The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s3.51

c10.s3.51

It has been necessary to go through Antiochus' career in some detail in order to understand his actions in the crucial year 166. In the spring of that year he held his great festival at Daphne,⁶ a parallel to the festival of Ptolemy II in Alexandria described by Callixenus.¹ The conventional explanation is that he was fond of ostentation and that he desired to surpass the show given by Aemilius Paullus,² the conqueror of Macedonia, at Amphipolis in 167, which had greatly impressed the Greek world. Likely enough both explanations are true, though the precisely similar ostentation of Ptolemy II had not prevented that monarch from being in fact as much a realist as any modern captain of industry; but even if true they are minor matters. The main feature of the show at Daphne was the review of Antiochus’ strong army; it recalls the similar review of his army by Ptolemy II, but while at Alexandria the march past of the army came last, at Daphne it came first of everything.³ Such a review was the Hellenistic form of triumph, and marked the end of a victorious and successful war;⁴ that point needs no elaboration. Antiochus had not himself been waging any successful war. But neither had Ptolemy II: whichever war he was actually celebrating,⁵ it had been won by his generals. We must look then for a war won by some general of Antiochus, precisely as at a later time an Antony or an Octavian might take the title *Imperator* for successes won by his legates. That this interpretation of the show at Daphne is correct is amply borne out by Antiochus’ coins, for in the same year, 166, he began to issue his third series and added to his coin-legend the title νικηφόρου, ‘The Victorious’;⁶ and the head of Zeus now begins to exhibit his own features.⁷