Agathocles of Bactria

Agathocles I Dicaeus (Agathoklēs Dikaios, the epithet means "the just") was a Greco-Bactrian/Indo-Greek king, who reigned between around 190 and 180 BC, likely of the dynasty of Diodotus I, due to his commemoration of Antiochus Nicator. There is a near-complete lack of written sources except an extensive coinage. Agathocles was first discovered by Johann Martin Honigberger in 1834, with hordes of coins being discovered at a rapid pace. No sooner had Desiré-Raoul Rochette held him to be the founder of the Bactrian dynasty than he was rejected by Christian Lassen, who felt that Agathocles was a contemporary of Demetrius and Eucratides I. Agathocles' father may have been Diodotus II, and he would therefore have been illegitimate. Agathocles ruled 185 BC and was probably the immediate successor of Pantaleon; he was a contemporaneous relative (maybe, son) of Demetrius I, who was busy expanding towards India. He was challenged by Antimachus I. Depending on the results, which is not accurately ascertainable, he was either immediately ousted by Antimachus I or a few years later, by an usurper Eucratides I. No gold mints have been found. 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. Agathocles issued a series of coins mentioning a variety of rulers. The first of these types was acquired by a Russian explorer Nicholai de Khanikoff from Bukhara and published by Jean-Jacques Barthélemy: on the obverse was the usual image of Diodotus but with an epithet of "ΣΩΤΗΡΟΣ" (savior) instead of basileus 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). This peculiar coinage led to significant debate among numismatists — Barthélemy had construed the coins to venerate a dead ancestor but Johann Gustav Droysen argued, to significant acclaim, that it meant Agathocles was ruling as a subordinate of Diodotus.