The Hellenistic Settlements in the East from Armenia and Mesopotamia to Bactria and India. Getzel M. Cohen

in Seleukeian bronzes at Susa during the reign of Antiochos III and suggested that this reflected the new commercial realities created by the Seleucid king’s presence in these regions in 205–204 B.C.⁴⁶ He correctly attributed the increase in Seleukeian bronzes at Susa to the presence of Seleukeian merchants there and saw this as a reflection of Susa’s role as an important market for goods coming from Arabia and India.

      Moving northward from Seleukeia, a major trade route ran north on and along the Euphrates to SELEUKEIA/Zeugma and thence overland across Syria to the Mediterranean coast. I have already mentioned that settlements such as those at NIKEPHORION (Raqqah), ANTHEMOUSIAS, and APAMEIA on the east bank and DOURA EUROPOS, AMPHIPOLIS [?], JEBEL KHALID, and SELEUKEIA/Zeugma on the west bank protected these roads and the crossings to Syria.⁴⁷ Finally, the fact that a number of Seleukeians are found taking part in agonistic contests at various places in the Greek world suggests that they (or others) also engaged in commercial enterprises with the Mediterranean and Aegean worlds.⁴⁸

      

      I would also mention the Persian Gulf. As is well known, in 325 B.C. Alexander ordered Nearchos to sail from the mouth of the Indus River along the coast of Gedrosia to the Persian Gulf (Arr. 7.20.9–10). From Arrian and Strabo we learn that in 324/3 B.C. Alexander sent out three small expeditions to explore the Arabian coast and that he planned to colonize the coastal region and the offshore islands because he thought the area would become as prosperous as Phoenicia.⁴⁹ And as is also well known, at the end of his great anabasis to the eastern regions of his empire, Antiochos III visited the Persian Gulf area, and in particular the Arabian city of Gerrha.⁵⁰ There was apparently a third expedition in the Gulf, this one under Antiochos IV Epiphanes (Pliny NH 6.147, 152).⁵¹

      

      The interest of Alexander and the Seleucids in the Persian Gulf is reflected by, among other things, the presence of a number of settlements in and around the Gulf: the extant evidence indicates the presence of settlements at the head of the Gulf (ALEXANDREIA/ANTIOCH/Spasinou Charax), on the Iranian shore (ANTIOCH in Persis), and in the Gulf itself (the island of IKAROS). The exact location of SELEUKEIA on the Erythraean Sea is still not known.

      Pliny provides additional information. Thus, he mentions two small ports or stations on the Iranian coast of the Persian Gulf—PORTUS MACEDONUM and the ALTARS OF ALEXAND ER (NH 6.110).⁵² Pliny also mentions ARETHOUSA, LARISA, and CHALKIS in Arabia. In this connection, J.-F. Salles has suggested that the Seleucids maintained a permanent fleet in the Persian Gulf and that settlements/garrisons or ports were established on the coast at various points to service the vessels. Arethousa, Larisa, and Chalkis would fall in this category. But, as Salles admitted, the suggestion will probably remain unverifiable.⁵³ There is, however, an additional problem regarding these three settlements: it is not clear whether Pliny erred in placing them in Arabia rather than in Syria.⁵⁴

