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Cyrus the Younger and Artaxerxes II, 401 BC: an Achaemenid Civil War Reconsidered

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Cyrus the Younger and Artaxerxes II, 401 BC: an Achaemenid Civil War Reconsidered chapter 7 Cyrus the Younger and Artaxerxes II, 401 BC: An Achaemenid Civil War Reconsidered John W. I. Lee Cyrus the Younger’s attempt in 401 BC to wrest the Achaemenid throne from his older brother King Artaxerxes II ranks among the pivotal moments of ancient West Asian history.1 The story really begins with the death of Cyrus’ and Artaxerxes’ grandfather Artaxerxes I (465–424). Artaxerxes I’s son and chosen successor Xerxes II faced immediate opposition from two half-brothers, Sogdianus and Ochus. Sogdianus assassinated Xerxes and seized power while Ochus raised an army to challenge Sogdianus. With the support of high-ranking Persians including Sogdianus’ own cavalry commander Arbarius and Arshama the satrap of Egypt, Ochus won out, ruling as Darius II from 424/3 to 405/4.2 Darius II and his wife Parysatis had many children, the eldest being Arses (born before 424) and his younger brother Cyrus, who was born after Darius became king. Darius prepared Arses as his successor while sending Cyrus west to Anatolia in 407 BC to oversee imperial responses to the ongoing Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. When Darius II died in late 405 or early 404, Arses took the throne as Artaxerxes II. The new king arrested Cyrus on charges of plotting against him but their mother Parysatis intervened, enabling Cyrus to return to his base at Sardis.3 With Artaxerxes distracted by revolt in Egypt and possibly elsewhere, Cyrus secretly built up strength for an attempt on the throne. Early in 401 BC, hav- ing assembled perhaps 40,000 troops including some 12,000 mostly Greek mercenaries, Cyrus set out from Sardis under the pretext of punishing rebels 1 This chapter forms part of a larger project on civil war and revolt in Achaemenid Persia. I am deeply grateful to John Collins and Joe Manning for the invitation to participate in the Crucible of Empire conference that led to this volume. I also wish to thank all the conference participants, especially my fellow Achaemenid panelists Beth Dusinberre and Matt Waters, for their engaging and insightful presentations and discussion. 2 On these events see Ctes. F15.47–51; Briant, 2002:588–89; Stolper, 1985:114–20; Zawadski, 1995 [1996]:45–49. Sogdianus, Ochus, and Ochus’ wife Parysatis were all half-siblings, each with a different Babylonian mother (Ctes. F15.47). 3 Accession of Artaxerxes II: Briant, 2002:615–17. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004330�84_008 104 Lee and brigands. Marching east through Phrygia and Lycaonia, Cyrus secured the key region of Cilicia with the help of its rulers Syennesis and Epyaxa, then moved inland through Syria, forded the Euphrates, and turned downriver towards Babylon. Meanwhile, Artaxerxes, having been warned of Cyrus’ inten- tions by the satrap Tissaphernes, mustered his forces to meet the challenge. In late summer or early fall 401 BC the brothers and their armies met at the battle of Cunaxa near Babylon. The Greek mercenaries held part of the field, but Cyrus was killed. His Persian supporters soon fled or went over to Artaxerxes, forcing the mercenaries—the Ten Thousand or Cyreans, as they are known—to fight their way out of Mesopotamia. Artaxerxes successfully consolidated power and became the longest-ruling Achaemenid king, holding the throne for some forty-two years (405/4–359/8 BC). Although Achaemenid inscriptions and documents illuminate the empire’s socio-economic and political situation in the late fifth century BC, no Persian narrative exists of the war between Artaxerxes and Cyrus, leaving us reliant on accounts by Greek writers. The first of these was Ctesias of Cnidus, court physician to Artaxerxes, who was present at Cunaxa but whose Persica sur- vives only in fragments. Diodorus Siculus writing in the first century BC and Plutarch in the first-second centuries AD drew on Ctesias as well as on other now-lost fourth century Greek historians such as Ephorus and Dinon.4 Our most complete and compelling source is of course Xenophon’s Anabasis; Xenophon knew Cyrus personally and took part in the march from Sardis to Cunaxa and beyond.5 Hellenocentric historians, reading the Anabasis through Orientalist lenses, long saw the conflict between Artaxerxes and Cyrus as a mark of Achaemenid Persia’s decadence and decline, just part of a series of civil wars and revolts stretching from the fifth into the fourth century.6 Historians writing from the Greek perspective in the twentieth century gradually became more balanced in their evaluations, but thanks in part to the widespread use of the Anabasis in Greek language learning, the view persists that Cyrus’ expedition revealed the weakness of the empire’s defenses and the superiority of manly Greek 4 On Ctesias see Lenfant, 2004; Stronk, 2010. For concise overviews of Ctesias, Dinon, Diodorus, and Ephorus see Lenfant, 2007:200–209 and Marincola, 2007:171–79. On Plutarch’s Artaxerxes see Binder, 2008; Binder, 2011:53–68; Mossman, 2010:145–68. 5 On the Anabasis and the Persian Empire see Tuplin, 2004:154–83. 6 On the origins of this trope see Lenfant, 2001/2:407–38. For an influential example of such a reading see Rawlinson, 1871..
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