vol. S IV p.1166-1177
Main sources: Xenophon’s Hellenica and Anabasis, as well as the Persica by Ktesias. Xenophon knew Cyrus personally (anab. III 1, 8. Diog. Laert. II 6, 4ff.), and took part in his military campaign against the Great King (Cic. de div. I 52. 122. Plut. Art. 8, 1. Paus. V 6, 5. IX 15, 5. Arrian. kyn. 24, 2. Aelian. v. h. XII 1. Georg. Synk. I 485). The Anabasis of Sophainetos of Stymphalos, who had also taken part in the campaign, has been lost apart from four insignificant fragments (FHG II 74f.). <30> As a personal doctor of the Great King, Ktesias was an eyewitness of the deciding battle on the opposite side. Diodor. XIV 19-31 is primarily a repeat of Ephoros’s account of the campaign, which differs from Xenophon’s in many regards. Ephoros seems to have taken his report on the battle (c. 22-24) from Ktesias. Polyain. II 2, 2ff. is unimportant. Plutarch (Alcib. Lysandros. Artax.), apart from Xenophon and Ktesias, mainly made use of Dinon, as well as Pompeius Trogus (Iustin. V 11. X 2. Oro. II 16, 9. 18, 1). <40>
Cyrus was the younger son of Dareius II. and his wife Parysatis. His year of birth is unknown. Ktesias (p. 169 Gilmore. Plut. Art. 2, 2), of course, claims to have heard directly from Parysatis that she bore Cyrus - in contrast to his older brother Arsakes (later king Artaxerxes II. Mnemon) - after she was βασιλεύουσα. Since Dareius II ascended to the throne after the end of 424, and probably only at the beginning of 423 (cf. ZDMG LXII 646), <50> Cyrus would have been born in 423 at the earliest. There are, however, serious doubts about this fact (cf. Krumbholz Comm. Ribbeck. 197ff. Bünger N. Jahrb. CLI 375ff. 1895). Artaxerxes II ruled for 46 years (404-358) and allegedly reached the age of 86 or even 94. Of course, at most only one of these two accounts can be correct, and in reality both are probably wrong. Since Plutarch (Art. 30, 5) says that he ruled for about 16 years more than he did (62 instead of 46), <60> it wouldn’t be too much of a leap to suggest the same happened with the age of the Great King, which Plutarch said was 94, and this idea probably brings us a little closer to the truth. According to this line of logic, Artaxerxes would have been born in around 436 and would have been about 13 years older than his younger brother, who he did however allegedly work together with (according to Xen. anab. I 9, 2). <page break 1166/1167> Another doubt holds more weight. While his father was alive, Cyrus was sent to Asia Minor as the Satrap of Lydia, Phrygia Major, and Cappadocia, and was the commander (κάρανος) of all the troops that gathered on the plain of Castolus (Xen. hell. I 4, 3; anab. I 1, 2. 9, 7). Of course, the exact date when he was sent off is not completely certain; <10> but it could only have been during either 408 (as eg. B. Ed. Meyer Gesch. d. Alt. IV § 719; cf. § 714 Anm. and Busolt Griech. Gesch. III 2, 1572; cf. 1592ff.) or 407 (as, most recently, Beloch Griech. Gesch.2 II 1, 416. II 2, 274). Despite everything which can be said about how those in the east tended to do things at a much earlier age, it still seems hard to believe that a young man 15 or 16 years old would have been given this kind of position, which would require a fully grown adult. The political situation was the following:
From 418, Athens and Sparta had been once again openly at war. <20> To begin with, Persia saw no reason to attack, because it must have been advantageous for them for their two enemies, who had once scared off the Persians when they were united, to be making one another as weak as possible. This changed when Athens supported supported the uprising of Pissuthnes, the satrap of Sardis, and after his death the uprising of his son Amorges. The Spartans on the other hand, whose troops were paid for by Tissaphernes, Pissuthnes’s successor, <30> had Amorges captured in 412, and delivered him over to the Persians. Once again, Tissaphernes made treaties with the Spartans (v. Scala Staatsverträge d. Altertums I 92), and promised to pay salaries in exchange for the Spartans giving him free reign over the Greek cities in Asia Minor. However, Tissaphernes was with Alcibiades at the time, who warned him against letting the Spartans become too powerful. <40> This meant that Tissaphernes ended up putting off fulfilling the obligations he had entered himself into, until at last the Spartans ran out of patience and they sent an embassy to the court of the Great King to deal with him directly. Pharnabazos, the satrap of Daskyleion, took his duty of supporting the Spartans more seriously. After their unsuccessful sea-battles at Rhoiteion (411) and Cyzicus (410), <50> he did as much as he could to protect the Spartan troops from their pursuers as they escaped. He also opposed the Athenians at the siege of Chalcedon, though he found himself forced to make a treaty with them, which, among other things, required him to escort an Athenian embassy to the Great King. This embassy set off with Pharnabazon in 409 or 408, stayed the winter in Gordion, but never reached its goal: <60> when they continued their journey in the following spring, they met the Spartan embassies who had gone to the court in the previous year, and found out from them that