The Greeks in Bactria and India c13.23

c13.23

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).