Strato II Soter: The Last Indo-Greek King of Eastern Punjab

Introduction

Strato II Soter, also called Stratha, was an Indo-Greek king who ruled in the eastern Punjab in the late first century BCE, dated by Bopearachchi to about 25 BCE–10 CE (R. C. Senior has argued his reign may have ended earlier). He probably retained the traditional Indo-Greek seat at Sagala (modern Sialkot) or possibly held Bucephala. Strato II is best attested through coinage, frequently issued in debased silver drachms showing a diademed portrait and Pallas Athena on the reverse, and in bronze and even lead pieces of the common Apollo/tripod type; some of his silver drachms use a lunate sigma written as C.

Late in his career Strato II associated his son, Strato III Philopator, as joint regent, and the two are commonly treated as the last Indo-Greek rulers in the region. Strato II and III used exclusively a single square or “boxy” mint mark, a feature shared with other late Indo-Greek issues and traced to Dionysios Soter. The gradual deterioration of their coinage, among the most debased and stylistically crude of the Indo-Greek series, has been linked in the sources to increasing pressure from Indo-Scythian nomads and long isolation from the Hellenistic world.

Strato II’s realm was invaded and supplanted by Indo-Scythian Northern Satraps, notably Rajuvula and Bhadayasa; large mixed hoards attest close circulation and imitation, for example 96 Strato II coins found at Mathura alongside Rajuvula issues, and Rajuvula copied Strato II designs. Numismatically anchored to the Menander I tradition by the epithet Soter and the Athena motif, Strato II’s coinage marks the terminal phase of Indo-Greek rule in the eastern Punjab and served as the model for the coinage of the succeeding Indo-Scythian authorities.