The Greeks in Bactria and India c15.34

c15.34

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).