did,⁶ and if the cult-name Soter, which he bore after death,¹ was used by him as his title before he died, then at the end he must have been king, though he has left no named coins, the Diodotus coins being those of his son Diodotus II. It cannot be made out that he ever ruled more than his own satrapy of Bactria-Sogdiana; the idea that he also ruled Arachosia-Seistan and that Antiochus III had to reconquer these provinces seems mistaken.² It has been thought that the monogram Dio on certain Seleucid coins of the period when he was reaching out towards independence stands for his name.³ A monogram is usually that of the moneyer; but in this case a theory that Dio stands for Diodotus might be supported by a reference to those ambitious governors, Aspeisas satrap of Susiana⁴ and Nicocles king of Paphos,⁵ who put their names on the Alexander-coinage with results disastrous to themselves. Diodotus had better fortune; far from being destroyed by Antiochus II he married his daughter. This quite certain fact, and the equally certain fact that Euthydemus married a daughter of Diodotus,⁶ enable us to get some dates. In 206 Euthydemus' eldest son Demetrius was νεανίσκος—about 19 to 20, not more;⁷ Euthydemus therefore married about 227, or possibly even a year or two later, and his wife, Diodotus' daughter by the daughter of Antiochus II, need not have been born till 243 or even a little later, though of course she might have been a little older. This makes it clear under what circumstances Diodotus married the Seleucid princess. Antiochus II died late in 247, and his son Seleucus II was at once faced by tremendous difficulties, including civil war; in 246 his capital was in the hands of Ptolemy III and the Egyptian king was making a military parade to Seleuceia to secure the eastern satrapies for the party he supported.⁸ Seleucus II then, about 246, gave one of his sisters to Diodotus to secure his allegiance, just as he gave two other sisters about the same time to the kings of Pontus and Cappadocia to secure their alliance.¹ It was common enough in all the dynasties for kings to use their daughters or sisters as pawns in the game, but these Macedonian girls were often anything but nonentities, and the pawns sometimes queened with surprising results; Cleopatra VII of Egypt was only the last of a long line who had done what they could with lesser opportunities than hers.

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⁵ *CHI* pp. 435-8; another coin, Sir G. F. Hill, *NC* 1925 p. 20 no. 62.

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⁶ Justin XLI, 4, 5 and 8.

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¹ The Diodotus coins in the pedigree series of Agathocles and Antimachus (App. 3), and the Διοδότου Σωτῆρος coin given *CHI* p. 451 (p. 201).

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² Herzfeld, *Sakastan* p. 38. But Justin XLI, 4, 5, totius Orientis populi . . . defecere, is only a hyperbole for Parthia, as the next sentence shows; and Strabo XI, 515 shows that the movement was confined to those north of (ἔξω) the Taurus, *i.e.* Bactrians and Parni, as he says.

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³ *CHI* p. 437, and an unpublished study by Professor C. A. Robinson Jr.

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⁴ E. S. G. Robinson, *NC* 1921 p. 37.

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⁵ E. T. Newell, *NC* 1919 p. 64.

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⁶ Shown by Agathocles' pedigree coin-series, see Appendix 3.

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⁷ Polyb. XI, 34, 9. It means one who has ceased to be a boy, παῖς, but is not yet a man, ἀνήρ (Plat. *Rep.* 413E), and on ordinary Greek reckoning a youth was ἀνήρ, a full warrior, when he had finished his ephebe training (19th and 20th years).

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⁸ *CAH* VII p. 717.

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¹ Euseb. (Schöne) I p. 251; Justin XXXVIII, 5, 3.

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In 246, then, Diodotus was still a Seleucid satrap. His son Diodotus II, who took the royal title, was on the throne in 228 or 227,² so Diodotus’ death cannot be put later than about 230; he had been satrap under Antiochus I³ and was not young. His coins show Diodotus II as a young man,⁴ but the dates make it almost certain that he was not a son of the Seleucid princess; he must have been Diodotus’ son by a former marriage. He reversed his father’s policy and allied himself with Tiridates of Parthia,⁵ the enemy of the Seleucids, who was then at war with Seleucus II; with Seleucus’ sister at Diodotus’ Court as his father’s widow the situation must have followed well-known lines. The queen-widow married her own daughter to Euthydemus, presumably one of Diodotus’ satraps,⁶ and Euthydemus killed Diodotus II,⁷ probably with popular support (for the alliance with Parthia cannot have been popular with the Greeks), and took the crown. At the moment he may have appeared to be acting in the Seleucid interest; he told Antiochus III later that he was no rebel, but that he had killed the son of a rebel.⁸

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² When Seleucus II went eastward, Justin XLI, 4, 9; on the date see *CAH* VII p. 722.

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³ *CHI* pp. 435-7.

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⁴ *BMC* Pl. I, 4-8; *CHI* p. 440.

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⁵ Justin XLI, 4, 9, foedus.

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⁶ Why de la Vallée-Poussin, p. 233, and Grousset, p. 53, make him satrap of Sogdiana I do not know.

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⁷ Polyb. XI, 34, 2; see *CHI* p. 440.

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⁸ Polyb. XI, 34, 2.

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The story of independent Bactria is, in its great period, essentially that of Euthydemus and his eldest son Demetrius. Euthydemus was a Greek from one of the Magnesias; it has been thought that Magnesia-under-Sipylos is the more likely because one of his coin-types resembles the type of certain cities in the neighbourhood of this Magnesia (not, be it noted, of Magnesia itself);⁹ but it is hard to believe that Polybius would call a man from the less important of the two cities a ‘Magnesian’

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⁹ *CHI* pp. 440, 443.

