Listed 91 sub titles with search on: Biographies for wider area of: "IRAN Country PERSIAN GULF" .
PERSEPOLIS (Ancient city) IRAN
Gaos, the commander of the Persian fleet, in the great expedition sent by Artaxerxes
against Evagoras in Cyprus, B. C. 386. In this situation he was subordinate to
Tiribazus, whose daughter he had married, and who held the chief command by sea;
but he contributed essentially to the success of the war, and totally defeated
the fleet of Evagoras off Citium. But the protracted siege of Salamis having given
rise to dissensions among the generals, which led to the recal of Tiribazus, Gaos
became apprehensive of being involved in his disgrace, and determined to revolt
from the Persian king. Accordingly, after the termination of the Cyprian war,
he kept together the forces under his command, on whose attachment he deemed that
he could rely, and entered into an alliance with Acoris, king of Egypt, and with
the Lacedaemonians, who gladly embraced the opportunity to renew hostilities against
Persia. But in the midst of his preparations, Gaos was cut off by secret assassination.
(Diod. xv. 3, 9, 18.) It is undoubtedly the same person who is called by Polyaenus
(vii. 20) Glos (Glos), whom that author mentions as carrying on war in Cyprus.
There is some doubt, indeed, which is the more correct form of the name. (See
Casaubon, ad Polyacn. l. c. ; Wesseling, ad Diod. xv. 3.)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
IRAN (Country) PERSIAN GULF
Achaemenes. The ancestor of the Persian kings, who founded the family of the Achaemenidae (Achaimenidai), which was the noblest family of the Pasargadae, the noblest of the Persian tribes. Achaemenes is said to have been brought up by an eagle. According to a genealogy given by Xerxes, the following was the order of the descent: Achaemenes, Teispes, Cambyses, Cyrus, Teispes, Ariaramnes, Arsames, Hystaspes, Darius, Xerxes. (Herod. i. 125, vii. 11; Aelian, Hist. Anim. xii. 21.) The original seat of this family was Achaemenia in Persis. (Steph. s.v. Achaimenia.) The Roman poets use the adjective Achaemenius in the sense of Persian. (Hor. Carm. iii. 1. 44, xiii. 8; Ov. Ar. Am. i. 226, Met. iv. 212.)
(Hakhamanisiya): royal dynasty of ancient Persia, named after its legendary
founder Achaemenes (Hakhamanis).
The Achaemenid or Persian empire was founded by Cyrus the Great, who
became king of Persis in 559 BCE and defeated his overlord Astyages of Media
in 550. The size of the Median empire is not exactly known, but it seems to have
included Cappadocia and Armenia
in the west and Parthia, Aria and Hyrcania in the east. Cyrus added Lydia
(547), Bactria and Sogdiana,
campaigned in India, and
captured Babylon in 539.
His capital was Pasargadae, built on the site where he had defeated Astyages.
In 530, Cyrus was killed during a campaign against the Massagetae, a Scythian
tribe.
He was succeeded by his son Cambyses, who conquered Egypt
(525). Three years later, civil war broke out when his courtier Gaumata revolted.
Cambyses returned home but died in Syria.
A distant relative of Cambyses, the Achaemenid prince Darius, however, killed
Gaumata. After the second coup in one year, many provinces of the Achaemenid empire
revolted; the most important rebellions were those of Phraortes of Media
and Nidintu-Bel of Babylonia. After nineteen battles, tranquillity returned to
the Achaemenid empire. Darius described his victory in the Behistun inscription,
in which he presents himself as the faithful servant of the Persian supreme god
Ahuramazda. (We do not know whether the Achaemenids adhered to the teachings of
the Bactrian prophet Zarathustra, although later Persian dynasties certainly were
Zoroastrians.)
Darius reorganized the empire and created satrapies, territorial units
that also served as tax districts. He also founded Persepolis,
where many administrative texts were discovered, and built a palace in Susa.
Capable generals like Mardonius added new countries to the empire, which now extended
from Macedonia in the west
to Pakistan in the east,
and from the river Syrdar'ya and the Caucasus mountains in the north to the Libyan
desert and the Persian Gulf in the south.
During the reign of Darius' son Xerxes, the expansion of the empire
came to an end. Gandara and Taxila in the far east were lost. The Greek researcher
Herodotus of Halicarnassus describes in his Histories Xerxes' ill-fated campaign
against the Greeks (480-479), but fails to explain why the Persians were unsuccessful:
because the Babylonian Samas-eriba revolted. In the west, Macedonia, Thrace and
several Greek towns in Asia Minor became independent. However, Xerxes was able
to keep the empire intact during the transition from an expansionist to a more
static organization.
Under his successors Artaxerxes I Makrocheir (465-424) and Darius
II Nothus (423-404), the empire remained as it was: the strongest power on earth.
In several regions (e.g., Asia
Minor) we detect strong Persian cultural influence. In Greece,
the Athenians copied many institutions of their powerful neighbor. They were not
the only ones. To the north of the Achaemenid empire, the Cadusians learned how
to organize itself. The war against this tribe was to flare up several times in
the fourth century.
After the death of Darius II, civil war broke out between Artaxerxes
II Mnemon and his younger brother Cyrus, who marched with an army of Greek mercenaries
to the east, but was defeated at Cunaxa near Babylon.
This event was important, because it was now obvious that the Persian infantry
was no match to the Greek hoplites. The Achaemenids developed a policy of dividing
the Greek powers (Athens, Sparta, Thebes) and were able to strengthen their grip
on Asia Minor, where the
Greek towns were again subdued.
On the other hand, Egypt became independent under Amyrtaeus. Several
times, the Persians tried to reconquer the former satrapy, usually employing Greek
mercenaries. (The Egyptians did the same.) These attempts came to nothing until
two generals of king Artaxerxes III Ochus (358-338), Bagoas and Mentor of Rhodes,
were finally successful and forced the last pharaoh of independent Egypt, Nectanebo
II, to flee (342/341).
For unknown reasons, Artaxerxes III was murdered by Bagoas and there
was a crisis in the Achaemenid dynasty. The new king was Artaxerxes IV Arses,
but after a brief reign, he was replaced by a distant relative, Darius III Codomannus
(336-330). Several satrapies revolted, but Darius immediately put down these rebellions.
However, in the meantime, the Macedonian king Alexander the Great had invaded
Asia Minor. Although Darius sent out a Greek mercenary leader, Memnon of Rhodes,
and a Persian admiral, Pharnabazus, the Macedonians were able to reach Syria,
where they defeated Darius at Issus (333).
The Persians built a new army, but two years later, they were defeated
at Gaugamela. Darius was murdered (330) and Alexander started to reign as an Achaemenid
king, keeping the empire together. After Alexander's death in Babylon
(11 June 323), his empire was divided into three parts: Macedonia was ruled by
Antipater, Ptolemy reconstituted the Egyptian kingdom, and Seleucus ruled the
Asian parts of Alexander's realms. In fact, the Seleucid empire was a continuation
of the Achaemenid empire.(...)
Jona Lendering, ed.
This text is cited July 2003 from the Livius Ancient History Website URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks.
Last native dynasty to reign in Persia before the Arab conquest.
The name 'Sassanids' is derived from a Persian priest named Sassan,
the ancestor of the dynasty. One of his sons was Papak, who dethroned the king
of Persia, Artabazus V, in 224 CE. The capital of the new king was Istakhr, not
far from ancient Persepolis.
At that moment, Persia was a vassal of the Parthian empire, but Papak's
son Ardasir I, who succeeded his father, did not behave himself as was expected
from a vassal. War broke out between him and his overlord. Ardasir was successful:
in 226, he took Ctesiphon, the capital of the Parthian empire. This meant the
end of Parthia and the beginning of the Sassanid empire. Ctesiphon became the
city where the Sassanid kings were to be inaugurated; Ardasir wanted to be called
'king of kings', the title that had been used by the Parthian kings and -centuries
ago- the Achaemenid rulers of Persia.
Under the descendants of the priest Sassan, Zoroastrianism became
the state religion. In their inscriptions, the Sassanid kings describe themselves
as 'Mazda-worshipping kings', i.e., believers in the supreme god Ahuramazda. King
Ardasir conferred many privileges to the Magians, the religious specialists of
Zoroastrianism, who gained great political power. For example, they played a role
in the inauguration ceremony in Ctesiphon, served as judges and served as tax
collectors.
As a consequence, there was little room for new religious ideas. Christians
were persecuted, and the prophet Mani (216-276), who had tried to combine Christianity
and Zoroastrianism, was crucified. When the Roman empire, the arch-enemy of the
Sassanid empire, had become Christian, the persecution of the Christians increased;
being a Christian was considered treason.
It should be noted, however, that the Zoroastrianism of the Sassanid
age was not the 'pure' monotheism that it had once been. Ahuramazda was no longer
the omnipotent creator of the world, but one of two gods. His rival Angra Mainyu,
who had always been a mere creature of the supreme god, was now considered Ahuramazda's
equal. Evil was, therefore, no longer an accidental mistake in the creation, but
an eternal cosmological force. Of course, Angra Mainyu was not worshipped, but
the recognition of his independent existence meant the end of pure monotheism.
Moreover, two other gods were venerated: the mother goddess Anahita and the sun-god
Mithras.
The conflict with Rome,
which had started in 231 with some fighting on the Euphrates, escalated under
Ardasir's son and successor Shapur I (241-272). He made territorial claims: he
wanted to restore the Achaemenian empire and demanded all Roman territories in
Asia, a claim that was implied in his title 'king of Iran and non-Iran'. After
he had invaded Syria and
looted Antioch, a Roman counterattack
was inevitable. The emperor Gordian III invaded Iraq and was very successful,
but he died during a battle near Ctesiphon (244). His successor, Philip the Arab,
was forced to conclude a shameful peace treaty.
A second war was even more disastrous to the Romans. Their emperor
Valerian was not just defeated, Shapur even captured the luckless Roman leader
(260). The other captive Romans were settled in a city that was called Veh-Antiok-Shapur,
'Shapur's city, better than Antioch'. The humiliation could not be more complete.
However, under the emperor Diocletian (284-305), the Romans restored their fortunes
and in 298, a peace treaty was concluded in which the Persians had to give up
territories in northern Mesopotamia.
Rome was not the only enemy. Shapur also attacked the Kushans, who
ruled the region known as Gandara, the valley of the river Kabul. The Persians
took their capital Peshawar and deposed the ruling dynasty.
The loot of Peshawar and Antioch was put to good use. Surveys in Iran
have shown that large tracts of previously unused land came under cultivation.
New trade routes with India and Arabia were opened, and new banking systems were
developed (our word 'cheque' has a Persian root).
The conflict with Rome remained an unsolved problem. Sometimes it
was just smouldering, sometimes it was blazing. King Shapur II (309-379) attacked
the Roman possessions in Mesopotamia, and defeated and killed the Roman emperor
Julian who had come to punish the attacker (363). The Romans were forced to give
up the conquests of 298. Like his namesake, Shapur II also attacked the Kushan
kingdom, which he overthrew. The sphere of influence of the Sassanid empire now
reached to the borders of China.
Shapur also invaded Arabia. Other enemies were the so-called White Huns, who invaded
the Sassanid empire during the fifth century.
After the reign of Shapur II, the western front became settled. There
were many wars, but no large-scale conflicts. E.g., the city of Nisibis was besieged
frequently by both parties, but the neighboring provinces were left alone. The
Byzantine historian Procopius (507-c.556) suggests that full-scale war was meaningless
because the frontier zone had become too devastated. It is true that the Roman
emperor Theodosius II defeated the Sassanid king Bahram V, but this did not mean
the end of Persia; Bahram was still able to defeat the White Huns. In 451, Yazdgard
II invaded the Roman province Armenia;
and Khusrau I invaded both Armenia and Syria,
but in the end, the borders remained unchanged.
The final struggle of the Roman empire -now called Byzantium- and
Persia started under Khusrau II 'the victorious' (590-628). Again, the Sassanids
were the aggressor. The Byzantines were weakened, because Italy had been invaded
by the Langobards, the Slavs were taking hold of the Balkans, and Andalusia was
lost to the Visigoths. It was the perfect moment to attack the Byzantine empire,
and Khusrau acted accordingly. His armies ravaged the cities of Syria and sacked
Jerusalem in 614. (The Jews
welcomed the Persians, because the Christians had often persecuted them.) One
of the objects the Persians took away was the relic of the True Cross.
Khusrau's armies went on to invade Egypt
-Alexandria was captured
in 619- and in 626, their advance-guards paused only a mile from Constantinople.
The Persians even raided Cyprus
and occupied Rhodes. It seemed
as if the Achaemenian empire was restored.
However, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius was to prove a match for
Khusrau. He took some time to train an army, and in 627, he successfully invaded
Assyria and Mesopotamia.
His campaign was extremely successful: he did not even return to his own empire
during the winter, but stayed far behind the enemy lines. The Persian army mutinied
and Khusrau was murdered (November 628). His successor Ardasir III made peace
and the relic of the True Cross was restored to Jerusalem.
Heraclius' victory meant the end of Persia. There were four Sassanid
kings in four years, and because there was no real authority, the Arabs -Muslims-
were able to defeat the Persians, who were still Zoroastrians. The last Persian
king was Yazdgard III, whose reign began in 632. In 636, the Arabs took Ctesiphon,
and in 651, the last Sassanian king died as a fugitive.
The lasting heritage of the Sassanid empire is the Avesta, the holy
book of Zoroastrianism. Under Khusrau II, the Zoroastrian high priest Tansar established
the canon of religious texts. It contained hymns of great antiquity and younger
texts, but also books on cosmogony and law, a biography of the prophet Zarathustra,
apocalypses and several expositions of doctrine. Although parts of this codex
were destroyed by the Muslims, the remainder still inspires thousands of people.
Jona Lendering, ed.
This text is cited July 2003 from the Livius Ancient History Website URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks.
PARTHIA (Ancient country) IRAN
Arsaces (Arsakes), the name of the founder of the Parthian empire, which was also borne by all his successors, who were hence called the Arsacidae. Pott supposes that it signifies the "Shah or King of the Arii"; but it occurs as a Persian name long before the time of the Parthian kings. Aeschylus (Pers. 957) speaks of an Arsaces, who perished in the expedition of Xerxes against Greece; and Ctesias (Pers. cc. 49, 53, 57, ed. Lion) says, that Arsaces was the original name of Artaxerxes Mnemon.
HYRCANIA (Ancient province) IRAN
Artabanus, an Hyrcanian, who was commander of the body-guard of king Xerxes. In B. C. 465, Artabanus, in conjunction with a eunuch, whom some call Spamitres and others Mithridates, assassinated Xerxes, with the view of setting himself upon the throne of Persia. Xerxes had three sons, Dareius, Artaxerxes, and Hystaspes, who was absent from the court as satrap of Bactria. Now as it was necessary for Artabanus to get rid of these sons also, he persuaded Artaxerxes that his brother Dareius was the murderer of his father, and stimulated hint to avenge the deed by assassinating Dareius. This was done at the earliest opportunity. Artabanus now communicated his plan of usurping the throne to his sons, and his intention to murder Artaxerxes also. When the moment for carrying this plan into effect had come, he insidiously struck Artaxerxes with his sword; but the blow only injured the prince slightly, and in the struggle which ensued Artaxerxes killed Artabanus, and thus secured the succession to himself (Diod. xi. 69). Justin (iii. 1), who knows only of the two brothers, Dareius and Artaxerxes, gives a different account of the circumstances under which Artabanus was killed.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
MIDIA (Ancient country) IRAN
Datis (Elamite Datiya, Old Persian Datica): Median general, commander of the Persian
troops in the battle of Marathon
in 490 BCE.
There are only a few ancient texts about the Mede Datis, who must
have been one of the most important generals in the Achaemenid empire in the first
quarter of the fifth century BCE. The most important information can be found
in the Histories by the Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus
(c.480-c.439).
In 499 BCE, the Greeks in Asia Minor, better known as the Ionian Greeks
or Ionians, revolted against the Achaemenid empire. The pro-Persian leaders were
taken captive, Persian garrisons were forced to surrender and in the summer of
498, Sardes, the capital
of the satrapy Lydia, was
destroyed. The Persian king Darius sent armies to suppress the revolt; the last
Ionian stronghold, Miletus,
had to surrender in November 494.
Herodotus describes the events in the fifth and sixth books of the
Histories. He does not mention the name Datis, but we know that he was present:
in 495, he captured Rhodes, the town and island that guard the entrance of the
Aegean Sea. This can be deduced
from an inscription which was found on Rhodes.
Unfortunately, this inscription is comparatively young and it may be that the
presence of Datis is an invention by a Rhodian patriot who wanted to prove that
his ancestors had been loyal to the Greek rebellion - something that Herodotus
does not tell.
If the Rhodian inscription is a forgery, it is a very good one, because
we know from the Persepolis fortification tablets that Datis was indeed involved
in the suppression of the Ionian revolt. In February 494, he received special
rations to make a tour of duty:
Seven rations of wine to Datiya. He carries a sealed document by the king.
He came from Sardes by the pirradazis and went to the king at Persepolis. Month
eleven, year twenty-seven. Written by Hidali.
[PFTs Q 1809]
(The pirradazis was the system of horse changing on the so-called
Royal Road from Sardes to the capitals of the Achaemenid empire.) This proves
that Damis has indeed been in the west. It is therefore likely that he commanded
a naval action against Rhodes in 495. This makes it also likely that Datis was
the commander of the Persian armada during the naval battle off Lade
on October 20, 494, which marked the beginning of the siege of Miletus.
In 490 BCE, king Darius sent an expedition to the west. Six hundred
ships assembled in Cilicia
and set out to bring troops across the sea. The commanders of this expedition
were Datis and Artaphernes. Herodotus presents the expedition as a punitive action
against Eretria and Athens, who had helped the Ionians. But he is almost certainly
wrong, because the army was too small to attack Athens.
In reality, the aims of the expedition of Datis and Artaphernes were to add the
Aegean islands to the empire, and, in doing so, to create a buffer zone between
Ionia and the Greek mainland. The same project had been proposed by the Greek
politician Aristagoras of Miletus to the father of Artaphernes, who had in vain
attacked Naxos (c.499 BCE).
The Persian aims were, therefore, to conquer Naxos and the other islands, and
to occupy Euboea (with its
capital Eretria). They also
tried to bring back the former ruler of Athens, Hippias, to his home town.
They were successful. First, they added Naxos to the Achaemenid empire,
the largest island in the Aegean sea, situated in its center. The Greek cult center
Delos was seized immediately
afterwards. A few days later, on September 1, Datis and Artaphernes took Eretria.
(Its inhabitants were deported to Elam.)
On 5 September, they landed at Marathon,
some twenty-five kilometers from Athens. Although an Athenian army came to block
the road to the south, it did not dare to attack the Persians, who were able to
plunder the country for five days. Since the Athenians refused to offer battle,
Datis and Artaphernes decided to leave early in the morning of 10 September. When
they were boarding, the Athenians unexpectedly attacked and inflicted heavy losses
on the Persian troops.
Herodotus' account of the battle of Marathon
is our most important source. (A summary and a comment can be found over here.)
He wants us to believe that Marathon was an important victory, but this is incorrect.
It was a rearguard action, and we know for certain that Artaphernes remained in
the king's favor; it is likely that Datis had the same experience. After all,
from now on, the Aegean Sea was under Persian control, preventing new Greek attacks
on Persian dominions.
Not all Greeks were convinced by Herodotus' story. There is one Greek
text, written c.100 CE, which gives us the Persian side of the story - Marathon
had been a minor setback (Dio Chrysostom, Oration 11.148-149). Unfortunately,
we do not know whether the author gives us reliable information from an ancient
Persian source, or invents this story.
The Greek historian Ctesias of Cnidus,
who is not know for his reliability, states that Datis died during the battle
of Marathon. The Athenians refused to return his body when the Persians asked
for it. There is no way to verify or refute this statement.
Datis had two sons, Harmamithres and Tithaeus, who commanded the cavalry
during the Greek expedition of king Xerxes in 480 BCE.
Jona Lendering, ed.
This text is cited July 2003 from the Livius Ancient History Website URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks.
