The Greeks in Bactria and India c11.6

c11.6

If we look at the state-forms of the Hellenistic kingdoms in their prime, say in the third century, we see in Ptolemaic Egypt absolute monarchy unfettered by any other element in the state; we see in Antigonid Macedonia a monarchy limited by the age-old rights of the Macedonian people under arms; we see in Seleucid Asia a monarchy limited by the rights of many more or less autonomous cities, rights which in most cases they had themselves created. All three state-forms could be traced back to some aspect of Alexander’s monarchy; all three dynasties could claim to be carrying on something which he had done. But there was another element in the matter, the huge mass of native subjects of the Alexander-monarchy; and we see no monarchy in the West which (putting religion aside) was subject to limitation, voluntary limitation of course, by the rights of its native subjects, though one does not know what Cleopatra VII might have done had she come at the beginning of Ptolemaic history instead of at the end.¹ But Hellenistic history would be imperfect had no dynasty made some sort of an attempt to put into practice, as the Stoics in some sense put into theory, not anything which Alexander had *done* but the greater thing which he had *dreamt*; and that is the importance of the Euthydemid dynasty during the three generations of its power (for politically Menander may be called a Euthydemid). The banishment of that dynasty from Greek to Indian history has been a sad impoverishment of the Hellenistic story.