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without any qualification,¹ and probably Euthydemus came from the great city on the Maeander which had already sent so many of her sons to the East (p. 6). A fine portrait-bust of him, thought to have been set up in his native Magnesia, is (or was) in the Torlonia museum in Rome;² it shows the strength of the man towards the end of his life, but not so successfully as the wonderful coin-portrait of him taken in old age. One has only to look at his face to see why he seized the crown: he meant to rule because he could.

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¹ Polyb. xi, 34, 1, ἦν ὁ Εὐθύδημος Μάγνης.

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² R. Delbrück, *Antike Porträts* Pl. 29.

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It will be well to consider here the Euthydemid relationships of the earlier period, and the portraits on coins struck in Bactria are such fine work that it ought to be possible to use them as evidence.³ Three of these Bactrian heads, in their stark truth and realism, stand out from the rest—that of Euthydemus in old age and those of his son Demetrius wearing the elephant-scalp and of a certain Antimachus wearing a flat kausia, both men in the prime of life;⁴ Greek art has bequeathed to us no finer portraits. These three are certainly the work of one man, whom I may call *X*, and cannot be very far apart in time. Antimachus then belongs to the same generation as Demetrius, and his portrait shows a feature which I believe to be all but unique in Hellenistic art, a peculiar half-mocking smile, as of one who did not take himself very seriously; those who wish may trace a resemblance to the smile of Monna Lisa. It has nothing to do with the vacuous smile, resembling the archaic smile, common in late Seleucid portraits; it is an essential part of the man. Now that smile occurs once again in Greek art; it occurs in the portrait of Euthydemus⁵ on one of Agathocles’ pedigree coins (App. 3). This coin is the work of a later artist—let us say school of *X*—who was portraying Euthydemus some twenty years after his death; but he remembered the smile, though he could not render it with the same subtlety with which *X* had rendered that of Antimachus. So far as I know, that peculiar smile never occurs again anywhere—certainly not in the East. Antimachus therefore was a son of Euthydemus and a younger brother of Demetrius.

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³ Not those struck in India, which can only be used to corroborate something else. I have checked the Bactrian heads here used with the coins, as is very necessary if portraiture be in question, and they are accurate. For a contrary instance, which might deceive any one, see p. 77 n. 7.

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⁴ See the Plate of coin-portraits in this book, hereinafter referred to as Plate, nos. 1, 3, 4.

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⁵ Plate no. 2.

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Now I need not have deduced this from the portraits, because it is known from other evidence; part of Antimachus’ own pedigree exists (App. 3) and it shows that he was a son of Euthydemus. But as I am going to use Bactrian coin-portraits throughout this book as evidence, I gave this deduction of a fact otherwise known just to show that one is on firm ground in using them.

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Whether Euthydemus had a third son beside Demetrius and Antimachus is purely matter of speculation, for Apollodotus has left no portrait of himself. He belonged rather to Demetrius’ generation than to the next (Chap. IV), and the confidence which Demetrius obviously felt in him (p. 166), and the fact that Demetrius’ grandson Strato I imitated his regular coin-type,¹ would fit well enough with a belief that he was Demetrius’ youngest brother. But there is nothing to show. He cannot have been a mere general, for his regular coin-type on his bronze money is the Seleucid type² of Apollo and tripod, and he therefore presumably claimed Seleucid descent; if not Demetrius’ brother, we must suppose that at any rate he was a collateral of the royal house. But as such a collateral would hardly be a Seleucid, his Seleucid type makes it much more probable that he was Demetrius’ brother.

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¹ Square bronze with Apollo and tripod; *BMC* p. 42; *CHI* Pl. VI, 5 and p. 552.

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² Head of Apollo and tripod-lebes appear on bronze of Seleucus I, III and IV and Antiochus II (*BMC Sel.* pp. 7, 15, 23, 32), and the type was imitated by Achaeus (*ib.* p. 30).

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Of the second generation after Euthydemus we are now moderately well informed; and there are good portraits of Demetrius’ four sons, though not done by X—call them ‘school of X’. It has never been doubted that Euthydemus II, on the ordinary rules of nomenclature, must be the eldest son of Demetrius, and this is now certain, for a comparison of his face³ with that of Agathocles⁴ would alone suffice to prove that they were brothers; Agathocles’ face is practically that of Euthydemus II a few years older. But the new coin of Agathocles’ pedigree series acquired in 1934 by the British Museum, which bears the head of Demetrius,⁵ proves conclusively that Agathocles, already known to be a grandson of Euthydemus, was a son of Demetrius (App. 3). Of the two extant portraits on Pantaleon’s rare coinage one is extremely like Euthydemus II,¹ though the face on the other is rather heavier.² But Pantaleon, the rarity of whose coins points to a very brief reign, cannot be separated from Agathocles, as except for one series of Agathocles their coinages are practically identical; Pantaleon therefore is another brother, and as the coins show that one must have taken the other’s place and as Agathocles was king when Eucratides arrived (Chap. v), it must have been he who took Pantaleon’s place, and Pantaleon was therefore the elder. The fourth brother is Demetrius II.³ His features have no very great resemblance to those of the other three brothers; it has been supposed that he was a son of Demetrius because his rare Bactrian coinage belongs to that period and because, on the rules of nomenclature, Demetrius’ second son should have been named after himself. This can now be confirmed. The Bactrian coins of Demetrius II bear the legend Βασιλέως Δημητρίου, ‘Of King Demetrius’, and are distinguished by a peculiar treatment of the floating ends of the diadem.⁴ In 1923 Mr Whitehead published a unique bilingual tetradrachm,⁵ now in the British Museum, which shows on the obverse the head of a young prince, wearing the same flat kausia as Antimachus wears, and with the ends of the diadem (as he pointed out) treated in the same way as those on the Bactrian tetradrachms of Demetrius II. The head has usually been called Demetrius;⁶ but though the coin was struck in India and though one cannot rely upon portraits struck in India, the coin is good as Graeco-Indian coins go and the face does not bear the least resemblance to the well-known features of Demetrius, beside being far too young; it is to me quite certain that it can only be meant for Demetrius II,⁷ apart from the diadem ends, which are really conclusive. The coin then was struck by Demetrius II, and the type, which is not one of Demetrius’ types, is his own; but the legend ‘Of King Demetrius the Invincible’ is Demetrius’ legend, as is proved by the new ‘Demetrius’ coin in Agathocles’ series (p. 76 n. 5). Demetrius II then struck this coin on behalf of Demetrius, putting on Demetrius’ name and legend but his own head and type;¹ he was therefore at the time Demetrius’ sub-king,² that is (from the ages) his son, as the names imply. I shall return to this coin and what it means; I only want here to get the relationships.