Datis, a Mede, who, together with Artaphernes, had the command of the forces which
were sent by Dareius Hystaspis against Eretria and Athens, and which were finally
defeated at Marathon in B. C. 490 (Herod. vi. 94, &c.). When the armament was
on its way to Greece through the Aegean sea, the Delians fled in alarm from their
island to Tenos; but Datis re-assured them, professing that his own feelings,
as well as the commands of the king, would lead him to spare and respect the birthplace
of "the two gods". The obvious explanation of this conduct, as arising from a
notion of the correspondence of Apollo and Artemis with the sun and moon, is rejected
by Muller in favour of a far less probable hypothesis (Herod. vi. 97; Muller,
Dor ii 5. 6, 6.10; Thirlwall's Greece; Spanheim, ad Callim. Hymn. in Del. 255).
The religious reverence of Datis is further illustrated by the anecdote of his
restoring the statue of Apollo which some Phoenicians in his army had stolen from
Delium in Boeotia (Herod. vi. 118; Paus. x. 28; Suid. s. v. Hdatis). His two sons,
Armamithres and Tithaeus, commanded the cavalry of Xerxes in his expedition against
Greece (Herod. vii. 88). He admired the Greek language, and tried hard to speak
it; failing in which, he thereby at any rate unwittingly enriched it with a new
word -Datismos. (Suid. l. c.; Arist. Pax, 289; Schol. ad loc.)
PASARGADAE (Ancient city) PERSIAN GULF
Ariaeus (Ariaios), or Aridaeus (Aridaios), the friend and lieutenant of Cyrus,
commanded the barbarians in that prince's army at the battle of Cunaxa, B. C.
401 (Xen. Anab. i. 8.5; Diod. xiv. 22; comp. Plut. Artax. c. 11). After the death
of Cyrus, the Cyrean Greeks offered to place Ariaeus on the Persian throne; but
he declined making the attempt, on the ground that there were many Persians superior
to himself, who would never tolerate him as king (Anab. ii. 1.4, 2.1). He exchanged
oaths of fidelity, however with the Greeks, and, at the commencement of their
retreat, marched in company with them; but soon afterwards he purchased his pardon
from Artaxerxes by deserting them, and aiding (possibly through the help of his
friend Menon) the treachery of Tissaphernes, whereby the principal Greek generals
fell into the hands of the Persians (Anab. ii. 2.8, &c., 4.1, 2, 9, 5.28, 38,
&c.; comp. Plut. Artax. c. 18). It was perhaps this same Ariaeus who was employed
by Tithraustes to put Tissaphernes to death in accordance with the king's order,
B. C. 396 (Polyaen. viii. 16; Diod. xiv. 80; comp. Xen. Hell. iii. 1.7). In the
ensuing year, B. C. 395, we again hear of Ariaeus as having revolted front Artaxerxes,
and receiving Spithridates and the Paphlagonians after their desertion of the
Spartan service (Xen. Hell. iv. 1.27; Plut. Ages. c. 11).
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
PERSEPOLIS (Ancient city) IRAN
Ariabignes, the son of Dareius, and one of the commanders of the fleet of his
brother Xerxes, fell in the battle of Salamis, B. C. 480 (Herod. vii. 97, viii.
89). Plutarch calls him (Them. c. 14) Ariamenes, and speaks of him as a brave
man and the justest of the brothers of Xerxes. The same writer relates (de Fratern.
Am.), that this Ariamenes (called by Justin, ii. 10, Artemenes) laid claim to
the throne on the death of Dareius, as the eldest of his sons, but was opposed
by Xerxes, who maintained that he had a right to the crown as the eldest of the
sons born after Dareius had become king. The Persians appointed Artabanus to decide
the dispute; and upon his declaring in favour of Xerxes, Ariamenes immediately
saluted his brother as king, and was treated by him with great respect. According
to Herodotus (vii. 2), who calls the eldest son of Dareius, Artabazanes, this
dispute took place in the life-time of Dareius.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Artabazus, one of the generals of Artaxerxes I., was sent to Egypt to put down the revolt of Inarus, B. C. 462. He advanced as far as Memphis, and accomplished his object. (Diod. xi. 74, 77; comp. Thuc. i. 109; Ctesias, Pers. p. 42, ed. Lion.) In B. C. 450, he was one of the commanders of the Persian fleet, near Cyprus, against Cimon. (Diod. xii. 4.)
Artybius (Artuxios), a Persian general in the reign of Dareius Hystaspis, who, after the Ionian revolt had broken out, sailed with a fleet to Cyprus to conquer that island. He was killed in battle by Onesilus, the principal among the chiefs of Cyprus. (Herod. v. 108-110)
Autophradates, a Persian, who distinguished himself as a general in the reign of Artaxerxes III. and Dareius Codomannus. In the reign of the former he made Artabazus, the revolted satrap of Lydia and Ionia, his prisoner, but afterwards set him free (Dem. c. Aristocr.). After the death of the Persian admiral, Memnon, in B. C. 333, Autophradates and Pharnabazus undertook the command of the fleet, and reduced Mytilene, the siege of which had been begun by Memnon. Pharnabazus now sailed with his prisoners to Lycia, and Autophradates attacked the other islands of the Aegaean, which espoused the cause of Alexander the Great. But Pharnabazus soon after joined Autophradates again, and both sailed against Tenedos, which was induced by fear to surrender to the Persians (Arrian, ANab. ii. 1). During these expeditions Autophradates also laid siege to the town of Atarneus in Mysia, but without success (Aristot. Polit. ii. 4.10). Among the Persian satraps who appeared before Alexander at Zadracarta, Arrian (Anab. iii. 23) mentions an Autophradates, satrap of the Tapuri, whom Alexander left in the possession of the satrapy. But this satrap is undoubtedly a different person from the Autophradates who commanded the Persian fleet in the Aegean.
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Abrocomas (Abrokomas), one of the satraps of Artaxerxes Mnemon, was sent with an army of 300,000 men to oppose Cyrus on his march into upper Asia. On the arrival of Cyrus at Tarsus, Abrocomas was said to be on the Euphrates; and at Issus four hundred heavy-armed Greeks, who had deserted Abrocomas, joined Cyrus. Abrocomas did not defend the Syrian passes, as was expected, but marched to join the king. He burnt some boats to prevent Cyrus from crossing the Euphrates, but did not arrive in time for the battle of Cunaxa. (Xen. Anab. i. 3.20, 4.3, 5, 18, 7.12; Harpocrat. and Suidas, s. v.)
Daurises, the son-in-law of Dareius Hystaspis, was one of the Persian commanders who were employed in suppressing the Ionian revolt. (B. C. 499.) After the defeat of the Ionian army at Ephesus, Daurises marched against the cities on the Hellespont, and took Dardanus, Abydus, Percote, Lampsacus, and Paesus, each in one day. He then marched against the Carians, who had just joined in the Ionian revolt, and defeated them in two battles; but shortly afterwards Daurises fell into an ambush, and was killed, with a great number of the Persians. (Herod. v. 116-121.)
Mardontes, a Persian nobleman, son of Bagaeus (see Herod. iii. 128), commanded, in the expedition of Xerxes against Greece, the forces from the islands in the Persian gulf. (Herod. iii. 93, vii. 80.) On the retreat of Xerxes, he was left behind as one of the admirals of the fleet, and he fell at the battle of Mycale, in B. C. 479. (Herod. viii. 130, ix. 102.)
Artabazus, a distinguished Persian, a son of Pharnaces, who lived in the reign of Xerxes.
In the expedition of this king to Greece, B. C. 480, Artabazus commanded the Parthians
and Choasmians (Herod. vii. 66). When Xerxes quitted Greece, Artabazus accompanied
him as far as the Hellespont, and then returned with his forces to Pallene. As
Potidaea and the other towns of Pallene had revolted from the king after the battle
of Salamis, Artabazus determined to reduce them. He first laid siege to Olynthus,
which he took; he butchered the inhabitants whom he had compelled to quit the
town, and gave the place and the town to the Chalcidians. After this Artabazus
began the siege of Potidaea, and endeavoured to gain his end by bribes; but the
treachery was discovered and his plans thwarted. The siege lasted for three months,
and when at last the town seemed to be lost by the low waters of the sea, which
enabled his troops to approach the walls from the sea-side, an almost wonderful
event saved it, for the returning tide was higher than it had ever been before.
The troops of Artabazus were partly overwhelmed by the waters and partly cut down
by a sally of the Potidaeans. He now withdrew with the remnants of his army to
Thessaly, to join Mardonius (viii. 126-130).
Shortly before the battle of Plataeae, B. C. 479, Artabazus dissuaded
Mardonius from entering on an engagement with the Greeks, and urged him to lead
his army to Thebes in order to obtain provisions for the men and the cattle; for
he entertained the conviction that the mere presence of the Persians would soon
compel the Greeks to surrender (ix. 41). His counsel had no effect, and as soon
as he perceived the defeat of the Persians at Plataeae, he fled with forty thousand
men through Phocis, Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace, to Byzantium, and led the
remnants of his army, which had been greatly diminished by hunger and the fatigues
of the retreat, across the Hellespont into Asia. (ix. 89; Diod. xi. 31, 33.) Subsequently
Artabazus conducted the negotiations between Xerxes and Pausanias (Thuc. i. 129;
Diod. xi. 44; C. Nepos, Paus. 2, 4).
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Artabazus, a Persian general, who was sent in B. C. 362, in the reign of Artaxerxes II., against the revolted Datames, satrap of Cappadocia, but was defeated by the bravery and resolution of the latter (Diod. xv. 91). In the reign of Artaxerxes III., Artabazus was satrap of western Asia, but in B. C. 356 he refused obedience to the king, which involved him in a war with the other satraps, who acknowledged the authority of Artaxerxes. He was at first supported by Chares, the Athenian, and his mercenaries, whom he rewarded very generously. Afterwards he was also supported by the Thebans, who sent him 5000 men under Pammenes. With the assistance of these and other allies, Artabazus defeated his enemies in two great battles. Artaxerxes, however, succeeded in depriving him of his Athenian and Boeotian allies, whereupon Artabazus was defeated by the king's general, Autophradates, and was even taken prisoner. The Rhodians, Mentor and Memnon, two brothers-in-law of Artabazus, who had like-wise supported him, still continued to maintain themselves, as they were aided by the Athenian Charidemus, and even succeeded in obtaining the liberation of Artabazus. After this, Artabazus seems either to have continued his rebellious operations, or at least to have commenced afterwards a fresh revolt; but he was at last obliged, with Memnon and his whole family, to take refuge with Philip of Macedonia. During the absence of Artabazus, Mentor, his brother-in-law, was of great service to the king of Persia in his war against Nectanebus of Egypt. After the close of this war, in B. C. 349, Artaxerxes gave to Mentor the command against the rebellious satraps of western Asia. Mentor availed himself of the opportunity to induce the king to grant pardon to Artabazus and Memnon, who accordingly obtained permission to return to Persia (Diod. xvi. 22, 34, 52; Dem. c. Aristoer.). In the reign of Dareius Codomannus, Artabazus distinguished himself by his great fidelity and attachment to his sovereign. He took part in the battle of Arbela, and afterwards accompanied Dareius on his flight. After the death of the latter, Alexander rewarded Artabazus for his fidelity with the satrapy of Bactria. His daughter, Barsine, became by Alexander the mother of Heracles; a second daughter, Artocama, was given in marriage to Ptolemy; and a third, Artonis, to Eumenes. In B. C. 328, Artabazus, then a man of very advanced age, resigned his satrapy, which was given to Cleitus. (Arrian, Anab. iii. 23, 29, vii. 4; Curtius, iii. 13, v. 9, 12, vi. 5, vii. 3, 5, viii. 1; Strab. xii.)
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PARTHIA (Ancient country) IRAN
Hieron. One of the chief satraps or governors among the Parthians, though, from his name, evidently of Greek origin, at the time when Tiridates, supported by Tiberius and the Roman influence, invaded Parthia, A. D. 36. After wavering for some time between the two rivals, Hieron declared in favour of Artabanus, and was mainly instrumental in re-establishing him upon the throne. (Tac. Ann. vi. 42, 43.)
PERSEPOLIS (Ancient city) IRAN
Hystaspes, (Hustaspes; in Persian, Goshtasp, Gustasp, Histasp, or Wistasp). The
son of Arsames, and father of Dareius I., was a member of the Persian royal house
of the Achaemenidae. He was satrap of Persis under Cambyses, and probably under
Cyrus also. He accompanied Cyrus on his expedition against the Massagetae; but
he was sent back to Persis, to keep watch over his eldest son Dareius, whom Cyrus,
in consequence of a dream, suspected of meditating treason. Besides Dareius, Hystaspes
had two sons, Artabanus and Artanes. (Herod. i. 209, 210, iii. 70, iv. 83, vii.
224.) Ammianus Marcellinus (xxiii. 6) makes him a chief of the Magians, and tells
a story of his studying in India under the Brahmins. His name occurs in the inscriptions
at Persepolis. (Grotefend, Beilage zu Heeren's Ideen.)
ATROPATENE (Ancient province) IRAN
Atropates, called Atrapes by Diodorus (xviii. 4), a Persian satrap, apparently
of Media, had the command of the Medes, together with the Cadusii, Albani, and
Sacesinae, at the battle of Guagamela, B. C. 331. After the death of Dareius,
he was made satrap of Media by Alexander (Arrian, iii. 8, iv. 18). His daughter
was married to Perdiccas in the nuptials celebrated at Susa in B. C. 324; and
he received from his fatherin-law, after Alexander's death, the province of the
Greater Media (Arrian, vii. 4; Justin. xviii. 4; Diod. l. c.). In the northern
part of the country, called after him Media Atropatene, he established an independent
kingdom, which continued to exist down to the time of Strabo (Strab. xi. p. 523).
It was related by some authors, that Atropates on one occasion presented Alexander
with a hundred women, said to be Amazons; but Arrian (vii. 13) disbelieved the
story.
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EKVATANA (Ancient city) MIDIA
Deioces (Deiokes), the founder of the Median empire, according to Herodotus, who
states that, after the Assyrians had held the empire of Upper Asia 520 years,
various nations revolted from them, and first of all the Medes. Soon after this,
Deioces, the son of Phraortes, a wise man among the Medes, desiring the tyranny,
became an arbitrator for his own village; and the fame of his justice attracted
to him suitors from all quarters, till at last the Medes chose him for their king.
He immediately assumed great royal state, and made the Medes provide him with
a bodyguard and build him a fortress. He then built the city of Agbatana (Ecbatana),
in the centre of which he resided, hidden from the public view and transacting
all business through messengers, in order, says Herodotus, to prevent the plots
which his former equals might have been drawn into by jealousy. The few who were
admitted to his presence were required to observe the strictest decorum. His administration
of justice was very severe, and he kept a body of spies and informers throughout
the whole country. After a reign of thirty-five years, during which he ruled the
six tribes of the Medes without attempting any foreign conquest, Deioces died,
and was succeeded by his son, Phraortes. (Herod. i. 95-102.)
There are considerable difficulties in settling the chronology of
the Median empire. Herodotus gives the reigns as follows:
| Deioces | 53 years. (i. 102.) |
| Phraortes | 22 " (ibid.) |
| Cyaxares | 40 " (i. 106.)* |
| Astyages | 35 " (i. 130.) |
| Total, | 150 |
| 1. | Arbaces | 28 years. |
| 2. | Mandauces | 50 years. |
| 3. | Sosarmus | 30 years. |
| 4. | Artycas | 50 years. |
| 5. | Arbianes | 22 years. |
| 6. | Artaeus | 40 years. |
| 7. | Artynes | 22 years. |
| 8. | Astibaras | 40 years |
| 9. | Aspadas, whom he identifies with Astyages | [35]* |
| 317 |
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Cambyses (Kambuses), the father of Cyrus the Great, according to Herodotus and Xenophon, the former of whom tells us (i. 107), that Astyages, being terrified by a dream, refrained from marrying his daughter Mandane to a Mede, and gave her to Cambyses, a Persian of noble blood, but of an unambitious temper. (Comp. Just. i. 4.) The father of Cambyses is also called 'Cyrus' by Herodotus (i. 111). In so rhetorical a passage as the speech of Xerxes (Herod. vii. 11) we must not look for exact accuracy in the genealogy. Xenophon (Cyrop. i. 2) calls Cambyses the king of Persia, and he afterwards speaks of him (Cyrop. viii. 5) as still reigning after the capture of Babylon, B. C. 538. But we cannot of course rest much on the statements in a romance. The account of Ctesias differs from the above.
MIDIA (Ancient country) IRAN
Arbaces, the founder of the Median empire, according to the account of Ctesias (ap. Diod. ii. 24, &c., 32). He is said to have taken Nineveh in conjunction with Belesis, the Babylonian, and to have destroyed the old Assyrian empire under the reign of Sardanapalus, B. C. 876. Ctesias assigns 28 years to the reign of Arbaces, B. C. 876-848, and makes his dynasty consist of eight kings. This account differs from that of Herodotus, who makes Deioces the first king of Media, and assigns only four kings to his dynasty. Ctesias' account of the overthrow of the Assyrian empire by Arbaces is followed by Velleius Paterculus (i. 6), Justin (i. 3), and Strabo. (xvi.)
Cyaxares (Kuaxares), was, according to Herodotus, the third king of Media, the son of Phraortes, and the grandson of Deioces. He was the most warlike of the Median kings, and introduced great military reforms, by arranging his subjects into proper divisions of spearmen and archers and cavalry. He succeeded his father, Phraortes, who was defeated and killed while besieging the Assyrian capital, Ninus (Nineveh), in B. C. 634. He collected all the forces of his empire to avenge his father's death, defeated the Assyrians in battle, and laid siege to Ninus. But while he was before the city, a large body of Scythians invaded the northern parts of Media, and Cyaxares marched to meet them, was defeated, and became subject to the Scythians, who held the dominion of all Asia (or, as Herodotus elsewhere says, more correctly, of Upper Asia) for twenty-eight years (B. C. 634-607), during which time they plundered the Medes without mercy. At length Cyaxares and the Medes massacred the greater number of the Scythians, having first made them intoxicated, and the Median dominion was restored. There is a considerable difficulty in reconciling this account with that which Herodotus elsewhere gives (i. 73, 74), of the war between Cyaxares and Alyattes, king of Lydia. This war was provoked by Alyattes having sheltered some Scythians, who had fled to him after having killed one of the sons of Cyaxares, and served him up to his father as a Thyestean banquet. The war lasted five years, and was put an end to in the sixth year, in consequence of the terror inspired by a solar eclipse, which happened just when the Lydian and Median armies had joined battle, and which Thales had predicted. This eclipse is placed by some writers as high as B. C. 625, by others as low as 585. But of all the eclipses between these two dates, several are absolutely excluded by circumstances of time, place, and extent, and on the whole it seems most probable that the eclipse intended was that of September 30, B. C. 610 (Baily, in the Philosophical Transactions for 1811; Oltmann in the Schrift. der Brel. Acad. 1812-13; Hales, Analysis of Chronology; Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie; Fischer, Griechische Zeilttafeln). This date, however, involves the difficulty of making Cyaxares, as king of the Medes, carry on a war of five years with Lydia, while the Scythians were masters of his country. But it is pretty evident from the account of Herodotus that Cyaxares still reigned, though as a tributary to the Scythians, and that the dominion of the Scythians over Media rather consisted in constant predatory incursions from positions which they had taken in the northern part of the country, than in any permanent occupation thereof. It was probably, then, from B. C. 615 to B. C. 610 that the war between the Lydians and the Medians lasted, till, both parties being terrified by the eclipse, the two kings accepted the mediation of Syennesis, king of Cilicia, and Labynetus, king of Babylon (probably Nebuchadnezzar or his father), and the peace made between them was cemented by the marriage of Astyages, the son of Cyaxares, to Aryennis, the daughter of Alyattes. The Scythians were expelled from Media in B. C. 607, and Cyaxares again turned his arms against Assyria, and, in the following year, with the aid of the king of Babylon (probably the father of Nebuchadnezzar), he took and destroyed Ninus. The consequence of this war, according to Herodotus, was, that the Medes made the Assyrians their subjects, except the district of Babylon. He means, as we learn from other writers, that the king of Babylon, who had before been in a state of doubtful subjection to Assyria, obtained complete independence as the reward for his share in the destruction of Nineveh. The league between Cyaxares and the king of Babylon is said by Polyhistor and Abydenus (ap. Euseb. Chron. Arm., and Syncell.) to have been cemented by the betrothal of Amyhis or Amytis, the daughter of Cyaxares, to Nabuchodrossar or Nabuchodonosor (Nebuchadnezzar), son of the king of Babylon. They have, however, by mistake put the name of Asdahages (Astyages) for that of Cyaxares. Cyaxares died after a reign of forty years (B. C. 94), and was succeeded by his son Astyages (Herod. i. 73, 74, 103-106, iv. 11, 12, vii. 20). The Cyaxares of Diodorus (ii. 32) is Deioces. Respecting the supposed Cyaxares II. of Xenophon, see Cyrus.
