The Greeks in Bactria and India c14.22

c14.22

I come now to the two real difficulties, which are in Hyrcania, a country where the town-names are so hopeless that not even Professor Kiessling has tried to straighten them out; no one of the lists we possess bears any recognisable relation to any other. Polybius gave a town ’Αχριανή,¹ and Patrocles, a century earlier, gave one called Σαμαριανή.² I have found nothing to throw light on Achriane; it may be a transcript of a native name ending in -ān, but that is guesswork. Samariane of course looks like ‘Samaritan’. There is a story, given only by Orosius (III, 7, 6) and other late writers, that Artaxerxes Ochus deported some Jews to Hyrcania;³ but even if he did, they would not in the fourth century B.C. have named their town after the hated Samaria. There are later legends which identify Gog and Magog, shut up behind the mountains, with the Ten Tribes;⁴ but one can hardly bring this into relation with Patrocles, neither did Assyrians really deport Samaritans to the Elburz, far outside their empire.⁵ A Greek epitaph of a ‘Samarian’, Eumenes, is said to have been seen near Kermanshah in Media (see p. 366 n. 8), but as his wife was named Arsinoe he presumably came from Samaria in the Arsinoë nome (Fayûm) in Egypt. A colony from Samaria in Palestine, settled by Alexander or some Persian king, is conceivable, but none such is known. Patrocles got his information through interpreters, and the name may be his own rendering in Greek of what he understood an interpreter to say; but what it means I do not know.