The Greeks in Bactria and India c13: Appendix 1. Monograms and Find-Spots
The Greeks in Bactria and India c13
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Appendix 1. Monograms and Find-Spots
c13.2
In order to save much repetition in the text, the principles followed in this book on these two matters are set out here.
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It has been widely believed that the monograms on the Greek coins from Bactria and India, or most of them, denoted mint-cities;¹ and even to-day, I understand, it is thought that some of them must be mints, though one numismatist has stated that they may sometimes ‘denote the name of the local magistrate under whose authority the coin was struck’.² Yet Cunningham’s laborious effort to work out the mint-cities from these numerous monograms was a complete failure, and it is admitted that, after many years of study, no single monogram of any mint has been identified, while on the other hand the types of at least two mint-cities, the ‘Zeus enthroned’ of Alexandria-Kapisa and the humped bull of Pushkalāvatī, are perfectly certain.
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¹ *BMC* p. lv; *CHI* p. 443 (very definitely). But the last word of Cunningham, the protagonist of this view, was that not one half were mint-cities; *NC* 1888 p. 205.
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² Whitehead, *NNM* p. 26.
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Why it was ever supposed that the Greek kings in the East would make such a radical breach with Seleucid custom I cannot imagine;³ the continuity between the eastern Greek kingdoms and the Seleucid realm is as marked as that of other Seleucid Succession states, indeed in many ways more so; this book has, I trust, shown the trouble taken by both houses, that of Euthydemus and that of Eucratides, to prove that they were Seleucids. No one seems ever to have doubted that the Seleucid monograms represent moneyers,⁴ and the Seleucid system of monograms at the Antioch mint has been elucidated by Mr E. T. Newell;⁵ the monograms are those of continuing mint-masters and changing city magistrates. There is literary evidence for mint-masters in one kingdom, Antigonid Macedonia;⁶ and it is admitted that the monograms on the coinage of Parthia, the principal Seleucid Succession state, are usually those of moneyers.¹ That the Bactrian and Indian monograms must also be, anyhow as a general rule, those of moneyers—mint-masters or city magistrates—seems to me almost too clear for argument; the Kharoshthi letters (instead of monograms) on some of the later Greek coins in India (p. 356) should alone be conclusive. The contrary belief would mean that some princelets were operating as many mints as Alexander ever did; that the Saca Azes, whose monograms and letters are very numerous, was operating several times as many; and that Eucratides’ twenty-stater gold piece, of finest Bactrian work, was struck in the same mint as some of the very inferior coins of his bitter enemy Menander in the eastern Punjab.
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³ This is where Cunningham went wrong; he thought he was dealing with ‘eastern kings’, not Hellenistic states, *NC* 1888 p. 205.
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⁴ P. Gardner in *BMC Sel.* p. xxxii; Sir G. Macdonald, *JHS* xxiii, 1903, p. 101.
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⁵ *The Seleucid Mint of Antioch* 1918; see the instances of long tenure of office on p. 10, and generally pp. 44, 54, 68–9, 80, and the résumé pp. 129 sqq.
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⁶ Plut. *Aem. Paul.* 23, τοὺς ἐπὶ τοῦ νομίσματος at Pella (two men). An earlier mint-master of Perseus, Zoilus, is known: A. Mamroth, *Z. f. Num.* xxxviii, 1928, p. 4. For a case of a mint-master moving from Tarsus to Pella see E. T. Newell, *The coinages of Demetrius Poliorcetes* 1927 p. 83.
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¹ Wroth, *BMC Parthia* pp. lxxix sq. and a certain instance p. lxxxiii; McDowell, *Coins from Seleucia* p. 168 (the tetradrachms). It is noteworthy that Professor P. Gardner, who in 1879 said that many of the Bactrian and Indian monograms might stand for mints (*BMC* p. lv), had in 1877 maintained that to call the Parthian monograms mints was to go altogether beyond the evidence (his *Parthian Coinage* p. 23).
c13.12
It is becoming clear that both Seleucids and Parthians operated only a few mints, serving large areas; and so far as can be made out there were very few regular Greek mints in the Farther East. Only four are at first certain: Bactra, Alexandria-Kapisa, Pushkalāvatī, and one in Menander’s home kingdom in the eastern Punjab, presumably at the capital, Sāgala. A fifth, Taxila, is morally certain; and it is possible that there was always a second mint in the eastern Punjab, at Bucephala,² though it only becomes certain under Hippostratus (p. 326). It is possible, though it cannot be proved, that there was for a time a mint in Antimachus’ sub-kingdom of Margiane, either at Antioch-Merv or possibly at Susia-Tōs; but this is very speculative, for his famous portrait was certainly engraved in Bactra (p. 75) and his coinage may have been struck for him there also (p. 440). There seems no trace to be got, so far, of any Greek mint either in Arachosia-Seistan or in Sind, where stood two of Demetrius’ name-cities, though later the Sacas struck, or got struck for them, a rude coinage in Seistan itself (p. 502). No doubt any city with a Greek community could produce coins of some sort if the political position necessitated this; but I am talking of the regular royal mints.