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Astyages (Astuages). king of Media, (called by Ctesias Astuigas, and by Diodorus Aspadas), was the son and successor of Cyaxares. The accounts of this king given by Herodotus, Ctesias, and Xenophon, differ in several important particulars. We learn from Herodotus (i. 74), that in the compact made between Cyaxares and Alyattes in B. C. 610, it was agreed that Astyages should marry Aryenis, the daughter of Alyattes. According to the chronology of Herodotus, he succeeded his father in B. C. 595, and reigned 35 years (i. 130). His government was harsh (i. 123.). Alarmed by a dream, he gave his daughter Mandane in marriage to Cambyses, a Persian of good family (i. 107). Another dream induced him to send Harpagus to destroy the offspring of this marriage. The child, the future conqueror of the Medes, was given to a herdsman to expose, but he brought it up as his own. Years afterwards, circumstances occurred which brought the young Cyrus under the notice of Astyages, who, on inquiry, discovered his parentage. He inflicted a cruel punishment on Harpagus, who waited his time for revenge. When Cyrus had grown up to man's estate, Harpgus induced him to instigate the Persians to revolt, and, having been appointed general of the Median forces, he deserted with the greater part of them to Cyrus. Astyages was taken prisoner, and Cyrus mounted the throne. He treated the captive monarch with mildness, but kept him in confinement till his death. Ctesias agrees with Herodotus in making Astyages the last king of the Medes, but says, that Cyrus was in no way related to him till he married his daughter Amytis. When Astyages was attacked by Cyrus, he fled to Ecbatana, and was concealed in the palace by Amytis and her husband Spitamas, but discovered himself to his pursuers, to prevent his daughter and her husband and children from being put to the torture to induce them to reveal where he was hidden. He was loaded with chains by Oebaras, but soon afterwards was liberated by Cyrus, who treated him with great respect, and made him governor of the Barcanii, a Parthian people on the borders of Hyrcania. Spitamas was subsequently put to death by the orders of Cyrus, who married Amytis. Some time after, Amytis and Cyrus being desirous of seeing Astyages, a eunuch named Petisaces was sent to escort him from his satrapy, but, at the instigation of Ocbaras, left him to perish in a desert region. The crime was revealed by means of a dream, and Amytis took a cruel revenge on Petisaces. The body of Astyages was found, and buried with all due honours. We are told that, in the course of his reign, Astyages had waged war with the Bactrians with doubtful success (Ctes. ap. Phot. Cod. 72.). Xenophon, like Herodotus, makes Cyrus the grandson of Astyages, but says, that Astyages was succeeded by his son Cyaxares II., on whose death Cyrus succeeded to the vacant throne (Cyrop. i, 5.2). This account seems to tally better with the notices contained in the book of Daniel (v. 31, vi. 1, ix. 1). Dareius the Mede, mentioned there and by Josephus (x. 11.4), is apparently the same with Cyaxares II. (Compare the account in the Cyropaedeia of the joint expedition of Cyaxares and Cyrus against the Assyrians). In that case, Ahasuerus, the father of Dareius, will be identical with Astyages. The existence of Cyaxares II. seems also to be recognized by Aeschylus, Pers. 766. But the question is by no means free from difficulty.
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First king of Media, father of Phaortes, his rise to power, building of a palace at Agbatana, and conquest of Persia
King of Media, son of Deioces and father of Cyaxares
PARTHIA (Ancient country) IRAN
Arsaces I., is variously represented by the ancient writers as a Scythian, a Bactrian,
or a Parthian (Strab. xi.; Arrian, ap. Phot. Cod. 58; Herodian, vi. 2; Moses Chor.
i. 7). Justin (xli. 4) says, that he was of uncertain origin. He seems however
to have been of the Scythian race, and to have come from the neighbourhood of
the Ochus, as Strabo says, that he was accompanied in his undertaking by the Parni
Daae, who had migrated from the great race of the Scythian Daae, dwelling above
the Palus Maeotis, and who had settled near the Ochus. But from whatever country
the Parthians may have come, they are represented by almost all ancient writers
as Scythians (Curt. vi. 2; Justin, xli. 1; Plut. Crass. 24; Isidor. Orig. ix.
2). Arsaces, who was a man of approved valour, and was accustomed to live by robbery
and plunder, invaded Parthia with his band of robbers, defeated Andragoras, the
governor of the country, and obtained the royal power. This is the account given
by Justin, which is in itself natural and probable, but different from the common
one which is taken from Arrian. According to Arrian (ap. Phot. Cod. 58), there
were two brothers, Arsaces and Tiridates, the descendants of Arsaces, the son
of Phriapitus. Pherecles, the satrap of Parthia in the reign of Antiochus II.,
attempted to violate Tiridates, but was slain by him and his brother Arsaces,
who induced the Parthians in consequence to revolt from the Syrians. The account
of Arrian in Syncellus is again different from the preceding one preserved by
Photius; but it is impossible to determine which has given us the account of Arrian
most faithfully. According to Syncellus, Arrian stated that the two brothers Arsaces
and Tiridates, who were descended from Artaxerxes, the king of the Persians, were
satraps of Bactria at the same time as the Macedonian Agathocles governed Persia
(by which he means Parthia) as Eparch. Agathocles had an unnatural passion for
Tiridates, and was slain by the two brothers. Arsaces then became king, reigned
two years, and was succeeded by his brother Tiridates, who reigned 37 years.
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Tiridates, reigned, 37 years, and is probably the king who defeated Seleucus.
Artabanus I., the son of the preceding, had to resist Antiochus III. (the Great), who invaded his dominions about B. C. 212. Antiochus at first met with some success, but was unable to subdue his country, and at length made peace with him, and recognized him as king. (Polyb. x. 27-31; Justin, xli. 5)
Priapatius, son of Artabanus I., reigned 15 years, and left three sons, Phraates, Mithridates, and Artabanus. (Justin, xli. 5, xlii. 2)
Phraates I., subdued the Mardi, and, though he had many sons, left the kingdom to his brother Mithridates. (Justin. xli. 5)
Mithridates I., son of Arsaces IV. (Priapatius I), whom Orosius (v. 4) rightly calls the sixth from Arsaces I., a man of distinguished bravery, greatly extended the Parthian empire. He conquered Eucratides, the king of Bactria, and deprived him of many of his provinces. He is said even to have penetrated into India and to have subdued all the people between the Hydaspes and the Indus. He conquered the Medes and Elymaeans, who had revolted from the Syrians, and his empire extended at least from the Hindu Caucasus to the Euphrates. Demetrius Nicator, king of Syria, marched against Mithridates; he was at first suecessful, but was afterwards taken prisoner in B. C. 138. Mithridates, however, treated him with respect, and gave him his daughter Rhodogune in marriage; but the marriage appears not to have been solemnized till the accession of his son Phraates II. Mithridates died during the captivity of Demetrius, between B. C. 138 and 130. He is described as a just and upright prince, who did not give way to pride and luxury. He introduced among his people the best laws and usages, which he found among the nations he had conquered. (Justin, xli. 6; Oros. v. 4; Strab. xi.: Appian, Syr. 67; Justin, xxxvi. 1, xxxviii. 9; Joseph. Ant. xiii. 9; 1 Maccab. c. 4; Diod. Exc.)
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Phraates II., son of Mithridates I., was attacked by Antiochus VII. (Sidetes), who defeated Phraates in three great battles, but was at length conquered by him, and lost his life in battle, B. C. 128. Phraates soon met with the same fate. The Scythians, who had been invited by Antiochus to assist him against Phraates, did not arrive till after the fall of the former; but in the battle which followed, the Greeks whom Phraates had taken in the war against Antiochus, and whom he now kept in his service, deserted from him, and revenged the illtreatment they had suffered, by the death of Phraates and the destruction of his army. (Justin, xxxviii. 10, xlii. 1)
Artabanus II., son of Priaratius. and consequently the uncle of Phraates II., fell in battle against the Thogarii or Tochari, apparently after a short reign. (Justin, xlii. 2)
Mithridates II., son of Artabanus II., prosecuted many wars with success, and added many nations to the Parthian empire, whence he obtained the surname of Great. He defeated the Scythians in several battles, and also carried on war against Artavasdes, king of Armenia. It was in his reign that the Romans first had any official communication with Parthia. Mithridates sent an ambassador, Orobazus, to Sulla, who had come into Asia B. C. 92, in order to restore Ariobarzanes I. to Cappadocia, and requested alliance with the Romans, which seems to have been granted. (Justin, xlii. 2; Plut. Salla, 5.) Justin (xlii. 4) has confounded this king with Mithridates III., i. e. Arsaces XIII.
Mnascires? The successor of Mithridates II., is not known. Vaillant conjectures that it was the Mnascires mentioned by Lucian (Macrob. 16), who lived to the age of ninety-six ; but this is quite uncertain.
Sanatroces, as he is called on coins. Phlegon calls him Sinatruces; Appian, Sintricus; and Lucian, Sinatrocles. He had lived as an exile among the Scythian people called Sacauraces, and was placed by them upon the throne of Parthia, when he was already eighty years of age. He reigned seven years, and died while Lucullus was engaged in the war against Tigranes, about B. C. 70. (Lucian, Macrob. 15; Phlegon, ap. Phot. Cod. 97)
Phraates III., surnamed Theos (Phlegon, l. c.), the son of Sanatroces. Mithridates of Pontus and Tigranes applied to Phraates for assistance in their war against the Romans, although Phraates was at enmity with Tigranes, because he had deprived the Parthian empire of Nisibis and part of Mesopotamia. Among the fragments of Sallust (Hist. lib. iv.) we have a letter purporting to be written by Mithridates to Phraates on this occasion. Lucullus, as soon as he heard of this embassy, also sent one to Phraates, who dismissed both with fair promises, but according to Dion Cassius, concluded an alliance with the Romans. He did not however send any assistance to the Romans, and eventually remained neutral (Memnon, ap. Phot. Cod. 224; Dion Cass. xxxv. 1, 3, comp. 6; Appian, Mithr. 87; Plut. Lucull. 30). When Pompey succeeded Lucullus in the command, B. C. 66, he renewed the alliance with Phraates, to whose court meantime the youngest son of Tigranes, also called Tigranes, had fled after the murder of his two brothers by their father. Phraates gave the young Tigranes his daughter in marriage, and was induced by his son-in-law to invade Armenia. He advanced as far as Artaxata, and then returned to Parthia, leaving his son-in-law to besiege the city. As soon as he had left Armenia, Tigranes attacked his son and defeated him in battle. The young Tigranes then fled to his grandfather Mithridates, and afterwards to Pompey, when he found the former was unable to assist him. The young Tigranes conducted Pompey against his father, who surrendered on his approach. Pompey then attempted to reconcile the father and the son, and promised the latter the sovereignty of Sophanene; but as he shortly after offended Pompey, he was thrown into chains, and reserved for his triumph. When Phraates heard of this, he sent to the Roman general to demand the young man as his son-in-law, and to propose that the Euphrates should be the boundary between the Roman and Parthian dominions. But Pompey merely replied, that Tigranes was nearer to his father than his father-in-law, and that he would determine the boundary in accordance with what was just (Dion Cass. xxxvi. 28, 34-36; Plut. Pomp. 33; Appian, Syr. 104, 105). Matters now began to assume a threatening aspect between Phraates and Pompey, who had deeply injured the former by refusing to give him his usual title of "king of kings". But although Phraates marched into Armenia, and sent ambassadors to Pompey to bring many charges against him, and Tigranes, the [p. 356] Armenian king, implored Pompey's assistance, the Roman general judged it more prudent not to enter into war with the Parthians, alleging as reasons for declining to do so, that the Roman people had not assigned him this duty, and that Mithridates was still in arms (Dion Cass. xxxvii. 6, 7; Plut. Pomp. 38, 39). Phraates was murdered soon afterwards by his two sons, Mithridates and Orodes (Dion Cass. xxxix. 56).
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Mithridates III., son of Phraates III., succeeded his father apparently during the Armenian war. On his return from Armenia, Mithridates was expelled from the throne, on account of his cruelty, by the Parthian senate, as it is called, and was succeeded by his brother Orodes. Orodes appears to have given Media to Mithridates, but to have taken it from him again; whereupon Mithridates applied to the Roman general, Gabinius, in Syria, B. C. 55, who promised to restore him to Parthia, but soon after relinquished his design in consequence of having received a great sum from Ptolemy to place him upon the throne of Egypt. Mithridates, however, seems to have raised some troops; for he subsequently obtained possession of Babylon, where, after sustaining a long siege, he surrendered himself to his brother, and was immediately put to death by his orders. (Justin, xlii. 4; Dion Cass. xxxix. 56; Appian, Syr.51; Joseph. B.J. i. 8.7)
Orodes I., brother of Mithridates III., was the Parthian king, whose general Surenas defeated Crassus and the Romans, in B. C. 53. The death of Crassus and the destruction of the Roman army spread universal alarm through the eastern provinces of the Roman empire. Orodes, becoming jealous of Surenas, put him to death, and gave the command of the army to his son Pacorus, who was then still a youth. The Parthians, after obtaining possession of all the country east of the Euphrates, entered Syria, in B. C. 51, with a small force, but were driven back by Cassius. In the following year (B. C. 50) they again crossed the Euphrates with a much larger army, which was placed nominally under the command of Pacorus, but in reality under that of Osaces, an experienced general. They advanced as far as Antioch, but unable to take this city arched against Antigoneia, near which they were defeated by Cassius. Osaces was killed in the battle, and Pacorus thereupon withdrew from Syria (Dion Cass. xl. 28, 29; Cic. ad Att. v. 18, 21, ad Fam. xv. 1). Bibulus, who succeeded Cassius in the command in the same year, induced Ornodapantes, one of the Parthian satraps, to revolt from Orodes, and proclaim Pacorus king (Dion Cass. xl. 30), in consequence of which Pacorus became suspected by his father and was recalled from the army (Justin, xlii. 4). Justin seems to have made a mistake in stating that Pacorus was recalled before the defeat of the Parthians by Cassius. On the breaking out of the war between Caesar and Pompey, the latter applied to Orodes for assistance, which he promised on condition of the session of Syria; but as this was refused by Pompey, the Parthian king did not send him any troops, though he appears to have been in favour of his party rather than of Caesar's (Dion Cass. xli. 55; Justin). Caesar had intended to invade Parthia in the year in which he was assassinated, B. C. 44; and in the civil war which followed, Brutus and Cassins sent Labienus, the son of Caesar's general, T. Labienus, to Orodes to solicit his assistance. This was promised; but the battle of Philippi was fought, and Brutus and Cassius fell (B. C. 42), before Labienus could join them. The latter now remained in Parthia. Meantime Antony had obtained the East in the partition of the Roman world, and consequently the conduct of the Parthian war; but instead of making any preparations against the Parthians, he retired to Egypt with Cleopatra. Labienus advised the Parthian monarch to seize the opportunity to invade Syria, and Orodes accordingly placed a great army under the command of Labienus and Pacorus. They crossed the Euphrates in B. C. 40, overran Syria, and defeated Saxa, Antony's quaestor. Labienus penetrated into Cilicia, where he took Saxa prisoner and put him to death; and while he was engaged with a portion of the army in subduing Asia Minor, Pacorus was prosecuting conquests with the other part in Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine. These successes at length roused Antony from his inactivity. He sent against the Parthians Ventidius, the ablest of his legates, who soon changed the face of affairs. He defeated Labienus at Mount Taurus in B. C. 39, and put him to death when he fell into his hands shortly after the battle. By this victory he recovered Cilicia; and by the defeat shortly afterwards of Pharnapates, one of the Parthian generals, he also regained Syria (Dion Cass. xlviii. 24-41; Veil. Pat. ii. 78; Liv. Epit. 127; Flor. iv. 9; Plut. Anton. c. 33; Appian, B. C. v. 65). In the following year, B. C. 38, Pacorus again invaded Syria with a still larger army, but was completely defeated in the district called Cyrrhestice. Pacorus himself fell in the battle, which was fought on the 9th of June, the very day on which Crassus had fallen, fifteen years before (Dion Cass. xlix. 19, 20; Plut. Anton. c. 34; Liv. Epit. 128; Oros. vi. 18; Justin). This defeat was a severe blow to the Parthian monarchy, and was deeply felt by the aged king, Orodes. For many days he refused to take food, and did not utter a word; and when at length he spoke, he did nothing but call upon the name of his dear son Pacorus. Weighed down by grief and age, he shortly after surrendered the crown to his son, Phraates, during his life-time (Justin, l. c.; Dion Cass. xlix. 23).
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Phraates IV., who is described as the most wicked of the sons of Orodes, commenced his reign
by murdering his father, his thirty brothers, and his own son, who was grown up,
that there might be none of the royal family whom the Parthians could place upon
the throne in his stead. In consequence of his cruelty many of the Parthian nobles
tied to Antony (B. C. 37) and among the rest Monaeses, who was one of the most
distinguished men in Parthia. At the instigation of Monaeses, Antony resolved
to invade Parthia, and promised Monaeses the kingdom. Phraates, alarmed at this,
induced Monaeses to return to him; but Antony notwithstanding persevered in his
intention of invading Parthia. It was not, however, till late in the year (B.
C. 36) that he commenced his march, as he was unable to tear himself away from
Cleopatra. The expedition was a perfect failure; he was deceived by the Armenian
king, Artavasdes, and was induced by him to invade Media, where he laid siege
to Praaspi or Praata. His legate, Statianus, meantime was cut off with 10,000
Romans; and Antony, finding that he was unable to take the town, was at length
obliged to raise the siege and retire from the country. In his retreat through
Media and Armenia he lost a great number of men, and with great difficulty reached
the Araxes with a part of his troops (Dion Cass. xlix. 23-31; Plut. Ant. cc. 37-51;
Strab. xi.; Liv. Epit. 130).
The breaking out of the civil war soon afterwards between Antony and
Octavianus compelled the former to give up his intention of again invading Parthia.
He formed, however, an alliance with the king of Media against the Parthians,
and gave to the former part of Armenia which had been recently conquered. But
as soon as Antony had withdrawn his troops in order to oppose Octavianus, the
Parthian king overran both Media and Armenia, and placed upon the Armenian throne
Artaxias, the son of Artavasdes, whom Antony had deposed (Dion Cass. xlix. 44).
Meantime the cruelties of Phraates had produced a rebellion against him. He was
driven out of the country, and Tiridates proclaimed king in his stead. Phraates,
however, was soon restored by the Scythians, and Tiridates fled to Augustus, carvying
with him the youngest son of Phraates. Hereupon Phraates sent an embassy to Rome
to demand the restoration of his son and Tiridates. Augustus, however, refused
to surrender the latter; but he sent back his son to Phraates, on condition of
his surrendering the Roman standards and prisoners taken in the war with Crassus
and Antony. They were not, however, given up till three years afterwards (B. C.
20), when the visit of Augustus to the east appears to have alarmed the Parthian
king. Their restoration caused universal joy at Rome, and was celebrated not only
by the poets, but by festivals, the erection of a triumphal arch and temple, and
other monuments. Coins also were struck to commemorate the event, on one of which
we find the inscription SIGNIS RECEPTIS (Dion Cass. li. 18, liii. 33, liv. 8 ;
Justin, xlii. 5; Suet. Aug, 21; Hor. Epist. i. 18. 56, Carm. iv. 15. 6; Ovid,
Trist. ii. 1. 228, Fast. vi. 467, Ar. Am. i. 179, &c.; Propert. ii. 10, iii. 4,
iii. 5. 49, iv. 6.79; Eckhel, vi.). Phraates also sent to Augustus as hostages
his four sons, with their wives and children, who were carried to Rome. According
to some accounts he delivered them up to Augustus, not through fear of the Roman
power, but lest the Parthians should appoint any of them king in his stead, or
according to others, through the influence of his Italian wife, Thennusa, by whom
he had a fifth son, Phraataces (Tac. Ann. ii. 1; Joseph. Ant. xviii. 2.4; Strab.
xvi.). In A. D. 2, Phraates took possession of Armenia, and expelled Artavasdes,
who had been appointed king by Augustus, but was compelled soon after to give
it up again (Dion Cass. lv. 11; Vell. ii. 101; Tac. Ann. ii. 4). He was shortly
afterwards poisoned by his wife Thermusa, and his son Phraataces. The coin given
under Arsaces XIV. is assigned by most modern writers to this king.
