| Agathocles Dicaeus | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Agathocles | |
| Indo-Greek king | |
| Reign | 190–180 BC |
| Predecessor | Pantaleon |
| Successor | Apollodotus I orAntimachus I |
| Dynasty | Euthydemid |
| Father | Demetrius I |
Agathocles I Dicaeus (Ancient Greek:Ἀγαθοκλῆς Δικαῖος,romanized: Agathoklês Dikaîos, meaning "Agathocles the Just") was aGreco-Bactrian/Indo-Greek king, who reigned between around 190 and 180 BC. He was likely from the dynasty ofEuthydemus I, but he is also known to have commemorated bothDiodotus I andAntiochus Nicator.
There is a near-complete lack of written sources except an extensivecoinage.[1][2][3]
Agathocles was first discovered byJohann Martin Honigberger in 1834, with hoards of coins being discovered at a rapid pace.[4] No sooner hadDesiré-Raoul Rochette held him to be the founder of the Bactrian dynasty than he was rejected byChristian Lassen, who felt that Agathocles was a contemporary of Demetrius andEucratides I.[4]
Agathocles' father may have beenDiodotus II, and he would therefore have been illegitimate.[3] Agathocles ruledc. 185 BC[a] and was probably the immediate successor ofPantaleon; he was a contemporaneous relative (maybe, son) ofDemetrius I, who was busy expanding towards India.[2][6][3][b]
He was challenged byAntimachus I.[2][6] Depending on the results, which is not accurately ascertainable, he was either immediately ousted by Antimachus I or a few years later, by an usurperEucratides I.[2][6][3]
No gold mints have been found.[7] Bronze and silver mints were commonplace. Copper mints having significant Nickel were discovered by Flight in 1868; François Widemann believes them to have had an intermediate value between bronze and silver.[7][8]
Agathocles issued a series of coins mentioning a variety of rulers.[2]
The first of these types was acquired by a Russian explorer Nicholai de Khanikoff fromBukhara and published byJean-Jacques Barthélemy: on the obverse was the usual image of Diodotus but with an epithet of ΣΩΤΗΡΟΣ ("savior") instead ofbasileus and on the reverse was the usual image of Zeus but with an additional inscription that read "ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΟΝΤΟΣ ΑΓΑΘΟΚΛΕΟΥΣ ΔΙΚΑΙΟΥ" (Agathocles the Just, ruling as a King).[4] This peculiar coinage led to significant debate among numismatists — Barthélemy had construed the coins to venerate a dead ancestor butJohann Gustav Droysen argued, to significant acclaim, that it meant Agathocles was ruling as a subordinate of Diodotus.[4][c]
Precisely similar coins but commemorating other rulers were located in the following decades — Euthydemus (1858) and Antiochus (1868).[4] A coin of the same kind commemorating Diodotus but struck byAntimachus was also chanced upon.[4] Scholars increasingly accepted the reasoning of Droysen and Cunningham proposed that Agathocles (alongside Antimachus) first ruled under Diodotus[d] and then under Euthydemus and Antiochus.[4] The general understanding of Bactrian Kingdom around the middle nineteenth century hold all of these Kings to be contemporaneous co-rulers.[4] Among the rare dissenting voices wasAlfred von Sallet who asserted that these "ancestor coins" were struck for the purpose of commemoration and rejected that these rulers were contemporary, based on the design of coins.[4]
1.Zeus standing with goddessHecate.[11] Greek: "King Agathokles".
2. Deity wearing a longhimation with a volume on the head, arm partly bent, andcontrapposto pose. Greek: "King Agathokles".[11] This coin is inbronze.[12]
