[6] A royal cup-bearer, who is at the same time general, is mentioned in Josephus, Arch. xiv. 13, 7 = Bell. Jud. i. 13, 1. Similar court offices are of frequent occurrence in the states of the Diadochi.
[7] Tacitus, Ann. xv. 2, 31. If, according to the preface of Agathangelos (p. 109, Langlois), at the time of the Arsacids the oldest and ablest prince bore rule over the country, and the three standing next to him were kings of the Armenians, of the Indians, and of the Massagetae, there is here perhaps at bottom the same arrangement. That the Partho-Indian empire, if it was combined with the main land, was likewise regarded as an appanage for the second son, is very probable.
[8] These are doubtless meant by Justinus (xli. 2, 2), proximus maiestati regum praepositorum ordo est; ex hoc duces in bello, ex hoc in pace rectores habent. The native name is preserved by the gloss in Hesychius, βίσταξ ὁ βασιλεὺς παρὰ Πέρσαις. If in Ammianus, xxiii. 6, 14, the presidents of the Persian regiones are called vitaxae (read vistaxae), id est magistri equitum et reges et satrapae, he has awkwardly referred what is Persian to all Inner Asia (comp. Hermes, xvi. 613); we may add that the designation “leaders of horsemen” for these viceroys may relate to the fact that they, like the Roman governors, united in themselves the highest civil and the supreme military power, and the army of the Parthians consisted preponderantly of cavalry.
[9] This we learn from the title σατράπης τῶν σατραπῶν, attributed to one Gotarzes in the inscription of Kermanschahân in Kurdistan (C. I. Gr. 4674). It cannot be assigned to the Arsacid king of the same name as such; but perhaps there may be designated by it, as Olshausen (Monatsbericht der Berliner Akademie, 1878, p. 179) conjectures, that position which belonged to him after his renouncing of the great-kingdom (Tacitus, Ann. xi. 9).
[10] Still later a troop of horse in the Parthian army is called that "of the free:" Josephus, Arch. xiv. 13, 5 = Bell. Jud. i. 13, 3.
[11] The oldest known coin with Pahlavi writing was struck in Claudius’s time under Vologasus I.; it is bilingual, and gives to the king in Greek his full title, but only the name Arsaces, in Iranian merely the native individual name shortened (Vol.).
[12] Usually this is restricted to the large silver money, and the small silver and most of the copper are regarded as of royal coinage. But by this view a singular secondary part in coinage is assigned to the great-king. More correctly perhaps the former coinage is conceived of as predominantly destined for dealings abroad, the latter as predominantly for internal intercourse; the diversities subsisting between the two kinds are also explained in this way.
[13] The first ruler that bears it is Phraapates about 188 B.C. (Percy Gardner, Parthian Coinage, p. 27).
[14] Thus there stands on the coins of Gotarzes (under Claudius) Γωτέρζης βασιλεὺς βασιλέων ὑὸς κεκαλουμένος Ἀρταβάνου. On the later ones the Greek legend is often quite unintelligible.
[15] While the kingdom of Darius, according to his inscriptions, includes in it the Gādara (the Gandhâra of the Indians, Γανδαρῖτις of the Greeks on the Cabul river) and the Hîdu (the dwellers by the Indus), the former are in one of the inscriptions of Asoka adduced among his subjects, and a copy of his great edict has been found in Kapurdi Giri, or rather in Shahbaz Garhi (Yusufzai-district), nearly 27 miles north-west of the point where the Cabul river falls into the Indus at Attock. The seat of the government of these north-west provinces of Asoka’s kingdom was (according to the inscription C. I. Indicar. i. p. 91) Takkhasilâ, Τάξιλα of the Greeks, some 40 miles E.S.E. of Attock, the seat of government for the south-western provinces was Ujjênî (Ὀζήνη). The eastern part of the Cabul valley thus belonged at any rate to Asoka’s empire. It is not quite impossible that the Khyber pass formed the boundary; but probably the whole Cabul valley belonged to India, and the boundary to the south of Cabul was formed by the sharp line of the Suleiman range, and farther to the south-west by the Bolan pass. Of the later Indo-Scythian king Huvishka (Ooerke of the coins), who seems to have resided on the Yamunâ in Mathurâ, an inscription has been found at Wardak not far northward from Cabul (according to information from Oldenberg).