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The Greeks in Bactria and India c9: Part I. The Background in the Middle East

The Greeks in Bactria and India c9

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Part I. The Background in the Middle East

Chapter I. The Seleucid Settlement

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THE Seleucids, whatever from time to time they held or did not hold in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, were Alexander’s heirs in Asia. He had not greatly modified the Persian empire which he had conquered: he might separate the three powers in the satrapies—civil, military, and financial—but they remained the huge Persian satrapies, though they might be governed by men of a different nationality. The Seleucid empire in its turn was still, in outward shape, very much the empire of Persia under different rulers; the great satrapies still remained, their military nature emphasised by the governor of a satrapy being no longer called satrap but *strategos*, ‘general’. But something was done to tighten up the reins of satrapal government, for in all the lands east of the Euphrates the Seleucids had a more complete system of internal subdivision; it was a threefold division¹—satrapy, eparchy, hyparchy—corresponding roughly to the threefold division in Ptolemaic Egypt of nome, topos, village, the nome, like the satrapy, being under a *strategos* or general. This threefold administrative division in each of the two empires must, one supposes, have had a common origin, but what it was is unknown. As the smallest administrative unit was in Egypt the village and in the Seleucid East the hyparchy—a district which would comprise a number

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¹ For all that follows about the eparchies see Tarn, *SP Stud.* §IV. Cf. M. Rostovtzeff in *Yale Class. Stud.* II p. 48 n. 1.

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Note. There is a good modern account of the Seleucid empire by M. Rostovtzeff in *CAH* VII Ch. v (1928), but the subject has now to be studied in special works; the excavations at Doura, Susa, and Seleuceia are important. The relevant bibliographies in *CAH* VII and VIII cover much of the ground. In this introductory sketch I am not always putting notes to well-known matters where touched on.

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of villages—the organisation of the Seleucid East was of necessity much looser than that of Egypt; the hyparchy, however, for purposes of land registration, was again subdivided into fortified posts called *stathmoi*¹—originally post stations on the main roads, the Seleucids having taken over the Persian postal system—each *stathmos* being the centre of a subdivision comprising so many villages.

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¹ The evidence for the *stathmoi* is from the Parthian period, notably Isidore and Avroman Pg. 1 (E. H. Minns, *JHS* xxxv, 1915, p. 22); but Strabo xv, 723 (see p. 55 n. 1) may show that they were Seleucid.

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The important thing in the Seleucid administrative division was the eparchy, of which each satrapy included a certain number; Appian’s 72 Seleucid satrapies mean eparchies, for he is using the terminology of a later day, though it does not follow that the number 72 is correct. So far as is known at present, the eparchy was a Seleucid innovation. It *may* have been Achaemenid, for *a priori* the common source of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid subdivision should have been Persian, but the actual evidence is very dubious,² and the Alexander-historians know nothing about eparchies; they do very occasionally use an eparchy name, but that again is probably only the common case of late writers using the accustomed nomenclature of a later day. When the Seleucid empire broke up, it was the eparchy, not the satrapy, which survived; the Seleucid administration was imitated over a large part of Asia, and it was imitated on the basis of the eparchy. In the Seleucid Succession states, like Bactria, Parthia, Elymais, the eparchies became the satrapies, *i.e.* the primary administrative divisions, of the new kingdoms, while states which were not properly Succession states but were copying Seleucid (or, what comes to the same thing, Parthian) organisation gave their satrapies eparchy names; so universal was the practice that it was followed even by little states like Adiabene and Characene, which had themselves only been Seleucid eparchies. One reason for the emergence by the first century B.C. of the eparchy as the general unit of the organisation of a new Asia was that it had often been a natural division, dictated by the lie of the ground, while the great satrapies were not; examples are the Bactrian satrapy, which had included northern Sogdiana and Merv, countries not geographically connected with Bactria, and the varying arrangements for the government of the hill land and the plain land which had both been included in the Persian satrapy of Arachosia (App. 9). The eparchies naturally varied greatly in size, as do English and Scotch counties, and it is possible that the eparchies of a satrapy did not always account for the whole of its geographical content; Ptolemy, who is careful over eparchy names, gives tribes in some satrapies as well as eparchies, and though one cannot press this, seeing that he so often mixes up items from different periods, still we do hear of unconquered hill peoples, like the Elymaeans of Susis, and the great satrapies may have included territory which was informally a sort of native reserve, the general of the satrapy being responsible for keeping the hill tribes in check. This may be why the Seleucid strategos retained his military status while his Ptolemaic counterpart became a civil official.

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² Tarn, *SP Stud.* p. 32; add that in Darius’ Behistun inscription, 38–9, Margus, *i.e.* Margiane, is under the satrap of Bactria. The question of subordinate governors of provinces under Persian satraps has since been discussed by O. Leuze, *Die Satrapienteilung in Syrien* 1935 pp. 163–5, for Syria and Babylonia, who decides that no conclusion is possible. It has, however, been suggested to me that the -νην termination in the East might have some connection with the Assyrian -anu; should that ever be substantiated, the connection could only be *via* Persia. The existence of old Greek city-names in -νην would not affect the (possible) adoption of the form in the East under other influences and for other purposes.

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The great satrapies almost always bore names ending in -ια, Persis being the only exception, unless Susis be reckoned; the eparchies most often bore names ending in -ηνη or, after iota, -ανη (-ιανη). Two other forms do also occur among the primary administrative divisions of the Succession states, names (very occasionally) in ια and some in -ιτις, which may be old eparchy forms; a third form in -υαια is merely a variant of -ηνη when preceded by upsilon, the two being used indiscriminately, as Parthyaia—Parthyene, Gordyaia—Gordyene.¹ The eparchy names had many sources; they might be taken from a city name, as Gabiene, Rhagiane; from a tribal name, as Paraitakene; or from some district name whose origin is lost, as Margiane from Margus (these are probably the majority); in Armenia some fanciful names are found, like Xerxene, Cambysene. And though other forms might sometimes occur, it was the -ηνη (or -ιανη) form which was the typical one and which spread all over Asia; and it is this form which has enabled the identification of a number of the Greek satrapies in India (Chap. VI). To make that identification valid, it is of course not enough to show that the majority of eparchies had names in -ην or -ιανη; it must also be shown that these names, in Greek writers, regularly meant either Seleucid eparchies or the primary administrative divisions of a Seleucid Succession state or of a state copying the Seleucid organisation; this is done in Appendix 2, the one or two exceptions being negligible among the mass of names extant; in fact, looking at the Greek dislike of technical terms, the result is rather notable. It must be emphasised that in speaking of the eparchy organisation I am speaking only of the lands east of the Euphrates (see on this App. 2), though the countries between the Euphrates and the Halys copied it.

