The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.132

c10.s1.132

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