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² It has been suggested that Menander’s ox-head was meant for the type of Bucephala.
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One reason alleged for the belief that the Bactrian and Indian monograms represent mint-cities must be noticed—that certain monograms appear over such long periods of time that they cannot be moneyers.³ There is nothing in this. None of the mint-cities possessed an overflowing population of Greeks, and no doubt the office of mint-master was often hereditary,⁴ as was the office of *strategos* at Doura.¹ Let me give an instance from a city which had a numerous Greek population, Athens. During a large part of the third and part of the second centuries B.C. the office of *paidotribes* at Athens was hereditary in the family of Hermodorus of Acharnae; the inscriptions show the name Hermodorus as *paidotribes* spread out over about a century, whether there were two or three men of the name, *i.e.* whether we are dealing with three or five generations.² Suppose that that family, instead of being hereditary *paidotribai* in Athens, had been hereditary mint-masters in Alexandria-Kapisa; we should get the Hermodorus monogram spread out over about a century, and we might get it over the whole century and a half of Greek rule in that city.
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³ *BMC* p. lv; *CHI* p. 443.
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⁴ Macdonald loc. cit.: the monograms show that ‘the magistracies attached to the mint (at Alexandria Troas) were held in succession by members of the same family or families, a practice that we know to have been followed in other parts of the Hellenic world’.
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¹ Jotham Johnson, *Dura Studies* 1932 pp. 17 *sqq.*
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² The inscriptions are set out by W. S. Ferguson, *Athenian Tribal Cycles* 1932 pp. 104 *sq.*; on the dating see also Tarn, *JHS* LIV, 1934, p. 30. Ferguson got the inscriptions into three generations; I inclined to five, with three men named Hermodorus. The principle is the same in either case.
c13.19
That should suffice for possibilities. While not asserting that all Bactrian and Indian monograms *must* necessarily represent moneyers—an alternative might be that some represented *officinae*,³ workshops, of which a great city might have more than one—I see no reason to suppose that they ever denote mint-cities.⁴ And I am not sure if any monogram occurs which is sufficiently stereotyped to denote an *officina*.⁵
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³ Suggested by Wroth as regarded the Parthian coinage, *BMC Parthia* pp. lxxxiv *sq.*
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⁴ Such minor variations of type in a series as are referred to in *CHI* p. 443 might of course be due to different mints or *officinae*, *i.e.* different die-cutters. But I do not know what relation, if any, such things bear to the monograms.
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⁵ McDowell, *Coins from Seleucia* p. 169, makes the attractive suggestion that the stereotyped monograms on later Parthian drachmae, which for long reproduced those on the money of Phraates III, were at the start moneyers’ monograms which became stereotyped to mean certain mints.
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It may be worth looking as an illustration at one common Bactrian monogram, ℛ; for as this monogram also occurs on a group of copper coins of Seleucus I found at Seleuceia⁶ it quite certainly represents a man and not a place. It is dominant during Bactria’s great period. It begins on the later coinage of Euthydemus,⁷ and appears on coins of Demetrius, Antimachus, Euthydemus II, Agathocles (twice), and the first issue of Eucratides⁸ before he took the title ‘Great King’; then it ceases. It is certainly connected with the mint at Bactra, since it is one of the only two monograms on the money of Euthydemus II; its appearance on two of the pedigree coins of Agathocles shows that they were struck for him in Bactra, as would be natural in the case of a sub-king; the same applies to the other sub-king in the list, Antimachus. The fact that this monogram does not appear on the earlier coins of Euthydemus, on the later coins of Eucratides, or on any of those of Heliocles, is further proof that it cannot represent a city or a workshop; it is, beyond any question, a man's signature. This man then held office from about 200 B.C. (certainly not earlier) to 167—say thirty-three years at the outside; he was therefore a mint-master. There is no reason whatever against his holding office for thirty-three years; two mint-masters are known at Antioch who held office for twenty-two and twenty-eight years,¹ and a case is known of a man being *paidotribes* at Athens for thirty-four years at the least;² not to mention Sosibius, who held high office under the third and fourth Ptolemies, first as *dioecetes* and then as vizier, for forty-one years.³ If we like, we may see in ☧ the mint superintendent who was largely responsible for enlisting the services of the artists who made the Greek coinage of Bactria such a wonderful portrait-gallery. His colleague or vice-official ☙,⁴ the other monogram on the coins of Euthydemus II, which appears also on the coins of Demetrius, Agathocles (including a pedigree coin), and Eucratides (including the Heliocles-Laodice coin), held office from about 190 to, at latest, Eucratides' death in 159, say perhaps thirty-one years. That these two men went over to Eucratides may illustrate the strength of his appeal (Chap. v).