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¹ Parthyaia and Parthyene indiscriminately in Strabo and Josephus. Gordyene always in Plutarch; both forms in Strabo, but usually Gordyaia. So even in personal names: the astronomer Naburiannu is Ναβουριανός in Strabo XVI, 739, but Ναβουριναν (acc.) in a Babylonian text written in Greek: W. S. Schileico, *Arch. f. Orientforschung* V, 1928, p. 11.

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The Seleucid empire was nothing organic, in the sense that the Roman state, up to a point, was organic. The latter resembled a vertebrate animal; it expanded outwards from a solid core, the city of Rome. The Seleucid empire resembled rather a crustacean, not growing from any solid core but encased in an outer shell; the empire was a framework which covered a multitude of peoples and languages and cities. What there really was to the empire, officially, was a king, an army, and a bureaucracy—the governing and taxing officials in the several satrapies. It had no imperial citizenship, as the Roman empire had; it hardly even had a unified state worship, for each satrapy had its own cult of the deified kings. Even before the final dissolution, any satrapy could easily set up for itself, as Bactria did for good and Media spasmodically, without endangering the life of the rest; and in the general break-up even eparchies, like Osrhoene, Adiabene, Mesene, easily became little kingdoms, because the governor of an eparchy, just as much as the governor of a satrapy, had an organisation ready to his hand, even to a *basileion* or palace residence,¹ while the Greek cities or settlements in his territory were only separate units and not parts of a whole. What actually held the empire together was the personality of the quasi-divine monarch, for the army was his and the officials were in his hand; how this might work out will be seen when we come to Antiochus Epiphanes. It had one advantage; the king—commander-in-chief, head of every service, the fount of law—stood high above the clash of nationalities or creeds; he could hold the balance level, for he had the power, and in particular he could if he chose hold it level between the Greek and the Asiatic. But it was not precisely of a level balance that the Seleucid kings were thinking.

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¹ *Βασίλειον* of Gabiene at Gabae, Strabo xv, 728; of Parthyene at Susia-Tōs, Artemidorus in Steph. *s.v.* *‘Υοία*; of Hyrcania (the Parthian not the Seleucid province) at Tambrax, Polyb. x, 31. These may suffice.

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Such was the theoretical outline of the monarchy; and it was very well understood by the two capable men, Seleucus and his son the first Antiochus, who made of the empire what it was to be. They knew the weakness of their position over against their vast and strange inheritance, and set to work to remedy it in their own way, by filling Asia with Greek settlements. I see no reason to believe that they had any deliberate intention of hellenising Asia; their object was not to spread Greek culture or turn Asiatics into Greeks, but to make of their unwieldy empire a strong state. Certainly they were hard-working, conscientious men who meant to govern as well as they could according to their lights; but their lights were the commonplace Greek lights of Plato and Aristotle—the barbarian was a person who was to be kept in his place and ruled by Greeks, though the Seleucid kings added well ruled. Alexander had gone far beyond that, and we shall hear something later about his ideas and their consequences, but to Seleucus a strong state meant the support of his own people: on them the state must be founded. The Seleucids did get the support of their own people; the dynasty was popular, and the abiding loyalty of the Graeco-Macedonian settlers to the person of the reigning Seleucid became notorious (Chap. v).

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The Greek settlement of Asia was one of the most amazing works which the ancient world ever saw, for it was not the natural result of an overspill of population, as had been the early Greek colonisation of the shores of the Mediterranean; it was undertaken deliberately, and though there was an overspill it was the kings who used and directed it. The Seleucid idea was to give to the framework of their empire substance and strength by filling it out with Greeks; Greeks were to supply its lack of living tissue. Indeed it is conceivable that the early kings dreamt of a day when the empire should no longer be a framework at all but should have become a complex of contiguous and quasi-autonomous city states, the whole under a quasi-divine king who managed policy and saw to security. This is the period we want to know about, the period from 312 to 262 B.C. when Seleucus and his son were settling Asia; and we hardly know anything. Some light has been thrown upon the Middle East in recent years by excavations, but the light has all fallen upon later times, usually the Parthian period; the first half of the third century is still almost a blank, and we have to deduce what happened as best we can.

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The basis of the Seleucid settlement was the military colony and not the Greek city, the *polis*.¹ The first two kings did not, as one used to be told, fill Asia with Greek cities directly; it was largely done indirectly. This was what enabled it to be done at all, for only the king could found a *polis*, and there is a limit to the work one man can do, especially under a system where delegation of power is imperfectly understood. Greek tradition remembered that Seleucus was a hard worker;² but even the foundation of a single *polis* meant for the king hard work.³ He had to find land for the city, build the wall, supply food, seed-corn, cattle and tools to give the people a start, remit taxation until the city had found its feet, and decide personally innumerable housing, economic and social questions; give a constitution and get political life started; and settle the city law. As to the last, he probably ordered the adoption of some well-known Greek city code, with any modifications required to suit local circumstances; but doubtless a city colonised for the king by some old Greek city, as it kept the gods of its mother-city,⁴ kept its code also. For while the king also had to find settlers, we should undoubtedly see, if we had the complete story, that in this he was greatly helped by the old Greek cities of Ionia. What is known is that Magnesia on the Maeander colonised Antioch towards Pisidia⁵ and Antioch in Persis⁶ for the Seleucids, that Miletus when under the rule of Ptolemy II colonised for him Ampelone in Arabia,⁷ and that the Greek populations of Susa and Uruk-Orchoi must have come from Ephesus, for the city-goddess of Susa, Artemis-Nanaia (p. 29), annexed the bee of Artemis of Ephesus for her own symbol, as did Artemis-Ishtar at Uruk.⁸

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¹ It was the great merit of Tscherikower’s book (pp. 121 *sqq.*) to bring this out, though he hardly went far enough. No reliance of course can be placed on the use of the word *polis* in many writers. Isidore (the Parthian survey) is always accurate, and Strabo usually so; I would not care to commit myself further.