      If there is no firm evidence for Greek settlement on the Arabian coast, there are (scattered) material remains from a number of sites in eastern Arabia that provide some evidence for ties between the region and the rest of the Greek world: for example, at Mleiha on the Omani peninsula a few Rhodian stamped amphora handles (second century B.C.) have been found.⁵⁵ At BAHRAIN, archaeologists have found evidence for Greeks and Babylonians. Among other things, they have found four Greek inscriptions as well as a potsherd and a gourd with Greek writing on each. The Greek inscriptions include a dedication of a temple made on behalf of King Hyspaosines and Queen Thalassia by the “strategos of Tylos and the Islands” to the Dioskouroi Saviors and a fragmentary tombstone inscription probably dating to the second half of the second century B.C. that honors a kybernetes with the Babylonian name Abidistaras. Another fragmentary funerary inscription that is dated by the Seleucid era to 118/7 B.C. honors someone with the Semitic name Auidisaros who is identified as an “Alexandreian.” A funerary jar (?) that contains an Aramaic inscription mentioning the Babylonian god Nabu and that may date to the fourth or third century B.C. has also been found.⁵⁶ The most important commercial center in eastern Arabia during the Hellenistic period was Gerrha.⁵⁷ In the Aegean basin there is epigraphic evidence for a merchant from Gerrha at Delos in the mid-second century B.C.⁵⁸ At Thaj (the probable site of Gerrha) sherds of Greek black-glazed pottery and a stamped amphora handle have been found.⁵⁹ A significant number of coins—mainly dating to the latter half of the third century B.C.—have been found (practically all picked up as surface finds) in northeastern Arabia. Many have the legend ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΥ and south Arabian letters on the reverse. Some of these were modeled after Alexander coinage—that is, with the head of Herakles on the obverse, Zeus seated in his throne on the reverse. Others have on the obverse diademed portraits that resemble various Seleucid rulers: for example, Seleukos I, Antiochos I, or Antiochos III.⁶⁰ The interpretation of these coins in the larger historical context has been the subject of an interesting discussion. Mørkholm noted that the coins were minted on the Attic standard and suggested this indicates that trade from eastern Arabia was primarily oriented toward the Seleucid empire. Furthermore, he suggested that the fact these “Arabian Alexanders” have been found on Failaka, at Susa (SELEUKEIA on the Eulaios), in northern Syria, and at Gordion in central Asia Minor demonstrates the route(s) on which the trade was being conducted. M. Huth and D. T. Potts disagreed. They suggested that the appearance of these coins in Syria and Phrygia simply reflects the movement of Antiochos III’s troops into Asia Minor after his expedition to the Persian Gulf area.⁶¹

      ASSYRIA AND APOLLONIATIS

      Apolloniatis (formerly called Sittakene), which Strabo describes as “extensive and fertile,”⁶² introduces a unique problem for the historian interested in the Hellenistic settlements in the Near East: the need to distinguish the Graeco-Macedonian settlements founded by Alexander and his successors from the colonies of Greeks and others that owed their origins to the population transfers carried out by the Persians, particularly in the early part of the fifth century B.C. At that time—especially under Darius and Xerxes—population transfer as a punitive measure was a standard policy of the Achaemenids.⁶³ Essentially, this policy resulted in Greeks and others being exiled to the interior and especially to the far eastern and southern regions of the Persian Empire.⁶⁴ It brought Barcaeans from Libya to Bactria (Hdt. 4.204), Paeonians to Asia (Hdt. 5.12), Milesians and others to the Red Sea basin (Hdt. 3.39, 6.20; Ctesias Persika 688 F14[43]) and Bactria (Branchidae: table of contents to Diodorus book 17 and Curt. Rufus 7.5.28–35, on which see Altheim-Stiehl, Geschichte 158–59; P. Bernard, Aï Khanoum 4:123–25), Eretrians from Euboea to Susiana (Hdt. 6.119; Pal. Anth. 7:259), Media (Philostratus Life of Apollonius of Tyana 1.24.2 = Pal. Anth. 7:256), and/or Gordyene in northern Mesopotamia (Strabo 16.1.25), Boeotians to Sittakene/Apolloniatis (Diod. 17.110.4–5), and Carians to the right bank of the Tigris, opposite Sittakene (Arr. 3.8.5; see also Diod. 17.110.3–4 and 19.12.1), as well as to Bactria (Strabo 11.11.4).⁶⁵

      As a result, when Alexander and his successors came to these various regions in and adjacent to Mesopotamia as well as those farther east, they encountered the descendants of those Greeks who had been sent there by the Persians two hundred or more years before and who still remained identifiably Greek. Thus, in describing some of the Boeotians in Sittakene, Diodorus noted: “There dwells here down to our time [i.e., latter half of the first century B.C.] a settlement of Boeotians who were moved in the time of Xerxes’ campaign, but still have not forgotten their ancestral customs. They are bilingual and speak like the natives in one language, while in the other they preserve most of the Greek vocabulary, and they maintain some Greek customs” (17.110.4–5, trans. Welles).

      This raises an interesting problem for the historian of the Hellenistic Near East: there are a number of settlements in Mesopotamia and Apolloniatis that are described by Isidore of Charax in the first century A.D. as poleis hellenides.⁶⁶ How many of these were settlements of Greeks that were established during the Hellenistic age, and how many were vestiges of the Achaemenid policy of population transfer? In some cases the paucity of the evidence does not allow us decide. As a result, in the absence of other extant information about these towns, we must consider the possibility that in some cases their “Hellenic character” reflected the forced settlement of Greeks by the