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Phraataces, reigned only a short time, as the murder of his father and the report that he committed incest with his mother made him hated by his subjects, who rose in rebellion against him and expelled him from the throne. The Parthian nobles then elected asking Orodes, who was of the family of the Arsacidae. (Joseph)
Orodes II., reigned only a short time, as he was killed by the Parthians on account of his cruelty. Upon his death the Parthians applied to the Romans for Vonones, one of the sons of Phraates IV., who was accordingly granted to them. (Joseph; Tac. Ann. ii. 1-4)
Vorones I., son of Phraates IV., was not more liked by his subjects than his two immediate predecessors. His long residence at Rome had rendered him more a Roman than a Parthian, and his foreign habits and manners produced general dislike among his subjects. They therefore invited Artabanus, king of Media, who also belonged to the family of the Arsacidae, to take possession of the kingdom. Artabanus was at first defeated, but afterwards drove Vonones out of Parthia, who then took refuge in Armenia, of which he was chosen king. But, threatened by Artabanus, he soon fled into Syria, in which province the Roman governor, Creticus Silanus, allowed him to reside with the title of king. (A. D. 16.) Two years afterwards he was removed by Germanicus to Pompeiopolis in Cilicia, partly at the request of Artabanus, who begged that he might not be allowed to reside in Syria, and partly because Germanicus wished to put an affront upon Piso, with whom Vonones was very intimate. In the following year (A. D. 19) Vonones attempted to escape from Pompeiopolis, intending to fly into Scythia; but he was overtaken on the banks of the river Pyramus, and shortly after put to death. According to Suetonius, he was put to death by order of Tiberius on account of his great wealth. (Joseph; Tac. Ann. ii. 1-4, 56, 58, 68; Suet. Tiber. c. 49)
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Artabanus III., obtained the Parthian kingdom on the expulsion of Vonones in A. D. 16. The possession
of Armenia was the great cause of contention between him and the Romans; but during
the life-time of Germanicus, Artabanus did not attempt to seize the country. Germanicus,
on his arrival in Armenia in A. D. 18, recognized as king Zenon, the son of Polemon,
whom the Armenians wished to have as their ruler, and who reigned under the name
of Artaxias III.; and about the same time, Artabanus sent an embassy to Germanicus
to renew the alliance with the Romans (Tac. Ann. ii. 56, 58).
After the death of Germanicus, Artabanus began to treat the Romans
with contempt, placed Arsaces, one of his sons, over Armenia, and sent an embassy
into Syria to demand the treasures which Vonones had carried with him out of Parthia.
He also oppressed his subjects, till at length two of the chief men among the
Parthians, Sinnaces, and the eunuch, Abdus, despatched an embassy to Tiberius
in A. D. 35, to beg him to send to Parthia Phraates, one of the sons of Phraates
IV. Tiberius willingly complied with the request; but Phraates upon arriving in
Syria was carried off by a disease, which was brought on by his disusing the Roman
mode of living, to which he had been accustomed for so many years, and adopting
the Parthian habits. As soon as Tiberius heard of his death, he set up Tiridates,
another of the Arsacidae, as a claimant to the Parthian throne, and induced Mithridates
and his brother Pharasmanes, Iberian princes, to invade Armenia. The Iberians
accordingly entered Armenia, and after bribing the servants of Arsaces, the son
of Artabanus, to put him to death, they subdued the country. Orodes, another son
of Artabanus, was sent against them, but was entirely defeated by Pharasmanes;
and soon afterwards Artabanus was obliged to leave his kingdom, and to fly for
refuge to the Hyrcanians and Carmanians. Hereupon Vitellius, the governor of Syria,
crossed the Euphrates, and placed Tiridates on the throne. In the following year
(A. D. 36) some of the Parthian nobles, jealous of the power of Abdageses, the
chief minister of Tiridates, recalled Artabanus, who in his turn compelled Tiridates
to fly into Syria (Tac. Ann. vi. 31-37, 41-44; Dion Cass. lviii. 26; Joseph. Ant.
xviii. 5.4). When Tiberius received news of these events, he commanded Vitellius
to conclude a peace with Artabanus (Joseph. Ant. xviii. 5.5), although Artabanus,
according to Suetonius (Tiber. c. 66), sent a letter to Tiberius upbraiding him
with his crimes, and advising him to satisfy the hatred of his citizens by a voluntary
death. After the death of Tiberius, Artabanus sought to extend his kingdom; he
seized Armenia, and meditated an attack upon Syria, but alarmed by the activity
of Vitellius, who advanced to the Euphrates to meet him, he concluded peace with
the Romans, and sacrificed to the images of Augustus and Caligula (Dion Cass.
lix. 27; Suet. Vitell. 2, Calig. 14, with Ernesti's Excursus).
Subsequently, Artabanus was again expelled from his kingdom by the
Parthian nobles, but was restored by the mediation of Izates, king of Adiabene,
who was allowed in consequence to wear his tiara upright, and to sleep upon a
golden bed, which were privileges peculiar to the kings of Parthia. Soon afterwards,
Artabanus died, and left the kingdom to his son Bardanes. Bardanes made war upon
Izates, to whom his family was so deeply indebted, merely because he refused to
assist him in making war upon the Romans; but when the Parthians perceived the
intentions of Bardanes, they put him to death, and gave the kingdom to his brother,
Gotarzes. This is the account given by Josephus (Ant. xx. 3) of the reigns of
Bardanes and Gotarzes, and differs from that of Tacitus.
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Gotarzes, succeeded his father, Artabanus III.; but in consequence of his cruelty, the Parthians invited his brother Bardanes to the throne. A civil war ensued between the two brothers, which terminated by Gotarzes resigning the crown to Bardanes, and retiring into Hyrcania. (Tac. Ann. xi. 8, 9.)
Bardanes, the brother of the preceding. attempted to recover Armenia, but was deterred from his design by Vibius Marsus, the governor of Syria. He defeated his brother Gotarzes, who had repented of his resignation, and attempted to recover the throne; but his successes led him to treat his subjects with haughtiness, who accordingly put him to death while he was hunting, A. D. 47. His death occasioned fresh disputes for the crown, which was finally obtained by Gotarzes; but as he also governed with cruelty, the Parthians secretly applied to the emperor Claudius, to beg him to send them from Rome Meherdates, the grandson of Phraates IV. Claudius complied with their request, and commanded the governor of Syria to assist Meherdates. Through the treachery of Abgarus, king of Edessa, the hopes of Meherdates were ruined; he was defeated in battle, and taken prisoner by Gotarzes, who died himself shortly afterwards, about A. D. 50. (Tac. Ann. xi. 10, xii. 10-14.)
Vorones II., succeeded to the throne on the death of Gotarzes, at which time he was satrap of Media. His reign was short (Tac. Ann. xii. 14), and he was succeeded by Vologeses I.
Vologeses I., the son of Vonones II. by a Greek concubine, according to Tacitus (Ann. xii. 14,
44); but according to Josephus, the son of Artabanus III (Ant. xx. 3.4). Soon
after his accession, he invaded Armenia, took Artaxata and Tigranocerta, the chief
cities of the country, and dethroned Rhadamistus, the Iberian, who had usurped
the crown. He then gave Armenia to his brother, Tiridates, having previously given
Media to his other brother, Pacorus. These occurrences excited considerable alarm
at Rome, as Nero, who had just ascended the throne (A. D. 55), was only seventeen
years of age. Nero, however, made active preparations to oppose the Parthians,
and sent Domitius Corbulo to take possession of Armenia, from which the Parthians
had meantime withdrawn, and Quadratus Ummidius to command in Syria. Vologeses
was persuaded by Corbulo and Ummidius to conclude peace with the Romans and give
as hostages the noblest of the Arsacidae; which he was induced to do, either that
he might the more conveniently prepare for war, or that he might remove from the
kingdom those who were likely to prove rivals (Tac. Ann. xii. 50, xiii. 5-9).
Three years afterwards (A. D. 58), the war at length broke out between the Parthians
and the Romans; for Vologeses could not endure Tiridates to be deprived of the
kingdom of Armenia, which he had himself given him, and would not let him receive
it as a gift from the Romans. This war, however, terminated in favour of the Romans.
Corbulo, the Roman general, took and destroyed Artaxata, and also obtained possession
of Tigranocerta, which surrendered to him. Tiridates was driven out of Armenia;
and Corbulo appointed in his place, as king of Armenia, the Cappadocian Tigranes,
the grandson of king Archelaus, and gave certain parts of Armenia to the tributary
kings who had assisted him in the war. After making these arrangements, Corbulo
retired into Syria, A. D. 60 (Tac. Ann. xiii. 34-41, xiv. 23-26; Dion Cass. lxii.
19, 20). Vologeses, however, resolved to make another attempt to recover Armenia.
He made preparations to invade Syria himself, and sent Monaeses, one of his generals,
and Monobazus, king of the Adiabeni, to attack Tigranes and drive him out of Armenia.
They accordingly entered Armenia and laid siege to Tigranocerta, but were unable
to take it. As Vologeses also found that Corbulo had taken every precaution to
secure Syria, he sent ambassadors to Corbulo to solicit a truce, that he might
despatch an embassy to Rome concerning the terms of peace. This was granted; but
as no satisfactory answer was obtained from Nero, Vologeses invaded Armenia, where
he gained considerable advantages over Caesenninus Paetus, and at length besieged
him in his winter-quarters. Paetus, alarmed at his situation, agreed with Vologeses,
that Armenia should be surrendered to the Romans, and that he should be allowed
to retire in safety from the country, A. D. 62. Shortly after this, Vologeses
sent another embassy to Rome; and Nero agreed to surrender Armenia to Tiridates,
provided the latter would come to Rome and receive it as a gift from the Roman
emperor. Peace was made on these conditions; and Tiridates repaired to Rome, A.
D. 63, where he was received with extraordinary splendour, and obtained from Nero
the Armenian crown (Tac. Ann. xv. 1-18, 25-31; Dion Cass. lxii. 20-23, lxiii.
1-7).
In the struggle for the empire after Nero's death, Vologeses sent
ambassadors to Vespasian, offering to assist him with 40,000 Parthians. This offer
was declined by Vespasian, but he bade Vologeses send ambassadors to the senate,
and he secured peace to him (Tac. Hist. iv. 51). Vologeses afterwards sent an
embassy to Titus, as he was returning from the conquest of Jerusalem, to congratulate
him on his success, and present him with a golden crown; and shortly afterwards
(A. D. 72), he sent another embassy to Vespasian to intercede on behalf of Antiochus,
the deposed king of Commagene (Joseph. B. J. vii. 5.2, 7.3; comp. Dion Cass. lxvi.
11; Suet. Ner. 57). In A. D. 75, Vologeses sent again to Vespasian, to beg him
to assist the Parthians against the Alani, who were then at war with them; but
Vespasian declined to do so, on the plea that it did not become him to meddle
in other people's affairs (Dion Cass. lxvi. 15; Suet. Dom. 2; Joseph. B. J. vii.
7.4)/. Vologeses founded on the Euphrates, a little to the south of Babylon, the
town of Vologesocerta (Plin. H. N. vi. 30.) he seems to have lived till the reign
of Domitian.
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Pacorus, succeeded his father, Vologeses I., and was a contemporary of Domitian and Trajan; but scarcely anything is recorded of his reign. He is mentioned by Martial (ix. 36), and it appears from Pliny (Ep. x. 16), that he was in alliance with Decebalus, the king of the Dacians. It was probably this Pacorus who fortified and enlarged the city of Ctesiphon. (Amm. Marc. xxiii. 6.)
Chosroes, called by Dion Cassius Osroes, a younger son of Vologeses I., succeeded his brother Pacorus during the reign of Trajan. Soon after his accession, he invaded Armenia, expelled Exedares, the son of Tiridates, who had been appointed king by the Romans, and gave the crown to his nephew Parthamasiris, the son of his brother Pacorus. Trajan hastened in person to the east, conquered Armenia, and reduced it to the form of a Roman province. Parthamasiris also fell into his hands. After concluding peace with Augarus, the ruler of Edessa, Trajan overran the northern part of Mesopotamia, took Nisibis land several other cities, and, after a most glorious campaign, returned to Antioch to winter, A. D. 114. In consequence of these successes, he received the surname of Parthicus from the soldiers and of Optimus from the senate. Parthia was at this time torn by civil commotions, which rendered the conquests of Trajan all the easier. In the spring of the following year, A. D. 115, he crossed the Tigris, took Ctesiphon and Seleuceia, and made Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Babylonia, Roman provinces. After these conquests, he sailed down the Tigris to the Persian gulf and the Indian ocean; but during his absence there was a general revolt of the Parthians. He immediately sent against them two of his generals, Maximus and Lusius, A. D. 116, the former of whom was defeated and slain by Chosroes, but the latter met with more success, and regained the cities of Nisibis, Edessa, and Seleuceia, as well as others which had revolted. Upon his return to Ctesiphon, Trajan appointed Parthamaspates king of Parthia, and then withdrew from the country to invade Arabia. Upon the death of Trajan, however, in the following year (A. D. 117), the Parthians expelled Parthanmaspates, and placed upon the throne their former king, Chosroes. But Hadrian, who had succeeded Trajan, was unwilling to engage in a war with the Parthians, and judged it more prudent to give up the conquests which Trajan had gained; he accordingly withdrew the Roman garrisons from Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Babylonia, and made the Euphrates, as before, the eastern boundary of the Roman empire. The exact time of Chosroes' death is unknown; but during the remainder of his reign there was no war between the Parthians and the Romans, as Hadrian cultivated friendly relations with the former (Dion Cass. ixviii. 17-33; Aurel. Vict. Caes. c. 13; Paus. v. 12.4; Spartian, Hadr. c. 21).
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Vologeses II., succeeded his father Chosroes, and reigned probably from about A. D. 122 to 149. In A. D. 133, Media, which was then subject to the Parthians, was overrun by a vast horde of Alani (called by Dion Cassius, Albani), who penetrated also into Armenia and Cappadocia, but were induced to retire, partly by the presents of Vologeses, and partly through fear of Arrian, the Roman governor of Cappadocia. (Dion Cass. lxix. 15.) During the reign of Hadrian, Vologeses continued at peace with the Romans ; and on the accession of Antoninus Pius, A. D. 138, he sent an embassy to Rome, to present the new emperor with a golden crown, which event is commemorated on a coin of Antoninus. (Eckhel, vii. pp. 5, 10, 11.) These friendly relations, however, did not continue undisturbed. Vologeses solicited from Antoninus the restoration of the royal throne of Parthia, which had been taken by Trajan, but did not obtain his request. He made preparations to invade Armenia, but was deterred from doing so by time representations of Antoninus. (Capitol. Anton. Pins, c. 9)
Vologeses III., probably a son of the preceding, began to reign according to coins, A. D. 149.
During the reign, of Antoninus, he continued at peace with the Romans; but on
the death of this emperor, the long threatened war at length broke out. In A.
D. 162, Vologeses invaded Armenia, and cut to pieces a Roman legion, with its
commander Severianus, at Elegeia, in Armenia. He then entered Syria, defeated
Atidius Cornelianus, the governor of Syria, and laid waste every thing before
him. Thereupon the emperor Verus proceeded to Syria, but when he reached Antioch,
he remained in that city and gave the command of the army to Cassius, who soon
drove Vologeses out of Syria, and followed up his success by invading Mesopotamia
and Assyria. He took Seleuceia and Ctesiphon, both of which he sacked and set
on fire, but on his march homewards lost a great number of his troops by diseases
and famine. Meantime Statius Priscus, who had been sent into Armenia, was equally
successful. He entirely subdued the country, and took Artaxata, the capitol (Dion
Cass. lxx. 2, lxxi. 2; Lucian, Alex. Pseudom. c. 27; Capitol. M. Ant. Phil. cc.
8, 9, Verus, cc. 6, 7; Eutrop. viii. 10). This war seems to have been followed
by the cession of Mesopotamia to the Romans.
From this time to the downfall of the Parthian empire, there is great
confusion in the list of kings. Several modern writers indeed suppose, that the
events related above under Vologeses III., happened in the reign of Vologeses
II., and that the latter continued to reign till shortly before the death of Commodus
(A. D. 192); but this is highly improbable, as Vologeses II. ascended the throne
about A. D. 122, and must on this supposition have reigned nearly seventy years.
If Vologeses III. began to reign in A. D. 149, as we have supposed from Eckhel,
it is also improbable that he should have been the Vologeses spoken of in the
reign of Caracalla, about A. D. 212. We are therefore inclined to believe that
there was one Vologeses more than has been mentioned by modern writers, and have
accordingly inserted an additional one in the list we have given.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Vologeses IV., probably ascended the throne in the reign of Commodus. In the contest between Pescennius Niger and Severus for the empire, A. D. 193, the Parthians sent troops to the assistance of the former ; and accordingly when Niger was conquered, Severus marched against the Parthians. He was accompanied by a brother of Vologeses. His invasion was quite unexpected and completely successful. He took Ctesiphon after an obstinate resistance in A. D. 199, and gave it to his soldiers to plunder, but did not permanently occupy it. Herodian appears to be mistaken in saying that this happened in the reign of Artabanus. (Herodian. iii. 1, 9, 10; Dion Cass. lxxv. 9; Spartian. Sever. cc. 15, 16.) Reimar (ad Dion Cass. l. c.) supposes that this Vologeses is the same Vologeses, son of Sanatruces, king of Armenia, to whom, Dion Cassius tells us, that Severus granted part of Armenia; but the account of Dion Cassius is very confused. On the death of Vologeses IV., at the beginning of the reign of Caracalla, Parthia was torn asunder by contests for the crown between the sons of Vologeses. (Dion Cass. lxxvii. 12.)
Artavanus IV., the last king of Parthia, was a brother of the preceding, and a son of Vologeses IV. According to Herodian,
Caracalla entered Parthia in A. D. 216, under pretence of seeking the daughter
of Artabanus in marriage; and when Artabanus went to meet him unarmed with a great
number of his nobility, Caracalla treacherously fell upon them and put the greater
number to the sword; Artabanus himself escaped with difficulty. Dion Cassius merely
relates that Artabanus refused to give his daughter in marriage to Caracalla,
and that the latter laid waste in consequence the countries bordering upon Media.
During the winter Artabanus raised a very large army, and in the following year,
A. D. 217, marched against the Romans. Macrinus, who had meantime succeeded Caracalla,
advanced to meet him; and a desperate battle was fought near Nisibis, which continued
for two days, but without victory to either side. At the commencement of the third
day, Macrinus sent an embassy to Artabanus, informing him of the death of Caracalla,
with whom the Parthian king was chiefly enraged, and offering to restore the prisoners
and treasures taken by Caracalla, and to pay a large stun of money besides. On
these conditions a peace was concluded, and Artabanus withdrew his forces.
In this war, however, Artabanus had lost the best of his troops, and
the Persians seized the opportunity of recovering their long-lost independence.
They were led by Artaxerxes (Ardshir), the son of Sassan, and defeated the Parthians
in three great battles, in the last of which Artabanus was taken prisoner and
killed, A. D. 226. Thus ended the Parthian empire of the Arsacidae, after it had
existed 476 years (Dion Cass. lxxviii. 1, 3, 26, 27, lxxx. 3; Herodian, iv. 9,
11, 11, 15, vi. 2; Capitolin. Macrin. cc. 8, 12; Agathias, Ilist. iv. 24). The
Parthians were now obliged to submit to Artaxerxes, the founder of the dynasty
of the Sassanidae, which continued to reign till A. D. 651. The family of the
Arsacidae, however, still continued to exist in Armenia as an independent dynasty.
The best modern works on the history of the Parthian kings are: Vaillant,
Arsacidarum imperium sive regum Parthorum historia ad fidem numismatum accomodata,
Par. 1725; Eckhel, Doctr. Num. Veter. vol. iii. pp. 523-550; C. F. Richter, Histor.
Krit. Versuch uber die Arsaciden und Sassaniden-Dynastie, Gottingen, 1804; Krause
in Ersch und Gruber's Encyclopadie, Art. Parther.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
PASARGADAE (Ancient city) PERSIAN GULF
Cyrus the Great. (Old Persian Kurus; Hebrew Kores): founder of the Achaemenid empire. He was
born about 576 BCE as the son of Cambyses I, the king of the Persian kingdom called
Ansan. During Cambyses' reign, the Persians were vassals of the Median king Astyages.
