Achaemenid Empire

Cyrus the Great (559–529)

Cyrus II, who was later dubbed Cyrus the Great, and the start of his reign in 559 marks the beginning of the Achaemenid Empire. He united under his authority several Persian and Iranian groups who apparently had not been under his father’s control. He then initiated diplomatic exchanges with Nabonidus of Babylon (reigned 556–539), which worried Astyages. Eventually he openly rebelled against the Medes, who were beaten in battle when considerable numbers of Median troops deserted to the Persian standard. Thus in 550 the Median empire became the first Persian empire, and the Achaemenid kings suddenly appeared on the international scene.

Cyrus immediately set out to expand his conquests. After apparently convincing the Babylonians that they had nothing to fear from Persia, he turned against the Lydians under the rule of the wealthy Croesus. Lydian appeals to Babylon were to no avail. He then took Cilicia, thus cutting the routes over which any help might have reached the Lydians. Croesus attacked, and an indecisive battle was fought in 547 on the Halys (Kızıl) River. Since it was late in the campaigning season, the Lydian leaders thought the war was over for the year, returned to their capital at Sardis, and dispersed the national levy. Cyrus, however, continued his campaign. He besieged the Lydian citadel at Sardis and captured Croesus in 546. Of the Greek city-states along the western coast of Asia Minor, which to this point were under Lydian control, only Miletus surrendered without a fight. The others were systematically reduced by the Persian armies led by subordinate generals. Cyrus was apparently busy elsewhere, possibly in the east, for little is known of his activities between the capture of Sardis and the beginning of the Babylonian campaign in 540.

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Nowhere did Cyrus display his political and military genius better than in the conquest of Babylon. The campaign actually began when he lulled the Babylonians into inactivity during his war with Lydia, which, since it was carried to a successful conclusion, deprived the Babylonians of a potential ally when their turn came. Then he took full advantage of internal disaffection and discontent within Babylon. Nabonidus was not a popular king: He had paid too little attention to home affairs and had alienated the native Babylonian priesthood. The writer of Deutero-Isaiah, speaking for many of the captive Jews in Babylon, undoubtedly represented the hopes of many of Nabonidus’s subjects that Cyrus was a potential deliverer. With the stage thus set, the military campaign against Babylon came almost as an anticlimax. The fall of the greatest city in the Middle East was swift; Cyrus marched into town in the late summer of 539, seized the hands of the statue of the city god Marduk as a signal of his willingness to rule as a Babylonian and not as a foreign conqueror, and was hailed by many as the legitimate successor to the throne. In one stride Cyrus carried Persian power to the borders of Egypt, for with Babylon came all that it had seized from the Assyrians and gained in the sequel.

Little is known of the remainder of Cyrus’s reign. The rapidity with which his son and successor, Cambyses II, initiated a successful campaign against Egypt suggests that preparations for such an attack were well advanced under Cyrus. But the founder of Persian power was forced to turn east late in his reign to protect that frontier against a hostile nomadic group, which Herodotus suggests was the Massagetai. How much Cyrus conquered in the east is uncertain. What is clear is that he lost his life during or shortly after this campaign. Although one Classical account indicates that the king died in Persia, most accounts suggest that he died fighting somewhere in the region of the Oxus (Amu Darya) and Jaxartes (Syr Darya) rivers.

Cambyses II (529–522)

Cyrus made plans for royal succession years before his death by naming the older of his two sons, Cambyses II, crown prince. After his father’s death, Cambyses took the throne without incident, despite his brother Bardiya’s discontent. There may have been some degree of unrest throughout the empire at the time of Cyrus’s death, as some accounts suggest that Cambyses felt it necessary to secretly kill his brother, Bardiya (Smerdis), about 525, although other historical details suggest that Bardiya lived until at least 522. The pharaoh Ahmose II of the 26th dynasty sought to shore up his defenses by hiring Greek mercenaries but was betrayed by the Greeks. Cambyses successfully managed to cross the hostile Sinai Desert, traditionally Egypt’s first and strongest line of defense, and brought the Egyptians under Psamtik III, son and successor of Ahmose, to battle at Pelusium. The Egyptian forces lost and retired to Memphis, which subsequently fell to the Persians. Three subsidiary campaigns were then mounted, all of which are reported as failures: one against Carthage, though the Phoenician sailors, who were the backbone of the Persian navy, declined to sail against their own colony; one against the oasis of Amon (in the Egyptian desert west of the Nile), which, according to Herodotus, was defeated by a massive sandstorm; and one led by Cambyses to Nubia. This latter effort was partly successful, but the army suffered badly from a lack of proper provisions on the return march. Egypt was then garrisoned at three major points: Daphnae in the east delta, Memphis, and Elephantine, where Jewish mercenaries formed the main body of troops.

