The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s1.68

c9.s1.68

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