The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s1.108

c9.s1.108

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*.