Further Reading
Burn, A. R. “Persia and the Greeks.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 2, edited by Ilya Gershevitch, 292–391. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Diodorus Siculus. Translated by C. H. Oldfather. London: William Heinemann, 1933.
Ghirshman, R. Iran from the Earliest Times to the Islamic Conquest. New York: Penguin, 1978.
Thucydides. The History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by Richard Crawley and revised by Donald Lateiner. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2006.
Artaxerxes II
Artaxerxes II (Old Persian: Artakhshacha II) was a king of the Persian Achaemenid dynasty who ruled from 404 to 359 BCE. The older son of Darius II, he ascended the Persian throne upon the death of his father. His title in Greek, Mnemon, translates as “mindful.” Artaxerxes II ruled for 46 years and was succeeded upon his death by his son Ochos, who ascended the Achaemenid throne as Artaxerxes III. The Greek author Plutarch wrote that from the very beginning of his reign there existed a tension between Artaxerxes and his younger brother, Cyrus, who was the favorite son of their mother. Artaxerxes intended to kill his younger brother, but through the intercession of their mother, the new king allowed Cyrus to return to Sardis in Asia Minor and remain the governor of the western provinces of the Persian Empire. Shortly after Artaxerxes II became king, a revolt in Egypt, which had been brewing since the latter part of his father’s reign, finally erupted. Egypt broke away from the Achaemenid Empire and declared its independence. Persian authority would not be reestablished in Egypt until the reign of Artaxerxes III (r. 359–338 BCE).
A year after Artaxerxes II lost Egypt, his younger brother, Cyrus (also known as Cyrus the Younger), who served as the governor of Asia Minor, revolted against him. Cyrus raised an army that included a large unit of Greek mercenaries and marched to Mesopotamia, where the Persian army led by his brother Artaxerxes II was waiting for him. The two armies joined battle in 401 BCE at Cunaxa on the left bank of the Euphrates River, 50 miles north of Babylon in present-day southern Iraq. Cyrus was defeated and killed after he had attacked and wounded his brother Artaxerxes. The bulk of Cyrus’s army was routed, and the Greek commanders who had participated in the campaign were executed, but according to the Greek officer and author Xenophon, a group of Greek mercenaries (some 10,000 men) who had fought with the ill-fated Persian prince returned to their homeland by way of Asia Minor and the Black Sea. This defeat and retreat were turned into a story of heroism and perseverance by Xenophon (430–350 BCE) in Anabasis (March of the Ten Thousand). Xenophon depicted Cyrus the Younger as a gifted, magnetic, and yet tragic leader.
Artaxerxes II reversed the pro-Sparta policy of his father, Darius II, and lent his support to Athens and its allies. Artaxerxes recognized that the defeated and demoralized Athenians could no longer pose a threat to Persian rule, but a rejuvenated and confident Sparta could potentially cause trouble in the western provinces of his empire. The conflict with Sparta headed by its king, Agesilaos, did not go well at first, but through a combination of bribing and good generalship, the Persians and their Greek allies seized the upper hand, destroying the Spartan fleet in the Battle of Cnidus off the southwestern coast of Asia Minor in the summer of 394 BCE. Sparta lost its entire fleet and suffered heavy casualties. The Persian forces and their allies then moved against Spartan-occupied cities and liberated them. The Persian policy of playing Athens against Sparta exhausted the Greek cities and forced them to send their ambassadors to the Persian capital, where they agreed to the Peace of the King (387–386 BCE). According to this agreement, Persian rule returned to all the Greek cities of Asia, including Ionia in Asia Minor, along with the island of Cyprus. Artaxerxes II achieved this result by the brilliant use of diplomacy and Persian gold. The Persian policy of inciting conflict between Athens and Sparta reignited the war between the two Greek states. When the two exhausted and war-torn city-states ended their war, Thebes, which dominated the region of Boeotia in central Greece, attacked them with support from Artaxerxes II and scored a decisive victory over both.
