Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/605

 EMPIRE.] PERSIA 577 the enterprise of their friend, but without openly breaking r ie en with the king. Cyrus advanced boldly, confident in the r ic military superiority of the Greeks ; but he had some trouble i: Ul in carrying them with him as far as Syria and Babylonia, for they were not engaged for so distant a goal. He made his way without difficulty into the heart of the empire. Neither the passes of the Taurus leading from Cappadocia into Cilicia nor those of the Amanus from Cilicia into Syria were blocked. The vassal-prince of Cilicia, Syennesis, put a good face on a bad business and let him through. Even the line of defence between Babylonia and the Mesopota- mian desert was unoccupied. At Cunaxa, 500 stadia from Babylon, 1 they came upon the mighty royalist army. The Greeks carried everything before them ; the king proved a miserable coward and fled. But, in fighting the Asiatic rabble, Clearchus seems to have adhered too pedantically to the cautious Spartan tactics, and not to have dashed with sufficient rapidity at the enemy s centre. Cyrus, however, rushed foolhardily into the melee and there fell. Even if we deduct much from Xenophon s idealistic portrait, we must still admit that Cyrus was a very able and in many respects honourable man, far worthier of the throne than his brother. From his grim mother he probably inherited his spirit and energy. Certainly none of the kings after Darius I. can be compared with him, except perhaps Artaxerxes III. But for Greece, as Grote shows, it was very fortunate that at that time the kingdom of Persia did not fall to a man whose most ardent endeavour it would have been to bring the Greeks into subjugation to himself, and who had learned in the school of Lysander and elsewhere the best means of accomplishing that object. Cyrus s Greeks were an object of terror to the king s troops. All the deception and crimes employed against them had their source in cowardice. The king s hosts were reinforced by the army of Cyrus, which after their leader s fall passed over to the enemy ; but all these Asiatics trembled before the dauntless Greek mercenaries, comparatively few in number as they were and strangers to the country. It is characteristic of the state of the empire that Tissaphernes allowed the Greeks to plunder the villages which were the special property of Parysatis ; he probably thought that with the death of her favourite son her power was broken, while he himself had succeeded in appearing as the deliverer of the empire. After elect ing fresh leaders in place of those who were foully assas sinated, the &quot;ten thousand&quot; made themselves a way through wild mountains and wild peoples ; they had to endure a thousand dangers and hardships, but from the king s forces they experienced no serious hindrance. This expedition revealed to the Greeks the weakness of the empire and the cowardice of its rulers and defenders. Cyrus had penetrated to its centre without striking a blow, and an army of ordinary Greek mercenaries proved itself more than a match for the power of the whole empire. It was perceived how helpless the colossus was; it was perceived that great territories, which had been regarded as royal provinces, were completely independent. 2 Independent at that time were the predatory Mysians (in Olympus), Pisidians, and Lycaonians ; :J the Lycians (entirely 1) and the Bithynians and Paphlagonians half and half, the last two peoples had kings of their own ; further, the Greek indirectly made use of the narrative of another writer who shared in the expedition. 1 So says Ctesias, who knew the country. Xenophon says 360 stadia. These figures are equal to nearly 58 and 42 English miles respectively, about 93 and 67 kilometres. 2 On the effect produced by the expedition, see Xenophon, Hell., vi. I, 12 ; Isocrates, passim. 3 At least in part ; such mountain peoples did not, of course, form integral wholes, and, if one tribe was independent, another may have obeyed the satrap. cities on the Euxine ; finally, the Carduchi and other wild 401-394. peoples in the south and north-west of Armenia. The death of Cyrus widened the breach between Parysatis and Statira. The former could not forget her dailinc, and succeeded in bringing to a cruel end one after another all who had participated in his death. Statira was exultant ; but she was eventually poisoned by her mother-in-law. Artaxerxes was indignant at this deed and banished Pary satis for ever from his sight ; but he could not live without the firm guidance of his mother, and soon recalled her. Tissaphernes succeeded to all the privileges of the post which Cyrus had occupied. This could not but hasten the inevitable conflict with Sparta, which now, at the War height of her power, could not bring herself to fulfil the lth treaty and resign to the Persians all the Greek cities of * Jar Asia Minor. The Greeks expected to be protected by Sparta against Tissaphernes, who was already enforcing his rights with the strong arm, and the war which the Spartans began in 401 against the Persians in Asia Minor was no doubt popular, but as a land-power with limited resources they were not in a position to conduct much more than a purely predatory war. The state of Ionia and ^Eolis must have changed very much for the worse since the termination of the Attic supremacy, and the Asiatic Greeks were now perhaps for the most part unworthy of the blood that ran in streams on their behalf. Tissaphernes and Phar- nabazus sought each to shift upon the other the burden of the war, the conduct of which was not essentially altered when the command of the Spartans devolved on Agesilaus (396), who strove in vain to give the struggle the prestige of a Pan-hellenic enterprise. But, when Agesi laus had gained a great victory close to Sardis, Tissaphernes, who had meantime, more from cowardice than treachery, remained inactive in Sardis, was quietly displaced by a successor in the person of Tithraustes, who succeeded in seizing and executing him. 4 The real cause of his fall was the hatred of Parysatis. The game of treaties, which neither side meant to keep, and the efforts of the one satrap to thrust the Spartans upon the other, began afresh. In course of time Agesilaus certainly gained ground rapidly. But his successes were in part much exaggerated even by contemporaries. 5 On the whole, they were predatory ex peditions on a large scale, which showed with ever greater clearness the weakness of the empire, but did not directly affect its stability. Even after his great victory, Agesilaus did not venture to attack Sardis a striking contrast to the speed and thoroughness with which Alexander took possession of these lands. In 394 Agesilaus was recalled, for Sparta needed him in Europe more than in Asia ; the intolerable nature of the Spartan supremacy had done more than Persian gold to rouse even the proved allies of Sparta, such as the Thebans and Corinthians, into leaguing them selves with Athens in revolt. When Agesilaus reached the frontier of Boeotia he heard the dreadful tidings of Cnidus. After the decisive defeat at ^Egospotami the admiral of the Athenian fleet, Conon, had fled to Evagoras, prince of Salarnis in Cyprus. Evagoras, a tyrant of the &quot; grand &quot; type like Pisistratus or Gelo, favoured Conon s efforts to enter into relations with the Persian king with a view to raise Athens from her fall. When the war between Persia and Sparta broke out, Pharnabazus had made it clear to the court that it was absolutely necessary to raise a fleet, and that no better commander could be found for it than the tried sailor-hero of Athens. Under the leadership of such a man the Persians actually dared to send Phoenician ships once more into those Greek waters which they had long anxiously avoided. But Conon s successes, such especi ally as the revolt of Rhodes from Sparta (probably in 396), 4 See Diod., xiv. 80 ; Pint., Art., 23 ; Polyoeuus, vii. 16, 1 5 Isocrates, Paney, 70. XVIII. 73