Expressions like 'king of the Persian kingdom' and 'the Median kingdom'
are a bit misleading. The Medes and the Persians were coalitions of Iranian nomad
tribes; in the fifth century, this was still remembered and the Greek researcher
Herodotus wrote:
The achievement of Deioces [...] was to unite under his rules the peoples of
Media - Busae, Parataceni, Struchates, Arizanti, Budii, Magi.
The Persian nation contains a number of tribes [...]: the Pasargadae, Maraphii,
and Maspii, upon which all the other tribes are dependent. Of these, the Pasargadae
are the most distinguished; they contain the clan of the Achaemenids from which
spring the Perseid kings. Other tribes are the Panthialaei, Derusiaei, Germanii,
all of which are attached to the soil, the remainder -the Dai, Mardi, Dropici,
Sagarti, being nomadic. (Herodotus, Histories 1.101 and 125; tr. by Aubrey de
Selincourt).
These 'kingdoms' were in fact losely organized tribal coalitions.
In the first half of the sixth cenctury, the Median federation was the most powerful
and was able to demand tribute from the Persians, but also from the Armenians,
Parthians, Drangians and Arians.
Cyrus became king of Ansan in 559, and formed a new coalition of his
own tribe, the Pasargadae, together with the Maraphii, Maspii, Panthialaei, Derusiaei,
Germanii, Dahae, Mardi, Dropici and Sagarti. They revolted in 550 (or 554/553
according to another chronology).
The Median king Astyages sent an army to Ansan. It was commanded by
Harpagus, but he defected to the Persians. Astyages was captured and Cyrus became
the new ruler of the empire of Persians and Medes. According to the Greek topographer
Strabo of Amasia, who lived
more than five centuries later, Cyrus' victory took place among the Pasargadae,
where Cyrus built his residence. From now on, this tribal name became the name
of a city.
According to Herodotus, Cyrus' father Cambyses had been married to
Astyages' daughter Mandane. This would explain why the Medes accepted Cyrus' rule;
he was one of them. Intertribal marriages were common, but it is also possible
that the story of Cambyses' Median marriage was invented to justify Cyrus' rule.
The Greek historian Ctesias of Cnidus
writes that Cyrus also married a daughter of Astyages. If both authors are right,
this woman must have been Cyrus' aunt.
Cyrus seems to have united Persia and Media
in a personal union; it was, therefore, a dual monarchy. Taking over the loosely
organized Median empire also implied taking over several subject countries: Armenia,
Cappadocia, Parthia, Drangiana,
Aria. They were probably ruled by vassal kings called satraps. It is plausible
that Elam was an early addition. In 547, Cyrus added Lydia
to his possessions, a state that had among its vassals the Greek and Carian towns
in the west and southwest of what is now Turkey.
According to Herodotus, Cyrus left Lydia and 'his mind was on Babylon
and the Bactrians and the Sacae and the Egyptians' (Histories 1.154). It is certain
that Cyrus never invaded Egypt, which was left to his son and successor Cambyses.
However, it is possible that he added Cilicia
to his dominions, making the local ruler (the Syennesis) a vassal king. Babylonian
sources do not mention imported Cilician iron after 545 - which may be signicant.
It is very plausible that Cyrus did indeed, ad Herodotus suggests,
conquer Bactria, although there is no independent confirmation of this. What we
do know for certain is that eight years after the conquest of Lydia, the Persian
king took Babylon (October 539). The Babylonian empire had been large, and Cyrus
now became ruler of Syria
and Palestine as well. He
allowed the Jews, who were exiled to Babylon,
to return home. This may have been an attempt to fortify the empire's western
border against possible Egyptian attacks.
The second century Greek-Roman author Arrian tells us in his book
about Alexander the Great (the Anabasis) that Cyrus founded a frontier town in
Sogdiana; there is no reason to doubt this statement. The Greeks called this town
Cyropolis ('town of Cyrus') or Cyreschata (a pun on the name of the king and the
word 'far away'); both names seem renderings of Kurushkatha, 'town of Cyrus'.
The Sacae (or Scythians) lived between Bactria and Cyreschata, and there is nothing
implausible in Herodotus' words that Cyrus subdued these tribes. All texts related
to the fall of Babylon can be found here.
Another story by Arrian deals with Cyrus' expedition to India; probably,
this story is also accurate, but we cannot be completely certain. If he did invade
India, he had to control Gandara first, and it is certain that Cyrus managed to
seize this country: in the Behistun inscription, it is mentioned in the list of
countries that king Darius inherited from earlier Persian kings. However, it seems
equally certain that Cyrus did not conquer the Indus valley itself, because India
is not mentioned in the Behistun inscription. Maybe his navy conquered Maka during
this campaign.
Cyrus' latest expedition took him to modern Khazakhstan, where he
fought against a nomadic tribe called Massagetes. The news of his death in battle
reached Babylon in December 530, where letters were dated 'first year of the reign
of king Cambyses', because Cyrus had appointed his son Cambyses as his successor.
(The mother of Cambyses was Cassadane, a sister of Otanes, who was to play an
important role after the death of Cambyses.)
Cyrus was buried near Pasargadae, in a small building containing a
gold sarcophagus, his arms, his jewellery and a cloak. This cloak played an important
role in the Persian inauguration rituals. When Persia was subjected by the Macedonian
king Alexander the Great, many sacred objects were taken away to prevent the coronation
of of an anarya, a foreigner; Cyrus' body was desacrated by throwing it on the
ground. Alexander ordered restorations in January 324 BCE.
Cyrus' capital was Pasargadae, where inscriptions in his palace state
Cyrus the Great King, an Achaemenid.
Jona Lendering, ed.
This text is cited July 2003 from the Livius Ancient History Website URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks.
Cyrus, the Elder (Kuros ho palaios or ho prhoteros), the founder of the Persian
empire. The life of this prince is one of the most important portions of ancient
history, both on account of the magnitude of the empire which he founded, and
because it forms the epoch at which sacred and profane history become connected:
but it is also one of the most difficult, not only from the almost total want
of contemporary historians, but also from the fables and romances with which it
was overlaid in ancient times, and from the perverseness of modern writers, of
the stamp of Rollin and Hales, who have followed the guidance, not of the laws
of historical evidence, but of their own notions of the right interpretation of
Scripture. Herodotus, within a century after the time of Cyrus, found his history
embellished by those of the Persians who wished to make it more imposing (hoi
Boulomenoi semnoun ta peri Kuron), and had to make his choice between four different
stories, out of which he professes to have selected the account given by those
who wished to tell the truth (ton eonta legein logon, i. 95). Nevertheless his
narrative is evidently founded to some extent on fabulous tales. The authorities
of Ctesias, even the royal archives, were doubtless corrupted in a similar manner,
besides the accumulation of errors during another half century. Xenophon does
not pretend, what some modern writers have pretended for him, that his Cyropaedeia
is anything more than an historical romance. In such a work it is always impossible
to separate the framework of true history from the fiction: and even if we could
do this, we should have gained but little. Much reliance is placed on the sources
of information which Xenophon possessed in the camp of the younger Cyrus. No idea
can be more fallacious; for what sort of stories would be current there, except
the fables which Herodotus censures, but which would readily and alone pass for
true in the camp of a prince who doubtless delighted to hear nothing but what
was good of the great ancestor whose name he bore, and whose fame he aspired to
emulate? And even if Xenophon was aware of the falsity of these tales, he was
justified, as a writer of fiction, in using them for his purpose. Xenophon is
set up against Herodotus. The comparative value of their authority, in point of
time, character, and means of information, is a question which, by itself, could
never have been decided by a sober-minded man, except in favour of Herodotus.
But it is thought that the account of Xenophon is more consistent with Scripture
than that of Herodotus. This is a hasty assumption, and in truth the scriptural
allusions to the time of Cyrus are so brief, that they can only be interpreted
by the help of other authorities. In the accounts of the modern Persian writers
it is impossible to separate the truth from the falsehood.
The account of Herodotus is as follows: In the year B. C. 594, Astyages
succeeded his father, Cyaxares, as king of Media. He had a daughter whom he named
Mandane. In consequence of a dream, which seemed to portend that her offspring
should be master of Asia, he married her to a Persian named Cambyses, of a good
house, but of a quiet temper. A second dream led him to send for his daughter,
when she was pregnant; and upon her giving birth to a son, Astyages committed
it to Harpagus, his most confidential attendant, with orders to kill it. Harpagus,
moved with pity, and fearing the revenge of Mandane, instead of killing the child
himself, gave it to a herdsman of Astyages named Mitradates, who was to expose
it, and to satisfy Harpagus of its death. But while the herdsman was in attendance
on Astyages, his wife had brought forth a still-born child, which they substituted
for the child of Mandane, who was reared as the son of the herdsman, but was not
yet called Cyrus. The name he bore seems from a passage of Strabo (xv.) to have
been Agradates, Agradates. When he was ten years old, his true parentage was discovered
by the following incident. In the sports of his village, the boys chose him for
their king, and he ordered them all exactly as was done by the Median king. One
of the boys, the son of a noble Median named Artembares, disobeyed his commands,
and Cyrus caused him to be severely scourged. Artembares complained to Astyages,
who sent for Cyrus, in whose person and courage he discovered his daughter's son.
The herdsman and Harpagus, being summoned before the king, told him the truth.
Astyages forgave the herdsman, but revenged himself on Harpagus by serving up
to him at a banquet the flesh of his own son, with other circumstances of the
most refined cruelty. As to his grandson, by the advice of the Magians, who assured
him that his dreams were fulfilled by the boy's having been a king in sport, and
that he had nothing more to fear from him, he sent him back to his parents in
Persia.
When Cyrus grew up towards manhood, and shewed himself the most courageous
and amiable of his fellows, Harpagus, who had concealed a truly oriental desire
of revenge under the mask of most profound submission to his master's will, sent
presents to Cyrus, and ingratiated himself with him. Among the Medians it was
easy for Harpagus to form a party in favour of Cyrus, for the tyranny of Astyages
had made him odious. Having organized his conspiracy, Harpagus sent a letter secretly
to Cyrus, inciting him to take revenge upon Astyages, and promising that the Medes
should desert to him. Cyrus called together the Persians, and having, by an ingenious
practical lesson, excited them to revolt from the Median supremacy, he was chosen
as their leader. Upon hearing of this, Astyages summoned Cyrus, who replied that
he would come to him sooner than Astyages himself would wish. Astyages armed the
Medes, but was so infatuated (Deublabes eon) as to give the command to Harpagus,
" forgetting," says Herodotus, " how he had treated him." In the battle which
ensued, some of the Medes deserted to Cyrus, and the main body of the army fled
of their own accord. Astyages, having impaled the Magians who had deceived him,
armed the youths and old men who were left in the city, led them out to fight
the Persians, and was defeated and taken prisoner, after a reign of 35 year, in
B. C. 559. The Medes accepted Cyrus for their king, and thus the supremacy which
they had held passed to the Persians. Cyrus treated Astyages well, and kept him
with him till his death. The date of the accession of Cyrus is fixed by the unanimous
consent of the ancient chronologers (African. ap. Euseb. Praep. Evan. x. 10 ;
Clinton, Fast. Hell. ii. s. a. 559). It was probably at this time that Cyrus received
that name, which is a Persian word (Kohr), signifying the Sun.
In the interval during which we hear nothing certain of Cyrus, he was doubtless
employed in consolidating his newly-acquired empire. Indeed there are some notices
(though not in Herodotus) from which we may infer that a few of the cities of
Media refused to submit to him, and that he only reduced them to obedience after
a long and obstinate resistance (Xen. Anab. iii. 4.7).
The gradual consolidation and extension of the Persian empire during
this period is also stated incidentally by Herodotus in introducing his account
of the conquest of Lydia, which is the next event recorded in the life of Cyrus.
It took place in 546 B. C.
The Ionian and Aeolian colonies of Asia Minor now sent ambassadors
to Cyrus, offering to submit to him on the same terms as they had obtained from
Croesus. But Cyrus, who had in vain invited the Ionians to revolt from Croesus
at the beginning of the war, gave them to understand, by a significant fable,
that they must prepare for the worst. With the Milesians alone he made an alliance
on the terms they offered. The other Ionian states fortified their cities, assembled
at the Panionium, and, with the Aeolians, sent to Sparta for assistance. The Lacedaemonians
refused to assist them, but sent Cyrus a message threatening him with their displeasure
if he should meddle with the Greek cities. Having sent back a contemptuous answer
to this message, Cyrus returned to the Median capital, Ecbatana, taking Croesus
with him, and committing the government of Sardis to a Persian, named Tabalus.
He himself was eager to attempt the conquest of Babylon, the Bactrian nation,
the Sacae, and the Egyptians. He had no sooner left Asia Minor than a revolt of
the states which had lately formed the Lydian empire was raised by Pactyes, a
Persian; but, after a long and obstinate resistance, the whole of Asia Minor was
reduced by Harpagus. In the mean time, Cyrus was engaged in subduing the nations
of Upper Asia, and particularly Assyria, which since the destruction of Ninus
had Babylon for its capital. Its king was Labynetus, the Belshazzar of Daniel.
Cyrus marched against Babylon at the head of a large army, and in great state.
He carried with him a most abundant supply of provisions for his table; and for
his drink the water of the Choaspes, which flows by Susa, was carried in silver
vessels. He passed the river Gyndes, a tributary of the Tigris, by diverting its
water into a great number of rills, and arrived before Babylon in the second spring
from the commencement of his expedition. Having defeated in battle the whole forces
of the Babylonians, he laid siege to the city, and after a long time he took it
by diverting the course of the Euphrates, which flowed through the midst of it,
so that his soldiers entered Babylon by the bed of the river. So entirely unprepared
were the Babylonians for this mode of attack, that they were engaged in revelry
(en eupatheiesi), and had left the gates which opened upon the river unguarded.
This was in B. C. 538.
After Cyrus had subdued the Assyrians, he undertook the subjugation
of the Massagetae, a people dwelling beyond the Araxes. Cyrus offered to marry
Tomyris, the widowed queen of this people; but she refused the offer, saying that
he wooed not her, but the kingdom of the Massagetae. The details of the war which
followed may be read in Herodotus. It ended in the death of Cyrus in battle. Tomyris
caused his corpse to be found among the slain, and having cut off the head, threw
it into a bag filled with human blood, that he might satiate himself (she said)
with blood. According to Herodotus, Cyrus had reigned 29 years. Other writers
say 30. He was killed in B. C. 529.
The account of Ctesias differs considerably in some points from that
of Herodotus. According to him, there was no relationship between Cyrus and Astyages.
At the conquest of Media by Cyrus, Astyages fled to Ecbatana, and was there concealed
by his daughter Amytis, and her husband, Spitamas, whom, with their children,
Cyrus would have put to the torture, had not Astyages discovered himself. When
he did so, he was put in fetters by Oebaras, but soon afterwards Cyrus himself
set him free, honoured him as a father, and married his daughter Amytis, having
put her husband to death for telling a falsehood. Ctesias also says, that Cyrus
made war apon the Bactrians, who voluntarily submitted to him, when they heard
of his reconciliation with Astyages and Amytis. He mentions a war with the Sacae,
in which Cyrus was taken prisoner and ransomed. He gives a somewhat different
account of the Lydian war (Ctesias, Pers. c. 5). Cyrus met with his death, according
to Ctesias, by a wound received in battle with a nation called the Derbices, who
were assisted by the Indians. Strabo also mentions the expedition against the
Sacae, and says, that Cyrus was at first defeated but afterwards victorious. He
also says, that Cyrus made an expedition into India, from which country he escaped
with difficulty.
The chief points of difference between Xenophon and Herodotus are
the following: Xenophon represents Cyrus as brought up at his grandfather's court,
as serving in the Median army under his uncle Cyaxares, the son and successor
of Astyages, of whom Herodotus and Ctesias know nothing; as making war upon Babylon
simply as the general of Cyaxares, who remained at home during the latter part
of the Assyrian war, and permitted Cyrus to assume without opposition the power
and state of an independent sovereign at Babylon; as marrying the daughter of
Cyaxares; and at length dying quietly in his bed, after a sage and Socratic discourse
to his children and friends. The Lydian war of Cyrus is represented by Xenophon
as a sort of episode in the Assyrian war, occasioned by the help which Croesus
had given to the Assyrians in the first campaign of Cyrus against them.
Diodorus agrees for the most part with Herodotus; but he says, that
Cyrus was taken prisoner by the Scythian queen (evidently meaning Tomyris), and
that she crucified or impaled him.
Other variations, not worth specifying, are given by the chronographers
and compilers.
To form a complete and consistent life of Cyrus out of these statements
is obviously impossible; but the leading events of his public life are made out
with tolerable certainty, namely, the dethronement of Astyages, the conquest of
the Lydian and Assyrian empires, his schemes to become master of all Asia and
of Egypt, and his death in a battle with one of the Asiatic tribes which he wished
to subdue. His acquisition of the Median empire was rather a revolution than a
conquest. Herodotus expressly states, that Cyrus had a large party among the Medes
before his rebellion, and that, after the defeat of Astyages, the nation voluntarily
received him as their king. This was very natural, for besides the harshness of
the government of Astyages, Cyrus was the next heir to the throne, the Medes were
effeminate, and the Persians were hardy. The kingdom remained, as before, the
united kingdom of "the Medes and Persians", with the difference, that the supremacy
was transferred from the former to the latter; and then in process of time it
came to be generally called the Persian empire, though the kings and their people
were still, even down to the time of Alexander, often spoken of as Medes. If Cyrus
had quietly succeeded to the throne, in virtue of his being the grandson of the
Median king Astyages, it seems difficult to account for this change. The mere
fact of Cyrus's father being a Persian is hardly enough to explain it.
With regard to the order of Cyrus's conquests in Asia, there seems
much confusion. It is clear that there was a struggle for supremacy between Cyrus
and the king of Babylon, tile latter having become master of Mesopotamia and Syria
by the conquests of Nebuchadnezzar. It was in fact a struggle between the Zend
tribes, which formed the Medo-Persian empire, and the Semitic tribes under the
king of Babylon, for the supremacy of Asia. We can scarcely determine whether
Cyrus conquered Lydia before making any attack on Babylon, and perhaps in this
matter Xenophon may have preserved something like the true succession of events.
That Croesus was in alliance with Babylon is stated also by Herodotus, who however,
makes Croesus entirely the aggressor in the Lydian war. No clear account can be
given of his campaigns in Central Asia, but the object of them was evidently to
subdue the whole of Asia as far as the Indus.
With respect to the main points of difference between Herodotus and
the Cyropaedeia, besides what has been said above of the historical value of Xenophon's
book, if it could be viewed as a history at all, its real design is the great
thing to be kept in view; and that design is stated by Xenophon himself with sufficient
clearness. He wished to shew that the government of men is not so difficult as
is commonly supposed, provided that the ruler be wise; and to illustrate this
he holds forth the example of Cyrus, whom he endows with all virtue, courage,
and wisdom, and whose conduct is meant for a practical illustration and his discourses
for an exposition of the maxims of the Socratic philosophy, so far as Xenophon
was capable of understanding it. Of course it would not have done to have represented
this beau ideal of a philosophic king as the dethroner of his own grandfather,
as the true Asiatic despot and conqueror, and as the victim of his own ambitious
schemes. It seems incredible that any one should rise from the perusal of the
Cyropaedeia without the firm conviction that it is a romance, and, moreover, that
its author never meant it to be taken for anything else; and still more incredible
is it that any one should have recognized in the picture of Xenophon the verisimilitude
of an Asiatic conqueror in the sixth century before Christ. That Cyrus was a great
man, is proved by the empire he established; that he was a good man, according
to the virtues of his age and country, we need not doubt; but if we would seek
further for his likeness, we must assuredly look rather at Genghis Khan or Timour
than at the Cyrus of Xenophon.
It has, however, been supposed, that the statement of Xenophon about
Cyaxares II. is confirmed by Scripture; for that Dareius the Mede, who, according
to Daniel, reigns after the taking of Babylon (for two years, according to the
chronologers) and before the first year of Cyrus, can be no other (this is the
utmost that can be asserted) than Cyaxares II. This matter seems susceptible of
a better explanation than it has yet received.
1. Xenophon's Cyaxares is the son of Astyages; Dareius the Mede is the son of
Ahasuerus. Now, it is almost beyond a doubt that Ahasuerus is the Hebrew form
of the Persian name or title which the Greeks called Xerxes, and Cyaxares seems
to be simply the form of the same word used in the Median dialect. Cyaxares, the
son of Phraortes, is called Ahasuerus in Tobit xiv. 15. It is granted that this
argument is not decisive, but, so far as it goes, it is against the identification.