The overwhelming success of Artaxerxes vis-à-vis Greece masked the growing weakness of the Achaemenid central government, which was facing an increasing number of revolts in its western provinces. There, satraps who had accumulated enormous power were challenging the power of the Persian king and forming their own armies and alliances. The revolt of the king’s satraps throughout the 360s BCE posed a serious threat to the security and survival of the Achaemenid state. Among these, the most menacing was the revolt of Datames, the satrap of Cappadocia in central Asia Minor. Equally alarming was the rebellion of Ariobarzanes, the governor of Dascylium in northwestern Asia Minor. By 362 BCE, the revolts of the king’s satraps in Asia Minor and the Egyptian attack on Syria and Phoenicia had brought the Persian state to the brink of defeat and disintegration. But at the very moment when everything seemed to be going against the Persian king, the tables were turned on his opponents, and the threats from the empire’s western provinces as well as from Egypt disappeared.
In Asia Minor, Orontes, the aging son-in-law of Artaxerxes, organized the assassination of Datames, the satrap of Cappadocia. Orontes also arrested Ariobarzanes, the governor of Dascylium, and sent him as a prisoner to his royal master. As for the threat from Egypt, a palace coup dethroned the Egyptian pharaoh Takhos, who at the time was in Phoenicia. The humiliated pharaoh was forced to seek refuge at the Persian court, while his ally, Straton, the king of Sidon (in present-day southern Lebanon), was murdered by his wife. King Agesilaos of Sparta, who had formed an alliance with Takhos, left Egypt and died aboard a ship as he sailed home. By the time he died in 359 BCE, Artaxerxes II ruled an empire temporarily freed from internal strife.
See also: K&Q, Achaemenid: Artaxerxes III; Cyrus the Younger; Darius II; Prophets: Xenophon; Primary Documents: Document 15; Document 16
Further Reading
Cook, J. M. The Persian Empire. New York: Schocken, 1983.
Curtis, John. Ancient Persia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Ghirshman, R. Iran from the Earliest Times to the Islamic Conquest. New York: Penguin, 1978.
Plutarch. Plutarch’s Lives, Vol. 2. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2006.
Xenophon. The Persian Expedition. Translated by Rex Warner. London: Penguin, 1950.
Artaxerxes III
Artaxerxes III (Old Persian: Artakhshacha) was a king of the Persian Achaemenid dynasty who ruled from 359 to 338 BCE. The son of Artaxerxes II, who had ruled the Persian Achaemenid Empire from 404 BCE to 359 BCE, Artaxerxes III ruled for nearly 26 years. Upon his murder, he was succeeded by one of his sons, Arses, who ruled from 338 to 336 BCE.
Beginning in 363 BCE before becoming king, Artaxerxes III had acted as the commander of his father’s army. In the first few years of his reign, the new king had to focus his attention on the rebellion of Artabazos, the Persian satrap of Phrygia in western Asia Minor. Artabazos enjoyed a friendly relationship with Greek commanders from Athens and Thebes, which allowed him to include Greek mercenaries in his army. Though the Persian satrap managed twice to defeat the armies sent against him by the Persian king, he was finally forced to flee to Macedonia and seek refuge at the court of the Macedonian ruler Philip. Artabazos was eventually pardoned by Artaxerxes III and returned home, where he would serve the Achaemenid state with distinction. After the fall of the Achaemenid Empire at the hands of Alexander the Macedon, Artabazos would be appointed as governor of Bactria in present-day northern Afghanistan.
After freeing himself from his unruly satrap, Artaxerxes III organized a campaign against Egypt. He had most probably been preparing the Achaemenid army for an invasion of Egypt during the last years of his father’s reign. Egypt had revolted against Artaxerxes II and declared its independence in 404/403 BCE. The efforts of Artaxerxes II to recapture the country had failed. The armies of Artaxerxes III also failed in their first campaign against Egypt, but the Persian king did not give up. In its second campaign, the Ac
haemenid army was led by the governors of Abar Nahra (“Beyond the River,” i.e., Euphrates), a region that extended from Amanus in present-day southern Turkey and northern Syria to the Sinai and included the island of Cyprus as well as Cilicia, the south coastal region of Asia Minor. The Persian forces attacked Phoenicia (present-day Lebanon) but were pushed back. In 345 BCE, Artaxerxes III assumed command of his army and attacked Sidon in southern Lebanon, capturing the city and executing its king, Tennes. The road was now open to invade Egypt. The invasion was delayed, however, by a revolt on the island of Cyprus, which was suppressed with the support of the Athenians.