In 522 news reached Cambyses of a revolt in Iran led by Bardiya (or an impostor claiming to be him). Cambyses died—possibly by his own hand but more probably from infection following an accidental sword wound—as he hastened home to regain control. Darius, a leading general in Cambyses’ army and one of the princes of the Achaemenid family, raced homeward with the troops to crush the rebellion in a manner profitable to himself.

Bardiya (522)

While Cyrus the Great chose Bardiya’s older brother, Cambyses, to succeed him on the throne, he made Bardiya satrap of Bactria, a major province in Central Asia. This arrangement did not sit well with the younger brother. The deterioration of the brothers’ relationship set the background for the king’s alleged order to kill Bardiya before or during the former’s Egyptian campaign, as reported by both Darius I’s scribes and Herodotus. Such writers contend that the man who, by all accounts, led a revolt and briefly ruled as Bardiya in 522 was actually an impostor, a magus whom Darius’s inscription at Bisotun calls Gaumata. The identity of the man who revolted and would come to rule the empire in mid-522 cannot be known for certain, although it is notable that a false Bardiya ruling the empire would have made Darius’s overthrow of the king and assumption of the throne more politically legitimate. For simplicity, the following assumes that it was the true Bardiya whom Darius overthrew.

Despite his revolt occurring in March, Bardiya did not claim the throne until July. He may have waited until the childless Cambyses’ death to name himself king, as the only male heir to the dynasty. One of Bardiya’s policies while king was the confiscation of land from certain aristocratic families, possibly as a way of depriving them of the means to revolt. He announced a three-year remission of taxes and military service for subject peoples. However, his reign ended well before that period elapsed. Bardiya was dead before the end of September 522.

Darius I (522–486)

In September 522 Darius, with the help of six Persian nobles, killed Bardiya and took the throne. Darius defended this deed and his own assumption of kingship not only on the grounds that the usurper was actually Gaumata but also based on his belonging to the rightful Achaemenid house. He himself, however, belonged to a collateral branch of the royal family, and, as his father and grandfather were still alive during his accession, it is unlikely that he was next in line to the throne. The transfer of power to Darius was not a peaceful one. It took more than a year (522–521 bce) of hard fighting to put down the revolts associated with Bardiya’s claim to the throne and Darius’s succession to power. Almost every province of the empire was involved in the conflict, including Persia and, most particularly, Media. A balanced policy of clemency backed by the swift and thorough punishment of any captured rebel leader, in combination with a well-coordinated and carefully timed distribution of loyal forces, eventually brought peace to the empire and undisputed power to Darius.

He then turned his attention to the organization and consolidation of his inheritance, and it was for this role—that of lawgiver and organizer—that he himself, to judge from his inscriptions, most wished to be remembered. He completed the organization of the empire into satrapies, initiated by Cyrus the Great, and fixed the annual tribute due from each province. During his reign, ambitious and far-sighted projects were undertaken to promote imperial trade and commerce. Coinage, weights, and measures were standardized and land and sea routes developed. An expedition led by Scylax of Caryanda sailed down the Indus River and explored the sea route from its mouth to Egypt, and a canal from the Nile River to the Red Sea, probably begun by Necho I (7th century bce), governor of Sais, was repaired and completed.

Such activities, however, did not prevent Darius from following an active expansionist policy. Campaigns to the east confirmed gains probably made by Cyrus the Great and added large sections of the northern Indian subcontinent to the list of Persian-controlled provinces. Expansion in the west began about 516 bce, when Darius moved against the Hellespont as a first step toward an attack on the Scythians along the western and northern shores of the Black Sea. The real strategic purpose behind this move probably was to disrupt and, if possible, interrupt Greek trade with the Black Sea area, which supplied much grain to Greece. Crossing into Europe for the first time, Darius campaigned with comparatively little success to the north of the Danube River. He retreated in good order, however, with only limited losses, and a bridgehead across the Hellespont was established.

Perhaps partly in response to these developments or perhaps for more purely internal reasons, the Ionian Greek cities on the west coast of Asia Minor revolted against Persian rule in 499 bce. The Persians were apparently taken by surprise, and at first the rebellion prospered. The Ionians received some limited assistance from the Athenians and in 498 felt strong enough to make another offensive. With one hand Darius negotiated, with the other he assembled a counterattack. The first Persian military efforts proved only partially successful, however, and the Ionians enjoyed another respite in the years 496–495. A renewed Persian offensive in 494 was successful. The Greek fleet was badly beaten off Miletus, and the Persian land army began a systematic reduction of the rebel cities. About 492 Mardonius, a son-in-law of Darius, was made special commissioner to Ionia. He suppressed local kings and returned democratic government to many cities. In time the wounds caused by the revolt and its suppression healed, and by 481 Xerxes was able to levy troops in this region with little trouble.

