The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s4.148

c10.s4.148

It remains to explain the word Euthymedeia (Εὐθυμέδεια), though it is tolerably obvious. It is a word invented for the occasion, but a properly formed derivative of the Homeric *μέδω, corresponding to a known class of women’s names;² it may be recalled that the one-time Parthian capital also bore a Homeric nickname, Hekatompylos. But the known feminine names in -μέδεια all seem to be poetical; this fact, and the scansion, show that the word comes from a hexameter verse and is consequently derived from some poem (whether in hexameters or elegiacs), precisely like Iomousa; and the meaning of the word, ‘(The town of) the upright ruler’,³ shows both that it belongs to Menander’s time (Plutarch alludes to the equity of his rule)⁴ and that he probably came into the poem somehow. The word became a name for the city precisely as other similar phrases have done for other cities; a traveller from afar, visiting Scotland a century ago, might well have written ‘Edinburgh, also called Auld Reekie’. As two inscriptions from Susa in Greek elegiacs, written more than a century later, both introduce compliments to Susa’s overlord, Phraates IV of Parthia,⁵ there is no difficulty on the technical side. It is possible enough that the poet who coined the word had in mind the name Epiphaneia, ‘(the city of) the god manifest’, given by Menander’s enemy Antiochus IV to Ecbatana, now the Parthian capital, and thought that his own king’s capital might be given a rival but more honourable title.