The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s1.144

c9.s1.144

There is in fact another possibility. The inscriptions from Seleuceia in Pieria have suggested that the business of the Seleucid *epistates* was rather to collaborate with the Greek magistrates than to govern the city;¹ and a reason can be seen for this. Every new city contained, beside Greeks, a number, often a large number, of people of other nationalities. In certain respects the Greek magistrates might no doubt act for the entire community; the *agoranomos* would feed Greeks and non-Greeks alike, the *astynomos* would cleanse all the streets without regard to who lived in them; and the non-Greeks were subject to the πολιτικὸς νόμος, the city law.² But if it came to trouble, it is hard to see what control the Greek magistrates could have had over the non-Greek *politeumata*, or how they were going to enforce order, save by club-law; and the primary reason for the Seleucid *epistates* may have been to ensure that there was someone in the city who, if occasion arose, stood above all the nationalities (for he represented the king) and had behind him legitimate force. This suggestion might be supported by two things. It was common under Parthian rule for the city governor to be called, not *epistates*, but ‘*strategos* and *epistates*’,³ *strategos* meaning here the highest magistrate,⁴ not a military general; that is, the Arsacids endowed the chief Greek magistrate with powers which *did* give him authority over the non-Greeks as well, perhaps an example of their Philhellenism. Also, of the three Seleucid *epistatai* known, the one at Uruk, under Seleucus IV, was a Babylonian, Anu-uballit also called Kephalon; he is called in a cuneiform inscription ‘city lord of Uruk’, which, as generally supposed, can hardly mean anything but *epistates*.¹ Uruk, under the name Orchoi, ranked as a Greek city;² but the Babylonian element was very strong (p. 58) and may have far outnumbered the Greeks. A Seleucid king could not have put the Greek citizen body under the direct rule of a Babylonian; so long as things went well, Kephalon, who doubtless possessed special influence with his own people, must have been meant to co-operate with the Greek magistrates and help to maintain good relations between the two peoples. One need not therefore suppose that the Seleucid *epistates*, where he existed, interfered much with the internal autonomy of the city: the machinery of democracy was in no sense destroyed and remained ready to act, for when Parthian rule replaced that of the Seleucids the cities seem to have had rather more freedom than before (p. 30).