By 492 bce Mardonius had also recovered Persian Thrace and Macedonia, first gained in the campaign against the Scythians and lost during the Ionian revolt. There followed the Persian invasion of Greece that led to Darius’s defeat at the Battle of Marathon late in the summer of 490 bce. The great king was forced to retreat and face the fact that the Greek problem, which had probably seemed to the Persians a minor issue on the western extremity of the empire, would require a more concerted and massive effort. Thus began preparations for an invasion of Greece on a grand, coordinated scale. These plans were interrupted in 486 by two events: a serious revolt in Egypt and the death of Darius.

Xerxes I (486–465)

Xerxes, Darius’s eldest son by Atossa, was born after his father had come to the throne; he had been designated official heir perhaps as early as 498, and while crown prince he had ruled as the king’s governor in Babylon. The new king quickly suppressed the revolt in Egypt in a single campaign in 484. Xerxes then broke with the policy followed by Cyrus and Darius of ruling foreign lands with a fairly light hand and governed Egypt harshly and ignored local customs. Plans for the invasion of Greece that had begun under Darius were then still further delayed by a major revolt in Babylonia about 482 bce, which also was suppressed with a heavy hand.

Xerxes then turned his attention westward to Greece. He wintered in Sardis in 481–480 and thence led a combined land and sea invasion of Greece. Northern Greece fell to the invaders in the summer of 480, the Greek stand at Thermopylae in August of 480 came to naught, and the Persian land forces marched on Athens, taking and burning the Acropolis. But the Persian fleet lost the Battle of Salamis, and the impetus of the invasion was blunted. Xerxes, who had by then been away from Asia rather long for a king with such widespread responsibilities, returned home and left Mardonius in charge of further operations. The real end of the invasion came with the Battle of Plataea, the fall of Thebes (a stronghold of pro-Persian forces), and the Persian naval loss at Mycale in 479. Of the three, the Persian loss at Plataea was perhaps the most decisive. Up until Mardonius was killed, the issue of the battle was probably still in doubt, but, once leaderless, the Persian forces collapsed. Time and again in later years this was to be the pattern in such encounters, for the Persians never solved the military problem posed by the Greek hoplites.

The formation of the Delian League, the rise of Athenian imperialism, troubles on the west coast of Asia Minor, and the end of Persian military ambitions in the Aegean followed rapidly in the decade after Plataea. Xerxes met his end in 465 at the hands of a conspiracy of his bodyguard, several of his sons, and one of the eunuchs who oversaw his harem.

Rebellions and the Peloponnesian War

The death of Xerxes was a major turning point in Achaemenid history. Occasional flashes of vigor and intelligence by some of Xerxes’ successors were too infrequent to prevent eventual collapse but did allow the empire to die gradually. It is a tribute to Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius that the empire they constructed was as resilient as it proved to be after Xerxes.

The three kings that followed Xerxes on the throne—Artaxerxes I (reigned 465–425 bce), Xerxes II (425–424), and Darius II Ochus (423–404)—were all comparatively weak as kings, and successes the empire enjoyed during their reigns were mainly the result of the efforts of subordinates or of the troubles faced by their adversaries. Artaxerxes I faced several rebellions, the most important of which was that of Egypt in 459, not fully suppressed until 454. An advantageous peace (the Peace of Callias) with Athens was signed in 448 bce, whereby the Persians agreed to stay out of the Aegean and the Athenians agreed to leave Asia Minor to the Achaemenids. Athens broke the peace in 439 in an attack on Sámos, and in its aftermath the Persians made some military gains in the west. Xerxes II ruled only about 45 days and was killed while in a drunken stupor by the son of one of his father’s concubines. The assassin was himself killed by Darius II, who rose to the throne through palace intrigue. Several revolts marred his reign, including one in Media, which was rather close to home.

The major event of these three reigns was the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens, which was fought, with occasional pauses, over the latter decades of the 5th century bce. The situation was ripe for exploitation by the famous “Persian archers,” the gold coins of the Achaemenids that depicted an archer on their obverse and that were used with considerable skill by the Persians in bribing first one Greek state and then another. Initially the Persians encouraged Athens against Sparta and from this gained the Peace of Callias. Then, after the disastrous Athenian campaign against Sicily in 413, the Persians intervened on Sparta’s side. By the treaty of Miletus in 412, the Persians recovered complete freedom in western Anatolia in return for agreeing to pay for sailors to staff the Peloponnesian fleet. Persian gold and Spartan soldiers brought about the fall of Athens in 404 bce. Despite the fact that the Persians played the two sides against each other to their own advantage, they should have done better. One observes a certain lack of control from Susa by the king in these proceedings, and the two principal governors in Asia Minor who were involved, Tissaphernes of Sardis and Pharnabazus of Hellespontine Phrygia, seemed to have permitted a personal power rivalry to stand in the way of a coordinated Persian intervention in the Greek war. When Egypt revolted in 405 bce, Persia was unable to do much about it, and from that point forward Egypt remained essentially an independent state.

