[16] The Egyptian merchant named in note 3 makes mention, c. 47, of "the warlike people of the Bactrians, who have their own king." At that time, therefore, Bactria was separated from the Indus-empire that was under Parthian princes. Strabo, too (xi. 11, 1, p. 516) treats the Bactro-Indian empire as belonging to the past.
[17] Probably he is the Kaspar—in older tradition Gathaspar—who appears among the holy three kings from the East (Gutschmid, Rhein. Mus. xix. 162).
[18] The most definite testimony to the Parthian rule in these regions is found in the description of the coasts of the Red Sea drawn up by an Egyptian merchant under Vespasian, c. 38: “Behind the mouth of the Indus in the interior lies the capital of Scythia Minnagara; but this is ruled by the Parthians, who constantly chase away one another” (ὑπὸ Πάρθων συνεχῶς ἀλλήλους ἐνδιωκόντων). The same is repeated in a somewhat confused way, c. 41; it might here appear as if Minnagara lay in India itself above Barygaza, and Ptolemy has already been led astray by this; but certainly the writer, who speaks as to the interior only from hearsay, has only wished to say that a large town Minnagara lay inland not far from Barygaza, and much cotton was brought thence to Barygaza. The numerous traces also of Alexander, which occur according to the same authority in Minnagara, can be found only on the Indus, not in Gujerat. The position of Minnagara on the lower Indus not far from Hyderabad, and the existence of a Parthian rule there under Vespasian, appear hereby assured.—With this we may be allowed to combine the coins of king Gondopharus or Hyndopherres, who in a very old Christian legend is converted to Christianity by St. Thomas, the apostle of the Parthians and Indians, and in fact appears to belong to the first period of the Roman empire (Sallet, Num. Zeitschr. vi. 355; Gutschmid, Rhein. Mus. xix. 162); of his brother’s son Abdagases (Sallet, ib. p. 365), who may be identical with the Parthian prince of this name in Tacitus, Ann. vi. 36, at any rate bears a Parthian name; and lastly of king Sanabarus, who must have reigned shortly after Hyndopherres, perhaps was his successor. Here belongs also a number of other coins marked with Parthian names, Arsaces, Pacorus, Vonones. This coinage attaches itself decidedly to that of the Arsacids (Sallet, ib. p. 277); the silver pieces of Gondopharus and of Sanabarus—of the others the coins are almost solely copper—correspond exactly to the Arsacid drachmae. To all appearance these belong to the Parthian princes of Minnagara; the appearance here of Indian legend alongside of the Greek, as of Pahlavi writing among the late Arsacids, suits this view. These, however, are not coins of satraps, but, as the Egyptian indicates, of great-kings rivalling those of Ctesiphon; Hyndopherres names himself in very corrupt Greek βασιλεὺς βασιλέων μέγας αὐτοκράτωρ, and in good Indian “Maharajah Rajadi Rajah.” If, as is not improbable, under the Mambaros or Akabaros, whom the Periplus, c. 41, 52, designates as ruler of the coast of Barygaza, there lurks the Sanabarus of the coins, the latter belongs to the time of Nero or Vespasian, and ruled not merely at the mouths of the Indus, but also over Gujerat. Moreover, if an inscription found not far from Peshawur is rightly referred to king Gondopharus, his rule must have extended up thither, probably as far as Cabul.—The fact that Corbulo in the year 60 sent the embassy of the Hyrcanians who had revolted from the Parthians—in order that they might not be intercepted by the latter—to the coast of the Red Sea, whence they might reach their home without setting foot on Parthian territory (Tacitus, Ann. xv. 25), tells in favour of the view that the Indus valley at that time was not subject to the ruler of Ctesiphon.
[19] That the great kingdom of the Arsacids of Minnagara did not subsist much beyond the time of Nero, is probable from the coins. It is questionable what rulers followed them. The Bactro-Indian rulers of Greek names belong predominantly, perhaps all of them, to the pre-Augustan epoch; and various indigenous names, e.g. Maues and Azes, fall in point of language and writing (e.g. the form of the ω Ω) before this time. On the other hand the coins of the kings Kozulokadphises and Oemokadphises, and those of the Sacian kings, Kanerku and his successors, while all are clearly characterised as belonging to one coinage by the gold stater of the weight of the Roman aureus, which does not previously occur in the Indian coinage, are to all appearance later than Gondopharus and Sanabarus. They show how the state of the Indus valley assumed a national Indian type in ever increasing measure in contrast to the Hellenes as well as to the Iranians. The reign of these Kadphises will thus fall between the Indo-Parthian rulers and the dynasty of the Sacae, which latter begins with A.D. 78 (Oldenberg, in Sallet’s Zeitschr. für Num. viii. 292). Coins of these Sacian kings, found in the treasure of Peshawur, name in a remarkable way Greek gods in a mutilated form, Ηρακιλο, Σαραπο, alongside of the national Βουδο. The latest of their coins show the influence of the oldest Sassanid coinage, and might belong to the second half of the third century (Sallet, Zeitschr. für Num. vi. 224).
