Numismatics give us also the succession of kings and tyrants over the whole Greek world. In the case of Bactria or Bactriana, whose capital Bactra is the modern Balk, this value of numismatics is perhaps most conspicuous. From coins, and from coins almost alone, we obtain the succession of kings, beginning with the Greek series in the third century B.C., and going on with various dynasties of Indian language and religion, till we come down to the Mohammedan conquest. “Extending through a period of more than fifteen centuries,” says Professor H. H. Wilson, “they furnish a distinct outline of the great political and religious vicissitudes of an important division of India, respecting which written records are imperfect or deficient[[15]].”
[15]. Ariana Antiqua, p. 439. London, 1841. For the more recent views of English and German numismatists on these coins, see Mr Thomas’s Catalogue of Bactrian Coins in the Numismatic Chronicle for 1857, Vol. XIX. p. 13 sqq.
Coins are so much more durable than most other monuments, that they frequently survive, when the rest have perished. This is well put by Pope in his Epistle to Addison, on his Discourse on Medals:
Ambition sighed, she saw it vain to trust
The faithless column and the crumbling bust,
Huge moles whose shadows stretched from shore to shore,
Their ruins perished and their place no more.
Convinced she now contracts her vast design,
And all her triumphs shrink into a coin.
A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps,