1836.] Memoir on the Ancient Coins of Beg hr dm. 19 



but if the coin discovered of him be clearly Bactrian, which the reverse 

 probably would decide, he may still be admitted his rank among the 

 later sovereigns of the Bactrian dynasty, or among those arising from 

 its destruction. 



We have this year procured intelligible specimens, which enable me 

 to decipher some of those left in doubt in my Memoir of last year ; 

 and have fallen upon two or three altogether new, from the characters 

 on the reverse, might be considered Bactrian ; at all events, they are 

 Greek, and I submit my opinion on them in the succeeding observations. 



With so many coins before us of princes who have more or less pre- 

 tensions of being Bactrian sovereigns, we may feel tempted to doubt 

 whether the Grecian authority in Bactriana was subverted by the Getae 

 at so early a period as that assigned, unless the fact be supported by the 

 fullest historical evidence. It may be, the recorded subversion amounted 

 to no more than a temporary inroad of barbarians, which may have 

 indeed involved the loss of royalty in the family of Eucratides, and 

 its assumption by some fortunate leader, who repelled the invasion; the 

 probability appears to be that the Greek power in Bactriana, in the 

 first instance, weakened by the incursions of the Getae and other Scy- 

 thic tribes, was ultimately annihilated by the overgrown empire of 

 Parthia. But a Greek authority must have existed to a much later 

 period in the countries west of the Indus, which would appear to have 

 been finally subverted by the Sakyan princes, who had established them- 

 selves in the regions east of the Indus. Without attaching extraordinary 

 importance to the hyperbolical strains of a Carmen Seculare, we may 

 observe, that Horace, who flourished about the commencement of the 

 Christian sera, enumerates among the objects of sufficient magnitude to 

 engage the attention of Augustus, the Bactrian empire, which we would 

 have to have been destroyed above 1 20 years before the time he wrote : — 



" Tu civitatem quis deceat status 

 Curas, et orbis solicitus, times 

 Quid Seres, etregnata Cyro 



Bactra parent, Tauaisque discors." 



Class Grecian — Series 2. Unrecorded Kings of Bactria. 

 1 have thought proper to include in this general series all the coins, of 

 whatever description, which may have Bactrian characters on the reverse 

 legends. I by no means however wish to assert that all these princes 

 ruled in Bactriana proper, perhaps no one of them did so. This series 

 at present includes Antimachus, Hermjlus I., II., III., Diomedes, An- 



TILAKIDES, AuSIUS*, ADELPHORTES, PALERKES, BASILIsf, AlOUOKENES, 



Azu I., II., Demetrius, (?) and three other coins among the unidentified 



* Lysius. — Ed. f Azilisos.— Ed. 



d 2 



