The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s1.137

c9.s1.137

There is no need for my purpose to consider the relation of the Seleucid kings to the old Greek cities of Asia Minor; at the start it was officially a symmachy or alliance, but the amount of freedom the cities enjoyed seems to have varied greatly with circumstances, though occasionally it might be fairly complete.⁶ As to the new cities, the kings when founding them could impose any terms they chose; but their position is obscure, and it is not known if they were technically ‘allies’,¹ though that supposition would remove one difficulty (p. 23 n. 5). The king could issue rescripts which became part of the city law, and he could express a wish, tantamount to an order, which a city could hardly disobey; but the instances known are small matters—a grant of citizenship to some one or the erection of a statue. The new cities were not of course sovereign states; they could neither have a policy nor interfere in affairs; none is heard of taking a line of its own with the Seleucids as Seleuceia was sometimes to do with the Arsacids, or even playing the part which Smyrna played towards Seleucus II. But neither were they municipalities of the empire, as they were to be of the Roman empire; they were a sort of half-way house. They sent ambassadors to the king,² as being states even if subject ones; and it is unlikely that the kings interfered much with their internal autonomy. One is familiar in the Antigonid realm with the royal *epistates* or city governor, who represented, and was directly responsible to, the king in some Greek city. Certainly the *epistates* is met with in the Seleucid realm also; but only three cases are known,³ none are earlier than Antiochus III, and it cannot just be assumed that they were a regular institution or that they existed under the early Seleucids; we do not know. The Antigonid *epistates* might sometimes control the Assembly,⁴ that is, he really did govern the city for the king; but whether this was really the function of the Seleucid *epistates* seems to me very uncertain, for I think there is no evidence for the Assembly being controlled in any of the new cities.