3. Hindu godBalarama-Samkarshana with attributes. Greek: "King Agathokles".[13]
4. Hindu godVāsudeva-Krishna with attributes.[13]Brahmi: "Rajane Agathukleyasa", "King Agathokles".
In 1880, a coin of the same kind struck by Agathocles but "commemorating"Alexander, Son of Philip was published by Percy Garnder of British Museum.[4] That it was impossible for Agathocles to be a sub-king of someone who had ruled about two hundred years earlier, Droysen's explanation was summarily rejected in favor of Sallet.[4][e] Gardner proposed that these coins were struck to increase his public on the eve of an (eventually successful) challenge byEucratides I.[15] In the early-mid 1900,Hugh Rawinson andWilliam Tarn would extrapolate Gardner's ideas to further their visions of a grand Hellenistic past where Agathocles had faked his pedigree andEucratides I was carrying out the orders ofAntiochus IV to reestablish the Seleucid control.[16][15] Other scholars generally avoided giving too much significance to these "ancestor coins".[17]
More varieties of these coins would be discovered later.[4] These mentionDiodotus II,Demetrius II andDemetrius.[4][6][18][17] In the last few decades, such coins have been discovered in more numbers but the accuracy of these finds remain plagued by the fact that these did not came from controlled excavations but auction networks.[4] They were evaluated by scholars only after they have traveled continents and passed through multiple hands.[4]
It has been since accepted that these coins indeed represented Agathocles' predecessors.[19] The precise context of minting and significance is still not clear.[6]
Agathocles was unique in issuing bilingual coinage.[6][3] Meant for local circulation in Gandhara, they were typically of smaller denominations, square or rectangular in shape, and minted in bronze or silver.[20][6] The obverse had his portrait labelled in Greek while the reverse had imagery from theBuddhist as well asHindu pantheon alongside inscriptions inBrahmi/Kharosthi.[20][3][f] Monolingual coinage (in Kharosthi) of similar kinds have been discovered.[22]
These finds have led scholars to conclude that Agathocles favored socio-religious tolerance.[22]Osmund Bopearachchi hold him to have inaugurated the first Indo-Greek era; others have been skeptic.[6]
Buddhist symbols such as thestupa and the "tree in railing" have been located in his coins.[3][22] These coins sometimes useBrahmi, and sometimesKharoshthi, whereas later Indo-Greek kings only used Kharoshthi.Lakshmi, goddess of abundance and fortune, appears in several of these coins.[23]
![A six-arched hill symbol surmounted by a star. Kharoshthi legend Akathukreyasa "Agathocles". Tree-in-railing, Kharoshthi legend Hirañasame.[24][25]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aAgatocles_Chaitya.jpg)
On 3 October 1970, six Indian-standard silverdrachmas were discovered at the administrative quarters ofAi-Khanoum from a pilgrim's water vessel by a team of French archaeologists.[26] These coins are the first numismatic representations ofVedic deities and serve as key evidences aboutBhagavatism being the first form ofVaishnavism in early India.[27][28]
The coins display earlyAvatars ofVishnu:Balarama-Sankarshana with attributes ofpestle andplow on reverse, andVāsudeva-Krishna with attributes ofShankha andSudarshana Chakra on obverse.[29][27][28][g] On the bases of the coins bearing characteristic trademarks of Indian sculpture — frontal pose as opposed to three-quarter, stiff and starched folds in drapes, absence of proportions, and sideways disposition of feet — Audoin and Bernard speculated that the engravings were by Indian artists.[27] Bopearachchi disputes the conclusion and points out the mis-representational depictions of Vāsudeva-Krishna'schattra with a headdress and conch with a high-necked vase; he hypothesizes that a Greek artist had engraved the coin from a now-lost (or undiscovered) sculpture.[27]
A dancing girl, found on the obverse of some Bronze coins of Agathocles are believed to be representations ofSubhadra.[27]
Also, Agathocles andPantaleon, along with their contemporaryEuthydemus II, are unique in the ancient world, in that they were the first in the world to issue copper-nickel (75/25 ratio) coins, an alloy technology only known by the Chinese at the time (some weapons from theWarring States period were in copper-nickel alloy).[30][31][32] These coins used the symbolism ofDionysos with athyrsus over his left shoulder and his panther, which were his type for smaller coinage.[33][34]
It has long been suggested that the nickel contained in the coins of Agathocles was ultimately of Chinese origin (ChineseBaitong, 白铜, "white copper"), and that they were indicative of the existence of trade links with China around that time.[35][30] However, a recentarchaeometallurgical study of trace elements has shown that nickel in these coins actually came from natural nickeliferous copper ore.[36]
From 1834, some attempts were made to decipher theBrahmi script, the main script used in old Indian inscriptions such as theEdicts of Ashoka, and which had become extinct since the 5th century CE. Some attempts by Rev. J. Stevenson were made to identify characters from theKarla Caves (c. 1st century CE) based on their similarities with theGupta script of theSamudragupta inscription of theAllahabad pillar (4th century CE) which had just been deciphered, but this led to a mix of good (about 1/3) and bad guesses, which did not permit proper decipherment of the Brahmi.[37][38]
The first successful attempts at deciphering the ancient Brahmi script of the 3rd-2nd centuries BCE were made in 1836 by Norwegian scholarChristian Lassen, who used the bilingual Greek-Brahmi coins ofIndo-Greek kings Agathocles andPantaleon to correctly and securely identify several Brahmi letters.[21] The task was then completed byJames Prinsep, an archaeologist, philologist, and official of theEast India Company, who was able to identify the rest of the Brahmi characters, with the help ofMajor Cunningham.[21][39] In a series of results that he published in March 1838 Prinsep was able to translate the inscriptions on a large number of rock edicts found around India, and provide, according toRichard Salomon, a "virtually perfect" rendering of the full Brahmi alphabet.[40][41]
| Preceded by | Greco-Bactrian king (inParopamisade) 190-180 BCE | Succeeded by |