The Historians' History of the World 02

Darius II had married his aunt Parysatis, one of the cruellest and most depraved women that ever entered an Eastern harem, and it was by her advice that he broke his word and Arsites was burnt to death. But this example did not deter Pissuthenes, the satrap of Lydia, who had been in office for twenty months, from rebelling; however, he, like Arsites, fell by treachery; for Tissaphernes having bribed the mercenaries in his pay to desert him, he was obliged to surrender. Darius had him put to death, and made his conqueror his successor.

But this was not the last of the troubles in Asia Minor, for Amorges, the natural son of Pissuthenes excited Caria to revolt, and after abrogating the title of King, he held out till 412.

It was at this time that the whole of Greece was laid waste by the Peloponnesian war. Athens had just lost in Sicily the best part of her fleet and the bravest of her soldiers, and when the news of her defeat reached the East, Darius saw that it was a favourable time to break the treaty of 449. He sent orders to the satraps of Mysia and Lydia to collect the taxes from the Greek towns on the coast and to treat with the Lacedæmonians. Sparta accepted the alliance offered her, and henceforth the different Hellenic states were but playthings in the hands of the Great King and his agents. Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus tried at first to keep the balance equal between the Dorians and Athenians, without allowing either of the rival races to deal the mortal blow; but this equalising policy did not last long. Darius had two sons, and the second one, named Cyrus after the founder of the empire, obtained through the influence of Parysatis the supreme rulership of the provinces of Asia Minor.

Cyrus was ambitious of reigning, and he hoped that his mother would manage by intrigues to obtain for him the succession which rightfully belonged to his eldest brother, Arsaces; and in the event of failure by those means he intended to win the throne by force of arms.

[405-399 B.C.]

Athens being a maritime power was not likely to help him in an expedition against the provinces of Upper Asia, so he turned to Sparta and supported her so efficaciously that in two years the war ended in favour of the Peloponnesians, by their decisive victory at Ægospotami in 405.

ARTAXERXES II

The satraps of Asia Minor seem to have suspected young Cyrus of these secret intrigues, for Darius summoned his son to Susa. But Cyrus arrived only in time to be present at the king’s death, and in spite of the efforts of Parysatis, Arsaces, the new king, ascended the throne under the royal name of Artaxerxes (Artakhshathra). Cyrus tried to kill his brother at the foot of the altar during the coronation ceremony, but Tissaphernes and one of the priests having denounced him, he was seized and would have been executed had not his mother saved him from the hands of the executioner.

His pardon being granted after some trouble, Cyrus returned to Asia Minor, determined to seize the first opportunity for revenge. Having managed, in spite of the surveillance of Tissaphernes, to collect under divers pretences 13,000 Greek mercenaries and 100,000 native soldiers, he suddenly left Sardis (401), crossed Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia, without being molested; but encountering the imperial army at Cunaxa, some miles north of Babylon, he was killed in the engagement. He was brave, active, ambitious, and endowed with all the qualities which would have made him a good oriental monarch. His intercourse with the Greeks had opened his eyes to the weak sides of his country which he tried to remedy; and if he had been successful he would probably have momentarily arrested the empire on its downward course. When he was gone, the native army which had followed him, immediately dispersed, but the mercenaries did not lose courage and gained the shores of the Pontus Euxinus by crossing Assyria and Armenia. The old state of affairs was quite changed when the retreat of the Ten Thousand showed that a handful of men, treacherously deprived of their leaders, without guides and without allies, could brave the empire with impunity and return to Greece without any considerable loss.

Victorious Sparta had now succeeded Athens in her protection of the Greeks of Ionia, and the death of Cyrus having broken her bonds with Persia, she had complete liberty of action. She continued the war with Asia for four years, her king, Agesilaus, even penetrated into the heart of Phrygia, and would have proceeded in the road taken by the Ten Thousand if Persian gold had not turned the course of affairs. For Athens again took up arms, and having united her fleet to that of Persia, she patrolled the Ægean Sea, the island of Cythera was taken by Conon, and the long walls were rebuilt at the expense of the Great King.