781 



BACTRIAN COINS. 



BACTRIAN COINS. 



782 



understood to have played any man till you have placed him upon a 

 point and quitted him. 3. If you play with fourteen men only, there 

 is no penalty attending it, because by playing with a less number 

 than you are entitled to you play to a disadvantage, by not having the 

 additional man to make up your tables. 4. If you bear any number of 

 men, before you entered a man taken up, and which consequently you 

 were obliged to enter, such men, so borne, must be entered again in 

 your adversary's tables, as well as the man taken up. 5. If you have 

 mistaken your throw and played it, and if your adversary has thrown, 

 it is not in your or his choice to alter it, unless both parties agree 

 to it. 



Strutt also says, " At the commencement of the last century backgam- 

 mon was a very favourite amusement, and pursued at leisure hours by 

 most persons of opulence, and especially by the clergy, which occasioned 

 Dean Swift, when writing to a friend of his in the country, sarcasti- 

 cally to ask the following question : ' In what esteem are you with 

 the vicar of the parish ; can you play with him at backgammon ? ' " 



BACON. Considered as an article of food, bacon gives rise to a 

 considerable commerce. Whether of superior or inferior quality, it is 

 prepared from pork by a process in which salt, heat, and smoke are 

 employed. Good bacon has a thin rind ; the fat has a firm consistency 

 and a reddish tinge ; and the lean adheres strongly to the bone. There 

 is no other country in Europe in which the working-classes are so 

 particular in the quality of the bacon eaten by them, and pay for it at 

 so high a price, as in England. 



There are no means of ascertaining the quantity of bacon made and 

 sold in the country. That which we import is mixed up in the Board 

 of Trade returns with hams. In the three years ending with 1858, the 

 average quantity of bacon and hams imported was 812,000 cwts. 

 annually. 



BACTRIAN COINS. A sketch of the history of Bactria, or 

 Bactriana (now Bokhara), is given under AFGHANISTAN, in tie GEO- 

 GRAPHICAL DIVISION of the ENGLISH CYCLOPAEDIA. The Persian pro- 

 vince of Aria was bounded partly on the north and to a greater extent 

 on the east, by Bactria. The river Oxus was the boundary between 

 Bactria and Sogdiana, which lay to the east of Bactria, and was pos- 

 sessed by the Greek kings of this province. (Strabo, p. 517.) The 

 northern boundary of Bactria was naturally indefinite, and the western 

 was Margiana. These limits, which mark the extent of Bactria as a 

 province or satrapy, do not of course correspond with the more extended 

 limits of the Greek Bactrian kingdom. The province of Bactria was a 

 territory of great extent, partly barren and waste, but in many parts 

 of great fertility, watered by the Oxus and its tributary streams, and 

 peopled by a brave and hardy race, who were reckoned amongst the 

 best soldiers in the service of Persia after Bactria became a Persian 

 province. The chief city was Bactra, called also Zariaspa, situated on 

 the Bactros, one of the tributary rivers of the Oxus. Of Bactra little 

 is known prior to its subjugation by the Macedonians under Alexander 

 the Great. The account of an expedition against it by Osymandyas 

 the Egyptian, merits no confidence ; and those of Ninus and Semiramis 

 perhaps not much more. According to Herodotus, Cyrus, having 

 defeated Croesus, intended to invade Bactria ; and (according to Cte- 

 sias) after a drawn battle, the Bactrians voluntarily surrendered them- 

 selves to him. In the reign of Darius I. the Bactrians paid a tribute 

 to that monarch of 360 talents. In the time of Xerxes there were 

 Bactriaua in the army which he led against Greece, who were under 

 the command of Hystaspes, a son of Darius by Atossa, a daughter 

 of Cyrus. The province continued to be governed by the satraps of 

 Persia down to the time of Darius Codomannus. In the final over- 

 throw of that king by Alexander the Great, at the battle of Arbela or 

 Gaugamela, there was a body of Bactrians in his service who were 

 under the command of Bessus, the satrap of Bactria ; they were 

 stationed in the left wing, and behaved with great bravery. After the 

 conquest of Bactria by Alexander he appointed Artabazus, a Persian, 

 as governor, with Macedonian garrisons in the towns. Shortly after- 

 wards they were attacked by the Scythians, joined by the people of 

 Sogdiana and some Bactrians, the whole under the command of 

 Spitamenes, who slew the garrisons and fortified themselves. They 

 were attacked in their turn by Alexander, who stormed seven of their 

 c.ties, and among them Cyropolis, the strongest of the whole. His 

 next step was to build a city, which he walled in twenty days, and 

 gave to his Greek mercenaries and to such of the Macedonians as were 

 unfit from age or wounds for longer service. Such was the foundation 

 of the Greek colony of Bactria, to which volunteers from the neigh 

 bouring countries were admitted. This, however, was not the earliest 

 settlement of Greeks in Bactria ; for the first Darius transplanted there 

 a number of Greeks from Barce, in Africa (Herod, iv. 204) ; and the 

 Branchidm also, from Ionia, were planted here by Xerxes I. (Strabo, 

 p. 517.) 