Continued problems and fall

Artaxerxes II came to the throne in 404 and reigned until 359 bce. The main events of his long rule were the war with Sparta that ended with a peace favorable to the Persians; the revolt and loss to the empire of Egypt; the rebellion of Cyrus the Younger, brother of the king; and the uprising known as the revolt of the satraps (provincial governors).

Sparta, triumphant over Athens, built a small empire of its own and was soon involved in a war against the Persians, the principal issue again being the Greek cities of Asia Minor. While Sparta played one Persian governor in Anatolia against the other, the Persians spent gold in Greece to raise rebellion on Sparta’s home ground. The Persians rebuilt their fleet and placed a competent Athenian admiral, Conon, in command. The contest continued from 400 to 387, with Sparta forced to act on an ever-shrinking front. A revitalized Athens, supported by Persia, created a balance of power in Greece, and eventually Artaxerxes was able to step in, at the Greeks’ request, and dictate the so-called King’s Peace of 387–386 bce. Once again the Greeks gave up any claim to Asia Minor and further agreed to maintain the status quo in Greece itself.

Cyrus the Younger, although caught in an assassination attempt at the time of Artaxerxes’ coronation, was nevertheless forgiven and was returned to the command of a province in Asia Minor. But he revolted again in 401 bce and, supported by 10,000 Greek mercenaries, marched eastward to contest the throne. He was defeated and killed at the Battle of Cunaxa in Mesopotamia that summer. The Greek mercenaries, however, were not broken and, though harried, left the field in good order and began their famous march, recorded in the Anabasis of Xenophon, north to the Black Sea and home. Probably no other event in late Achaemenid history revealed more clearly to the Greeks the essential internal weakness of the Achaemenid Empire than the escape of so large a body of soldiers from the very heart of the Persian domain.

Since 379 bce Artaxerxes had been gathering Greek mercenaries to mount a campaign against Egypt. An attack in 373 failed against the native Egyptian 30th dynasty. On the heels of this failure came the revolt of the satraps. Several satraps rose against the central power, and one, Aroandas (Orontes), a satrap of Armenia, went so far as to stamp his own gold coinage as a direct challenge to Artaxerxes. The general plan of the rebels appears to have been for a combined attack. The rebel satraps were to coordinate their march eastward through Syria with an Egyptian attack, under the king Tachos, and support from Greek mercenaries. The Egyptian attack was called off because of a revolt in Egypt by Tachos’s brother, and Artaxerxes managed to defeat the satraps who were left alone to face the king’s wrath. Several of the satraps, including Aroandas, were forgiven and returned to their governorships.

Plot and counterplot, harem intrigue, and murder brought Artaxerxes III to the throne in 359 bce. He promptly exterminated many of his relatives who might have challenged his rule—all to no avail, for revolts continued to rock the empire. A fresh attempt to win back Egypt was repulsed in 351. This setback encouraged revolt in Sidon and eventually in all of Palestine and Phoenicia. Parts of Cilicia joined the rebellion, but the revolt there was crushed in 345, the same year it had begun. Peace was achieved only temporarily; mercenaries from Thebes and the Argives, as well as from the Greek cities of Asia Minor, gathered for a new attempt on Egypt. Led by Artaxerxes III, it succeeded in 343 bce. But the local Egyptian dynasty fled south to Nubia, where it maintained an independent kingdom that kept alive the hopes of a dynastic revival. Persia then misplayed its hand in Greece by refusing aid to Athens against the rising power of Philip II of Macedon. In 339 bce Persian troops were fighting alone in Thrace against the Macedonians, and in the following year, at the Battle of Chaeronea, Philip extended his hegemony over all of Greece—a united Greece that was to prove impervious to Persian gold.

Artaxerxes was poisoned by his physician at the order of the eunuch Bagoas. The latter made Artaxerxes’ youngest son, Arses, king (338–336 bce) in hopes of being the power behind the throne, but Arses did not bend easily to Bagoas’s will. He attempted to poison the kingmaker but was himself killed in retaliation. Bagoas then engineered the accession of Darius III, a 45-year-old former satrap of Armenia. So many members of the royal house had been murdered in the court intrigue that Darius probably held the closest blood claim to the throne by virtue of being the grandnephew of Artaxerxes II. Darius was able to put down yet another rebellion in Egypt under Khababash in 337–336 bce, but the beginning of the end of the Achaemenid Empire came soon afterward, in May 334, when he lost the Battle of Granicus to Alexander the Great. Persepolis fell to the invader in April 330, and Darius, the last Achaemenid, was murdered in the summer of the same year while fleeing the conqueror. His unfinished tomb at Persepolis bears witness to his lack of preparation.