they had gained everything they had wanted from the Great King, as well as that Cyrus had been appointed κάρανος τῶν εἰς Καστωλὸν ἀθροιζομένων and was going to support the Spartans. They also saw Cyrus himself, and were soon given the opportunity to see that the Spartans had been telling the truth. <page break 1167/1168> Cyrus ordered Pharnabazos to either hand over the Athenian embassy to him, or at least to not let them into their home, so that the Athenians wouldn’t find out what was being planned in Asia Minor. Pharnabazos stayed with them for a long time, allegedly three years (Xen. hell. I 4, 7), and was finally allowed to let them into their home. <10> Soon after Cyrus had arrived in his new residence in Sardis, he was visited by the Spartan Lysandros, who had taken Station in Ephesos as a naval commander. Lysandros was bringing charges against Tissaphernes, whose power was now limited to Caria and the coastal cities, and asked Cyrus for financial support. Cyrus went above and beyond his father’s generosity, <20> and put Lysandros in a position where he was able to increase the salary of his men so much that a large number of Athenians deserted their own fleets (Xen. hell. I 5. Diod. XIII 70. Plut. Lys. 4. Alcib. 35. 5; cf. also Thuc. II 65, 12). The Athenians tried, without success, to send an embassy to gain an audience with Cyrus. Cyrus didn’t even let them in, even though Tissaphernes had very clearly warned him of the dangers that could arise from supporting the Spartans too excessively (Xen. hell. I 5, 8f.). When Lysander’s time as naval commander had run out, <30> he ended up leaving his successor Callicratidas a number of problems, not only because he had sent the remainder of the Persian auxiliary troops back to Cyrus, who hadn’t yet fought. Callicratidas was forced to travel to Sardis in person, but Cyrus delayed seeing him for trivial reasons (Xen. hell. I 6, 6ff.), or he wasn’t welcomed at all and journeyed back to Ephesos in dismay (Plut. Lys. 6; apophth. Lak. Kallikratidas 2). Later, Cyrus did allegedly send him the payments for the salaries as well as ξένια. <40> Either way, it was honourable for Callicratidas when he only accepted the first of these, and sent back the gifts with a very Spartan response - that he was in no need of a personal friendship with Cyrus (Plut. apophth. Lak. Kall. 4). In 406, when Callicratidas drowned in the sea-battle at Arginusae, which was such a disaster for both parties - their grateful homeland handed over the victorious Athenian generals, or as many as they could get their hands on, to the executioners - <50> the Spartan allies and Cyrus himself wanted Lysander to be reinstated. Since it was illegal for someone to be a naval commander more than once, the new naval commander Arakos was given Lysandros as an ἐπιστολεύς. As far as the title was concerned, Arakos was technically in charge of Lysandros (Xen hell. II 1, 6f. Plut. Lys. 7, 2f.; cf. Diod. XIII 100). Soon afterwards, Cyrus was summoned to his house, because his father Dareius had fallen ill: at least, according to Xen. anab. I 1, 1. <60> According to hell. II 1, 8f., this was only a pretence - the real reason was the despotic execution of two of his relatives, who had allegedly infringed upon his due respect. Before Cyrus set off again, his friend Lysandros visited him and once again received a large sum of money (Xen. hell. II 1, 11). According to Plutarch (Lys. 9), Cyrus would have even appointed him as his deputy, <page break 1168/1169> transferred the income from the cities to him, and promised him the most excessive and extravagant things. Next, he travelled back to his father’s court with Tissaphernes, whom he still considered his friend (Xen. anab. I 1, 2), as well as a troop of 300 Greek hoplites. Soon after, in the year 404, Dareius died. The ambitious prince was hoping to succeed to the throne himself, and was supported here by Parysatis (Plut. Art. 2, 2), since he was her favourite son (Xen. anab. I 1, 4). <10> He was, of course, unsuccessful, and instead his brother Arsakes became the Great King following the law of primogeniture, and took on the name Artaxerxes. It is possible that Cyrus’s secret intentions had already been spotted by Alcibiades at that time. Allegedly, he was intending to travel to the Persian court via Pharnabazos as satrap, <20> to tell Artaxerxes about Cyrus’s plans. However, Pharnabazos wanted to get the credit for sharing this warning himself, and therefore had Alcibiades killed, who had just been taking refuge with him (Ephoros in Diod. XIV 11. Corn. Nep. Alc. 9, 5). Of course, this was not the main reason for getting Alcibiades out of the way, but the idea that Pharnabazos had warned Artaxerxes about Cyrus (Diod. XIV 22, 1) is in and of itself not implausible (cf. Judeich Kleinasiat. Studient 32f.). <30> However, we do know that Tissaphernes made the Great King distrusting of his brother. Indeed, Xenophon (anab. I 1, 3) and even Ktesias (p. 173 Gilm.) took this as slander, but Plutarch (Art. 3) was aware of a complete assassination plan, which Cyrus wanted to enact in the temple of Pasargadai during his brother’s dedication to the mysteries, and which Tissaphernes had discovered. Cyrus was arrested and (according to Iustin. V 11, 4) thrown into golden chains. <40> When he was being lead off to his execution, his desperate mother threw her arms around him, broke into passionate tears and cries, and through her courage she managed to win his pardon, and even get him reinstated as satrap. Gravely ill, though keeping up his outer appearances, Cyrus turned back to Asia Minor. He tried to lull his brother, the Great King, into a false sense of security with submissive reports, which his mother again supported him in. <50> In secret, he pursued his plans. He aimed to gain allies by being generous and lowering himself. He was also popular among his troops, who had acted efficiently in the battle against the Pisidians and Mysians (Xen. anab. I 9, 14. 