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² *Plut. Mor.* 790 A. Somewhat similar sentiments were attributed, doubtless with truth, to Gonatas (*Stob. Flor.* 7, 20; 49, 20) and Doson (Justin XXVIII, 3, 13).

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³ *Ditt.*³ 344 gives the best idea of the work which fell on a king. See also Holleaux, *BCH* XLVIII, 1924, p. 1 on *SEG* II, 663; Rostovtzeff, *CAH* VII pp. 178 *sqq.*; *Sardis* VII, i, no. 2 (1932).

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⁴ *OGIS* 233 l. 40, κοινούς θεούς.

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⁵ *Strabo* XII, 577.

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⁶ *OGIS* 233.

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⁷ Tarn, *JEA* XV, 1929, p. 21 on Pliny VI, 159.

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⁸ On the bee see Allotte de la Fuye, *MDP* XXV, 1934, pp. 9 *sq.*

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The military colony⁹ goes back to Alexander. Traditionally he founded 70 ‘cities’; but comparatively few can be identified, and the number, right or wrong, includes his military colonies; the same is true of many of the ‘cities’ attributed to Seleucus.¹ The first Antigonus continued Alexander’s system, as did the early Seleucids, and it is only rarely that we know under which king any particular colony was founded. The places called Alexandropolis, for example, must be military colonies which claimed to go back to Alexander;² Doura and Orrhoë are recorded to have been founded under Antigonus I;³ but the majority probably belonged to the Seleucid settlement. A military colony was settled either with time-expired troops, sometimes mercenaries, or with men able and willing to serve; normally, though by no means always, it was located at or beside a native village, and was usually, it seems, perhaps always, founded by the provincial governor on the king’s order, as some of the names show (p. 11); the king had to provide the land and money required, but he could and did delegate the actual work to a subordinate, whereas a subordinate could not found a *polis*. Each settler received a *cleros*, an allotment of land which carried with it the obligation to serve in the army when called upon; hence the name cleruch, one who had a *cleros*, the regular name in the Hellenistic period for a settler in a military colony.⁴ The succession law of Doura⁵ shows that the allotments there were at the start grouped together into larger units; it cannot be said whether this system was general or not, but the name given in that law to these larger units, *hekas*,¹ has not occurred elsewhere. The reason for this arrangement is unknown, but it had nothing to do with the one-time system of land-ownership by the *genos* (the clan, or family in the widest sense), for at first the *genos* did not exist at Doura;² it might conceivably point to some system of collective farming under a head man. The same law shows that from the beginning the *cleros* could, on failure of the male line, pass to and be held by a woman; doubtless in that case she had to provide a man for the army. This elasticity in the law of inheritance, and the *hekas* (if it existed at other places), differentiated the Seleucid *cleros* in the third century B.C. from the better-known Ptolemaic *cleros*, and may have been one reason, though not the principal one, why the cleruch system was so much more successful in Asia than in Egypt.³

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⁹ Oertel, *Katoikoi* in *PW*; Tscherikower *loc. cit.*; Rostovtzeff, *CAH* VII p. 180; and the excellent account in Griffith pp. 147 *sqq.*

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¹ App. Syr. 57.

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² No evidence; but Alexander could not, without reason, have altered his regular name (Alexandria) in just two or three cases.

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³ Doura (Isidore 1) was founded by Nicanor, who was the well-known general of the upper satrapies under Antigonus I (Tarn, *CAH* VI p. 430, and independently Tscherikower p. 88), though most writers still persist in calling him an official of Seleucus, no such Nicanor being known. The same Nicanor (Pliny VI, 117) founded Orrhoë, later Antioch-Edessa called Arabis (*ib.*; this Antioch Arabis is not Nisibis, as Tscherikower thought p. 89, for Pliny had previously given Nisibis (VI, 42), and the Orrhoei (*v.l.* Orroei and see VI, 129) extended to Orrhoë. There is no Greek authority for the name ’Ορρόη, but it follows from the Syriac form Ōrhāi, which ultimately came back and on which see A. R. Bellinger and C. B. Welles, *Yale Class. Stud.* V, 1935, p. 96 n. 8.

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⁴ The Hellenistic use of *cleros* is to be distinguished from the classical use (Lenschau, κλῆροι in PW), in which *cleros* refers to the division of the city land of a new city among the citizens and has nothing to do with military service. This *may* have still obtained in those new Hellenistic cities which were founded directly as *poleis*, if the Emperor Julian’s reference to 10,000 κλῆροι at Antioch on the Orontes, cited by Cumont, *JRS* XXIV, 1934, p. 188, be not a piece of archaising.

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⁵ B. Haussoullier, *Rev. hist. du droit français et étranger* 1923 p. 515; P. Koschaker, *Sav. Z.* XLVI, 1926, p. 297 (belongs to the first days of the colony before families were well established); D. Pappulias, ’Ακαδημία ’Αθηνῶν 28 Nov. 1929, given by L. Wenger, *Arch. f. Pap.* X, 1932, p. 131.

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¹ A *hekas* is also mentioned in Doura Pg. 1; Fr. Cumont, *Fouilles* pp. 287 sqq. ² This follows from Koschaker *op. cit.* p. 300; see further p. 37. ³ See Griffith pp. 162–3 on the fact and the reason. ⁴ Names in Tarn, *Hell. Civ.*² p. 134. ⁵ Polyb. x, 27, 3. ⁶ *BCH* 1887 p. 466 n. 32, [Οἱ π]ερὶ Θυάτειρ[α Μ]ακέδονες; *OGIS* 290, [Οἱ περὶ Νά]κρασον Μακέδονες; οἱ περὶ is a usual expression indicating a *koinon*. L. Robert, *Villes d’Asie Mineure* 1935 p. 75, would restore *A]κρασον* for *Νά]κρασον* in *OGIS* 290, but this does not affect it as evidence for a *koinon*. For examples of a *katoikia* being called a *koinon* see Oertel, *Katoikoi* in PW col. 10. ⁷ *SEG* III, 12. ⁸ Steph. *s.v.* Σύνναδα: Docimeum a κώμη. Many instances in Oertel, *Katoikoi* in PW col. 8.

