The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.12

c10.s1.12

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.