Egypt at this time was ruled by Nektanebo II, a pharaoh who had seized the throne of the country 16 years before by staging a palace revolt against the former pharaoh, Takhos. When the two armies joined in battle, an Achaemenid division, which included mercenaries, defeated a unit of the pharaoh’s Greek mercenaries. Nektanebo II panicked and fled to Memphis, the capital of Egypt. The flight of the Egyptian ruler caused his forces stationed at Pelusium on the eastern edge of the Nile Delta to negotiate a surrender. The Achaemenid armies under the capable leadership of two of the king’s most prominent commanders, Bagoas and Mentor, pushed south toward Memphis. Garrison after garrison fell without any fight. Thus, by the summer of 243 BCE, Egypt was once again a province of the Achaemenid Empire.
Once the reconquest of Egypt was complete, Artaxerxes III sent Bagoas to subdue the rebellious Cadusii, a tribal group that inhabited the southwestern shore of the Caspian Sea south of the Aras River. The Cadusii had been in a state of revolt ever since 405 BCE. While the king’s forces were suppressing the Cadusii, the king’s general, Mentor, was dispatched to western Asia Minor, where he restored order by negotiating with the former rebel satrap Artabazos and convincing the refugee governor and his family to return home.
Toward the end of Artaxerxes III’s reign, Macedonia under its king, Philip II, began to emerge as a threat to the security of the Persian possessions in Asia Minor. In 340 BCE, Philip attacked Perinthos in northern Greece with the goal of establishing himself as the master of the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, which connected the Black Sea to the Aegean. He then defeated the Greeks (the Athenian and Theban forces) in the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE, permanently ending the independence of the Greek city-states. Given the threat he represented, the Achaemenids were probably relieved when they received the news of Philip’s assassination in 336 BCE.
Artaxerxes III had restored peace and order to the Achaemenid state, but at the height of his success the king and all but one of his sons were assassinated by his close confidant, Bagoas, who cherished the dream of ruling the empire through a puppet. In this case the puppet was to be Arses, the remaining son of Artaxerxes III, whose life had been spared so he could play the role of the nominal ruler, while Bagoas emerged as the sole power behind the throne. Having become aware of the heinous crimes of Bagoas against his father and brothers, Arses tried to punish the traitor, but he and his sons were also murdered. The Achaemenid royal house was decimated by these assassinations. In fact, only one prince of the ruling dynasty could still claim a direct and legitimate link to the Achaemenid male line. This ill-fated prince was a relative of Artaxerxes III who at the time served as the governor of Armenia and would ascend the throne as Darius III.
See also: K&Q, Achaemenid: Arses; Artaxerxes II; Darius III
Further Reading
Burn, A. R. “Persia and the Greeks.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 2, edited by Ilya Gershevitch, 292–391. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Cook, J. M. The Persian Empire. New York: Schocken, 1983.
Wiesehöfer, Josef. Ancient Persia. London: I. B. Tauris, 2011.
Cambyses I
Cambyses I (Old Persian: Kambujiya I) was the father of Cyrus II the Great, the founder of the Persian Achaemenid dynasty (r. 550–330 BCE). Cambyses I was the ruler of Anshan, which was located in the present-day southern Iranian province of Fars (Old Persian: Parsa). He ruled most probably between 600 BCE and 559 BCE. On his cylinder excavated in Babylon, Cyrus the Great stated that he was the “son of Cambyses, great king, king of Anshan, grandson of Cyrus [Cyrus I], great king, king of Anshan” (Curtis: 42). The Greek author Herodotus claimed that Cambyses was not a king but rather a Persian from “a good family and quiet habits” who was handpicked by Astyages, the king of Media, as the husband for his daughter, Mandane (Herodotus: 1.107–108). Another Greek author, however, namely Xenophon, called Cambyses “the king of Persians” who married Mandane, the daughter of the Median king Astyages (Xenophon: 1.2.1).
See also: Ancient Provinces: Anshan; K&Q, Achaemenid: Cyrus II the Great
Further Reading
Curtis, John. The Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia. London: British Museum Press, 2013.
Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey De Sélincourt. New York: Penguin, 2003.
Pritchard, James B. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.
