The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s4.142

c10.s4.142

Sāgala (Sialkot between the Chenab and the Ravi) was Menander’s official capital, though doubtless the suggestion is correct that he must also have had a summer capital in the hills.³ It was certainly not a Greek *polis*⁴ but a great Indian city, the capital town of the Madras, though the actual description of it in the *Milindapañha* is merely that of a great Indian city at large; and though it has been suggested that there was probably a Greek palace quarter,⁵ this is very unlikely, seeing that in the parallel case of Demetrius’ Taxila no indication of a Greek quarter was found; Greeks must have lived in the Indian city as they did at Taxila. Ptolemy gives a meaningless Greek nickname, Σάγαλα ἡ καὶ Εὐθυμηδία, ‘Sāgala, also called Euthymedia’. Discussion of the MSS readings has been relegated to Appendix 13, which I must take as read; I have no more doubt than I ever had that the real name was Εὐθυμέδεια, Euthymědeia. The name usually found in modern books, Εὐθυδημία, Euthydēmia, was a conjecture of Bayer, made at a time when knowledge was naturally not at its present level; it has been copied by the majority⁶ of writers since, because that was the line of least resistance, and is now so consecrated by repetition that it may be doubtful if any reasoning can displace it; yet it is so impossible that even if it occurred in a MS of Ptolemy (it does not) it would have to be emended. The impossibility is that Euthydemia is a dynastic name and would therefore have to be a Greek *polis*, while Sāgala was quite certainly not a *polis*. That is conclusive; and another reason is hardly less so. Whenever Ptolemy mentions a preexisting town which had acquired a Hellenistic dynastic name he always puts the dynastic (i.e. the official) name first, as was proper, even if it never came into general use;¹ on his practice therefore ‘Sāgala, also called Euthydemia’ would be an impossible phrase; he would certainly have written ‘Euthydemia, also called Sāgala’.