The Greeks in Bactria and India c20.8

c20.8

It was common enough for Hellenistic kings to give asylum to other states’ exiles, who might one day have their uses; one need only recall the number of the dispossessed who had found shelter in their time at the courts of Lysimachus and Ptolemy II. But if some Euthydemid prince did escape in 167, his natural refuge would not have been Seleuceia, which was closed to him and was to remain closed for another four years till Antiochus IV died, but Apollodotus or Menander in India; and the discovery of the Bajaur hoard has made it more than probable that a son of Antimachus, afterwards Antimachus II Nikephoros, did escape to Menander (p. 229). As both Menander and the Seleucid Demetrius I were natural enemies of Eucratides, it is therefore conceivable that Menander, during his struggle with Eucratides, sent this Antimachus (not yet his sub-king) to Seleuceia as his envoy to Demetrius I and that he is the prince of the seal-impression who wears the flat kausia of the elder Antimachus; the portrait of Antimachus II happens to be unknown, as when king he did not put his head on his coins.¹ If so, another similar Seleuceia sealing, an excellent portrait of an older man whom McDowell calls Heracleides,² would be some official who accompanied Antimachus on his mission.