After the death of Alexander, Bactria remained for fifty years a 

 province of Persia, with which it was united by Seleucus Nicator, 

 bAween B. c. 312 and 301. When Seleucus became king of Syria, 

 Bactria became a dependency of the great Syrian empire of the 

 Seleucidae. During the reign of Antiochus Theus (B.C. 262-247) 

 Bactria waa -constituted an independent kingdom by the governor 

 Theodotus or Diodotus, who was a Greek by birth, and it continued 

 ao under his successors for several centuries. The history of the 

 Bactrian kings of Greek descent is not given by any of the extant 



-reek or Roman historians. It may have been noticed in Arrian's 

 lost history of the successors of Alexander. A few names mentioned 

 by the ancient historians, or discovered on some rare coins, and the 

 fact related by the Chinese annalists that this Greek kingdom was 

 overthrown by the Scythians, was all we knew of it. In spite of the 

 barrenness of materials, the learned Bayer undertook to write his 

 ' Historia Regni Graecorum Bactriana,' Peteraburgh, 1738, a book more 

 valuable for what the author says on things connected with Bactria, 

 than for information on Bactria itself. Bactrian coins were then so 

 rare, that the discovery of two gold coins towards the end of the past 

 century created a great sensation in Europe, and the acquisition of the 

 names of two kings was considered a valuable addition to our know- 

 ledge of Bactrian history. Nobody expected that Bactrian coins would 

 be found in such quantities as to be sold by the measure and for little 

 more than their intrinsic value. This was actually the case not many 

 years back in some places in India and Afghanistan, though only with 

 the copper corns. In the beginning of this century the late Colonel 

 Tod made a collection of coins during his long residence in India, of 

 which several are of high interest for the history of Bactria. A 

 description of them was given with engravings in the first volume of 

 the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1824. Two of these 

 coins bore the names of Apollodotus and of Menander, both Bactrian 



igs. Their historical value, says Wilson, is undiminished, but 

 in 'thing is calculated to exhibit the rapid progress of numismatic dis- 

 covery in respect to Bactrian coins more strikingly than the diminution 

 of then- value as objects of rarity within the last twelve years. 

 Instead of only two medals, the cabinets of Paris and London now 

 possess two thousand of the coins of Menander and Apollodotus, of 

 silver and copper, of a great variety of types, and mostly in excellent 

 preservation. The country on both sides of the Indus and north of 

 the Hindu Koosh having been explored with a view of searching for 

 coins, great discoveries were made. Generals Ventura, Alard, and 

 Court, Dr. Swiney, James Prinsep, Sir Alexander Burnes, Masson, and 

 many others, mostly British residents in India, have made collections 

 of Bactriau coins, which enabled xis to make out a complete series of 

 Bactrian kings, of Greek and barbaric descent. 



The following lists of the Greek kings of Bactria have been drawn up 

 by Professor Wilson and by Mr. H. T. Prinsep, the brother of the late 

 Mr. James Prinsep. 



B.C. WILSON. 

 256. Theodctus I. 

 240. Theodotus II. 

 220. Euthydemus. 

 190. Demetrius. 

 181. Eukratides. 

 147. Heliokles. 

 147. Lysias. 

 135. Amyntas. 



Agathoclea. 

 140. Antimachus. 

 130. Philoxenus. 

 135. Antialkides. 



125. Archebius. 



126. Menander. 

 110. Apollodotus. 

 100. Diomedes. 



98. Hermaeus. 

 135. Agathocles. 

 120. Pantaleou. 



B.C. PRINSEP. 

 256. Theodotus I. 

 240. Theodotus II. 

 220. Euthydemus. 

 190. Demetrius. 

 178. Eukratides. 

 155. Heliocles. 

 . 150. Antimachus. 

 190. Agathocles. 

 195. Pantaleon. 

 155. Menander. 

 135. Apollodotus. 



Diomedes. 



Zoilus. 



Hippostratus. 



Straton. 



Dionysius. 



Nicias. 

 120. Hermaeus. 



According to these lists, several kings reigned at the same time, or 

 at least several persons acted as independent sovereigns and coined 

 money. 



Besides the kings placed in~ Mr. Prinsep's list there is still a small 

 number of others, namely, Antimachus, Archebius, Antialkides, Lysias, 

 Philoxenus, and Amyntas, who appear to have been governors in Herat 

 and Southern Bactria, and to have occasionally assumed the titles and 

 prerogatives of kings. Only two Bactrian gold coins of the Greek 

 kings are known, one of Diodotus and one of Euthydemus ; all the 

 others we know of are of silver, of billon, or of copper. 



Hermaeus, the last king of the series, is supposed to have been over- 

 powered by Azes, a Scythian, who, as it appears, conquered these 

 countries in company with Maues. Coins of these princes, and of 

 their successor Azilides, are frequent. They have the Greek and 

 Arianian inscriptions. It appears that these Scythians remained in 

 possession of the country about thirty years, from 90 to 60 B.C. 



Under the term Bactrian coins are understood in this article only 

 such medals as were struck by kings of either Greek or barbaric 

 descent who ruled over the ancient kingdom of Bactria or parts of it ; 

 but not coins of Hindu, Afghan, or foreign Mohammedan princes who 

 reigned at Kabool and other places in Afghanistan. The Greek coins 

 may be divided, with respect to their inscriptions, into pure Greek and 

 bilingual coins. The first class comprehends the names of five kings, 

 Theodotus I., Theodotus II., Euthydemus, Demetrius, and Eucratides, 

 who ascended the throne in B.C. 181, and perhaps reigned as long as 

 B.C. 155. Of Theodotus I. two coins are known. One, a gold medal, 

 was bought at the fair of Nishni-Novgorod in Russia, and is now in 

 the Imperial Cabinet of Paris. It corresponds in weight and style with 



