The Greeks in Bactria and India c15: Appendix 3. Agathocles' Pedigree Coins
The Greeks in Bactria and India c15
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Appendix 3. Agathocles' Pedigree Coins
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In the first century B.C. there was in existence a fictitious pedigree of the Seleucid house which derived the descent of the dynasty from Alexander.¹ The fact is clearly shown in a series of inscriptions² set up by Antiochus I of Commagene below the representations of his ancestors, each inscription giving the name and patronymic of the corresponding figure; these inscriptions professedly give the respective pedigrees of his father, going back to Darius, and of his mother Laodice Thea Philadelphos, who was a Seleucid princess, a daughter of Antiochus VIII Grypus; and his mother's pedigree is the ordinary Seleucid pedigree³ but begins with Alexander.⁴
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¹ I must refer to my paper *Queen Ptolemais and Apama*, *Class. Quarterly* XXIII, 1929, p. 138.
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² *OGIS* 388–401.
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³ *Ib.* 399–401.
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⁴ *Ib.* 398.
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How was Alexander brought into the Seleucid pedigree? I must emphasise that the Commagene inscriptions mean that some member of the direct Seleucid line was (supposed to be) a *lineal descendant* of Alexander. This member could not be the first Seleucus and the story could not have originated in his reign, as a great many people knew that he and Alexander were contemporaries and much of an age. Professor Rostovtzeff in an interesting paper⁵ has suggested that the explanation is that in 306 Seleucus was trying to connect himself with Alexander by connecting his own mother Laodice with Alexander's mother Olympias. The method suggested is not too convincing, seeing that Laodice was a Macedonian name and Olympias was an Epirote; however, his quotation from Libanius may be taken to show that Seleucus I, like Ptolemy I and Antigonus I, did claim some connection with the Argead line. But a claim by Seleucus I to be connected with the Argeads has no bearing at all on the question, how did some member of the direct Seleucid line later than Seleucus I come to be considered a *lineal descendant* of Alexander? I answered that question in 1929,⁶ but I can now take it further.
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⁵ ΠΡΟΓΟΝΟΙ, *JHS* LV, 1935, pp. 56, 63–5.
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⁶ I gave it briefly, as being a simple case of two and two making four; but as Professor Rostovtzeff thinks my answer ‘far-fetched’ (*ib.* p. 65 n. 24) I must now give every link in the chain with (I fear tedious) minuteness.
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There is a story preserved in almost identical language by Livy and Appian,⁷ which therefore (I think no one will dispute this) originally came from Polybius; and as it concerns people who lived in Polybius' own city, Megalopolis, during his own youth, it is extraordinarily well attested and the details must be taken as trustworthy. The story is that in 192 B.C. there was living in Megalopolis as a citizen a Macedonian named Philip who boasted that he was a descendant of Alexander, and ‘to gain credence for his story’ he named his two sons Philip (after Alexander’s father) and Alexander, and named his daughter Apama. In Megalopolis at that time, therefore, it was believed (or some believed) that there had been an Apama who was a very close relative of Alexander’s in the sense that his father Philip was a very close relative; for the man who wanted ‘to gain credence for his story’ would surely have named his daughter after Alexander’s mother Olympias or his sister Cleopatra had it not been believed that there had been a woman named Apama who was at the very least as close a relation as they. Now as matter of history it is certain that Alexander had no relative named Apama, and tolerably certain that that rare name is Achaemenid¹ and not Macedonian at all. But though there was no Apama connected with Alexander, there was a very well-known woman of that name connected with Seleucus: at Susa in 324 he married an Apama who was a daughter of the Sogdian baron Spitamenes² and almost certainly an Achaemenid on her mother’s side, and she bore him a son, Antiochus I. We have accordingly now got to find two things: an Apama who shall be (supposed to be) a very close relative of Alexander’s, and a woman through whom some Seleucid king prior to the second century could claim *lineal descent* from Alexander (it has to be a woman, as the male line back to Alexander’s contemporary Seleucus I was at the time accurately known to everybody); and as the name Apama is rare, and no Apama is known in the period of Alexander and the Successors except Seleucus’ queen, the conclusion is inevitable that the answer to both questions is identical—Seleucus’ queen Apama became a daughter of Alexander, and the fictitious Seleucid descent from Alexander was traced through her as (the real) mother of Antiochus I.
