The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s3.131

c10.s3.131

It has sometimes been supposed that Eucratides founded a new capital; and to give a new capital your own name was, *prima facie*, the clearest form of declaration known that you were an independent king, just as the foundation of Demetrias in Arachosia by Demetrius as capital of his new conquest Arachosia-Seistan had been his definite repudiation of any Seleucid suzerainty. This principle had been illustrated very clearly by the actions of the dynasts in the wars after Alexander’s death; Cassander had founded his name-city Cassandreia while Alexander IV yet lived as a proclamation that he repudiated the authority of the boy-king, who was his prisoner, while Seleucus and Lysimachus, though actually no less independent than Cassander, observed the decencies to the extent of not founding Seleuceia and Lysimacheia till the boy had been murdered. But in view of one thing which was to happen in India (p. 212) it is almost impossible to believe that Eucratides meant at this time to repudiate Antiochus’ suzerainty; and there is nothing to show that Eucratideia, a place never mentioned except by Ptolemy, was meant to be a new capital, for Eucratides, as is shown by his moneyers (App. 1), coined in Bactra, and Bactra was certainly the capital of his son Heliocles. The most natural supposition would be that Eucratideia was only Demetrias on the Oxus (p. 118)