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⁶ McDowell *op. cit.* p. 6 no. 9 and Pl. I no. 6.
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⁷ *BMC* p. 5; *CHI* p. 443.
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⁸ *BMC* pp. 6, 8, 10, 12, 13; for Demetrius see also *NC* 1904 p. 321, 1935 p. 1.
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¹ Newell, *The Seleucid Mint of Antioch* p. 10.
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² Abascantus: *IG* II² 2086 l. 115 and 2097; see W. B. Dinsmoor, *The Archons of Athens* 1931 p. 94; J. Kirchner, *Gnomon* 1932 p. 453.
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³ Tarn, *JHS* LIII, 1933, p. 66.
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⁴ Two contemporary mint-masters are met with at Antioch (Newell, *op. cit.* p. 10) and at Pella (Plut. *Aem. Paul.* 23); whether they were colleagues or whether one was subordinate to the other cannot be said. So far as I know, this monogram never occurs again.
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The same monogram ☧ in India on twenty-two coins of the Bajaur hoard,⁵ composed of coins of Apollodotus, Menander, and Antimachus II (p. 229), must be another man, whose monogram also appears on coins of Menander's son Strato I; and a third man, possibly a grandson of the first, signs coins of two later members of the house of Eucratides, Antialcidas and Archebius, with the same monogram. What little is known of Greek names in India apart from the kings points to certain favourite names being often repeated (p. 392). This seems to be the story of one common monogram, and it has nothing whatever to do with mint-cities. But it is to be hoped that it may one day be possible for numismatists to work out the Bactrian and Indian mints as the Seleucid and Parthian mints are being worked out.
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⁵ M. F. C. Martin, *JASB* XXIII, 1927 (pub. 1929), Num. Supp. XL pp. 18, 20. It is unfortunately not stated on whose coins this monogram occurs, but some twenty-five years will cover the whole.
c13.33
Much use has been made by some writers of the find-spots of coins in determining where this or that king reigned, but it is not a satisfactory form of evidence; I have sometimes been forced to use it in default of better, but coins travel in trade and almost any other kind of evidence is preferable. In many cases too the find-spots are unknown; at best we have only a very partial picture. The following rules seem sound. If a king has an abundant coinage which is found in many places over great distances, like the coinages of Apollodotus and Menander, that is evidence of a widely extended rule, but not evidence that he ruled in all the places where his coins are found. If the coins of a king with a very large coinage are never found in a particular district, that creates a presumption, in the absence of other evidence, that he did not rule there; but if the coinage be small, no presumption is created; and in both cases, large and small coinage, the absence of coins in a district cannot be set up against other evidence that the king in question ruled there. If only a few isolated coins of a king be known, the find-spots afford no real evidence for the locality of his rule. The belief that find-spots of copper coins are good evidence of rule, because they do not travel far from the place of issue, is unfounded; copper coins must have circulated regularly over all the country served by the mint of issue, which might be very extensive, and a good deal more than that can be demonstrated. There have been found in Susa 143 copper coins of Seleuceia on the Tigris,¹ and sixty chalkoi of an unknown king Tigraios, who if I am right ruled at Omana on the Gulf of Ormuz (p. 485); large numbers of copper coins of Kadphises I have been found at Taxila, where probably he never ruled;² and copper coins of the Ptolemies have frequently been found, not only all round the Mediterranean,³ but even at many places in Britain.⁴
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¹ MDP xx, 1928, pp. 37-40; xxv, 1934, pp. 62-3. 143 altogether.
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² CHI p. 584; Marshall, ASI 1929-30 p. 57.
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³ J. G. Milne, JRS 1932 p. 247; and see p. 149 n. 6.
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⁴ List of places in NC 1930 p. 338.
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Account must also be taken of known centres of trade; for example, the great mass of coins of many kings which Masson got about Begram reflects the fact that Alexandria-Kapisa was the gateway of the trade between India and the West, but does not necessarily show who ruled there. It also has to be borne in mind that the coins of some kings continued to be struck after their deaths. Eucratides was not long in India, but Masson picked up his copper coins at Begram by the thousand; Euthydemus was almost certainly dead when Demetrius conquered Seistan, but his copper issues are said to be the only money which has been found in that country in any quantity; the copper money of both must have continued to be coined after their respective deaths. The most curious instance, for which the evidence is unimpeachable, is that the money of both Apollodotus and Menander was circulating in Barygaza in the middle of the first century A.D. (p. 149), two centuries after their deaths, though Surastrene had long been lost to the Greeks. It must be supposed that the great trading port, having found that these coins were good media of exchange, continued to copy them indefinitely for trade purposes; the Saca rulers would not desire to interfere with what was presumably a lucrative procedure.