The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.135

c10.s1.135

Antimachus’ regular coin-type of Poseidon and trident on his various issues has rightly been held to indicate a naval victory. It was certainly not won on the Indus, for he had no connection with India,⁵ and as this type was his regular coin-type from the start the victory must have been won early in his reign, long before the invasion of India; it may indeed have been the occasion of the grant to him of the royal title.⁶ And certainly no Bactrian king reached or used the ‘unnavigated’ Caspian; for one thing, Parthia lay between them. A unique bronze coin of Antimachus from Seistan,⁷ showing on one side an Indian elephant (the usual adoption of a Seleucid type, p. 213) and on the other Nike bearing a wreath and standing on the prow of a galley, one of the numerous imitations of the Victory of Samothrace, must refer to the same victory; but it was not won on the Hamun lake, for at this time Seistan was Seleucid and the presence of this one coin there is an accident of trade, like his coins from Baluchistan (p. 94). The only place where the ruler of Merv can have won a naval victory is on the Oxus; and what Antimachus did was to defeat a fleet of the Sacas (Massagetae). The use made of Sacas on Xerxes' fleet shows that among them were people acquainted with the water;¹ and one tribe of the Massagetae, the Apasiacae, which is Apa-saka, ‘Water-Sacas’,² are said to have lived about the middle reaches of the Oxus,³ north-westward of the effective boundary of the Bactrian kingdom. A century later, when Sacas had invaded India, the naval symbolism on the coins of Maues and Azes shows that they had fleets and fought battles on the Indus and the Jhelum (Chap. VIII); similarly the Water-Sacas would have shipping on the Oxus,⁴ presumably combining trade and piracy in the usual way. It must be remembered that the Massagetae were not all nomads (p. 81).