The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s3.186

c10.s3.186

Eucratides issued several types of bilingual coins in India,⁵ which means that he was in the country for some little time; this bears out the chronology here adopted and the protracted nature of his struggle with Apollodotus and Menander. One of his square bronze issues, with the type ‘Victory’,⁶ is of interest as an indication of what was now in his mind. In the Greek legend he is still only ‘Great King’, but the Kharoshthi legend adds to this the word *rajadirajasa*, ‘King of Kings’: he was to be the independent monarch of a great Graeco-Asiatic empire. It is no doubt true, speaking generally, that Graeco-Macedonians did not use the title ‘King of Kings’;⁷ but apart from the fact that the last Greek king in India, Hermaeus, was for political reasons called *rajadirajasa* after his death (App. 17), there is another eloquent exception besides that of Eucratides—Antony’s famous coin on which Cleopatra is ‘Queen of Kings’. Now the title ‘King of Kings’ was the nearest equivalent a Greek knew to the Indian Chakravartin,⁸ the ‘king of the wheel’ (p. 263), and as Menander in Indian eyes was a Chakravartin (*ib.*), Eucratides’ title must have some connection with this fact and with his struggle with Menander. But the actual relationship is obscure, for it cannot be said when Menander was first regarded as a Chakravartin; chronologically, we do not know which title came first.