The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.162

c10.s1.162

In Arachosia Demetrius founded a city which bore his name, Demetrias;⁶ it was a sign that Seleucid suzerainty over the Euthydemids, if it had existed, was at an end, for to found a city bearing your own name was a proclamation of independence (p. 208). Isidore, *i.e.* the Parthian survey, places Demetrias on the main route from Seistan by Alexandria-Ghazni to Kabul, and somewhere between Seistan and Ghazni.⁷ The old Persian capital of the combined Seistan-Arachosia satrapy, known as ‘the Arachosians’, had been somewhere in the neighbourhood of Kalat-i-Gilzai, convenient for governing both the Seistan plain and the hill country of Arachosia; but Alexander had detached Seistan from Arachosia and had left the hill land as a separate satrapy, with its capital at his new city of Alexandria-Ghazni. But in Demetrius’ scheme Seistan was again to be united with the Arachosian hill land under one sub-king, and therefore neither Alexandria-Prophthasia (pp. 14, 347), Alexander’s capital of Seistan, nor Alexandria-Ghazni was suitably placed for the ruler’s seat; there can be little doubt that he founded Demetrias to be again a joint capital and therefore founded it at, or as representing, the old Persian centre, ‘the Arachosians’; in the first century B.C. the old town-name, as happened so often, came back in the form Arachosia. It was not a retrograde step, for the division of the land into at least three Parthian satrapies later¹ shows that Arachosia-with-Seistan formed at least three separate satrapal governments (representing the Seleucid eparchies) under the Euthydemid sub-king, Arachosia forming one satrapy and Seistan at least two—Zarangiane, the Hamun lake country, and Paraitakene, the lower Helmand, afterwards Sacastene; there may have been a third, Tatakene.²