Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/21

Rh Nothus), who was father to Artaxerxes II. (called Mnemon), and to Cyrus, the younger, with whom we have to do.

Darius Nothus came to the throne in the year 423, and Cyrus was born after this date. He was, therefore, less than twenty-one years old when our story begins. Orientals are precocious, and early authority matures the powers; but still it must be allowed that he was a young prince of very extraordinary abilities, for in the measures by which he proposed to carry out his ambitious projects, he quite departed from the traditionary ideas of his country. He was the favourite son of his mother, Parysatis, who encouraged him in expecting to supersede his elder brother and succeed to the throne. As he had been born after his father's accession, he had, according to Persian custom, a superior claim to his brother, who, having been born before the accession, ranked as the son of a private person. But Darius Nothus, his father, settled it otherwise, and gave Cyrus, in his seventeenth year, the satrapy of Lydia, Phrygia, and Cappadocia, being, in short, the greater part of Asia Minor, while he nominated Artaxerxes to succeed himself on the throne.

The youthful satrap had, from the first, Greek troops in his pay, and Greek officers about his person. He mixed in Grecian politics, and assisted the Spartans in their war against Athens. Just before his father's death (404 ) he was summoned to Babylon, and, when the decease had occurred, he was charged with plotting against his newly-crowned brother. He was arrested by Artaxerxes, and would have been put to