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³ Plate no. 5. Cf. the coin given by Svoronos, *J.I.d’A.N.* xv, 1913, Pl. XVIII, 7.

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⁴ Plate no. 9.

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⁵ J. Allan, *NC* 1935 p. 1 and Pl. III, 1: obv., head of Demetrius in elephant-scalp with legend Δημιητρίου ἀνικήτου; rev., Demetrius’ type of Heracles standing and crowning himself, with legend βασιλεύοντος Ἀγαθοκλέους δικαίου.

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¹ Whitehead *NC* Pl. XIV, 3.

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² Plate no. 8.

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³ Plate no. 6 (two specimens in the British Museum). This king was discovered by Sir G. Macdonald, *CHI* p. 448.

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⁴ *CHI* p. 448. It is very marked.

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⁵ Whitehead, *NC* p. 317 no. 2, Pl. XIV, 2: obv., bust of a young king, diademed, in flat kausia, with legend Βασιλέως ἀνικήτου Δημητρίου; rev., Zeus standing facing, thunder-bolt in r. hand and long sceptre in l., with Kharoshthi legend Maharajasa aparazitasa Demetriyasa. It is Plate no. 7.

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⁶ Whitehead, *NC loc. cit.*; C. T. Seltman, *Greek coins* 1933 p. 235; J. Allan, *NC* 1935 p. 2.

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⁷ If the head on Pl. XIV, 2 in Whitehead *NC* were correct it would be one of the most beautiful things in antiquity; but it has little resemblance to the coin. I examined the coin itself together with tetradrachms of Demetrius and Demetrius II, and Mr E. S. G. Robinson, who was with me, agreed with me that the face must be meant for Demetrius II, apart from the diadem ends. The face is liker those of the other brothers than is the Bactrian portrait of Demetrius II.

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¹ Similarly some rare Seleucid coins struck by Antiochus I when joint-king bear his own name but the head of his father Seleucus; Bunbury, NC 1883 p. 67 and Pl. IV, 1; Head² 758. ² On sub-kings see p. 90. ³ Rapson, Corolla Numismatica 1906 p. 249 n., suggested that she was a daughter or niece of Demetrius. ⁴ On this king and the evidence see pp. 229 sq.

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The four sons of Demetrius, in order of age, are then Euthydemus II, Demetrius II, Pantaleon, and Agathocles. In addition, Menander’s queen Agathocleia (Chap. VI) was probably his daughter.³ It has long been known from her use of Euthydemus’ coin-type of Heracles seated on a rock that she must have been descended from him, and on the dates that can only mean that she was his granddaughter; but if Agathocles and Agathocleia were both grandchildren of Euthydemus their names are strong to show that they were brother and sister. If Apollodotus was a son of Euthydemus it would be conceivable that she was Apollodotus’ daughter, for her son Strato I uses Apollodotus’ type of Apollo and tripod; but he may have used it, not because it had been used by Apollodotus, but because it was Seleucid, and in default of exact information it will be assumed in this book that she was the daughter of Demetrius. One point to notice about Demetrius’ family is that his eldest son Euthydemus II looks rather younger on his coins than any of his brothers (which means that he coined several years before they did), and that none of the four unless perhaps Demetrius II can have reached the age of thirty; these facts must be accounted for in the reconstruction.

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One other relationship of this period is now known. The publication in 1929 of the great Bajaur hoard showed that the Graeco-Indian king Antimachus II Nikephoros, whose place and date had been utterly uncertain, belonged at latest to the generation after Demetrius;⁴ it may therefore be taken for granted that he was a son of Antimachus.

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Before coming to the kingdom of Euthydemus, it may be useful to give some slight indication of the nomad background which always threatened Greek Bactria and ultimately destroyed it. That kingdom, while it lasted, was to play the same part in shielding the settled world of Iran from the semi-barbarism of the northern steppes as Antigonid Macedonia played in Europe in shielding Greek civilisation from the barbarism of the Balkan peoples. The true home of nomadism was the vast Eurasian steppe, extending from the Danube through Russia and the plains north of the Caspian far to the eastward, a reservoir of peoples which, as the world then went, seemed inexhaustible. Every nomad horde had its own territory within which it moved, pasturing its flocks and herds; of various blood and speech but identical way of life, hordes easily coalesced or broke up again, though on the whole the tendency seems to have been for the greater hordes to absorb lesser ones. This world of nomads had offshoots in more than one direction, and the offshoot which concerned Bactria was that which extended southward into the great gap between the Aralo-Caspian water system and the mountain barrier of the Pamirs and its contiguous ranges. This offshoot seems to have been entirely composed of peoples who spoke some form of Iranian; I must follow general usage and call them Iranians, but it will be understood that that refers to a common inheritance of language and custom and not to blood, which cannot be traced. Through this gap between mountain and sea the Iranian peoples had once poured southward;¹ Medes and Persians, Bactrians and Arachosians, had long since conquered and settled the lands of the Iranian plateau, the Ariana of Eratosthenes, and had forgotten that they were ever nomads; but behind them there remained layers of the less developed peoples of the Iranian name, still largely in the nomad stage, for whom Persians and following them Greeks used the general designation ‘Saca’, though Greek writers were apt improperly to call them ‘Scythians’, really the name of a particular Iranian people in South Russia. One of the brilliant results of the explorations of recent years in Central Asia has been the discovery and identification of the Saca language,² belonging to the North Iranian group which includes Sogdian and Pahlavik (Parthian Pahlavi). The history of the Sacas, so far as they had any before the second century B.C., had consisted in a great attempt made in the seventh century B.C. to follow their kinsmen southward; it was a far-reaching effort and one or two of its details will be noticed later.