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The purpose of the military colony was primarily defence; there was a chain of seven across Asia Minor to prevent the Galatians attacking Ionia;⁴ those in Bactria-Sogdiana, started by Alexander, were to safeguard the frontier against the nomads (Chap. III); those in Media were to bridle the hill tribes;⁵ but those in normally quiet districts like northern Syria served the double purpose of settling Macedonians and Greeks in Asia and constituting an army reserve. Naturally they were walled. At some places in Asia Minor, and presumably everywhere, the military colony called itself a *koinon*,⁶ that useful word which did duty for almost any form of association from a League to a dining club; a village in old Greece might also call itself a *koinon*,⁷ and by analogy a military colony might be referred to as a village.⁸ The elected officials therefore of a military colony, like those of any private *koinon*, must have tended to copy city officials so far as might be, and it had some power of managing its internal affairs. It was a planned foundation and had something which may be called a written charter;¹ perhaps a stereotyped form existed. In the Mediterranean countries the great majority, if not all, of the settlers were no doubt Greeks or Macedonians, but east of the Euphrates this element tended to become thinner. There were cases in which Greeks, if there were any at all, can only have been a small minority, as at Avroman in Kurdistan, where the settlers named in the parchments are all Asiatics;² Mysia in the Parthian satrapy³ and Pterion in Media⁴ must have been primarily settled with Anatolian mercenaries, Mysians and Cappadocians of Pteria; Thracian colonies are recorded east of the Tigris,⁵ and we shall meet a colony of Pisidian mercenaries in India (p. 250); but probably Greek was always the *official* language, as it still was in the first century B.C. at Avroman.

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¹ Avroman *Pg.* 1, ἐν τῇ παλαιᾷ συγγραφῇ; see E. H. Minns, *JHS* xxxv, 1915, p. 52; L. Mitteis, *Sav. Z.* xxxvi, 1915, p. 428.

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² Minns *op. cit.* p. 45.

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³ Ptol. vi, 5, 3.

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⁴ Steph. *s.v.*

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⁵ Diod. xix, 27, 5.

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The aim of every military colony was to become a full *polis*, which in the East meant a city, not necessarily of Greek nationality, but of Greek organisation and civic forms; there was a steady upward growth of the colony into the *polis*, and it was this which before the end of the second century B.C. had filled Asia with ‘Greek’ cities. It is difficult to define the minimum distinction between a military colony and a *polis*; the real matter was the greater autonomy of the latter. The wall was there in any case. It may I think be taken that, to constitute a place a *polis*, there would have to be, at the least, a Council, an Assembly, a division of the Greek population into tribes with consequent rotation of prytanies⁶ and the other phenomena of that division, an elected magistracy, and almost certainly a gymnasium (p. 17). How the change-over from military colony to *polis* took place is not known.⁷ There were cases where the king of set purpose enlarged some colony and formally made it a *polis*, but usually the settlement itself must have outgrown the *koinon* form and petitioned for the change: mere permission from the king probably sufficed, but was certainly needed (p. 31).

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⁶ Common in Asia Minor. An identifiable case, from its name (p. 11), of a military colony which became a *polis* with prytanies is Themisonium, Michel 544.

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⁷ On the very peculiar case of the colony at Magnesia-under-Sipylos, *OGIS* 229, see now Griffith pp. 154 sq. In the Roman period a place might be allowed to *call* itself a city as a favour; I know of no evidence that this is Hellenistic.

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In Asia Minor there are supposed also to have been some Greek civil colonies;¹ there is not the material for detecting such forms in the East, and their existence there is not very probable. But civil colonies of another people are heard of. Where the Greek went the Phoenician trader followed, as he had followed Alexander to India: two important cities, Seleuceia and Antioch-Merv (p. 15), contained large bodies of ‘Syrians’, and their presence can be deduced at Susa (p. 29); doubtless there were ‘Syrians’ in every city important for commerce. But, quite apart from their presence in Greek cities, foundations of their own are recorded. Eddana on the Euphrates, south of Doura, is mentioned as a Phoenician colony;² another is given in Arabia;³ and they founded a Tyre, probably a small one, in India itself.⁴ There are names too which imply civil colonies of other Asiatic peoples, doubtless founded as trade settlements; such are Nisibis in Aria,⁵ which must have been settled from Antioch-Nisibis in Mesopotamia, and Elymaide (if the record can be trusted) in India,⁶ a colony from Elymais. As these two colonies took the native and not the Greek names of their places of origin, it is not likely that they were military colonies, though it is not impossible.

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¹ Oertel, *Katoikoi* in PW cols. 7–8. The evidence is from Roman times, but some were presumably Hellenistic.

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² Steph. *s.v.*

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³ Ptol. VI, 7, 3, Φοινίκων κώμη.

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⁴ Steph. *s.v.* Τύρος. Unfortunately no source is given, but it can hardly be a made-up name from Dionysius’ *Bassarica*, for it does not occur in Nonnus; and Nonnus has so much to say about Tyre itself that had he found an Indian Tyre in the *Bassarica*, his regular source, he was almost bound to mention it.

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⁵ Ptol. VI, 17, 7.

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⁶ Peutinger Table (K. Miller, *Itineraria Romana* 1916 p. 787).