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⁷ Livy XXXV, 47, 5 = *App. Syr.* 13.
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¹ Tarn, *op. cit.* p. 140; see Rostovtzeff *op. cit.* p. 65 and n. 24.
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² Arr. VII, 4, 6 (from Ptolemy I).
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The fictitious Seleucid pedigree thus established is the key to several things in the Farther East, and the first is the coin-series of Agathocles. He struck a series of tetradrachms which bore on the obverse the head (or device) of some former king with his name and cult-title or legend, and on the reverse the characteristic type of that king, with the legend βασιλεύοντος ’Αγαθοκλέους δικαίου, ‘Under the rule of Agathocles the Just’.³ The coins known give the names of Alexander, Antiochus Nikator, Diodotus Soter, Euthydemus Theos, and Demetrius Aniketos;⁴ the Alexander coins (there are two in the British Museum) of course have the head not of Alexander but of Heracles (or Alexander as Heracles) wearing the lion’s scalp, and the Antiochus coin, from the characteristic reverse type, is certainly Antiochus II.¹ These coins used to be called memorials of former rulers (which is meaningless), though more recently one numismatist did utter, very doubtfully, the word ‘relationship’;² they are in fact Agathocles’ pedigree. The exact resemblance of this coin-series to the series of inscriptions in which Antiochus I of Commagene gave his mother’s pedigree—both begin with Alexander and continue through the Seleucid line—shows that the nature and purpose of the two series must be identical, and as the Commagene series is professedly a pedigree, so must that of Agathocles be: he is giving the Euthydemid pedigree back to where it branches off from the Seleucid pedigree, followed by the fictitious Seleucid pedigree from that point back to Alexander. Some inscriptions are missing from the Commagene series, and two coins—Antiochus I and Seleucus (or Seleucus and Apama)—from Agathocles’ series; but as the Demetrius coin only came to light in 1934 specimens of the others may yet be found. As Agathocles’ pedigree passes backward through Diodotus to Antiochus II, it proves, as stated in Chapter III, that Diodotus married a daughter of Antiochus II and Euthydemus a daughter of Diodotus by the Seleucid princess; Agathocles was a Seleucid on the distaff side. The reason why he desired to proclaim that the Euthydemid family were Seleucid collaterals is given in Chapter V.
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³ On βασιλεύοντος see further p. 354.
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⁴ The first four coins: *BMC* p. 10 nos. 1–3, Pl. IV, 1–3, and p. 164, Pl. XXX, 5; the Diodotus and Euthydemus coins also in *CHI* Pl. IV, 1 and 2. The new Demetrius coin: *NC* 1935 p. 1.
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¹ The first three kings named Antiochus have all been proposed, but there is no doubt at all. See *CHI* p. 450.
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² Whitehead, *NNM* p. 16.
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Antimachus published his pedigree at the same time as Agathocles; it was of course the same from Euthydemus backwards, but only the Diodotus and Euthydemus coins are known;³ they show (see pp. 75 sq.) that Antimachus was a son of Euthydemus. The coins follow the same plan as those of Agathocles, but bear on the reverse the legend βασιλεύοντος ᾿Αντιμάχου θεοῦ, ‘Under the rule of Antimachus the god’; naturally the two series were issued by the two kings in collaboration, and for the same reason.
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³ The Diodotus coin, *BMC* p. 164, Pl. XXX, 6. The Euthydemus coin, long known to be in the hands of an Indian dealer, is now in the British Museum.