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¹ The most recent account is in E. Herzfeld, *Archaeological History of Iran* 1935 pp. 7 sqq.

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² First identified by H. Lüders, *Berlin SB* 1914 p. 94.

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When Eratosthenes said that the Jaxartes separated Sacas and Sogdians¹ his statement was only true for the Chodjend district at the great southward bend of that river; for though in his day and later there were Saca peoples north of the Jaxartes, a considerable proportion of the Saca name lived to the south of it, and these were the people with whom the Bactrian Greeks were primarily concerned. Bactria’s defence against the nomads, until the arrival of the Yueh-chi, was a domestic matter, a defence against those backward Iranian tribes in the steppes to the west and north-west who were perpetually attracted by the rich settled lands; it was not altogether a conflict between the desert and the sown, for some of the Sacas were now only semi-nomads. The peoples south of the Jaxartes who principally came in question, and of whom more will be heard later, were essentially three, the Dahae, Massagetae, and Sacaraucae. The Dahae, who originally came from the Jaxartes steppes,² were a comparatively small confederacy of three tribes now living on the Caspian northward of Hyrcania³ and only semi-nomad; they occupied some oases, including Dihistan (which long bore their name), and though primarily horse-archers were also known as good fighters on foot. They had not appeared in Darius’ province-lists, but had been subject to Xerxes;⁴ whether they were still subject to Persia when Alexander came cannot be said.⁵ Their importance to history was that one of their three tribes, the Parni, had in 248–7, according to their own reckoning, founded a kingdom in the Hyrcanian-Parthian satrapy, but when Euthydemus came to the throne there was nothing to suggest that ‘Parthia’ would ever be more than a local principality. The Sacaraucae, the Sacas of ‘Saca-land beyond Sogd’ which Darius I had ruled, will be described later (p. 291); they occupied the country south of the Jaxartes from the Chodjend district westward toward the Oxus, but as Ptolemy knows of other Saca peoples between the lower Jaxartes and the lower Oxus the Sacaraucae, as we shall meet them later, were probably also a confederacy of several tribes. Most important to the Greeks were the Massagetae, whose name is now supposed to signify ‘the great Saca horde’.¹ They were a huge confederacy of tribes, lords of the Caspian steppes northward from the Great Balkan mountains to the lower Oxus and the Aral; eastward of the Aral they may or may not have extended to the mouth of the Jaxartes, westward of it they stretched northward for an unknown distance, possibly to the Aorsi at the head of the Caspian. Five of their tribes are recorded—Derbices,² Apasiacae (p. 91), Attasii, Chorasmii,³ Augasii;⁴ and we shall meet another later.⁵ What their confederacy really meant is unknown; the tribes apparently often acted independently.⁶ Some of the Massagetae fought on foot,⁷ which means that they were agriculturalists; but the majority still led a pastoral life and fought on horseback after the universal fashion of the nomads, horse-archers led by an aristocracy of mailed warriors on mailed horses.⁸ They ruled various subject races, including primitive ‘fish-eaters’ in the swamps at the river mouths and along the sea shores, some of whose peculiar customs were transferred by Greek writers to their Saca overlords;⁹ they had slain the great Cyrus and had defied Alexander.¹⁰

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¹ Strabo XI, 514 (Eratosthenes), 517 (probably not Apollodorus but Strabo’s own addition). ² Arr. III, 28, 8 and 10. ³ Justin XLI, 1, 10; Strabo XI, 508, 511. ⁴ Xerxes’ province-list from Persepolis l. 26, dahā: E. Herzfeld, *Arch. Mitt. aus Iran* VIII, 1936, pp. 56, 61. ⁵ That he recruited Dahae is consistent with either supposition.

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¹ A. Christensen, *Die Iranier* 1933 p. 250 (in *Kulturgeschichte des alten Orients*, dritter Abschnitt, ed. W. Otto, as part of Müller’s *Handbuch*); E. H. Minns, *Scythians and Greeks* 1913 p. 111, had previously interpreted it as ‘belonging to the great (horde)’. The old interpretation, ‘Fish-eaters’, merely perpetuated the partial confusion in Herodotus and Strabo of the primitive fish-eaters with their Saca overlords.

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² A. Herrmann, *Massagetai* in PW 1930, col. 2127.

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³ Strabo XI, 513 (both tribes).

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⁴ Steph. *s.v.*; probably they are the Augaloi of Ptol. VI, 12, 4.

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⁵ For the Parsii see pp. 292 *sqq.* and Appendix 9.

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⁶ Thus Bessus expected the help of the Chorasmii, Curt. VII, 4, 6; and that people gave asylum to Spitamenes, as did the Apasiacae to Tiridates I of Parthia, Strabo XI, 513.

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⁷ Strabo *ib.*, ἀγαθοὶ ἱππόται καὶ πεζοί.

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⁸ See Tarn, *Military Developments* pp. 73 sq.

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⁹ Notably promiscuity and the stock accusation φανερῶς μίσγεσθαι, Strabo XI, 513; Greeks, who were not anthropologists, called all primitive peoples promiscuous, as Agatharchides in *GGM* I pp. 130, 133, 143, 153. For a similar transfer of primitive customs to other Iranians see Plut. *Mor.* 328C, Alexander taught the Hyrcanians marriage.

