The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s6.163

c10.s6.163

Unless I am entirely wrong about the Chinese evidence which follows, the accession of Hermaeus falls between two points, the first appointment by China of a general of the western *limes*, which is said to have been in 59,¹ and the accession of the Han emperor Yuan-ti in 48; and as by the latter date Hermaeus was already in possession of the Paropamisadae, then if Amyntas began to reign in 58 Hermaeus' accession was quite certainly not later than 50 and probably not much earlier. Numismatists seem agreed that his reign exhibits a curious revival of Greek power; his large and widespread coinage should attest a substantial kingdom, though any fresh influx of Greeks or mercenaries from the West seems at this time quite out of the question. It has even been suggested that his rule extended to the Jhelum.² One would like to believe this, and it would certainly suit very well with his relations with Hippostratus; but it seems incredible that he could have been strong enough to take Gandhāra and Taxila from the Sacas, and against it is the fact that, on the Chinese evidence, he can only have taken what was under the rule of the Sacas of Kabul, and they were not ruling Gandhāra. It must be supposed that he ruled all the Paropamisadae, but no more. He was, however, certainly in touch with the kingdom of Hippostratus on the Jhelum; his queen Calliope, on the silver coins which show their jugate busts,³ appears at his side wearing the diadem and is named with him in the legend and should therefore, as usually supposed, have been a princess in her own right, but whether that be so or not, she can only have come from Hippostratus' kingdom, for these coins bear the type of Hippostratus and Nicias, ‘King on prancing horse’,⁴ which Hermaeus himself did not use. The idea that the last descendant of Eucratides married the last descendant of Euthydemus is very attractive; but the old feud may have been healed long before (p. 314) and in any case there is no certainty that Hermaeus *was* descended from Eucratides.⁵