Appendix 8 - A sealing from Seleuceia

Summary

Among the seal-impressions found in excavating Seleuceia on the Tigris is one which differs considerably from the ordinary run of impressions made by seals of local or western manufacture; it is the head of a man, between youth and middle age, who wears the flat kausia of the Euthydemids known from the coins of Antimachus and Demetrius II, and the portraiture is so strong and vivid that to my mind there can be little doubt that the seal was engraved in Bactria by one of the good artists. Mr McDowell, in publishing it, called it Timarchus, but I see no possibility of it being Timarchus; the head is not diademed, and bears not the least resemblance to the head of Timarchus on his coins, quite apart from the Bactrian kausia. If, after the death of Antiochus IV, Eucratides, as seems certain enough, acknowledged no allegiance to the Seleucid Demetrius I and stood with the rebel Timarchus (p. 218), Demetrius I cannot have been badly disposed towards Eucratides' enemies; and it might therefore be conceivable that the portrait in question was that of some member of one of the Euthydemid families who had escaped the slaughter of his house by Eucratides and found refuge in Seleuceia after the accession of the Seleucid Demetrius I.

It was common enough for Hellenistic kings to give asylum to other states' exiles, who might one day have their uses; one need only recall the number of the dispossessed who had found shelter in their time at the courts of Lysimachus and Ptolemy II.