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There are several things to be said about the fictitious Seleucid pedigree. I think Yule was the first, though not the last, to suggest that the Alexander-descents of the Hindu Kush country were connected with the Bactrian Greeks;⁴ it was a wonderfully brilliant guess, for now that it is known that the Euthydemid kings (and the house of Eucratides too, for that matter) claimed to go back to Alexander little doubt seems possible. These descents are discussed in Chapters VII and IX; here I need only point out that one of them further defines the position of Apama. Marco Polo relates that in his day the (now extinct) family of the Mirs of Badakshan claimed to be descended from Alexander and a daughter of King Darius.¹ Alexander did marry Darius' elder daughter, Barsine, at Susa in 324;² but it is not Barsine who is meant, for Marco Polo also says that when he was at Balkh (i.e. Bactra) ‘the people of the city tell that it was here that Alexander took to wife the daughter of Darius’.³ The wife Alexander did marry at Bactra was Roxane, daughter of the Bactrian baron Oxyartes; and in Bactria therefore she had become Darius' daughter, just as she is in the Greek Alexander-romance⁴ and some other Greek sources.⁵ Apama then in the fullest version of the legend became a daughter of Alexander by his wife Roxane daughter of Darius III; the fact that the real Apama was an Achaemenid, and that she and the real Roxane both belonged to the Bactrian nobility,⁶ doubtless helped, as perhaps did the legendary story that (beside Alexander IV) Roxane did have another child who died.⁷ Naturally the makers of legend were not troubled by the trifling fact that the two women must in reality have been much the same age; legend, like law, cares not for trifles. One Hellenistic instance must suffice. When Antigonus I sent to Polyperchon a boy to play, under the name of Heracles, the part of an illegitimate son of Alexander, he chose (doubtless for some facial resemblance) a boy nearly six years too young for the alleged occasion of his birth;⁸ but the discrepancy did not trouble the common man at the time, and has troubled few historians since.
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⁴ Yule, *Marco Polo*, 2nd ed. 1874, vol. I p. 169 (p. 160 in the 3rd ed.), ‘probably due to a genuine memory of the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom’. He did not consider the claim to Greek ancestry real. Recently given by W. P. Yetts, *Eurasia Septentrionalis antiqua* IX, 1934, p. 234, ‘an outcome of the Greek conquest of this region and the establishment of hellenised states’.
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¹ I chap. xxix in Yule; p. 56 in A. Ricci's translation from the text of L. F. Benedetto, The travels of Marco Polo 1931.
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² Arr. vii, 4, 4 (from Ptolemy I).
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³ I chap. xxvii in Yule; p. 54.
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⁴ Historia Alexandri Magni, ed. Kroll, p. 92 l. 2, and often; and in some later versions.
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⁵ Suidas s.v. Δαρεῖος; Syncellus p. 264 B, given as Porphyry in FHG iii p. 693 fr. 3 (1), but not so in F. Gr. Hist. Porphyry in fact, F. Gr. Hist. no. 260 fr. 3 (2), gave an intermediate version: Roxane was daughter of Oxyartes, king of the Bactrians.
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⁶ Sir A. Stein, Innermost Asia ii p. 886 n. 2, made the attractive suggestion that Roxane was the same word as Roshan (which would make Roshan Oxyartes' fief), and then withdrew it on the ground that classical literature knows other Roxanes. But, so far as I know, other occurrences of the name are all much later than Alexander and therefore quite immaterial, being merely taken from his queen's name.
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⁷ Berve, Das Alexanderreich ii p. 347.
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⁸ Tarn, JHS xli, 1921, pp. 24, 27.
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The fictitious Seleucid pedigree played its part in the West no less than in the East. Apart from Megalopolis and Commagene, another Alexander-descent has come to light in the Greek city of Teos,⁹ and others may follow; for an Alexander-descent implies attachment in some form or other to the Seleucid pedigree, and doubtless there were people in the Greek world who traced their lineage, real or reputed, from a concubine of this or that Seleucid king; compare the one-time descents from Charles II in England. Whether there was once a version in the West which made Apama a daughter of Barsine, not of Roxane, cannot at present be said; but certainly in the second century B.C. the legend that Apama was Alexander's daughter was well known from Megalopolis to Merv.¹
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⁹ SEG ii, 581, second century B.C., a long catalogue of names of citizens of Teos, with patronymics but no other descriptive words, in the middle of which appears the entry Διονύσιος Πυθέου ὁ ἐξ ᾿Αλεξάνδρου.
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¹ Apama underwent yet another transformation in Augustan literature; in Livy XXXVIII, 13, 5 she is Seleucus' sister.