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The military colony at first had no name but that of the native village where it was founded, and many kept their native names throughout, even when they became *poleis*, as for example Nacrasa, where this is proved by inscriptions;⁷ this was the case with the *poleis* with native names given by Isidore in eastern Iran. But if most of the settlers came from one place they often renamed the colony themselves after their mother-city; the numerous colonies or cities in northern Syria and elsewhere with Greek or Macedonian place-names had all named themselves.⁸ Every Greek or Macedonian place-name in Asia implies a military colony at the start, and the same is true of Anatolian names in the East; the name Europus, Seleucus’ birthplace, has been thought to be an exception,¹ but there is no reason to suppose that it is, or that Seleucus ever founded poleis of that name. East of the Euphrates Greek and Macedonian place-names become more rare; Tanagra² and Maitona (Methone)³ in Persis, Thera, Rhoetea, and possibly Argos in Bactria-Sogdiana (p. 120), Arethusa, Larisa and Chalcis on the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf,⁴ the two Cretan names in India (p. 250), are about all which chance has preserved. Other names besides place-names were also possible for a military colony. The names ending in -polis, like Alexandropolis, Dionysopolis, Macedonopolis, are almost certainly names assumed by the settlers themselves, either to claim that they went back to Alexander or to honour their god or themselves; and any place bearing a non-dynastic man’s name,⁵ like Docimeum, Zenodotium, Menedemium, Themisonium,⁶ was once a military colony which had named itself after the official who founded it. But unless there are inscriptions or coins, which one does not get east of the Euphrates, it is difficult to detect a military colony which retained its native name, and there were far more of such settlements in the East than are recorded. The mutations which a name might pass through can be illustrated from Nicanor’s two foundations already noticed (p. 7, n. 3). Doura at first had only the native name; Seleucus sent new Greek settlers, who in his honour renamed it Europus;⁷ subsequently some Seleucid allowed it to become a polis, which kept the name Europus; in Roman times the native name Doura came back, as native names usually did sooner or later. Orrhoë had only the native name till Seleucus sent fresh Macedonian settlers, who renamed it Edessa after their home town; then some Seleucid made it a *polis* and officially named it Antioch on the Kallirhoë; under the Roman empire the name Antioch vanished, and the Syriac Ōrhāi came back alongside the Roman name Edessa.

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⁷ Before becoming a *polis*, OGIS 290 (see however p. 8, n. 6); after, *ib.* 268, which is Attalus II, not I, see Griffith p. 151 n. 4.

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⁸ Tscherikower pp. 123 *sqq.*; to me conclusive. It must have been universal.

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¹ Tscherikower pp. 123 sqq.

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² Ptol. VI, 4, 4.

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³ Ib. VI, 4, 6; see Herzfeld, *Klio* VIII, 1908, p. 16; Tarn, *JEA* XV; 1929, p. 11 n. 4.

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⁴ Pliny VI, 159; see p. 66 n. 2. Not, strictly speaking, east of the Euphrates.

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⁵ To be distinguished from foundations made by little dynasts, like Lysias and Philomelium in Phrygia; see A. Wilhelm, *Neue Beiträge* I p. 48; Holleaux, *Rev EA* 1915 p. 237; L. Robert, *Villes d’Asie Mineure* 1935 p. 156 n. 2.

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⁶ All are in Tscherikower but Menedemium, which is Ptol. V, 5, 6; for the epigraphic evidence as to Docimeum and Docimus see L. Robert, *Rev. Phil.* LX, 1934, p. 267. It is at best doubtful whether the Themison who founded Themisonium was the minister of Antiochus II, as given in all the books, most recently by W. Ruge, *Themisonion* in PW; there is no evidence at all. *Prima facie*, Paus. X, 32, 4 shows that Themisonium existed in 277, but possibly the name is there used proleptically; see A. Wilhelm, *Πρακτικὰ ᾿Ακαδ. ᾿Αθηνῶν* VI, 1931, pp. 323-4.

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⁷ Given plainly in Isidore 1.

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It has been mentioned that the Ionian cities settled whole new cities for the Seleucids, and that many military colonies named themselves after their mother-towns. The two processes in combination went further, for the new cities themselves sometimes sent out colonies of the same name; there were foundations upon foundations. A clear case is Artemita on the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf,¹ which must have been settled from the well-known Artemita in the Apolloniatis; another is ‘Calliope’ in India, which must have had *some* settlers at any rate from ‘Calliope’ in Parthia (p. 246); Carrhae on the Persian Gulf² was presumably settled from Carrhae in Mesopotamia. Unmistakeable, though not Seleucid, is Ouranopolis in Pamphylia;³ it was a colony from Ouranopolis in Chalcidice, the city founded by Cassander’s brother Alexarchus (p. 210), for two people could never have hit upon that extraordinary name independently. One may suppose that these places were military colonies, anyhow at the start; perhaps the Seleucids supervised the process. How far it went cannot be said; but the fact that some new cities themselves were able to send out colonies is obviously important (p. 70).

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¹ Ptol. v, 19, 7.

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² Steph. *s.v.*

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³ Ptol. v, 5, 6.

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The recorded nomenclature of the cities has never really been considered, and it is important for the Farther East. Putting aside for a moment the Alexandrias (p. 18) and the foundations of Antiochus IV (p. 186), the only places which were founded directly as *poleis* from the start were *some*, probably the majority, of those which bore the four Seleucid dynastic names—Antioch, Seleuceia, Apamea, Laodicea—and perhaps (we do not know) one or two towns named after some god, like Heracleia or Artemita. By the middle of the second century B.C., however, every place which ultimately bore a Seleucid dynastic name had received that name and become a *polis*. But no city was ever officially named Antioch or Seleuceia alone; the confusion would have been impossible, and some geographical designation was always part of the city’s official name,⁴ so that *e.g.* a Greek of Susa in a formal document would call himself not a Seleuceian but a Seleuceian-on-the-Eulaeus. It was a very clumsy system, and naturally led in popular speech to many cities getting secondary or popular names, which may be comprehensively called nicknames; these were convenient and found their way wholesale into literature, with the result that east of the Euphrates we know the nicknames better than the official names, which have often been ousted altogether. These nicknames¹ were of many types; they might allude to some historical event, as Prophthasia (p. 14) or Zetis (App. 12); to some peculiarity of construction, as Hekatompylos; to virtues and vices, as Charis, Stasis, Apate;² to some feature of the population, as the ethnic names (p. 15); to something in the city worship, as Calliope and Soteira;³ even to material objects, as Kibotos (the ark),⁴ Aspis (the shield),⁵ Perikephalaia (the necklace),⁵ Syrinx (the mine),⁶ where the allusion is for us completely lost. As even stranger nicknames occur in India, it is necessary, before reaching that country, to understand what was happening. One must of course distinguish from nicknames those cases in late compilers where they copied from their sources the description of a place as though it were a name; such are Diadochou, ‘the city of the Successor’;⁷ Ionaca polis, ‘Greek town’;⁸ Portus Macedonum, ‘the harbour-town of the Macedonians’;⁹ Asylum Persarum, ‘the asylum of the Persians’;¹⁰ and even Komopolis, ‘a village-city’.¹¹

