The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.143

c10.s1.143

But the startling thing on Antimachus’ coins is that he calls himself Theos, ‘the god’.⁵ No king of any of the western dynasties called himself Theos on his coins till Antiochus IV, and though Antimachus overlapped the first few years of Antiochus (Chap. v), his regular coinage had certainly begun long before 175, when Antiochus ascended the throne; if there was borrowing, which seems unlikely, it was done by the Seleucid. There is also a Parthian ‘beardless’ coin on which some Parthian king called himself Theos,¹ a title not used again officially by any Parthian king, though Greeks gave it unofficially to Phraates IV;² Wroth tentatively attributed this coin to Phriapitius because his son Artabanus II (Wroth’s Artabanus I) called himself θεοπάτωρ, ‘son of a god’, but, whichever of the early Arsacids it may have been, the title Theos was borrowed from Antimachus. Why did Antimachus, a younger son who was only a sub-king of his father Euthydemus when he settled his coin-types, adopt this title? So far as is known, the Euthydemid kings were not gods during life, though Euthydemus was deified after death,³ perhaps with the usual state-cult, and one has only to look at Antimachus’ face to see that there is no overweening pride there; he is rather amused at himself. Now Alexander in private had been ironical about his divinity; once when wounded he had said to those who called him a god: ‘This, you see, is blood and not “ichor such as flows in the veins of the blessed gods”.’⁴ And there had been irony enough in the snub once administered by Antigonus Gonatas to the poet who called him god;⁵ I need not cite later cases.⁶ And irony might be the explanation of Antimachus’ adoption of the divine title: this is what the great kings think, so let a small king say it. Indeed one small king had practically said it before, though not in irony; Alexarchus of Ouranopolis (p. 210) had called himself the Sun and had put the Sun on his coins. The more that strange man is considered the more important he grows as a forerunner of later ideas; we shall meet a king presently (p. 210) who may have had him in mind, and one cannot say that his example may not have suggested to Antiochus IV the assumption on his coins of the radiate crown of Helios the Sun-god and to Antimachus the assumption on his coins of the divine title. However it be, there are the coins of Antimachus the god; and strange enough it is.