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¹⁰ Herrmann *op. cit.* without any warrant makes them subject to Alexander.

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One fertile country, a great island in the Saca steppes—Chorasmia (Kwarizm) on the lower Oxus—at a later day the seat of a powerful monarchy, raises such a difficult problem that it is considered in an Appendix (11). I shall have a conjecture to make about it later (pp. 293 sq.), but it cannot be more than a conjecture.

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With this sketch of the background, one can now turn to Euthydemus and Bactria. So long as the Seleucids were strong, Euthydemus confined himself to the rule of what had been the Bactrian satrapy, Bactria and Sogdiana; Polybius shows that when Antiochus III attacked him in 208 he held nothing east of the Hindu Kush, and his western boundary was still the lower Arius (Ochus) river.¹ I need not elaborate the oft-told story of that expedition,² as given by Polybius, though some of the details will be useful later. Euthydemus tried and failed to hold the lower Arius against Antiochus with 10,000 Bactrian horse, and then seemingly stood a two years' siege in Bactra; if the fortifications of the capital bore the relation to those of Sirynx (p. 16) which the relative importance of the two places demanded, it is readily understandable why Antiochus failed to take it after a siege with which only one other in the third century can compare for length, the Roman siege of Syracuse;³ Euthydemus had turned Bactra into one of the greatest fortified places known. Finally Euthydemus threatened to call in the Sacas (p. 117) and pointed out the general disaster which would ensue; and Antiochus wisely made peace, left him his kingdom, and concluded an alliance. The Polybius fragment does not give the one thing which matters, whether Euthydemus acknowledged Seleucid suzerainty or not; but as the first overtures toward peace came from him, and he surrendered his elephants, probably he did,⁴ though it soon became a dead letter. Antiochus is said to have promised him a daughter for his son Demetrius; but she can only have been a little child at the time, and it is quite certain that whomever Demetrius married it was not a daughter of Antiochus (p. 201 n. 1). The interesting thing is that Antiochus should have thought that he saw in Demetrius, young as he was, one who both by his bearing and his address was worthy to be a king.⁵

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¹ Doubtless the traditional boundary, for Mithridates I when powerful still treated it as the frontier.

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² See in the last place M. Holleaux in *CAH* VIII pp. 138 sqq.

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³ The Roman siege of Capua was only a blockade.

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⁴ The συμμαχία of Polyb. XI, 34, 10 is not against this.

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⁵ Polyb. XI, 34, 9.

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The common belief that Euthydemus died about the time of the battle of Magnesia, 189 B.C., cannot be far wrong; his portrayal in old age on one of his coins, conjoined with the date of his marriage, shows that he cannot have died much earlier, and, had he lived longer, the city founded by Demetrius in Arachosia (see pp. 94, 471) must have been named Euthydemia and not Demetrias. After the departure of Antiochus III in 206 he began to develop his kingdom in such directions as were open to him without inviting a fresh attack by the Seleucid; the last phase prior to the invasion of India, the incorporation of some Seleucid provinces, did not take place till Antiochus’ power had been broken at Magnesia, and was due to Demetrius; but it may be taken that (India apart) such traces of expansion outside the Seleucid realm as exist belong to the reign of Euthydemus, for after Magnesia Demetrius’ hands were full with other matters. A connected story of Euthydemus’ reign is impossible; one can only take the kingdom as it existed when Demetrius crossed the Hindu Kush and go through the several provinces. It will be convenient to take the outlying parts first and leave Bactria itself, the kernel of the kingdom, to the end, for Bactria leads naturally to such account of the nature of Euthydemus’ rule as it may be possible to give.

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To the northward, Euthydemus, besides Sogdiana, ruled Ferghana, a province which in the Greek period was as highly cultivated as Bactria itself (App. 10); whether its population were Sacas, Sogdians, or something older,¹ they had definitely ceased to be nomads, if they had ever been so. The boundaries of Seleucid Sogdiana are not known, and Ptolemy’s Sogdiana, which includes Chorasmia (never under Greek rule) and does not include Ferghana,² is a patchwork of different periods which gives no help; but whether or no Ferghana had ever been part of the Persian empire, it was certainly not part of it in Alexander’s day (App. 10). But it was undoubtedly in Greek hands before Euthydemus died, whether its acquisition was due to him or to the Seleucids; we hear of a mysterious Antioch in Scythia,³ which might have been the capital of the province, whatever it was, and if so the conquest may have been made by Demodamas during the joint reigns of Seleucus and Antiochus I, the period which saw the exploration of the Caspian and the walling-round of the Merv oasis, for Demodamas is known to have been active on the Jaxartes.¹ The Persian road which Alexander had followed from Samarcand only went to Cyropolis and the loop of the Jaxartes; but in 128 B.C. Chang-k’ien, coming from the east, travelled through Ferghana on ‘postal roads’ and found it full of ‘walled towns’,² and Greek rule over the province is not in doubt (App. 10), though it cannot be said if they ruled the whole of Chang-k’ien’s Ta-yuan, which seems to have been larger than the later Ferghana; in his day its then Saca lords held the river valleys up to the watershed on the Pamirs (ib.). The route through Chinese Turkestan to the West most favoured at a somewhat later time passed through Kashgar and thence ran, skirting rather than crossing the Pamirs, to Irkishtam, where it bifurcated, one branch crossing the Terek pass and reaching Ferghana, the other, the later Silk Route, holding on down the Alai valley and so ultimately to Bactria;³ with Bactria and Ferghana in his hands Euthydemus held the ends of both forks of the easiest route into Chinese Turkestan.