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⁴ OGIS 231, Antioch in Persis; ib. 233 l. 100, several cities; Susa, SEG VII, 1; Seleuceia on the Tigris, OGIS 233 and the coins (McDowell, *Coins from Seleucia* pp. 94 *sqq.*); a number of cities on coins of Antiochus IV, *BMC Sel.* pp. 40-42. Much other evidence.

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¹ Many of these will be noticed later. ² Charis, App. Syr. 57; Stasis, Steph. s.v.; Apate, Pliny VI, 55. ³ Soteira might refer to Soter, the title of Antiochus I. ⁴ The well-known Apamea Kibotos in Phrygia. Not used separately. ⁵ Steph. s.v. ’Ασπίς. ⁶ Polyb. X, 31; see pp. 15, 20. ⁷ Steph. s.v. ⁸ Ptol. VI, 4, 2; see p. 418. ⁹ Pliny VI, 110; see App. 12. ¹⁰ Pliny VI, 135. ¹¹ Ptol. VI, 1, 5. ¹² App. Syr. 57.

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It is worth looking at some of these nicknames in eastern Iran, though some lie outside the course of my main story. How completely they came to dominate literature is shown by a statement of Appian¹² that five new cities—Soteira, Charis, Calliope, Hekatompylos, Achaea—were named after Greek cities. There were no such Greek cities; his statement refers to the real names, but what he has given is not the real names but the nicknames; the real names of the first four are lost. Achaea and Calliope I shall come to. Hekatompylos, prior to Mithridates I, was the Parthian capital; but the word only occurs in Greek as Homer’s stock epithet for Thebes ‘of the hundred gates’, and means that the place had more gates than the stereotyped four of Hellenistic town-planning; its real name is unknown, and ‘Hekatompylos’ in our late Alexander-historians is only a case of the usual proleptic use of names of a later day. Whether the city stood at Damghan or Shahrud need not be discussed here; only excavation can decide.

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Another very important city whose name is lost is Prophthasia in Seistan (Drangiane or Zarangiane), though in this case the name can be recovered. The old Persian capital of Seistan, known as ‘The Zarangians’,¹ was on or near the Hamun lake; Alexander founded a city at ‘the Zarangians’ to be the capital of Seistan² when he detached it from Arachosia, but the old name, as was usual, came back again; the place is Zarin of Isidore, Aris of the Peutinger Table³ whence several roads started, the mediaeval Zarang. Prophthasia, ‘Anticipation’, was only a nickname, in allusion to Philotas’ conspiracy; the official name, Alexandria, has been preserved by the Chinese historian Pan-ku, who called Seistan O-ik-san-li, a word which has been shown to be Alexandria (see p. 347). That Prophthasia did stand on or near the Hamun lake and not at Farah is both certain⁴ and important (p. 49).

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¹ Arr. III, 25, 8, and all analogy. ² Arr. ib. ³ Tomaschek, Wien SB CII, 1883, p. 206. ⁴ I gave this in CAH VI pp. 389–90, but necessarily without explanation. Modern writers locate Prophthasia at Farah, though Droysen long ago proved that this was impossible (Hellenismus² III, 2, p. 216). Pliny VI, 61, after the bematists, gave the distance from Herat to Prophthasia as 199 Roman miles, say about 185 English miles; Eratosthenes, using the Seleucid survey (p. 55 n. 1), gave 1600 stades, say some 200 English miles (Strabo XI, 514), while others (ib.) made it 1500 stades, say 187½ English miles; these figures agree well enough with a site on the Hamun lake, but absolutely exclude Farah, which modern maps make about 140 English miles from Herat. Farah is Isidore’s Phra, capital of the Anauoi satrapy; this is from the Parthian survey, but Isidore has added a note that the Anauoi country was once part of the (undivided) satrapy of Aria; Farah therefore (this is the point) was never in Zarangiane-Seistan at all. Farah-Phra is Propasta of the Peutinger Table, a word which has nothing to do with Prophthasia; it may be a Persian term meaning ‘seen from afar’, Tomaschek, op. cit. p. 213. Stephanus, s.v. Φράδα, says that the old name of Prophthasia was Phrada, which I suppose is Persian (cf. Autophradates), and was presumably the Iranian name of the village where ‘the Zarangians’, i.e. the Persian satrap’s palace and fortress, were located; it is not Phra. The later Zarang is said to be represented by the ruins at Nad Ali (Herzfeld, Sakastan p. 3); but it does not follow that Nad Ali was the actual site of ‘the Zarangians’ and Prophthasia (it seems rather far south), for names sometimes moved a considerable distance, and the Hamun lake has altered its size and shape greatly from time to time.

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Next, those nicknames which are ethnics. Antioch ‘the Syrian’ (Merv),¹ and Heracleia ‘the Achaean’,² refer to large elements of those peoples among the settlers, but whether Antioch ‘the Arabian’³ (Edessa in Osrhoene) refers to an Arab element in the population (it was known as ‘the half-barbarian’)⁴ or only to the fact that it stood in Arab country may be doubtful, and the same doubt applies to the important nickname of this class, Seleuceia (on the Tigris) ‘the Babylonian’,⁵ for it had an enormous Babylonian population (p. 61). This nickname has been a curse to scholarship, for it contributed to the process whereby Seleuceia was sometimes called Babylon⁶ and Seleuceians more often than not were called Babylonians;⁷ indeed a Greek called a ‘Babylonian’ generally means a Seleuceian, though after Antiochus IV refounded Babylon as a Greek city it is sometimes impossible to say which city is meant.⁸

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¹ Pliny VI, 47, Syriam, which may be an adjective or perhaps equally well a substantive: as Heracleia ‘the Achaean’ (next note) is twice referred to simply as ‘Achaea’ (Strabo XI, 516; App. Syr. 57), so this Antioch could have been called ‘Syria’, precisely as some English writers have called districts in London ‘Alsatia’ or ‘Bohemia’.