[20] The Indo-Greek and the Indo-Parthian rulers, just as the Kadphises, make use on their coins to a large extent of the indigenous Indian language and writing alongside of the Greek: the Sacian kings on the other hand never used the Indian language and Indian alphabet, but employ exclusively the Greek letters, and the non-Greek legends of their coins are beyond doubt Scythian. Thus on Kanerku’s gold pieces there sometimes stands βασιλεὺς βασιλέων Κανήρκου, sometimes ραο νανοραο κανηρκι κορανο, where the first two words must be a Scythian form of the Indian Rajâdi Rajah, and the two following contain the personal and the family name (Gushana) of the king (Oldenberg, l.c. p. 294). Thus these Sacae were foreign rulers in India in another sense than the Bactrian Hellenes and the Parthians. Yet the inscriptions set up under them in India are not Scythian but Indian.
[21] Arrian, who, as governor of Cappadocia, had himself wielded command over the Armenians (contra Al. 29), always in the Tactica names the Armenians and Parthians together (4, 3, 44, 1, as respects the heavy cavalry, the mailed κοντοφόροι and the light cavalry, the ἀκροβολισταί or ἱπποτοξόται; 34, 7 as respects the wide hose); and, where he speaks of Hadrian’s introduction of barbaric cavalry into the Roman army, he traces the mounted archers back to the model of “the Parthians or Armenians” (44, 1).
[22] Caesar’s illegitimate son Πτολεμαῖος ὁ καὶ Καῖσαρ θεὸς φιλοπάτωρ φιλομήτωρ, as his royal designation runs (C. I. Gr. 4717), entered on the joint rule of Egypt in the Egyptian year 29 Aug. 711/2, as the era shows (Wescher, Bullet. dell’ Inst. 1866, p. 199; Krall, Wiener Studien, v. 313). As he came in place of Ptolemaeus the younger, the husband and brother of his mother, the setting aside of the latter by Cleopatra, of which the particulars are not known, must have taken place just then, and have furnished the occasion to proclaim him as king of Egypt. Dio also, xlvii. 31, places his nomination in the summer of 71242 B.C. before the battle of Philippi. It was thus not the work of Antonius, but sanctioned by the two rulers in concert at a time when it could not but be their object to meet the wishes of the queen of Egypt, who certainly had from the outset ranged herself on their side.
[23] This is what Augustus means when he says that he had brought again to the empire the provinces of the East in great part distributed among kings (Mon. Ancyr. 5, 41: provincias omnis, quae trans Hadrianum mare vergunt ad orientem, Cyrenasque, iam ex parte magna regibus eas possidentibus ... reciperavi).
[24] The decorum, which was as characteristic of Augustus as its opposite was of his colleague, did not fail him here. Not merely in the case of Caesarion was the paternity, which the dictator himself had virtually acknowledged, afterwards officially denied; the children also of Antonius by Cleopatra, where indeed nothing was to be denied, were regarded doubtless as members of the imperial house, but were never formally acknowledged as children of Antonius. On the contrary the son of the daughter of Antonius by Cleopatra, the subsequent king of Mauretania Ptolemaeus, is called in the Athenian inscription, C. I. A. iii. 555, grandson of Ptolemaeus; for Πτολεμαίου ἔκγονος cannot well in this connection be taken otherwise. This maternal grandfather was invented in Rome, that they might be able officially to conceal the real one. Any one who prefers—as O. Hirschfeld proposes—to take ἔκγονος as great-grandson, and to refer it to the maternal great-grandfather, comes to the same result; for then the grandfather is passed over, because the mother was in the legal sense fatherless.—Whether the fiction, which is in my view more probable, went so far as to indicate a definite Ptolemaeus, possibly to prolong the life of the last Lagid who died in 71242 B.C., or whether they were content with inventing a father without entering into particulars, cannot be decided. But the fiction was adhered to in this respect, that the son of Antonius’s daughter obtained the name of the fictitious grandfather. The circumstance that in this case preference was given to the descent from the Lagids over that from Massinissa may probably have been occasioned more by regard to the imperial house, which treated the illegitimate child as belonging to it, than by the Hellenic inclination of the father.
[25] It is in itself credible that Antonius concealed the impending invasion from Phraates as long as possible, and therefore, when sending back Monaeses, declared himself ready to conclude peace on the basis of the restitution of the lost standards (Plutarch, 37; Dio, xlix. 24; Florus, ii. 20 [iv. 10]). But he knew presumably that this offer would not be accepted, and in no case can he have been in earnest with those proposals; beyond doubt he wished for the war and the overthrow of Phraates.