Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/24

 2 HISTORY OF GREECE. while as an illustration of Hellenic character and competence measured against that of the contemporary Asiatics, it stands pre- eminent and full of instruction. This march from Sardis up to the neighborhood of Babylon, conducted by Cyrus the younger and undertaken for the purpose of placing him on the Persian throne in the room of his elder brother Artaxerxes Mnemon, was commenced about March or April in the year 401 B. c. It was about six months afterwards, in the month of September or October of the same year, that the battle of Kunaxa was fought, in which, though the Greeks were victorious, Cyrus himself lost his life. They were then obliged to commence their retreat, which occupied about one year, and ulti- mately brought them across the Bosphorus of Thrace to Byzan- tium, in October or November, 400 B. c. The death of king Darius Nothus, father both of Artaxerxes and Cyrus, occurred about the beginning of 404 B. c., a short tune after the entire ruin of the force of Athens at JEgospotami. His reign of nineteen years, with that of his father Artaxerxes Longi- manus which lasted nearly forty years, fill up almost all the inter- val from the death of Xerxes in 465 B. c. The close of the reigns both of Xerxes and of his son Artaxerxes had indeed been marked by those phenomena of conspiracy, assassination, fratricide, and family tragedy, so common in the transmission of an Oriental sceptre. Xerxes was assassinated by the chief officer of the pal- ace, named Artabanus, who had received from him at a banquet the order to execute his eldest son Darius, but had not fulfilled it. Artabanus, laying the blame of the assassination upon Darius, prevailed upon Artaxerxes to avenge it by slaying the latter ; he then attempted the life of Artaxerxes himself, but failed, and was himself killed, after carrying on the government a few months. Artaxerxes Longimanus, after reigning about forty years, left the sceptre to his son Xerxes the second, who was slain after a few months by his brother Sogdianus ; who again was put to death after seven months, by a third brother Darius Nothus mentioned above. 1 1 See Diodor. xi, 69 ; xii, 64-71 ; Ivtesias, Persica, c. 29-45 ; Aristotel. Polit. v, 14, 8. This last passage of Aristotle is not very clear. Compare Justin, x, 1. For the chronology of these Persian kings, see a valuable Appendix i Mr. Fynes Clinton's Fasti Hellenic!, App. 18, vol. ii, p. 313-316.