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² Pliny VI, 48, Heraclea called Achaiis. Strabo XI, 516, by mistake included ‘Achaea’ in a list of cities named after their founders, which has given much trouble.

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³ Pliny VI, 117, Arabis; see p. 7 n. 3.

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⁴ Malalas XVII, 418, ἡ μιξοβάρβαρος; he implies that the epithet belonged to the Seleucid period.

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⁵ Pliny VI, 122.

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⁶ Steph. s.v. Βαβυλών; Eustathius in GGM II p. 390.

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⁷ Strabo XVI, 743, the people are called Babylonians from the χώρα, ἀπὸ δὲ τῆς Σελευκείας ἧττον, κἂν ἐκεῖθεν ὦσι.

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⁸ Prior to Antiochus IV a Greek called a Babylonian must, it would seem, be a Seleuceian, like Dromon son of Phanodemus at Andros in the third century, IG XII, 5, 715.

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It was not only later writers who used nicknames by themselves, for Polybius sins in the same way with his ‘Calliope’⁹ and ‘Sirynx’; he says expressly that the latter name is a nickname.¹⁰ It is obviously meant to sound like Syrinx, which means either a covered gallery¹¹ or a mine used in attacking a town. Antiochus III, coming eastward by the main Ecbatana-Hekatompylos road toward Bactra, as soon as he entered Hyrcania came to a town Tambrax, unfortified and containing a palace (i.e. the seat of the Parthian governor of Hyrcania), and close to it, οὐ μακράν, a *polis* Sirynx, a very strong place; this account puts out of court the suggested and attractive identification of Sirynx with Sarakhs.¹ Sirynx was indeed strong, for it had three great ditches² to keep off siege machines, and Antiochus, to take the place, had to use all the resources of Hellenistic siege-craft, gradually sapping his way in behind his ‘tortoises’. ³ Many cities had one ditch outside the wall, but only very great fortresses, like Syracuse, had three;⁴ what kind of town was this unknown place in Hyrcania that it should be fortified on such a scale? I shall come back to Sirynx, for it helps to solve one of the problems of the eastern cities.

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⁹ In Steph. s.v. So App. Syr. 57.

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¹⁰ Polyb. X, 31, 6, τὴν προσαγορευομένην Σίρυγκα πόλιν.

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¹¹ Polyb. XV, 30, 6.

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¹ By Herzfeld: *Arch. Mitt. aus Iran* I pp. 109-10; *Sakastan* pp. 38, 62. Sarakhs is far away on the lower Arius and not in the Parthian satrapy of Hyrcania at all; it was the chief town of Sirakene, Ptol. VI, 9, one of those Parthian satrapies which do not come in Isidore because the main road did not pass through them. The old name of Sarakhs may have been Sirax or Sirak, but it is not Isidore’s Sirok, which was in Parthyene; the same name in two or more places is common enough, and all these names, like the better-known Sirakene in Armenia, must be due to an invasion and settlement of Siracians (on whom see Rostovtzeff, *CAH* XI p. 94), whether before the Greek period or as part of the Saca invasion of 129 B.C. If the Greek spelling of Syrinx as Sirynx be due to the place having been another Siracian settlement, then their invasion (or infiltration) had taken place long before the Saca invasion of 129; P. Kretschmer, *Sirakes* in PW, makes it part of the great invasion of the seventh century B.C.

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² Polyb. X, 31, 8.

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³ Shields to cover sappers; see Tarn, *Military Developments* p. 109.

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⁴ At Syracuse the outer ditch has been partially traced: E. Schramm, *Röm. Mitt.* XL, 1925, p. 3.

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The statements often found in late writers that some king had given its nickname to this or that city are merely ridiculous, with one possible exception—the name Bucephala given to Alexandria on the Jhelum (p. 245), traditionally founded by Alexander on the spot where Bucephalus died. Alexander certainly had much affection for the famous charger which had carried him across Asia,⁵ and it is conceivable that he did mean the city to be Bucephalus’ monument and gave the name himself, much as T’ai Tsong, the virtual founder of the T’ang dynasty, was to set up a monument in honour of the six chargers he had ridden in battle.

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⁵ Arr. V, 19, 4-6.

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The towns of the East which ranked as *poleis*, cities with Greek organisation, appear to have fallen into two distinct classes. Those of the first class were, it would seem, really Greek cities, though they may have contained more foreigners than a city in old Greece; the decree of Antioch in Persis,¹ on the Gulf of Bushire, is no more distinguishable from the decree of an old Greek city than are the decrees of the new Greek cities in Asia Minor,² and a whole group of cities is known which passed similar decrees,³ decrees which, having the same object, would follow a common model; they are Seleuceia on the Tigris, Apamea on the Seleia (Silhu) in southern Babylonia, Antioch in Sittakene, Alexandria (Charax) at the mouth of the Tigris, and the three Seleuceias in Elymais—Susa (Seleuceia on the Eulaeus), Seleuceia on the Hedyphon, and Seleuceia on the Erythraean Sea, *i.e.* the Persian Gulf (p. 43). These cities may be taken as representative of those in the East with dynastic names, and all were really Greek; there was a Council and Assembly at Antioch in Persis, and the Council of 300 at Seleuceia on the Tigris is explicitly mentioned,⁴ as is the popular Assembly;⁵ there was the usual organisation by tribes, as there was at Seleuceia in Pieria,⁶ shown by the mention of prytanies at Antioch in Persis⁷ and of a deme (with a Macedonian name) at Alexandria-Charax.⁸ At Seleuceia in Pieria the magistrates formed a board or college of *archontes*,⁹ as was beginning to be the case in old Greek cities; and the same thing is found at Susa (p. 27), it may be taken to have been the same in all the cities of this class. At Susa there was a gymnasium and a stadium,¹⁰ at Greek Babylon a gymnasium¹¹ and a theatre,¹² and the same inscriptions show that games were held in both cities: we may suppose therefore that cities of this class in the East usually possessed a theatre, for in Asia Minor a theatre and games were part of the ordinary equipment of a city with a Seleucid dynastic name,¹³ and it is certain that they would possess a gymnasium, seeing that in Asia Minor even a *polis* with a native name would have a gymnasium.¹ We know the importance attached to the gymnasium by the Greeks in Egypt; we know that Alexander’s Greek settlers in the East complained at first that his system was not ‘Hellenic life and training’;² and for a Greek city in the East a gymnasium, the centre of both physical and intellectual training for the common man who did not specialise in the higher learning, must have been all-important.

