The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s6.15

c10.s6.15

A difficult problem is the ‘joint’ coin of Antialcidas and Lysias.¹ Lysias on his own coins used the type of Demetrius, Heracles crowning himself; he sometimes wore Demetrius' elephant-scalp,² and adopted Demetrius' title *ἀνίκητος*; that he was a descendant, presumably a grandson, of Demetrius seems self-evident. But Antialcidas certainly belonged to the rival line of Eucratides, as his type ‘pilei of the Dioscuri’ shows; and the ‘joint’ coin is so difficult that the view has been put forward that (for once) Lysias' types have not their natural meaning but are merely local.³ But *ἀνίκητος* cannot be local, and that title, combined with the elephant-scalp, leaves no doubt who Lysias was, for the combination of these two things had been of the very essence of Demetrius' royalty (pp. 131 *sq.*). The important thing is that at some period Lysias was able to coin in a Greek mint, but all the mints known were in the hands of Antialcidas or Strato; at the same time the elephant on Lysias' coins (which might, however, be the elephant of Taxila), and more especially the little elephant on his aegis (which cannot well refer to Taxila), have been interpreted—in the latter case there seems no alternative—to mean that he regarded himself as under the protection of the elephant god of Kapisa.⁴