The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s1.157

c9.s1.157

The letter shows that there was at Susa a Council and Assembly who passed decrees; that magistrates were proposed by the Council but elected by the People; that no magistrate could be elected till after the usual *δοκιμασία* or scrutiny of his qualifications; and that the office of City Treasurer could be held a second time only after an interval of three years. One is familiar in Greece, notably in the Achaean and Aetolian Leagues, with offices which could be held again only after an interval; and the interval shows, as the δοκιμασία shows, that there was no dearth of suitable citizens at Susa to fill the offices. The stadium, gymnasium and games have already been mentioned (p. 17); and the city set up honorary statues, with metrical dedications on their bases, in the regular Greek form.¹ A prominent citizen, Hestiaeus, is praised in the city’s decree for having gone on embassies for the city at his own expense,² one of the regular services to the state in old Greek cities in the Hellenistic period for which prominent men received decrees of thanks;³ and it is interesting to find in the East the added laudation, which has its parallels in honorary decrees in the West, that Hestiaeus had neglected his own affairs for the public good,⁴ for it points to a single culture-sphere (of which we shall find other indications) extending from Greece to Susa; all decrees everywhere follow the same forms. An embassy might have been sent by Susa either to another city or to the Parthian king, as the embassy mentioned in the decree of Seleuceia in Pieria was sent to the Seleucid king;⁵ it proves that Susa was a state, even if a state subject to Parthia. Though the Parthian king himself dated by the Arsacid Era,⁶ Susa still dates by the Seleucid Era,⁷ though she also dates by the eponymous magistracy, as was customary in older Greek cities; but she exhibits the unique phenomenon of dating, not by one eponymous magistrate, as was usual, but by two.⁸ No Greek city did this; but it was the custom at Rome, where the two consuls were the eponyms, and presumably the custom was introduced at Susa by Antiochus IV as one of his imitations of Rome (p. 186).⁹