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It is tempting to try and guess when this legend originated. The coin-series of Antimachus and Agathocles can be accurately dated to 168 or 167 B.C. (Chap. v), but we can go back much further than that in the West. Apama of Megalopolis married king Amynander of Athamania in 192. In that year the claim of her family to descend from Alexander was known far beyond the bounds of Megalopolis, for it was known to Antiochus III: he held out to Apama's brother Philip, as a bait for his services, the hope of the crown—his 'ancestral' crown—of Macedonia.² If Apama married in 192 she was probably born round about 212–210, and she had two elder brothers; her father's claim then must have been in existence about 220, and might of course be older than that. We have then to seek an occasion of origin earlier than about 220; and as obviously the origin could not fall in the reigns of Seleucus I or of Apama's son Antiochus I, we are restricted, speaking roughly, to the reign of Antiochus II or Seleucus II. The establishment by Antiochus II of the cult of the πρόγονοι (ancestors) of the dynasty³ might have prepared the ground, for the common man might not know very well whom this might include, while he probably did know that the state cult of the rival Ptolemies started with Alexander. But this cult was not the origin of the popular belief, for it did *not* start with Alexander.¹ It is clear, from the proceedings of Antiochus III in 192, that, though he knew of the alleged Seleucid Alexander-descent, he did not believe it; we may assume therefore that the Euthydemid kings did not believe it either. But the fictitious pedigree was used as propaganda by Agathocles and Antimachus in order to influence the common man at a time when they were fighting for their lives (Chap. v); it may therefore be supposed that it originated in some Seleucid extremity in order to influence the common man, and that it did influence him. If so, the fictitious pedigree first saw the light about 246-5, when Ptolemy III was overrunning the Seleucid empire in the name of the alleged rightful heir and the young Seleucus II was fighting for the very existence of his dynasty; ‘we Seleucids are the true sons of Alexander’ would have been no bad battle-cry. His sister took the fabrication eastward with her when she married Diodotus and it passed to her Euthydemid descendants; Bactrian local patriotism did the rest. As on the coins of Agathocles and Antimachus the dead kings of Bactria, Diodotus and Euthydemus, appear with cult names, it is conceivable that the Euthydemids had a state cult of their own, running back through the Seleucids to Alexander (see p. 201 n. 3).
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² Livy XXXV, 47, 7; App. Syr. 13, ἐπελπίζων—playing with him.
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³ Rostovtzeff op. cit. In his text, pp. 59 sqq., he calls the founder Antiochus III, on rather slight grounds, but in the later note on p. 66 he inclines to return to Antiochus II, the usual opinion. But I do not believe in the suggestion (p. 65) that there was an earlier cult of πρόγονοι under Antiochus I which included Alexander and the Achaemenids, and that Antiochus III (or II) 'eliminated' them 'from the list of his πρόγονοι'. Rostovtzeff (see p. 62) is going on the reference by the Ionian League to the policy of the πρόγονοι of Antiochus I in OGIS 222, a much-discussed expression, most recently treated by C. B. Welles, Royal Correspondence in the Hellenistic period 1934 p. 81. Now the policy is an essential part of the business; and if the references given by Rostovtzeff in the notes to p. 62 be examined, it will be found that there is only one real parallel to the phrase in OGIS 222, but that is a very exact parallel indeed. In l. 17 of Ditt.³ 434/5 (Chremonides' decree of 267 B.C.)—a document of the same generation as OGIS 222—Chremonides makes Ptolemy II, in showing zeal for the liberation of Greece, follow τεῖ τῶν προγόνων καὶ τεῖ τῆς ἀδελφῆς προαιρέσει, the policy of his πρόγονοι and of his sister (Arsinoe II); both inscriptions refer to the policy of the πρόγονοι, and no one, I think, has ever doubted that in Chremonides' decree the word means Ptolemy I and no one else at all; the official pedigree of Ptolemy II as it was in 267 is well known from Satyrus and Theocritus (Tarn, JHS LIII, 1933, p. 57), and does not include either Alexander or anyone else who could have had a policy about Greece except Ptolemy I. It follows that the πρόγονοι of Antiochus I in OGIS 222
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¹ OGIS 245, 246.
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should mean Seleucus I and no one else. Rostovtzeff’s article really does not bear at all on the point considered in this Appendix—how came the Seleucid dynasty to be made *lineal descendants* of Alexander?