2. After the taking of Babylon, Dareius the Mede receives the kingdom, and exercises
all the functions of royalty, with great power and splendour, evidently at Babylon.
But in Xenophon it is Cyrus who does this, and Cyaxares never comes near Babylon
at all after its capture, but remains in Media, totally eclipsed and almost superseded
by Cyrus. There are other arguments which seem to shew clearly that, whoever Dareius
the Mede may have been (a point difficult enough to decide), he was not the Cyaxares
of Xenophon. The matter cannot be further discussed here; but the result of a
most careful examination of it is, that in some important points the statements
of Xenophon cannot be reconciled with those of Daniel; and that a much more probable
explanation is, that Dareius was a noble Median, who held the sovereignty as the
viceroy of Cyrus, until the latter found it convenient to fix his court at Babylon;
and there are some indications on which a conjecture might be founded that this
viceroy was Astyages. It is quite natural that the year in which Cyrus began to
reign in person at Babylon should be reckoned (as it is by the Hebrew writers)
the first year of his reign over the whole empire. This view is confirmed by the
fact, that in the prophecies of the destruction of Babylon it is Cyrus, and not
any Median king, that is spoken of. Regarding this difficulty, then, as capable
of being explained, it remains that Xenophon's statement about Cyaxares II. is
entirely unsupported. Xenophon seems to have introduced Cyaxares simply as a foil
to set off the virtues of Cyrus. In the passage of Aeschylus, which is sometimes
quoted as confirming Xenophon, the two kings before Cyrus are clearly Phraortes
and Cyaxares, or Cyaxares and Astyages. At all events, no room is left for Cyaxares
II. The most natural explanation seems to be, that Phraortes, in whose reign the
Persians were subjected to the Medes, and who was therefore the first king of
the united Medes and Persians, is meant in the line:
Medos gar en ho protos hegemon stratou.
The next line admirably describes Cyaxares, who took Ninus, and consolidated the empire.
Allos d' ekeinou pais tod' ergon enuse.
If so, Astyages is omitted, probably because he did not complete his reign, but
was dethroned by Cyrus, who is thus reckoned the third Medo-Persian king, Tritos
d' ap autou Kuros. For the ap autou surely refers to the person who is called
protos. On the other hand, the account which Herodotus gives of the transference
of the Median empire to the Persians is in substance confirmed by Plato, Aristotle,
Isocrates, Anaximenes, Dinon, Ctesias, Amyntas, Strabo, Cephalion, Justin, Plutarch,
Polyaenus, and even by Xenophon himself in the Anabasis, as above quoted. Much
light would be thrown on the subject if the date of Cyrus's birth could be fixt;
but this is impossible. Dinon says, that he was seventy at his death; but this
is improbable for various reasons, and Herodotus evidently considered him much
younger.
None but the sacred writers mention the edict of Cyrus for the return
of the Jews. A motive for that step may be perhaps found in what Herodotus says
about his designs on Egypt. The very remarkable prophecy relating to the destruction
of Babylon and the restoration of the Jews by Cyrus is in Isaiah xliv. xlv., besides
other important passages in Isaiah and Jeremiah, which predict the fall of Babylon
without mentioning the name of Cyrus, and the corresponding history is in the
books of Daniel, Ezra, and 2 Chron. xxxvi. 22, 23. The language of the proclamation
of Cyrus, as recorded both in Ezra i. 2 and Chron. xxxvi. 22, seems to countenance
the idea that he was acquainted, as he might easily be through Daniel, with the
prophecy of Isaiah. "The Lord God of heaven... hath charged me to build him an
house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah" (compare Isaiah xliv. 28, xlv. 13); but
beyond this one point there is nothing to sustain the notion of Hales and others,
that Cyrus was more than an unconscious instrument in accomplishing the designs
of Providence. The contrary is intimated in Isaiah xlv. 5.
In the East Cyrus was long regarded as the greatest hero of antiquity,
and hence the fables by which his history is obscured. The Persians remembered
him as a father (Herod. iii. 89, 160), and his fame passed, through the Greeks,
to the Europeans, and the classical writers abound with allusions to him. His
sepulchre at Pasargadae was visited by Alexander the Great. (Arrian, vi. 29; Plut.
Alex. 69.) Pasargadae is said to have been built on the spot where Cyrus placed
his camp when he defeated Astyages, and in its immediate neighbourhood the city
of Persepolis grew up. The tomb of Cyrus has perished, but his name is found on
monuments at Murghab, north of Persepolis, which place, indeed, some antiquarians
take for Pasargadae (Herodotus, lib. i.; Ctesias, ed. Lion; Xenophon, Cyropaedeia;
Diodorus; Justin; Strabo; and other ancient authors)
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Amytis, (Amutis). The daughter of Astyages, the wife of Cyrus, and the mother of Cambyses, according to Ctesias. (Pers. c. 2, 10, &c.)
Cassandane (Kassandane), a Persian lady of the family of the Achaemenidae, daughter of Pharnaspes, who married Cyrus the Great, and became by him the mother of Cambyses. She died before her husband, who much lamented her loss, and ordered a general mourning in her honour. (Herod. ii. 1, iii. 2.)
PERSEPOLIS (Ancient city) IRAN
Cambyses was the son and successor of Cyrus the Great. He ruled the
Persian Empire from the death of his father in 530 to his own death in Ecbatane
(Syria) in 522 while on his
way back from Egypt with
his army.
He continued the policy of expansion started by his father Cyrus.
First, he took part with his father to the conquest of Babylonia and was named
king of Babylon after the
capture of the city in 539. After becoming king of Persia,
he conquered Egypt and was
named Pharao in 526. But he had a repute of madness and despotism which led to
palace struggles for the succession and it is possible that he was in fact assassinated
upon order of one of his brothers, Smerdis, which he himself tried to have assassinated.
At his death, after a short period during which Smerdis assumed the
leadership, more palace struggles led to the rise to the throne of Persia
of Darius the Great, whose task it was to organise such a vast empire.
Bernard Suzanne (page last updated 1998), ed.
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Cambyses (Kambuses). The son and successor of Cyrus the Great, ascended
the throne of Persia B.C. 530. Soon after the commencement of his reign, he undertook
the conquest of Egypt, being incited to the step, according to the Persian account
as given in Herodotus, by the conduct of Amasis, the king of that country. Cambyses,
it seems, had demanded in marriage the daughter of Amasis; but the latter, knowing
that the Persian monarch intended to make her, not his wife, but his concubine,
endeavoured to deceive him by sending in her stead the daughter of his predecessor
Apries. The historian gives another account; but it is more than probable that
both are untrue, and that ambitious feelings alone on the part of Cambyses prompted
him to the enterprise. Amasis died before Cambyses marched against Egypt, and
his son Psammenitus succeeded to the throne. A bloody battle was fought near the
Pelusiac mouth of the Nile, and the Egyptians were put to flight, after which
Cambyses made himself master of the whole country, and received tokens of submission
also from the Cyrenaeans and the people of Barca. The kingdom of Egypt was thus
conquered by him in six months.
Cambyses now formed new projects. He wished to send a squadron
and subjugate Carthage, to conquer Aethiopia, and to make himself master of the
famous temple of Zeus Ammon. The first of these expeditions, however, did not
take place, because the Phoenicians, who composed his naval force, would not attack
one of their own colonies. The army that was sent against the Ammonians perished
in the desert, and the troops at whose head he himself had set out against the
Aethiopians were compelled by hunger to retreat. How far he advanced into Aethiopia
can not be ascertained from anything that Herodotus says. Diodorus Siculus, however,
makes Cambyses to have penetrated as far as the spot where Meroe stood, which
city, according to this same writer, he founded. After his return from Aethiopia,
the Persian king gave himself up to the greatest acts of outrage and cruelty.
On entering Memphis he found the inhabitants engaged in celebrating the festival
of the reappearance of Apis, and, imagining that these rejoicings were made on
account of his ill success, he caused the sacred bull to be brought before him,
stabbed him with his dagger, of which wound the animal afterwards died. He also
ordered the priests to be scourged.
Cambyses is said to have been subject to epilepsy from his
earliest years; and the habit of drinking, in which he now indulged to excess,
rendered him at times completely furious. No relation was held sacred by him when
intoxicated. Having dreamed that his brother Smerdis was seated on the royal throne,
he sent one of his principal confidants to Persia, with orders to put him to death,
a mandate which was actually accomplished. His sister and wife Atossa, who lamented
the death of Smerdis, he kicked so severely as to bring on an abortion. These
and many other actions, alike indicative of almost complete insanity, aroused
against him the feelings of his subjects. A member of the order called the Magi
availed himself of this discontent, and, aided by the strong resemblance which
he bore to the murdered Smerdis, as well as by the exertions of a brother who
was also a Magian, seized upon the throne of Persia, and sent heralds in every
direction, commanding all to obey, for the time to come, Smerdis, son of Cyrus,
and not Cambyses. The news of this usurpation reached Cambyses at a place in Syria
called Ecbatana, where he was at that time with his army. Resolving to return
with all speed to Susa, the monarch was in the act of mounting his horse, when
his sword fell from its sheath and inflicted a mortal wound in his thigh. An oracle,
it is said, had been given him from Butus that he would end his life at Ecbatana,
but he had always thought that the Median Ecbatana was meant by it. He died of
his wound soon after, B.C. 522, leaving no children. Ctesias gives a different
account. He makes Cambyses to have died at Babylon of a wound he had given himself
on the femoral muscle, while shaving smooth a piece of wood with a small knife.
According to Herodotus, Cambyses reigned seven years and five months.
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Cambyses, a son of Cyrus the Great, by Amytis according to Ctesias, by Cassandane
according to Herodotus, who sets aside as a fiction the Egyptian story of his
having had Nitetis, the daughter of Apries, for his mother. This same Nitetis
appears in another version of the tale, which is not very consistent with chronology,
as the concubine of Cambyses; and it is said that the detection of the fraud of
Amasis in substituting her for his own daughter, whom Cambyses had demanded for
his seraglio, was the cause of the invasion of Egypt by the latter in the fifth
year of his reign, B. C. 525. There is, however, no occasion to look for any other
motive than the same ambition which would have led Cyrus to the enterprise, had
his life been spared, besides that Egypt, having been conquered by Nebuchadnezzar,
seems to have formed a portion of the Babylonian empire. In his invasion of the
country, Cambyses is said by Herodotus to have been aided by Phanes, a Greek of
Halicarnassus, who had fled from the service of Amasis; and, by his advice, the
Persian king obtained the assistance of an Arabian chieftain, and thus secured
a safe passage through the desert, and a supply of water for his army. Before
the invading force reached Egypt, Amasis died and was succeeded by his son, who
is called Psammenitus by Herodotus, and Amyrtaeus by Ctesias. According to Ctesias,
the conquest of Egypt was mainly effected through the treachery of Combapheus,
one of the favourite eunuchs of the Egyptian king, who put Cambyses in possession
of the passes on condition of being made viceroy of the country. But Herodotus
makes no mention either of this intrigue, or of the singular stratagem by which
Polyaenus says (vii. 9), that Pelusium was taken almost without resistance. He
tells us, [p. 589] however, that a single battle, in which the Persians were victorious,
decided the fate of Egypt; and, though some of the conquered held out for a while
in Memphis, they were finally obliged to capitulate, and the whole nation submitted
to Cambyses. He received also the voluntary submission of the Greek cities, Cyrene
and Barca, and of the neighbouring Libyan tribes, and projected fresh expeditions
against the Aethiopians, who were called the "long-lived," and also against Carthage
and the Ammonians. Having set out on his march to Aethiopia, he was compelled
by want of provisions to return; the army which he sent against the Ammonians
perished in the sands; and the attack on Carthage fell to the ground in consequence
of the refusal of the Phoenicians to act against their colony. Yet their very
refusal serves to shew what is indeed of itself sufficiently obvious, how important
the expedition would have been in a commercial point of view, while that against
the Ammonians, had it succeeded, would probably have opened to the Persians the
caravan-trade of the desert (Herod. ii. 1, iii. 1-26; Ctes. Pers. 9 ; Just. i.
9).
Cambyses appears to have ruled Egypt with a stern and strong hand;
and to him perhaps we may best refer the prediction of Isaiah: "The Egyptians
will I give over into the hand of a cruel lord" (Is. xix. 4); and it is possible
that his tyranny to the conquered, together with the insults offered by him to
their national religion, may have caused some exaggeration in the accounts of
his madness, which, in fact, the Egyptians ascribed to his impiety. But, allowing
for some over-statement, it does appear that he had been subject from his birth
to epileptic fits (Herod. iii. 33); and, in addition to the physical tendency
to insanity thus created, the habits of despotism would seem to have fostered
in him a capricious self-will and a violence of temper bordering upon frenzy.
He had long set the laws of Persia at defiance by marrying his sisters, one of
whom he is said to have murdered in a fit of passion because she lamented her
brother Smerdis, whom he had caused to be slain. Of the death of this prince,
and of the events that followed upon it, different accounts are given by Herodotus
and Ctesias. The former relates that Cambyses, alarmed by a dream which seemed
to portend his brother's greatness, sent a confidential minister named Prexaspes
to Susa with orders to put him to death. Afterwards, a Magian, who bore the same
name as the deceased prince and greatly resembled him in appearance, took advantage
of these circumstances to personate him and set up a claim to the throne, and
Cambyses, while marching through Syria against this pretender, died at a place
named Ecbatana of an accidental wound in the thigh, B. C. 521. According to Ctesias,
the name of the king's murdered brother was Tanyoxarces, and a Magian named Sphendadates
accused him to the king of an intention to revolt. After his death by poison,
Cambyses, to conceal it from his mother Amytis, made Sphendadates personate him.
The fraud succeeded at first, from the wonderful likeness between the Magian and
the murdered prince; at length, however, Amytis discovered it, and died of poison,
which she had voluntarily taken, imprecating curses on Cambyses. The king died
at Babylon of an accidental wound in the thigh, and Sphendadates continued to
support the character of Tanyoxarces, and maintained himself for some time on
the throne (Herod. iii. 27-38, 61-66; Ctes. Pers. 10-12; Diod. Exc. de Virt. et
Vit.; Strab. x., xvii.; Just. i. 9). Herodotus says (iii. 89), that the Persians
always spoke of Cambyses by the name of despotes, in remembrance of his tyranny.
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Dareius or Darius (Dareios, Dareiaios, Ctes., Heb. i. e. Daryavesh), the name of several kings of Persia. Like such names in general, it is no doubt a significant title. Herodotus (vi. 98) says that it means herxeies; but the meaning of this Greek word is doubtful. Some take it to be a form fabricated by Herodotus himself, for rhexias or prekter, from the root erps (do), meaning the person who achieves great things; but it is more probably derived from heirpso (restrain), in the sense of the ruler. In modern Persian Dara or Darab means lord, which approaches very near to the form seen in the Perscpolitan inscription, Dareush or Daryush (where the sh is no doubt an adjective termination), as well as to the Hebrew form. Precisely the same result is obtained from a passage of Strabo (xvi.), who mentions, among the changes which names suffer in passing from one language to another, that Dareios is a corruption of Dareiekes, or, as Salmasius has corrected it, of Dariaues, that is Daryav. This view also explains the form Dareiaios used by Ctesias. The introduction of the y sound after the r in these forms is explained by Grotefend. Some writers have fancied that Herodotus, in saying that Dareios means herxeies, and that Xerxes means areios, was influenced in the choice of his words by their resemblance to the names; and they add, as if it were a matter of course, the simple fact, which contradicts their notion, that the order of correspondence must be inverted. (Bahr, Annot. ad loc. )
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Dareius, Darius (Dareios; Pers. Daryavas). Surnamed Hystaspis (or son
of Hystaspes), a satrap of Persia, born B.C. 548, and belonging to the royal line
of the Achaemenides. His father Hystaspes had been governor of the province of
Persia. Seven noblemen of the highest rank, among whom was Darius, conspired to
dethrone the Magian Smerdis, who had usurped the crown after the death of Cambyses,
and, having accomplished their object (B.C. 521), resolved that one of their number
should reign in his stead. According to Herodotus, they agreed to meet at early
dawn in the suburbs of the capital, and that he of their number whose horse should
first neigh at the rising of the sun should possess the kingdom. If we believe
the historian, who gives two accounts of the matter, Darius obtained the crown
through an artful contrivance on the part of his groom. It is more probable, however,
that, in consequence of his relationship to the royal line, his election to the
throne was the unanimous act of the other conspirators. It is certain, indeed,
that they reserved for themselves privileges which tended at least to make them
independent of the monarch, and even to keep him dependent upon them. One of their
number is said to have formally stipulated for absolute exemption from the royal
authority, as the condition on which he withdrew his claim to the crown; and the
rest acquired the right of access to the king's person at all seasons, without
asking his leave, and bound him to select his wives exclusively from their families.
How far the power of Darius, though nominally despotic, was really limited by
these privileges of his nobles, may be seen from an occurrence which took place
in the early part of his reign, in the case of Intaphernes, who had been one of
the partners in the conspiracy. He revenged himself, it is true, for an outrage
committed by this individual, by putting him to death; but before he ventured
to take this step, he thought it necessary to sound the other four, and to ascertain
whether they would make common cause with the offender.
Nevertheless, Darius was the greatest and most powerful king
that ever filled the throne of Persia. Cyrus and Cambyses had conquered nations;
Darius was the true founder of the Persian State. The dominions of his predecessors
were a mass of countries only united by their subjection to the will of a common
ruler, which expressed itself by arbitrary and irregular exactions. Darius first
organized them into an empire, of which every member felt its place and knew its
functions. His realm stretched from the Aegean to the Indus, from the steppes
of Scythia to the Cataracts of the Nile. He divided this vast tract into twenty
satrapies or provinces, and prescribed the tribute which each was to pay to the
royal treasury, and the proportion in which they were to supply provisions for
the army and for the king's household. A highway, on which distances were regularly
marked and spacious buildings placed to receive all who travelled in the king's
name, connected the western coast with the seat of government; and along this
road couriers trained to extraordinary speed transmitted the king's messages.
Darius, in the very beginning of his reign, meditated an expedition
against the Scythians to check their incursions for all time to come by a salutary
display of the power and resources of the Persian Empire. His march, however,
was delayed by a rebellion which broke out at Babylon. The ancient capital of
Assyria had been secretly preparing for revolt during the troubles that followed
the fall of Smerdis, and for nearly two years it defied the power of Darius. At
length the strategy of Zopyrus, a noble Persian, who sacrificed his person and
his power to the interest of his master, is said to have opened its gates to him
(circa B.C. 516). When he was freed from this care he set out for the Scythian
war (B.C. 513 or 508).
The whole military force of the Empire was put in motion, and
the numbers of the army are rated at seven or eight hundred thousand men. This
expedition of Darius into Scythia has given rise to considerable discussion. The
first point involved is to ascertain how far the Persian monarch penetrated into
the country. According to Herodotus, he crossed the Thracian Bosporus, marched
through Thrace, passed the Danube on a bridge of boats, and then pursued a Scythian
division as far as the Tanais. Having crossed this river, he traversed the territories
of the Sauromatae as far as the Budini, whose city he burned. Beyond the Budini
he entered upon a vast desert, and reached the river Oarus, where he remained
some considerable time, erecting forts upon its banks. Finding that the Scythians
had disappeared, he left these works only half finished, turned his course to
the westward, and, advancing by rapid marches, entered Scythia, where he fell
in with two of the divisions of the enemy. Pursuing these, he traversed the territories
of the Melanchlaeni, Androphagi, and Neuri, without being able to bring them to
an engagement. Provisions failing, he was eventually compelled to recross the
Danube, glad to have saved a small portion of his once numerous army. According
to other accounts, Darius only came as far as the sandy tract between the Danube
and the Tyrus, in the present Bessarabia, where, in afterdays, Antigonus was taken
prisoner by the Scythians, with his whole army.
Another expedition undertaken by command of Darius was an invasion
of India, the date, however, being doubtful. In this affair he was more successful,
and conquered a part of the Punjab; not, however, the whole country, as some modern
writers erroneously represent.
Some time after this, Miletus having revolted, and Aristagoras,
its ruler, having solicited aid from the Athenians for the purpose of enabling
it to main tain its independence, they sent twenty ships, to which the Eretrians
added five more, in order to requite a kindness previously received from the Milesians.
