The Greeks in Bactria and India c15.14

c15.14

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.