The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s1.77

c9.s1.77

It was not only later writers who used nicknames by themselves, for Polybius sins in the same way with his ‘Calliope’⁹ and ‘Sirynx’; he says expressly that the latter name is a nickname.¹⁰ It is obviously meant to sound like Syrinx, which means either a covered gallery¹¹ or a mine used in attacking a town. Antiochus III, coming eastward by the main Ecbatana-Hekatompylos road toward Bactra, as soon as he entered Hyrcania came to a town Tambrax, unfortified and containing a palace (i.e. the seat of the Parthian governor of Hyrcania), and close to it, οὐ μακράν, a *polis* Sirynx, a very strong place; this account puts out of court the suggested and attractive identification of Sirynx with Sarakhs.¹ Sirynx was indeed strong, for it had three great ditches² to keep off siege machines, and Antiochus, to take the place, had to use all the resources of Hellenistic siege-craft, gradually sapping his way in behind his ‘tortoises’. ³ Many cities had one ditch outside the wall, but only very great fortresses, like Syracuse, had three;⁴ what kind of town was this unknown place in Hyrcania that it should be fortified on such a scale? I shall come back to Sirynx, for it helps to solve one of the problems of the eastern cities.