Aristagoras, upon the arrival of this fleet, resolved to make an expedition against
Sardis, the residence of the Persian satrap. Accordingly, landing at Ephesus,
the confederates marched inland, took Sardis, and drove the governor into the
citadel. Most of the houses in Sardis were made of reeds, and even those that
were built of brick were roofed with reeds. One of these was set on fire by a
soldier, and immediately the flames spread from house to house and consumed the
whole city. The light of the conflagration showing to the Greeks the great numbers
of their opponents, who were beginning to rally, being constrained by necessity
to defend themselves, as their retreat was cut off by the river Pactolus, the
former retired through fear and regained their ships (B.C. 501). Upon the receipt
of this entelligence, Darius, having called for a bow, put an arrow into it, and
shot it into the air, with these words, "Grant, O God, that I may be able
to revenge myself upon the Athenians." After he had thus spoken, he commanded
one of his attendants thrice every time dinner was set before him, to exclaim,
"Master! remember the Athenians." Mardonius, the king's son-in-law,
was intrusted with the care of the war. After crossing the Hellespont, he marched
down through Thrace, but, in endeavouring to double Mount Athos, he lost 300 vessels
and, it is said, more than 20,000 men (B.C. 492). After this he was attacked in
the night by the Brygi, who killed many of his men and wounded Mardonius himself.
He succeeded, however, in defeating and reducing them to subjection, but his army
was so weakened by these circumstances that he was compelled to return ingloriously
to Asia. Darius, only animated by this loss, sent a more considerable force, under
the command of Datis and Artaphernes, with orders to sack the cities of Athens
and Eretria, and to send to him all the surviving inhabitants in fetters. The
Persians took the isle of Naxos and the city of Eretria in Euboea, but were defeated
with great slaughter by the Athenians and Plataeans under the celebrated Miltiades
at Marathon (B.C. 490). Their fleet was also completely unsuccessful in an attempt
to surprise Athens after the battle. The anger of Darius was doubly inflamed against
Athens by the result at Marathon; and he resolved that the insolent people, who
had invaded his territories, violated the persons of his messengers, and put his
generals to a shameful flight, should feel the whole weight of his arm.
The preparations he now set on foot were on a vast scale and
demanded a longer time. For three years all Asia was kept in a continual stir;
in the fourth, however, Darins was distracted by other causes--by a quarrel between
his two sons respecting the succession to the throne, and by an insurrection in
Egypt. In the following year, before he had ended his preparations against Egypt
and Attica, he died, and Xerxes ascended the throne, in B.C. 485. Darius had reigned
for thirtysix years. His memory was always held in veneration by the Persians
and the other nations comprehended under his sway, whom he governed with much
wisdom and moderation.
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Darius, a member of the Achemenides family, raised to the throne of
the kingdom of Persia by taking part, in 522, in a plot to assassinate Smerdis,
who had assumed the kingship that same year at the death of his brother Cambyses
on his way back from Egypt.
Both Cambyses and Smerdis were sons of Cyrus the Great, the founder
of the Persian Empire. Darius, on the other hand, was a remote cousin of them.
If Cyrus and Cambyses built the Persian empire by conquering a terrritory spanning
from the Ionian coast west to India
east, and from Scythia, Caucasus
and the southern shores of the Black
and Caspian Seas north to
Lybia, Egypt
and the shores of the Persian
Gulf south, it is Darius who organized its administration. He moved his residence
to the Elamite city of Susa,
which became the administrative capital of his empire and where he had a gigantic
palace built for himself. He divided his vast empire into satrapies headed by
Satraps and submitted to an annual tribute, and built roads across the empire
to ease the communications required to administer such a huge territory. He also
directed the building, in his native country of Persia, of another palace at Persepolis
(the “Persian city” by Greek etymology).
But Darius was not merely an administrator and, after curbing several
rebellions in various parts of the empire during his first year in power, he also
continued the policy of expansion of his ancestors, toward the east in India,
as well as toward the west and Europe, starting with Thracia.
In 499, some Ionian Greek cities of the satrapy of Lydia,
under the leadership of Aristagoras of Miletus,
rebelled against the Persians and set fire to Sardis.
It was not until 494, with the naval victory of the Persian fleet at Lade, off
the shores of Miletus, and
the recapture of Miletus,
that the rebellion was completely curbed. Having thus subdued the Ionian Greeks,
Darius set out to conquer the rest of Greece,
which led to the first Persian War. But his troops were stopped by the Athenians
at the battle of Marathon
in 490. It was left to his son Xerxes to lead a second attempt in 480, with no
more success (2nd Persian War).
Darius' reign marks the apogee of the Persian Empire, which started
to crumble by the mere fact of its size after his death, until it was conquered
by Alexander the Great (who entered Susa
in 331).
Bernard Suzanne (page last updated 1998), ed.
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Artystone (Artustone), a daughter of the great Cyrus, was married to Dareius Hystaspis, who loved her more than any other of his wives, and had a golden statue made of her. She had by Dareius a son, Arsames or Arsanes. (Herod. iii. 88, vii. 69.)
Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, and the wife successively of her brother Cambyses,
of Smerdis the Magian, and of Dareius Hystaspis, over whom she possessed great
influence. Excited by the description of Greece given her by Democedes, she is
said to have urged Dareius to the invasion of that country. She bore Dareius four
sons, Xerxes, Masistes, Achaemenes, and Hystaspes (Herod. iii. 68, 88, 133, 134,
vii. 2, 3, 64, 82, 97; Aeschyl. Persac.) According to a tale related by Aspasius
(ad Aristot. Ethic. p. 124), Atossa was killed and eaten by her son Xerxes in
a fit of distraction.
Hellanicus related (Tatian, c. Graec. init.; Clem. Alex. Strom. i.), that Atossa
was the first who wrote epistles. This statement is received by Bentley and is
employed by him as one argument against the authenticity of the pretended epistles
of Phalaris.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
King of Persia, father of Artaxerxes, crosses to Europe, invades Greece, overthrows Lacedaemonians at Thermopylae, burns cities of Phocis, captures Athens, his fleet defeated by Themistocles at Salamis, Xerxes a spectator of the battle of Salamis, his council of war after the battle, his fear of the Greeks, story of his danger of shipwreck in his return.
Xerxes. A king of Persia from B.C. 485 to 465. He was the son
of Darius Hystaspis and Atossa. By the influence of Atossa, who was a daughter
of Cyrus, Artabazanes, the son of Darius by his former wife, was set aside from
the succession and Xerxes made him heir. Xerxes succeeded to the throne in B.C.
485, Darius having died in the midst of his warlike preparations against Greece,
which had been delayed by a revolt of the Egyptians. Bred up in the luxury of
the Persian court, among slaves and women, a mark for their flattery and intrigues,
Xerxes had none of the experience which Darius had gained in early life. He was
probably inferior to his father in ability; but the difference between them in
fortune and education seems to have left more traces in their history than any
disparity of nature. Ambition was not the prominent feature in the character of
Xerxes; and, had he followed his unbiassed inclination, he would, perhaps, have
been content to turn the preparations of Darius against the revolted Egyptians,
and have abandoned the expedition against Greece, to which he was not urged on
by any personal motives. But he was surrounded by men who were led by various
passions and interests to desire that he should prosecute his father's plans of
conquest and revenge. Mardonius was eager to renew an enterprise in which he had
been foiled through unavoidable mischance, and not through his own incapacity.
He had a reputation to retrieve, and might look forward to the possession of a
great European satrapy, at such a distance from the court as would make him almost
an absolute sovereign. He was warmly seconded by those Greeks who had been drawn
to Susa by the report of the approaching invasion of their country, and who wanted
foreign aid to accomplish their designs. The Thessalian house of the Aleuadae,
either because they thought their power insecure, or expected to increase it by
becoming vassals of the Persian king, sent their emissaries to invite him to the
conquest of Greece. The exiled Pisistratidae had no other chance for the recovery
of Athens. They had brought a man named Onomacritus with them to court, who was
one of the first among the Greeks to practise the art of forging prophecies and
oracles. While their family ruled at Athens he had been detected in fabricating
verses, which he had interpolated in a work ascribed to the ancient seer Musaeus,
and Hipparchus, previously his patron, had banished him from the city. But the
exiles saw the use they might make of his talents, and had taken him into their
service. They now recommended him to Xerxes as a man who possessed a treasure
of prophetical knowledge, and the young king listened with unsuspecting confidence
to the encouraging predictions which Onomacritus drew from his inexhaustible stores.
These various devices at length prevailed. The imagination of Xerxes was inflamed
with the prospect of rivalling or surpassing the achievements of his glorious
predecessors, and of extending his dominion to the ends of the earth. He resolved
on the invasion of Greece. First, however, in the second year of his reign, he
led an army against Egypt, and brought it again under the Persian yoke, which
was purposely made more burdensome and galling than before. He intrusted this
conquest to the care of his brother Achaemenes, and then returned to Persia, and
bent all his thoughts towards the West. Only one of his counsellors, his uncle
Artabanus, is said to have been wise and honest enough to endeavour to divert
him from the enterprise, and especially to dissuade him from risking his own person
in it. If any reliance could be placed on the story told by Herodotus about the
deliberations held on this question in the Persian cabinet, we might suspect that
the influence and arts of the Magian priesthood, which we find in this reign rising
in credit, had been set at work by the adversaries of Artabanus to counteract
his influence over the mind of his nephew, and to confirm Xerxes in his martial
mood. The vast preparations were continued with redoubled activity, to raise an
armament worthy of the presence of the king. His aim was not merely to collect
a force sufficient to insure the success of his undertaking and to scare away
all opposition, but also, and perhaps principally, to set his whole enormous power
in magnificent array, that he might enjoy the sight of it himself, and display
it to the admiration of the world.
For four years longer Asia was still kept in restless turmoil;
no less time was needed to provide the means of subsistence for the countless
host that was about to be poured out upon Europe. Besides the stores that were
to be carried in the fleet which was to accompany the army, it was necessary that
magazines should be formed along the whole line of march as far as the confines
of Greece. But, in addition to these prudent precautions, two works were begun,
which scarcely served any other purpose than that of showing the power and majesty
of Xerxes, and proving that he would suffer no obstacles to bar his progress.
It would have been easy to transport his troops in ships over the Hellespont;
but it was better suited to the dignity of the monarch, who was about to unite
both continents under his dominion, to join them by a bridge laid upon the subject
channel, and to march across as along a royal road. The storm that had destroyed
the fleet which accompanied Mardonius in his unfortunate expedition had made the
coast of Athos terrible to the Persians. The simplest mode of avoiding this formidable
cape would have been to draw their ships over the narrow, low neck that connects
the mountain with the mainland. But Xerxes preferred to leave a monument of his
greatness and of his enterprise in a canal cut through the isthmus, a distance
of about a mile and a half. This work employed a multitude of men for three years.
The construction of the two bridges which were thrown across the Hellespont was
intrusted to the skill of the Phoenicians and Egyptians.
When these preparations were drawing to a close, Xerxes set
forth for Sardis, where he designed to spend the following winter, and to receive
the reinforcements which he had appointed there to join the main army (B.C. 481).
During his stay at Sardis the Phoenician and Egyptian engineers completed their
bridges on the Hellespont; but the work was not strong enough to resist a violent
storm, which broke it to pieces soon after it was finished. How far this disaster
was owing to defects in its construction, which might have been avoided by ordinary
skill and foresight, does not appear; but Xerxes is said to have been so much
angered by the accident that he put the architects to death. Such a burst of passion
would be credible enough in itself, and is only rendered doubtful by the extravagant
fables that gained credit on the subject among the Greeks, who, in the bridging
of the sacred Hellespont, saw the beginning of a long career of audacious impiety,
and gradually transformed the fastenings with which the passage was finally secured
into fetters and scourges with which the barbarian, in his madness, had thought
to chastise the aggression of the rebellious stream. The construction of new bridges
was committed to other engineers, perhaps to Greeks; but their names have not
come down, like that of Mandrocles. By their skill two broad causeways were made
to stretch from the neighbourhood of Abydus to a projecting point on the opposite
shore of the Chersonesus, resting each on a row of ships, which were stayed against
the strong current that bore upon them from the north by anchors and by cables
fastened to both sides of the channel. The length was not far short of a mile.
When all was in readiness the mighty armament was set in motion.
Early in the spring (B.C. 480) Xerxes began his march from
Sardis, in all the pomp of a royal progress. The baggage led the way: it was followed
by the first division of the armed crowd that had been brought together from the
tributary nations; a motley throng, including many strange varieties of complexion,
dress, and language, commanded by Thessalian generals, but retaining each tribe
its national armour and mode of fighting. An interval was then left, after which
came 1000 picked Persian cavalry, followed by an equal number of spearsmen, whose
lances, which they carried with the points turned downward, ended in knobs of
gold. Next, ten sacred horses, of the Nisaean breed, were led in gorgeous trappings,
preceding the chariot of the Persian Zeus, drawn by eight white horses, the driver
following on foot. Then came the royal chariot, also drawn by Nisaean horses,
in which Xerxes sat in state; but from time to time he exchanged it for an easier
carriage, which sheltered him from the sun and changes of the weather. He was
followed by two bands of horse and foot, like those which went immediately before
him, and by a body of 10,000 Persian infantry, the flower of the whole army, who
were called the Immortals, because their number was kept constantly full. A thousand
of them, who occupied the outer ranks, bore lances tipped with gold; those of
the rest were similarly ornamented with silver. They were followed by an equal
number of Persian cavalry. The remainder of the host brought up the rear. In this
order the army reached Abydus, and Xerxes, from a lofty throne, surveyed the crowded
sides and bosom of the Hellespont, and a sort of mimic sea-fight; a spectacle
which Herodotus might well think sufficient to have moved him with a touch of
human sympathy. The passage did not begin before the king had prayed to the rising
sun, and had tried to propitiate the Hellespont itself by libations, and by casting
into it golden vessels and a sword. After the bridges had been strewed with myrtle
and purified with incense, the ten thousand Immortals, crowned with chaplets,
led the way. The army crossed by one bridge, the baggage by the other; yet the
living tide flowed without intermission for seven days and seven nights before
the last man, as Herodotus heard, the king himself, the tallest and most majestic
person in the host, had arrived on the European shore. In the great plain of Doriscus,
on the banks of Hebrus, an attempt was made to number the land force. A space
was enclosed large enough to contain 10,000 men; into this the myriads were successively
poured and discharged, till the whole mass had been rudely counted. They were
then drawn up according to their natural divisions, and Xerxes rode in his chariot
along the ranks, while the royal scribes recorded the names, and most likely the
equipments, of the different races. The real military strength of the armament
was almost lost among the undisciplined hordes who could only impede its movements
as well as consume its stores. The Persians were the core of both the land and
the sea force; none of the other troops are said to have equalled them in discipline
or in courage; and the 24,000 men who guarded the royal person were the flower
of the whole nation. Yet these were much better fitted for show than for action;
and of the rest, we hear that they were distinguished from the mass of the army,
not only by their superior order and valour, but also by the abundance of gold
they displayed, by the train of carriages, women, and servants that followed them,
and by the provisions set apart for their use.
Marching through Thrace and Macedonia, Xerxes met no resistance
until he reached the Pass of Thermopylae between Mount Oeta and the sea. This
the Spartan king Leonidas, with about 7000 men, had occupied. For two days they
beat back the huge masses of Persians who assailed the pass, but whose very numbers
proved an impediment to their success. Even the Immortals were unsuccessful, and
Xerxes, who was watching the battle, leaped thrice from his throne in his rage.
Presently, however, by the treachery of a Malian named Ephialtes, a body of Persian
troops was led by a secret path to the rear of the Greeks. Leonidas at once dismissed
all his men except his immediate guard of 300 Spartans and a body of Thespians,
and with these advanced into the plain and perished after an heroic struggle (B.C.
480). Meantime a storm had wrecked 400 of the Persian ships of war, and an indecisive
naval battle had been fought off Artemisium. Xerxes occupied Athens, pillaged
the Acropolis, but suffered a great naval defeat at Salamis, where 200 of his
ships were sunk.
After this disastrous defeat at Salamis, Xerxes felt desirous
of escaping from a state of things which was now becoming troublesome and dangerous,
and Mardonius saw that he would gladly listen to any proposal that would facilitate
his return. He was aware that, without a fleet, the war might probably be tedious,
in which case the immense bulk of the present army would be only an encumbrance,
from the difficulty of subsisting it. Besides, the ambition of Mardonius was flattered
with the idea of his becoming the conqueror of Greece, while he feared that, if
he now returned, he might be made answerable for the ill success of the expedition
which he had advised. He therefore proposed to Xerxes to return into Asia with
the body of the army, leaving himself, with 300,000 of the best troops, to complete
the conquest of Greece. Xerxes assented, and, the army having retired into Boeotia,
Mardonius made his selection, and then, accompanying the king into Thessaly, there
parted from him, leaving him to pursue his march towards Asia, while he himself
prepared to winter in Thessaly and Macedonia.
Widely different from the appearance of the glittering host,
which a few months before had advanced over the plains of Macedonia and Thrace
to the conquest of Greece, was the aspect of the crowd which was now hurrying
back along the same road. The splendour, the pomp, the luxury, the waste, were
exchanged for disaster and distress, want and disease. The magazines had been
emptied by the careless profusion or peculation of those who had the charge of
them; the granaries of the countries traversed by the retreating multitude were
unable to supply its demands; ordinary food was often not to be found; and it
was compelled to draw a scanty and unwholesome nourishment from the herbage of
the plains, the bark and leaves of the trees. Sickness soon began to spread its
ravages among them, and Xerxes was compelled to consign numbers to the care of
the cities that lay on his road, already impoverished by the cost of his first
visit, in the hope that they would tend their guests, and would not sell them
into slavery if they recovered. The passage of the Strymon is said to have been
peculiarly disastrous. The river had been frozen in the night hard enough to bear
those who arrived first. But the ice suddenly gave way under the heat of the morning
sun, and numbers perished in the waters. It is a little surprising that Herodotus,
when he is describing the miseries of the retreat, does not notice this disaster,
which is so prominent in the narrative of the Persian messenger in Aeschylus.
There can, however, be no doubt as to the fact; and perhaps it may furnish a useful
warning not to lay too much stress on the silence of Herodotus, as a ground for
rejecting even important and interesting facts which are only mentioned by later
writers, though such as he must have heard of, and might have been expected to
relate. It seems possible that the story he mentions of Xerxes embarking at Eion
may have arisen out of the tragical passage of the Strymon.
In forty-five days after he had left Mardonius in Thessaly,
he reached the Hellespont; the bridges had been broken up by foul weather, but
the fleet was there to carry the army over to Abydus. Here it rested from its
fatigues, and found plentiful quarters; but intemperate indulgence rendered the
sudden change from scarcity to abundance almost as deadly as the previous famine.
The remnant that Xerxes brought back to Sardis was a wreck, a fragment, rather
than a part of his huge host.
The history of Xerxes, after the termination of his Grecian
campaign, may be comprised in a brief compass. He gave himself up to a life of
dissolute pleasure, and was slain by Artabanus, a captain of the royal guards,
B.C. 464.
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Xerxes became king of Persia at the death of his father Darius the
Great in 485, at a time when his father was preparing a new expedition against
Greece and had to face an
uprising in Egypt. According
to Herodotus, the transition was peaceful this time. Because he was about to leave
for Egypt, Darius, following
the law of his country had been requested to name his successor and to choose
between the elder of his sons, born from a first wife before he was in power,
and the first of his sons born after he became king, from a second wife, Atossa,
Cyrus' daughter, who had earlier been successively wed to her brothers Cambyses
and Smerdis, and which he had married soon after reaching power in order to confirm
his legitimacy. Atossa was said to have much power on Darius and he chose her
son Xerxes for successor.
After quelling the revolt of Egypt,
Xerxes finally decided to pursue the project of his father to subdue Greece,
but made lengthy preparations for that. Among other things, remembering what had
happened to Mardonius' expedition a few years earlier (his fleet had been destroyed
by a tempest in 492 while trying to round Mount
Athos), he ordered a channel to be opened for his fleet north of Mount
Athos in Chalcidice.
He also had two boat bridges built over the Hellespont
near Abydus for his troop
to cross the straits.