Xenophon. Cyropaedia: The Education of Cyrus. Translated by Wayne Ambler. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Cambyses II
Cambyses II (Old Persian: Kambujiya II) was the elder son of Cyrus II the Great, the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire who succeeded his father after his death in 530 BCE and ruled until 522 BCE. Cambyses’s mother was Cassandane, who was loved and highly respected by Cyrus the Great. Cambyses had a younger brother named Bardiya and three sisters, Atossa, Artystone, and Roxane. Cambyses II was named after his grandfather Cambyses I, who was the king of Anshan in the present-day southern Iranian province of Fars (ancient Parsa) probably from 600 to 559 BCE. As the elder son of his father, Cambyses accompanied Cyrus the Great during his campaign against the Neo-Babylonian Empire. After the conquest of Babylon, Cambyses was appointed by his father as the king of Babylon. Toward the end of Cyrus’s reign, for a short time Cambyses acted as a co-regent and shared the titles “king of Babylon” and “king of the lands” with his father. Cambyses II ascended the Persian throne in 530 BCE after his father was killed in a campaign against the Massagetae, a Scythian group in Central Asia. In 525 BCE after restoring order to the vast empire he had inherited from his father, Cambyses marched against Phoenicia (modern-day Lebanon) and Egypt. The Phoenicians submitted voluntarily to the Persian king. The conquest of Egypt, however, required a major military campaign and the personal participation and leadership of the Persian monarch. In attacking Egypt, Cambyses II was continuing his father’s policy of expanding the boundaries of the Persian Empire to North Africa. His principal objective was the conquest of the agriculturally rich Nile River Valley, which could provide the Persian state with an important strategic foothold in Africa while at the same time significantly enhancing and augmenting the economic and political power of the Persian king.
The Persian army first established a foothold on the eastern frontiers of Egypt. Scrambling to craft a military coalition capable of deterring the Persians from invading his country, Amasis, the pharaoh of Egypt, formed an alliance with Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, a Greek island situated off the coast of Asia Minor in the eastern Aegean Sea. This unreliable ally, however, abandoned the pharaoh shortly before the invasion of Egypt by the Persians. Worse, the commander of the pharaoh’s forces also deserted his royal master and defected to Cambyses. Before the Persians invaded his country, Amasis died in 525 BCE. He was succeeded by Psammetichus III, who was left with the task of defending Egypt against the Persian invaders. When the two armies joined battle, the Persians scored two quick victories, first at Pelusium and then at Memphis, where the new pharaoh was captured. Following the policy of his father, which was to retain a defeated ruler as a tribute-paying vassal, Cambyses spared the life of Psammetichus III. The relationship between the two monarchs, however, deteriorated quickly when Cambyses was informed that the defeated pharaoh was involved in a conspiracy to stir a rebellion against Persian rule. Psammetichus III was execut
ed by order of Cambyses. Herodotus and later Strabo described Cambyses as a brutal and cold-blooded murderer and madman who looted Egyptian temples and insulted Egyptian gods and priests (Herodotus: 3.30). According to these authors, the brutality and savagery of Cambyses reached its climax when the Persian king killed Apis, the Egyptian sacred bull (Herodotus: 3.27–30). The Egyptian sources refute these fantastic stories, however, and indicate that Persian rule did not leave an adverse impact on Egypt and that Cambyses behaved with respect toward Egyptian religious beliefs, customs, and traditions. Herodotus also claimed that Cambyses invaded Nubia (southern Egypt and northern Sudan). This campaign was aborted, however, as a result of inadequate provisions.
Cambyses departed Egypt for Persia in 522 BCE after he was informed that a man claiming to be his brother Bardiya (the younger son of Cyrus the Great) had proclaimed himself king. On his inscription at Bisotun in western Iran, the Achaemenid king Darius I (r. 522–480 BCE), who at the time served as an officer in the army of Cambyses, claimed that the man who had revolted against Cambyses was not Bardiya, the younger brother of the king, but rather a false pretender—a magus, or priest, named Gaumata (Kent: 119–120). Darius stated that before leaving for Egypt, Cambyses II had secretly ordered the execution of his brother to prevent a palace coup in his absence. The murder of the king’s brother was, however, kept a secret and was only known to a handful of individuals within the royal court. In 522 BCE before he could reach Persia and quell the rebellion, Cambyses died suddenly.
The main historical source for the reign of Cambyses II is the Greek author Herodotus, who depicted the Persian monarch as a mad, violent, and bloodthirsty despot bent on inflicting pain and suffering on everyone, including the people of Egypt and members of his own family. More recent scholarship contradicts Herodotus and indicates that the unsavory depiction of Cambyses by the Greek author is largely unfounded and baseless and may even have been fueled and influenced by the propaganda waged by Darius I, who seized the Persian throne through a military coup shortly after Cambyses’s death.
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