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¹ Marquart, *Untersuchungen z. Gesch. von Eran* I p. 30 n. 136, made its people the Barkanioi (O. P. Varkāna), which he thought the same word as Ferghana. But Stephanus *s.v.* definitely makes this tribe neighbours of the Hyrcanians; and they appear in the army of Darius III (Curt. III, 2, 6), who certainly did not rule Ferghana. Herzfeld has located the Paricani in Ferghana, p. 285 n. 3.

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² Berthelot pp. 191, 195.

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³ Antioch no. 10 in Stephanus. But conceivably it was only Alexandria-Eschate refounded.

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¹ Pliny VI, 49.

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² See Chapter VII p. 307 and also Appendix 10, where the references are given.

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³ See Sir A. Stein, On ancient tracks past the Pāmīrs, Himalayan Journal IV, 1932, pp. 20 sqq. and map.

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There seems no doubt that he conquered and held some part of that country. Apollodorus says that the conquests of the Greek kings of Bactria extended to the Seres and Phryni,⁴ which however does not necessarily mean that the two peoples were close together. The Seres will be considered later. The Phryni are mentioned again, under the name Phuni, by Pliny at a later period in association with the Tochari,⁵ i.e. the Little Yueh-chi (p. 276) who settled in the Tarim basin somewhere between 174 and 160; there has been so much confusion about this that it may be well to repeat⁶ the elementary fact that Apollodorus does not mention the Tochari because they were not in the Tarim basin in c. 200 B.C., the period he is talking about, and Pliny does mention them because they had arrived there in the interval between c. 200 and the date of his source. Who the Phryni or Phuni were cannot be said; most certainly they were not the Hiung-nu, whose power was not extended into Chinese Turkestan till after 174.¹ The Ch’ien-han-shu gives the names, in the first century B.C., of a great number of peoples and states in Chinese Turkestan, none of which seems to represent Phryni; but before they had more exact knowledge the Chinese had lumped together the peoples of the Tarim country on their western border under the general name of Ki’ang, and in the same way Phryni may be a general term for the peoples of the Kashgar-Yarkand or the Khotan country. Whether any Greek ever crossed into Chinese Turkestan by the more difficult southern route from Badakshan across the Pamirs² may depend on what follows.

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⁴ Strabo XI, 516.

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⁵ Pliny VI, 55, Phuni et Focari; see also Kiessling, Hunni in PW cols. 2595-6. Gutschmid p. 45 n. 1 emended Focari to Thocari, but it may be doubtful if this was really necessary; see Appendix 21.

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⁶ Tarn, SP Stud. p. 9.

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¹ Tomaschek, *Wien S.B.* cxvi, 1888, p. 769, proposed to read Φοῦνοι = Οὖννοι of Cosmas = Huns. I do not know of anyone who has accepted this; the word Οὖννοι is many centuries later than Apollodorus, and the Hiung-nu were not in the Tarim basin till some time between their final defeat of the Yueh-chi, 176 or 174, and 138, when they caught Chang-k’ien; see p. 279 and also Herzfeld, *Sakastan* p. 14.

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² Stein *op. cit.* pp. 1 sqq. and map.

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In some of the Kharoshthi texts of the third century A.D. brought by Sir A. Stein from the Khotan district in Chinese Turkestan there occur two Greek words for coins, stater and drachma, and a word milima, which is thought to be medimnos (a bushel);³ also the word Yonu or Yona (i.e. ‘Greek’) used as a proper name.⁴ These seem certain. Two others have been suggested; one is that a word khi is derived from χοῦς,⁵ another measure of capacity, and the other that a word hinajhasya is a translation of στρατηγός, ‘general’,⁶ which has however been thought too conjectural to be accepted.⁷ One cannot suppose that these words were brought by traders from Roman Asia in Imperial times, as many of the Greek seals from the Khotan country were (pp. 365 sq.), for it is impossible to see how they can have brought the word stater. But though no Greek king later than Eucratides coined staters, the word survived in India as a measure of weight; it occurs, together with drachma, in two Kharoshthi inscriptions from Taxila of about the Christian era;⁸ and another Kharoshthi inscription on a silver saucer from Taxila, early in the first century A.D., gives the signs of all three coins, stater, drachma, and obol.¹ Now a piece of silk, with a trader’s memorandum written on it in Brahmi, which was discovered at a ruined watch-station on the old Chinese Limes, is said to show that traders from India, coming for silk, had already reached the Limes in the latter part of the first century B.C.,² while in the first three centuries A.D. there were settlements of Indian-speaking people in the Khotan country (p. 365); it is possible therefore that these Greek words thus passed into Chinese Turkestan from India in the course of trade,³ in the same way that coins of some of the Greek kings—Hermaeus and probably Menander—passed into the same country from India.⁴

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³ F. W. Thomas, *JRAS* 1924 p. 671, 1926 p. 507; for milima, *JRAS* 1930 p. 204, and see T. Burrow, *BSOS* vii, 1935, p. 785.

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⁴ Thomas, *JRAS* 1924 p. 672.

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⁵ Burrow, *JRAS* 1935 p. 669.

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⁶ Burrow, *BSOS* vii, 1935, p. 514; cf. Sten Konow, *Indian Culture* ii, 1935, p. 195, who thought it might even be earlier than the third century.

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⁷ Thomas, *BSOS* viii, 1936, p. 789.

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⁸ *CII* no. xxxvii, 3 and 4 (pp. 98–9); see Sten Konow, *Acta Orientalia* vi, 1928, p. 255.

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¹ ASI 1929–30 pp. 62 no. 46 and 63: Aspavarmasa strategasa Sa. 10. 1. Dra. 2. O. 2. (Too late for inclusion in CII.) The known name of the strategos Aspavarma dates this inscription to near the end of the Azes dynasty.

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² Sir A. Stein, Asia Major, Hirth anniv. vol. 1923, pp. 367–72.