The expedition was ready to move in the spring of 480 and Xerxes himself
took the lead. Herodotus gives us a colorful description of the Persian army that
he evaluates at close to two million men and about twelve hundred ships. Modern
historians find these figures irrealistic, if only for logistical reasons, and
suppose the army was at most two hundred thousand men and the fleet no more than
a thousand ships, but this still makes an impressive body for the time. Xerxes'
expedition moved by land and sea through Thracia,
the fleet following the army along the coast. It didn't meet resistance until
it reached Thessalia, where
the Persian army defeated the Spartans and their allies at the pass of Thermopylae
while, on sea, neither the Persian nor the Athenian fleet could win the decision
in the battle that took place near Cape Artemisium,
along the northern coast of the island of Euboea.
Because of Themistocles' decision to evacuate Athens,
Xerxes managed to take the city and set fire to the temples of the Acropolis,
but his fleet was soon after destroyed by the Athenian fleet of Themistocles at
the battle of Salamis. After
this defeat, Xerxes returned to Asia via the Hellespont,
leaving part of his army in Greece
under the command of Mardonius. But the following year, after having taken Athens
a second time, the Persian army was defeated, in September of 479, at Plataea,
near Thebes in Boeotia,
in a battle that lasted 13 days, in which Mardonius was killed while, at about
the same time, what remained of the Persian fleet was destroyed by a Greek fleet
under the command of the Spartan general Leutychides off Cape
Mycale, a promontory of the Ionian coast, north of Miletus,
facing the island of Samos.
This was not the end of the war between Persia and Greece,
but it was the end of the incursions of the Persian army on mainland Greece.
And without a fleet, Persia had to abandon control of the sea to Athens.
Xerxes died in 465, assassinated probably upon order by one of his
sons, Artaxerxes, who succeeded him.
Bernard Suzanne (page last updated 1998), ed.
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Amastris or Amestris. The wife of Xerxes, and mother of Artaxerxes I. According
to Herocotus, she was the daughter of Otanes, according to Ctesias, who calls
her Amistris, of Onophas. She was cruel and vindictive. On one occasion she sacrificed
fourteen youths of the noblest Persian families to the god said to dwell beneath
the earth. The tale of her horrible mutilation of the wife of Masistes, recorded
by Herodotus, gives us a lively picture of the intrigues and cruelties of a Persian
harem. She survived Xerxes (Herod. vii. 61, 114, ix. 108-113; Ctesias, Persic.
c. 20. 30; Plut. Alcib).
Artaxerxes I., surnamed Longimanus (Makrocheir) from the circumstance of his right hand being longer than his left (Plut. Artax. 1), was king of Persia for forty years, from B. C. 465 to B. C. 425 (Diod. xi. 69, xii. 64; Thuc. iv. 50). He ascended the throne after his father, Xerxes I., had been murdered by Artabanus, and after he himself had put to death his brother Darcius on the instigation of Artabanus. His reign is characterized by Plutarch and Diodorus (xi. 71) as wise and temperate, but it was disturbed by several dangerous insurrections of the satraps. At the time of his accession his only surviving brother Hystaspes was satrap of Bactria, and Artaxerxes had scarcely punished Artabanus and his associates, before Hystaspes attempted to make himself independent. After putting down this insurrection and deposing several other satraps who refused to obey his commands, Artaxerxes turned his attention to the regulation of the financial and military affairs of his empire. These beneficent exertions were interrupted in B. C. 462, or, according to Clinton, in B. C. 460, by the insurrection of the Egyptians under Inarus, who was supported by the Athenians. The first army which Artaxerxes sent under his brother Achaemenes was defeated, and Achaemenes slain. After a useless attempt to incite the Spartans to a war against Athens, Artaxerxes sent a second army under Artabazus and Megabyzus into Egypt. A remnant of the forces of Achaemenes, who were still besieged in a place called the white castle (leukon teichos), near Memphis, was relieved, and the fleet of the Athenians destroyed by the Athenians themselves, who afterwards quitted Egypt. Inarus, too, was defeated in B. C. 456 or 455, but Amyrtaeus, another chief of the insurgents, maintained himself in the marshes of lower Egypt (Thuc. i. 104, 109; Diod. xi. 71, 74, 77). In B. C. 449, Cimon sent 60 of his fleet of 300 ships to the assistance of Amyrtaeus, and with the rest endeavoured to wrest Cyprus from the Persians. Notwithstanding the death of Cimon, the Athenians gained two victories, one by land and the other by sea, in the neigbourhood of Salamis in Cyprus. After this defeat Artaxerxes is said to have commanded his generals to conclude peace with the Greeks on any terms. The conditions on which this peace is said to have been concluded are as follows: -that the Greek towns in Asia should be restored to perfect independence; that no Persian satrap should approach the western coast of Asia nearer than the distance of a three days' journey; and that no Persian ship should sail through the Bosporus, or pass the town of Phaselis or the Chelidonian islands on the coast of Lycia (Diod. xii. 4). Thucydides knows nothing of this humiliating peace, and it seems in fact to have been fabricated in the age subsequent to the events to which it relates. Soon after these occurrences Megabyzus revolted in Syria, because Artaxerxes had put Inarus to death contrary to the promise which Megabyzus had made to Inarus, when he made him his prisoner. Subsequently, however, Megabyzus became reconciled to his master. Artaxerxes appears to have passed the latter years of his reign in peace. On his death in B. C. 425, he was succeeded by his son Xerxes II.
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Dareius II., was named Ochus (Ochos) before his accession, and was then surnamed Nothus (Nothos),
from his being one of the seventeen bastard sons of Artaxerxes I. Longimanus,
who made him satrap of Hyrcania, and gave him in marriage his sister Parysatis,
the daughter of Xerxes I. When Sogdianus, another bastard son of Artaxerxes, had
murdered the king, Xerxes II., he called Ochus to his court. Ochus promised to
go. but delayed till he had collected a large army, and then he declared war against
Sogdianus. Arbarius, the commander of the royal cavalry, Arxames, the satrap of
Egypt, and Artoxares, the satrap of Armenia, deserted to him, and placed the diadem
upon his lead, according to Ctesias, against his will, B. C. 424-423. Sogdianus
gave himself up to Ochus, and was put to death. Ochus now assumed the name of
Dareius. He was completely under the power of three eunuchs, Artoxares, Artibarxanes,
and Athoiis, and of his wife, Parysatis, by whom, before his accession, he had
two children, a daughter Amistris, and a son Arsaces, who succeeded him by the
name of Artaxerxes (II. Mnemon). After his accession, Parysatis bore him a son,
Cyrus the Younger, and a daughter, Artosta. He had other children, all of whom
died early, except his fourth son, Oxendras (Ctes. 49). Plutarch, quoting Ctesias
for his authority, calls the four sons of Dareius and Parysatis, Arsicas (afterwards
Artaxerxes), Cyrus, Ostanes, and Oxathres (Artax. I).
The weakness of Dareius's government was soon shewn by repeated insurrections.
First his brother Arsites revolted, with Artyphius, the son of Megabyzus. Their
Greek mercenaries, in whom their strengh consisted, were bought off by the royal
general Artasyras, and they themselves were taken prisoners by treachery, and,
at the instigation of Parysatis, they were put to death by fire. The rebellion
of Pisuthnes had precisely a similar result. (B. C. 414). A plot of Artoxares,
the chief eunuch, was crushed in the bud; but a more formidable and lasting danger
soon shewed itself in the rebellion of Egypt under Amyrtaeus, who in B. C. 414
expelled the Persians front Egypt, and reigned there six years, and at whose death
(B. C. 408) Dareius was obliged to recognise his son Pausiris as his successor;
for at the same time the Medes revolted: they were, however, soon subdued. Dareius
died in the year 405-404 B. C., and was succeeded by his eldest son Artaxerxes
II. The length of his reign is differently stated: it was really 19 years. Respecting
his relations to Greece, see Cyrus, Lysander, Tissaphernes. (Ctes. Pers. 44-56;
Diod. xii. 71, xiii. 36, 70, 108; Xen. Hell. i. 2.19, ii. 1.8, Anab. i. l.1; Nehem.
xii. 22)
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Artaxerxes. Surnamed Mnemon, from his good memory, succeeded his father, Darius II., and reigned B.C. 405-359. Respecting the war between him and his brother Cyrus, see Cyrus. Tissaphernes was appointed satrap of Western Asia in the place of Cyrus, and was actively engaged in wars with the Greeks. Artaxerxes had to carry on frequent wars with tributary princes and satraps, who endeavoured to make themselves independent. Thus he maintained a long struggle against Evagoras of Cyprus, from 385 to 376; and his attempts to recover Egypt were unsuccessful. Towards the end of his reign he put to death his eldest son Darius, who had formed a plot to assassinate him. His last days were still further embittered by the unnatural conduct of his son Ochus, who caused the destruction of two of his brothers, in order to secure the succession for himself. Artaxerxes was succeeded by Ochus, who ascended the throne under the name of Artaxerxes III.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Artaxerxes II., surnamed Mnemon from his good memory, succeeded his father, Dareius II., as king
of Persia, and reigned from B. C. 405 to B. C. 362 (Diod. xiii. 104, 108). Cyrus,
the younger brother of Artaxerxes, was the favourite of his mother Parysatis,
and she endeavoured to obtain the throne for him; but Dareius gave to Cyrus only
the satrapy of western Asia, and Artaxerxes on his accession confirmed his brother
in his satrapy, on the request of Parysatis, although he suspected him (Xenoph.
Anab. i. 1.3; Plut. Artax. 3). Cyrus, however, revolted against his brother, and
supported by Greek mercenaries invaded Upper Asia. In the neighbourhood of Cunaxa,
Cyrus gained a great victory over the far more numerous army of his brother, but
was slain in the battle. Tissaphernes was appointed satrap of western Asia in
the place of Cyrus (Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 1.3), and was actively engaged in wars
with the Greeks.
Notwithstanding these perpetual conflicts with the Greeks, the Persian
empire maintained itself by the disunion among the Greeks themselves, which was
fomented and kept up by Persian money. The peace of Antalcidas, in B. C. 388,
gave the Persians even greater power and influence than they had possessed before.
But the empire was suffering from internal disturbances and confusion: Artaxerxes
himself was a weak man; his mother, Parysatis, carried on her horrors at the court
with truly oriental cruelty; and slaves and eunuchs wielded the reins of government.
Tributary countries and satraps endeavoured, under such circumstances, to make
themselves independent, and the exertions which it was necessary to make against
the rebels exhausted the strength of the empire. Artaxerxes thus had to maintain
a long struggle against Evagoras of Cyprus, from B. C. 385 to B. C. 376, and yet
all he could gain was to confine Evagoras to his original possession, the town
of Salamis and its vicinity, and to compel him to pay a moderate tribute (Diod.
xv. 9). At the same time he had to carry on war against the Cardusians, on the
shores of the Caspian sea; and after his numerous army was with great difficulty
saved from total destruction, he concluded a peace without gaining any advantages
(Diod. xv. 9, 10; Plut. Artax. 24). His attempts to recover Egypt were unsuccessful,
and the general insurrection of his subjects in Asia Minor failed only through
treachery among the insurgents themselves (Diod. xv. 90, &c.). When Artaxerxes
felt that the end of his life was approaching, he endeavoured to prevent all quarrels
respecting the succession by fixing upon Dareius, the eldest of his three legitimate
sons (by his concubines he had no less than 115 sons, Justin. x. 1), as his successor,
and granted to him all the outward distinctions of royalty. But Dareius soon after
fell out with his father about Aspasia, and formed a plot to assassinate him.
But the plot was betrayed, and Dareius was put to death with many of his accomplices
(Plut. Artax. 26). Of the two remaining legitimate sons, Ochus and Ariaspes, the
former now hoped to succeed his father; but as Ariaspes was beloved by the Persians
on account of his gentle and amiable character, and as the aged Artaxerxes appeared
to prefer Arsames, the son of one of his concubines, Ochus contrived by intrigues
to drive Ariaspes to despair and suicide, and had Arsames assassinated. Artaxerxes
died of grief at these horrors in B. C. 362, and was succeeded by Ochus, who ascended
the throne under the name of Artaxerxes III. (Plut. Life of Artaxerxes; Diod.
xv. 93)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Amastris. A daughter of Artaxerxes II., whom her father promised in marriage to Teribazus. Instead of fulfilling his promise, he married her himself. (Plut. Artax. c. 27)
Cyrus the Younger, the second of the four sons of Dareius Nothus, king of Persia, and of Parysatis, was appointed by his father commander (karanos or strategos) of the maritime parts of Asia Minor,and satrap of Lydia, Phrygia, and Cappadocia (B. C. 407). He carried with him a large sum of money to aid the Lacedaemonians in the Peloponnesian war, and by the address of Lysander he was induced to help them even more than his father had commissioned him to do. The bluntness of Callicratidas caused him to withdraw his aid, but on the return of Lysander to the command it was renewed with the greatest liberality. There is no doubt that Cyrus was already meditating the attempt to succeed his father on the throne of Persia, and that he sought through Lysander to provide for aid from Sparta. Cyrus, indeed, betrayed his ambitious spirit, by putting to death two Persians of the blood royal, for not observing in his presence a usage which was only due to the king. It was probably for this reason, and not only on account of his own ill health, that Dareius summoned Cyrus to his presence (B. C. 405). Before leaving Sardis, Cyrus sent for Lysander and assigned to him his revenues for the prosecution of the war. He then went to his father, attended by a body of 500 Greek mercenaries, and taking with him Tissaphernes, nominally as a mark of honour, but really for fear of what he might do in his absence. He arrived in Media just in time to witness his father's death and the accession of his elder brother, Artaxerxes Mnemon (B. C. 404), though his mother, Parysatis, whose favourite son Cyrus was, had endeavored to persuade Dareius to appoint him as his successor, on the ground that he had been born after, but his brother Artaxerxes before, the accession of Dareius. This attempt, of course, excited the jealousy of Artaxerxes, which was further enflamed by information from Tissaphernes, that Cyrus was plotting against his life. Artaxerxes, therefore, arrested his brother and condemned him to death; but, on the intercession of Parysatis, he spared his life and sent him back to his satrapy. Cyrus now gave himself up to the design of dethroning his brother. By his affability and by presents, he endeavoured to corrupt those of the Persians who past between the court of Artaxerxes and his own; but he relied chiefly on a force of Greek mercenaries, which he raised on the pretext that he was in danger from the hostility of Tissaphernes. When his preparations were complete, he commenced his expedition against Babylon, giving out, however, even to his own soldiers, that he was only marching against the robbers of Pisidia. When the Greeks learnt his real purpose, they found that they were too far committed to him to draw back. He set out from Sardis in the spring of B. C. 401, and, having marched through Phrygia and Cilicia, entered Syria through the celebrated passes near Issus, crossed the Euphrates at Thapsacus, and marched down the river to the plain of Cunaxa, 500 stadia from Babylon. Artaxerxes had been informed by Tissaphernes of his designs, and was prepared to meet him. The numbers of the two armies are variously stated. Artaxerxes had from 400,000 to a million of men; Cyrus had about 100,000 Asiatics and 13,000 Greeks. The battle was at first altogether in favour of Cyrus. His Greek troops on the right routed the Asiatics who were opposed to them; and he himself pressed forward in the centre against his brother, and had even wounded him, when he was killed by one of the king's body-guard. Artaxerxes caused his head and right hand to be struck off, and sought to have it believed that Cyrus had fallen by his hand. Parysatis took a cruel revenge on the suspected slayers and mutilators of her son. The details of the expedition of Cyrus and of the events which followed his death may be read in Xenophon's Anabasis. This attempt of an ambitious young prince to usurp his brother's throne led ultimately to the greatest results, for by it the path into the centre of the Persian empire was laid open to the Greeks, and the way was prepared for the conquests of Alexander. The character of Cyrus is drawn by Xenophon in the brightest colours. It is enough to say that his ambition was gilded by all those brilliant qualities which win men's hearts (Xenophon, Hellen. i. 4, 5, ii. 1, iii. 1, Anab. i., Cyrop. viii. 8.3, Oecon. iv. 16, 18, 21; Ctesias, Persica, i. 44, 49, Fr. li., lii., liii., liv., lvii.; Isocr. Panath. 39; Plut. Lys. 4, 9; Artax. 3, 6, 13-17; Diod. xiii. 70, 104, xiv. 6, 11, 12, 19, 20, 22).
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Artaxerxes, also called Ochus, succeeded his father as king of Persia in B. C.
362, and reigned till B. C. 339. In order to secure the throne which he had gained
by treason and murder, he began his reign with a merciless extirpation of the
members of his family. He himself was a cowardly and reckless despot; and the
great advantages which the Persian arms gained during his reign, were owing only
to his Greek generals and mercenaries, and to traitors, or want of skill on the
part of his enemies. These advantages consisted in the conquest of the revolted
satrap Artabazus, and in the reduction of Phoenicia, of several revolted towns
in Cyprus, and of Egypt, B. C. 350 (Diod. xvi. 40-52). From this time Artaxerxes
withdrew to his seraglio, where he passed his days in sensual pleasures. The reins
of the government were entirely in the hands of the eunuch Bagoas, and of Mentor,
the Rhodian, and the existence of the king himself was felt by his subjects only
in the bloody commands which he issued. At last he was killed by poison by Bagoas,
and was succeeded by his youngest son, Arses (Diod. xvii. 5; Plut. De Is. et Os.
11; Aelian, V. H. iv. 8, vi. 8, H. A. x. 28; Justin, x. 3)
Arses, Narses or Oarses, the youngest son of king Artaxerxes III. (Ochus). After the eunuch Bagoas had poisoned Artaxerxes, he raised Arses to the throne, B. C. 339; and that he might have the young king completely under his power, he caused the king's brothers to be put to death; but one of them, Bisthanes, appears to have escaped their fate (Arrian, Anab. iii. 19). Arses, however, could but ill brook the indignities committed against his own family, and the bondage in which he himself was kept; and as soon as Bagoas perceived that the king was disposed to take vengeance, he had him and his children too put to death, in the third year of his reign. The royal house appears to have been thus destroyed with the exception of the above-mentioned Bisthanes, and Bagoas raised Dareius Codomannus to the throne (Diod. xvii. 5; Strab. xv.; Plut. de Fort. Alex. ii. 3, Artax. 1; Arrian, Anab. ii. 14; Ctesias, Pers.).
Dareius III., named Codomannus before his accession, was the son of Arsames, the son of Ostanes, a brother of Artaxerxes II. His mother Sisygambis was the daughter of Artaxerxes. In a war against the Cadusii he killed a powerful warrior in single combat, and was rewarded by the king, Artaxerxes Ochus, with the satrapy of Armenia. He was raised to the throne by Bagoas, after the murder of Arses (B. C. 336), in which some accused him of a share; but this accusation is inconsistent with the universal testimony borne to the mildness and excellence of his character, by which he was as much distinguished as by his personal beauty. He rid himself of Bagoas, whom he punished for all his crimes by compelling him to drink poison. Codomannus had not, however, the qualities nor the power to oppose the impetuous career of the Macedonian king. The Persian empire ended with his death, in B. C. 330. (Diod. xvii. 5, &c.; Justin, x. 3)
Son of Darius, an officer in Xerxes' army, a Persian, father of Mardonius.
MIDIA (Ancient country) IRAN
Heracon, (Herakon), an officer in the service of Alexander, who, together with Cleander and Sitalces, succeeded to the command of the army in Media, which had previously been under the orders of Parmenion, when the latter was put to death by order of Alexander, B. C. 330. In common with many others of the Macedonian governors, he permitted himself many excesses during the absence of Alexander in the remote provinces of the East: among others he plundered a temple at Susa, noted for its wealth, on which charge he was put to death by Alexander after his return from India, B. C. 325. (Arrian, Anab. vi. 27.8, 12; Curt. x. 1.)
Hippostratus, a general under Antigonus, who was appointed by him to command the army which he left in Media, after the defeat and death of Eumenes, B. C. 216. He was soon after attacked by Meleager, and others of the revolted adherents of Pithon, but repulsed them, and suppressed the insurrection. We know not at what period he was succeeded by Nicanor, whom we find commanding in Media not long afterwards. (Diod. xix. 46, 47, 92.)
SUSA (Ancient city) IRAN
Diogenes, praefect of Susiana in the reign of Antiochus the Great. During the rebellion of Molo he defended the arx of Susa while the city itself was taken by the rebel. Molo ceased pushing his conquest further, and leaving a besieging corps behind him, he returned to Seleuceia. When the insurrection was at length put down by Antiochus, Diogenes obtained the command of the military forces [p. 1020] stationed in Media. In B. C. 210, when Antiochus pursued Arsaces II. into Hyrcania, Diogenes was appointed commander of the vanguard, and distinguished himself during the march. (Polyb. v. 46, 48, 54, x. 29, 30.)
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