The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s2.106

c9.s2.106

It is however advisable to be sure that Plutarch’s source *was* a Greek and not, as has been suggested, king Artavasdes of Armenia,⁴ which if true would mean that a king of Armenia in the first century B.C. might possess the historical sense, a thing difficult to believe. The theory has never been examined. Plutarch says that Artavasdes wrote Greek tragedies and histories;¹ it would be strange, if he himself were using one of those histories, that he did not here say so; but it is not impossible, and in fact most of the story will fit Artavasdes as well as a Greek. The historian’s dislike of Surenas fits him better, for he was the brother-in-law of Orodes’ son Pacorus and as such would sympathise with the party of the nobility whom Pacorus represented rather than with that of the common man who looked to Surenas;² but it is not conclusive, for any Greek might have disliked Surenas, who had taken Seleuceia when Mithridates III stood a siege in it. On the other hand the account of Surenas’ mock triumph at Seleuceia seems to be from an eye-witness; but Artavasdes could have got the story from one. Plutarch’s statement that the Arsacid kings were the sons of Greek courtesans³ would of course be conclusive against Pacorus’ brother-in-law if it came from the source we are examining; but it is certainly a much later insertion, possibly Plutarch’s own, for the earlier Arsacids married their half-sisters or other princesses, and the first king whose mother was a Greek concubine was Vologases I, A.D. 57–77; the statement cannot be earlier than his reign.⁴