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³ This seems to be the view of F. W. Thomas, Acta Orientalia xiv, ii, 1935, p. 109. I had thought so myself prior to Thomas’ discovery of παρεμβολή, ib.

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⁴ A silver coin of Hermaeus from Karghalik, Sir A. Stein, Serindia iii p. 1340; not counting his ‘Chinese’ copper coin (p. 338). A coin probably Menander’s: R. Hoernle, JASB lxviii, 1899, pt. 1, extra no. 1, p. 27.

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But though this must always be a possible view, I doubt if it be the true one. In 1935 Professor F. W. Thomas discovered in these Kharoshthi documents from the Khotan district two occurrences of the word παρεμβολή, camp.⁵ This word cannot well have been brought by Indian traders, but points to Greek military occupation, just as -chester (castra) in English points to Roman military occupation; one recalls the παρεμβολαί near Barygaza (p. 148), and it is possible that παρεμβολή survived in India as a place-name,⁶ like Chester. It may be therefore that all these Greek words in the Khotan country are a deposit from Euthydemus’ conquest. The time-gap is considerable, but hardly a real objection; putting -chester aside, it has been pointed out that old names of coins may survive for a very long time, and a case has been cited of the use of ’Αττικαὶ (δραχμαί) in Egypt three and a half centuries after the last Attic drachma had been coined and over six centuries since the last drachma on anything which could be called the Attic standard had been struck in Egypt.⁷ One cannot assert that these Greek words do date from Euthydemus’ conquest; but of the two possibilities this view seems to me at present the more probable one.

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⁵ Acta Orientalia xiv ii p. 109.

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⁶ Professor Thomas suggested to me that the name Παραβάλει, a town on the Indus, Ptol. vii, 1, 61, might be παρεμβολή. Alexander had left some garrisons along the Indus, Arr. Anab. vi, 17, 1.

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⁷ J. G. Milne, JEA xx, 1934, p. 193; the ’Αττικαὶ he cites are from P. Oxy.

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One result of this conquest of Euthydemus, wherever it extended to, was that nickel, which was not isolated in Europe till 1751, began to appear in Bactria. The Chinese used several alloys in which nickel was combined with other metals; and since chemical analysis has shown that the composition of the Bactrian ‘nickel’ coins is almost identical with that of the alloy known to the Chinese as ‘white copper’¹ there can be no doubt that the Bactrian nickel came from China, whether it came as an alloy or otherwise. But Euthydemus himself did not coin nickel; and as all the nickel coins known were struck by sub-kings of his son Demetrius—Euthydemus II, Pantaleon, and Agathocles—it seems that the penetration of Chinese Turkestan must be placed towards the very end of Euthydemus’ reign. Whether he was seeking touch with China, ruled since 201 by the enterprising Han dynasty, cannot be said.² There was certainly no *direct* trade with China during the Greek period, for through caravans from China to Iran only started in 106 B.C. as a consequence of Chang-k’ien’s missions;³ such exports from China as reached Greek Bactria were passed along from one people to another, as they always had been; in this way came the nickel, and in this way the bamboos and cloth from Szechuan which so astonished Chang-k’ien when he saw them in Bactria.⁴ But when in 128 B.C. Chang-k’ien first reached Ferghana it is recorded that the people there were overjoyed, because ‘they had tried in vain to communicate with China’;⁵ presumably therefore attempts to open up through communication had been made from the Greek side, though it was the Chinese who finally succeeded in doing it.

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¹ W. Flight, *NC* 1868 p.

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² The Ciñas who appear among the retinue of Bhagadatta-Apollodotus in the *Mahābhārata* (B. C. Law, *Ind. Culture* III, 1937, p. 731) can hardly be Chinese.

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³ Hirth, pp. 103, 135; Wylie pp. 69, 70.

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⁴ Hirth p. 98.

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⁵ Hirth p. 94.

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In the west, at some time subsequent to 206 Euthydemus crossed the Arius and took from Parthia the Parthian satrapies of Astauene and

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2113 (A.D. 316). Cf. Mdlle. C. Préaux, *La chronique d’Égypte* no. 20, 1935, *Bibliog. Papyrologique* p. 416, for some modern instances: in Belgium the 20 franc piece is still called a Louis. One might compare some English nautical terms, like starboard, fo’c’sle.

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³⁰⁵ White copper, neglecting decimals, is 79 per cent. copper, 16 per cent. nickel, and 4 per cent. iron; the Bactrian coins are 77 per cent. copper, 20 per cent. nickel, 1 per cent. iron, and a little cobalt, tin, and sulphur. The other known Chinese alloys of nickel contain a good deal of zinc.

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Apavartikene and perhaps part of Parthyene, which became (with a different division) the Bactrian satrapies of Tapuria (or Tapuruaia) and Traxiane,¹ Tapuria being the country of the Tapuri about the upper Atrek and Traxiane the Kasaf-rud valley with its capital at Susia-Tōs and probably extending northward. The conquest is reflected in Apollodorus’ statement that the Arius flows *through* Bactria,² and it implies a war with Parthia, though the occasion is unknown. The two new satrapies, with the outlying Bactrian satrapy of Margiane (Merv) and the country between the Margus and the lower Arius (which may have been part of the Merv satrapy) to connect them,³ were formed into a sub-kingdom for Euthydemus’ second son Antimachus;⁴ his seat was probably Antioch-Merv, as his kingdom appears to have been generally known as Margiane. Cunningham, who knew more about the find-spots of coins than anybody, has recorded that he would have put Antimachus’ kingdom in Margiane⁵ but for his own theory of the Bactrian mints, which has never been accepted by anybody and may now be left out of the question (App. 1); and this kingdom of Margiane appears in Ptolemy, who, as will be seen later (Chap. VI), has preserved a good deal of information about the second century from ‘Trogus’ source’ (p. 45). Ptolemy’s divisions of Asia, speaking generally, are the old Achaemenid-Alexander satrapies, but he makes Margiane (VI, 10) a separate division of Asia as though it had been a satrapy. This it never was; under Darius I the Merv district (Margus in Old Persian) was part of the Bactrian satrapy and when it revolted it was the satrap of Bactria who was entrusted with its reduction;⁶ Alexander continued this arrangement (all his satrapies are known and Margiane is not among them), and there is nothing to show that the Seleucids ever did otherwise. The name Margiane, from its form, must be that of a Seleucid eparchy (App. 2), the eparchy of Merv proper (not Ptolemy’s Greater Margiane); like the other Seleucid eparchies of Bactria, it became under Euthydemus a satrapy of the Bactrian kingdom (p. 113) and at a later time a satrapy of the Parthian kingdom.¹