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¹ *OGIS* 233; on its location Tarn, *JEA* xv, 1929, p. 11 n. 4.

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² E.g. Michel 543, decree of Laodicea on the Lycus.

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³ *OGIS* 233 l. 100, ‘Ομοίως δὲ ἔδοξεν (the list follows). The names of Seleuceia on the Hedyphon and Alexandria-Charax are mutilated but are certain from the grouping.

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⁴ Tac. *Ann.* vi, 42; see Streck, *Seleukeia am Tigris* in PW, and on the coins struck at Seleuceia with the legend Βουλῆς McDowell, *Coins from Seleucia* pp. 104, 224–6.

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⁵ Sua populo vis (Tac. *Ann.* vi, 42) can only mean this.

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⁶ *SEG* vii, 62; see Holleaux, *BCH* lvii, 1933, p. 61.

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⁷ *OGIS* 233 ll. 10, 87.

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⁸ Pliny vi, 138, *pagum* Pellaeum.

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⁹ *SEG* vii, 62; see Holleaux *op. cit.* p. 22.

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¹⁰ *SEG* vii, 3.

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¹¹ Haussoullier, *Klio* ix, 1909, p. 352 no. 1.

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¹² R. Koldewey, *Das wieder erstehende Babylon* 1925 pp. 293–9, with inscription.

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¹³ Michel 543, Laodicea on the Lycus; *I. Magnesia* 90, Antioch in Caria.

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¹ As Prymnessus in Phrygia, Michel 545; 2nd century B.C.

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² Diod. XVIII, 7, 1 (from Hieronymus), of the revolted Greeks: ποθοῦντες τὴν ‘Ελληνικὴν ἀγωγὴν καὶ δίαιταν.

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All these Greek cities must have contained many non-Greeks within the wall, even if the local natives largely lived in suburbs outside the wall, and the question is how the non-Greeks within the wall were organised. I have supposed elsewhere,³ on the analogy of Alexandria in Egypt, that they were organised according to nationalities in quasi-autonomous bodies or corporations called *politeumata* or *catoeciae* (*κατοικίαι*), the latter perhaps the more usual name in the Seleucid sphere,⁴ though the name *politeuma* was not confined to the Ptolemaic sphere, as there was one of Syrians at Seleuceia.⁵ If this be correct, the system goes back to Alexander; indeed it may be doubted whether his Alexandrias in Asia, at the start, were properly speaking *poleis* at all and not rather a collection of *politeumata*, the Greek one being merely the most important; it has been seen that his system was strange to his Greek settlers (p. 18 n. 2). In any case, however, the Alexandrias became *poleis* under the Seleucids.⁶ One may take it that, in any city where there were enough Greeks, they were the citizen body who really constituted the city, provided the magistrates, and were known by the city name, Alexandrians or Seleuceians or what it might be; certainly that was so at Seleuceia on the Tigris and also at Susa, where the inscriptions, which go down to A.D. 21, represent it as a Greek city with the usual forms, though it is known to have had many other inhabitants.

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³ *CAH* VI p. 430; *Hell. Civ.*² p. 129; based on *Dikaiomata* (*P. Hal.* 1) and the discussions to which it has given rise.

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⁴ *OGIS* 238; *Inscr. Hierapolis* no. 212; Strabo XIII, 625; Oertel, Katoikoi, and Swoboda, κώμη, in *PW*.

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⁵ Jos. *Ant.* XVIII, 372 (and cf. 378), Σύρων οὐκ ὀλίγων τὸ ἐμπολιτευόμενον, which is the verb of πολίτευμα, not of πόλις or πολίτης. Josephus, where he has no axe to grind, is often well-informed on details of the Greek and Parthian East.

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⁶ The only direct evidence is *OGIS* 233 l. 114, and ’Αλεξάνδρεια πόλις in Isidore 18 (really 19, see p. 471). But it was inevitable.

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In contrast with the Greek cities of the first class are the cities of the second class, which only had native names; Isidore gives a number of them, chiefly in eastern Iran, which must all have been evolved from military settlements with the same native names. A *polis* in the West with a native name might be Greek, like Nacrasa and other places in Asia Minor; Nacrasa, when a *polis*, claimed to be Macedonian,¹ but then the original military colony there had seemingly consisted of Macedonians.² But east of the Euphrates there were military colonies which were mixed or even non-Greek, and some at least of the *poleis* in the East with native names can have had little that was Greek about them but the civic organisation and the use of Greek as an official language; the latter was taken over from the military colony where, as Avroman shows, Greek was the *official* language even when the settlers were Asiatics. The type of one of these non-Greek cities is probably exhibited by an invaluable inscription of the first century B.C. from a native town in Cappadocia, Anisa,³ which had become a *polis*; though not evolved from a military colony, and probably the creation of one of the Cappadocian kings, it must have followed the standard model of a non-Greek *polis*. Anisa had a Council, an Assembly which held monthly and yearly meetings, and prytanies, which show that it was organised by tribes; there was the usual college of magistrates, one of whom named the year; decrees were passed in Greek, showing that Greek was the official language; and the city worshipped two gods with Greek names. But its record office was its temple of ‘Astarte’ (here probably Mā or Anaïtis), and there was so little that was Greek about it that even those of the citizens mentioned in the inscription who had Greek and not Cappadocian names had fathers with Cappadocian names; the custom of giving children Greek names evidently only started when the place was made a *polis*.

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