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¹ Strabo XI, 517, τήν τε ’Ασπιώνου τήν τε Τουριούαν, on which see Tarn, *SP Stud.* pp. 20-4.

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² Strabo XI, 518 with 509; see Kiessling, *Hyrkania* in PW cols. 492-3.

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³ This follows from Ptolemy’s Gouriane in Margiane (VI, 10, 4) being identical with Polybius’ *Ταγουρίαν* (x, 49; Gutschmid’s conjecture *τὰ Γουρίανα* is certain), which was somewhere east of the lower Arius; see Tarn, *SP Stud.* p. 24; *CAH* VIII p. 141 n. 1.

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⁴ The facts connected with Antimachus’ pedigree brought out in Chapter V pp. 200 sq. amply confirm this.

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⁵ *NC* 1869 p. 39.

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⁶ Behistun 38-9 (F. H. Weissbach, *Die Keilinschriften der Achaemeniden*, 1911): Darius ends with ‘This is what I did in *Bactria*’. The name Margus does not occur in any of Darius’ lists of provinces.

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¹ Isidore 14.

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Now Ptolemy in Iran never notices or reflects either the Bactrian or the Parthian reorganisation, but gives eparchy names everywhere as what they originally were, subdivisions of the old satrapies; his usage is consistent throughout. The Parthians took Merv in the reign of Mithridates II some time between his accession in 124 and 115,² as part of the liquidation of the great Saca invasion which began in 129; and as no place can be found for Ptolemy’s Greater Margiane after that date, its existence must lie somewhere between the reorganisation of Bactria by Diodotus or Euthydemus on the one hand and the Parthian conquest of Merv on the other, which means that Greater Margiane was either the kingdom of some Bactrian king or a short-lived Saca kingdom somewhere between 129 and 115. But the nomad or semi-nomad Sacas were hardly likely to have carried out a comprehensive reorganisation during their brief occupation of the country, though they possibly set up a transient kingdom in Traxiane (p. 295); it seems certain enough that Greater Margiane must belong to the Bactrian period, and, if so, no king comes in question but Antimachus.³ Besides, as will be seen (Chap. v), he must have ruled somewhere westward of Bactria itself, as he was one of the two sub-kings who bore the first brunt of Eucratides’ attack; and he cannot have been far away, as the coin-portrait for his tetradrachms was engraved by the artist *X* (p. 75), who must have worked in Bactra, and some of his money was seemingly coined in Bactra (App. 1). Ptolemy (VI, 10) includes in his Greater Margiane the Tapuri, that is the new satrapy of Tapuria, and Gouriane (p. 88 n. 3) between the lower Arius and Margus rivers. He also includes the Dahae, which *may* mean that Antimachus had, or claimed, rule over the southern part of the Caspian steppes.¹ Ptolemy makes the schematic boundary of his Greater Margiane touch the Caspian just north of Hyrcania; but it certainly did not reach the Caspian, or reach it to any purpose. This Greater Margiane was also known to one of Pliny’s sources.²

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² Tarn, *SP Stud.* pp. 15–18, *CAH* IX p. 585. By 115 I mean the date (Hirth’s) of Chang-k’ien’s second mission, which Herzfeld puts in 118, *Sakastan* p. 16.

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³ I do not mean that Ptolemy’s Margiane necessarily gives the correct boundaries, but that it shows there was such a kingdom; see also p. 90 n. 2. Of the scanty occurrences of the word Margiane, Pliny VI, 46 and Strabo XI, 516 = II, 73 are the Seleucid eparchy; Strabo II, 72, Isidore 14, Justin XLI, 1, 10, and the Parthian *Μαργιανή* coin (*BMC Parthia* p. 40) are the Parthian satrapy; Strabo XI, 515, a reference to the oasis, might be either; Curtius VII, 10, 15 and IX, 7, 4 are merely unsafe emendations.

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¹ *It might* merely reflect the fact that the Dahae were in Xerxes’ empire (p. 80).

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² Because Pliny VI, 47 refers to mountains in Margiane: *ab hujus excelsis*.

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We have now got the rough outline of the kingdom of Antimachus, and it gives several pieces of information. Undoubtedly he was a sub-king under his father Euthydemus, and subsequently under his brother Demetrius (Chap. v). The Seleucids had never employed a system of sub-kings of their own race; when the heir-apparent governed the East he was in theory joint-king with his father of the whole kingdom and Babylon dated by the two jointly. Euthydemus introduced a new state-form, in which a younger son might rule a definite part of the realm not as joint-king or as satrap but as sub-king, with the right of coining. We shall meet many such sub-kings again; they explain that standing numismatic puzzle, the large number of kings in the early period. The Parthians, those supreme imitators, may have borrowed the idea of sub-kings; Mithridates III was seemingly for a time a sub-king of his brother Orodes II,³ and it seems that some of the great Parthian feudatories were practically sub-kings in their own districts.⁴

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