6, 6). He let his hatred towards Tissaphernes run wild. The Ionian coastal cities, which had previously been subject to Tissaphernes, defected from him and went over to Cyrus’s side. <60> Only Miletus remained; however, when it started to look like it was going to follow the example of the other cities, Tissaphernes took serious violent action, had some of the citizens executed, and sold some others. Cyrus welcomed the exiles with open arms, gathered troops, and besieged Miletum by water and by land. He ordered the commanders of the rest of the Greek cities to recruit as many Greek soldiers as possible, so that they could be prepared against Tissaphernes’s hostile plans. <page break 1169/1170> He had his guest-friend Sophainetos of Stymphalos and the Achaean Socrates gather troops under the same pretence. He asked the Great King to grant him the Ionian cities, and since he didn’t mind who he got the taxes he was entitled to from, he payed no more mind to the feud between his brother and Tissaphernes, <10> and instead it seemed to be okay for Cyrus to arm himself against his fellow satrap. The Pisidians, the unruly neighbours to the south of his province, gave Cyrus another excuse to be gathering more troops via his Boeotian guest-friend Proxenos. Moreover, Cyrus supported his guest-friend Aristippus of Larissa in Thessaly, who had been in conflict with his fellow countrymen; he gave him money to pay 4000 men for six months - four times as much as Aristippos had asked him for - <20> but he ordered him to consult with him before allying himself with his enemies. Clearchus became Cyrus’s most enthusiastic ally, who was sent to Byzantium as a leader of the Spartan army, was then condemned to death for disobedience, and fled to Cyrus at the beginning of 402 (cf. Demosth. XV 24). He gained 10000 darics from him, he recruited soldiers, and put them to use in battle against the Thracians in Asia Minor. <30> Since he was working to the advantage of the Greek cities on the Hellespont, they also supported him financially. The authorities in his home city also seem to have presented him no more difficulties for the same reasons: at the beginning of 401, when Cyrus was sending an embassy to Sparta to ask for troops against his brother, they secretly sent Clearchus the order to support Cyrus in any way he could (Plut. Art. 6, 2; exaggerating Isocrates XII 104). <40> They also handed over 35 (Diod. 25) ships to the naval commander Samios (as Xen. hell. III 1, 1; Diod. XIV 19, 5f. calls him Samos, Xen. anab. I 4, 2 Pythagoras) to Ephesus, where his and Cyrus’s fleet combined (cf. also Paus. III 9, 1).
When Cyrus considered himself to be sufficiently prepared, he moved most of his troops over into Sardis, under the pretence of wanting to lead a new military campaign against Pisidia, <50> according to Xen. anab. I 1, 11. 2, 1: Diod. XIV 19, 3 name Cilicia, § 6 Cilicia and Pisidia. Even before Cyrus had set off, the suspicious Tissaphernes hurried to the Persian court with 500 cavalrymen, to bring news to the Great King of his brother’s conspicuous military preparations as quickly as possible. In spring in 401, the hordes began to move from Sardis. The day they set off cannot be determined with any more accuracy. <60>
Of course, Xenophon doesn’t only describe the main stopping-points of the campaign in apparent detail, as far as he deemed it important, but even the distances between them in how many days it took to travel, and in parasanges too for the most part, and he also reported on the number of days spent resting, if a stop was made, meaning that the accounts of the Anabasis allow us to work out that, for example, between the day they set off from Sardis and the day of the deciding battle, there were 84 marching days and 96 rest-days - about 180 days in total. <page break 1170/1171> But in terms of a precise set of calendrical dates - perhaps 9th March to 3rd September, as tends to be written even in strictly academic works - we are completely lacking in precise evidence. In reality, these dates which appear to be so exact are only based on calculations about general climatic circumstances, <10> eg. that the first crossing of the Euphrates, as described in Xen. anab. I 4, 17, was only possible at very low water-levels, and that the water of the river tends to be deepest in August. Moreover, from Xenophon’s account II 3, 14f., people conclude that it must have been around the time of the date-harvest in Babylonia - in itself an uncertain conclusion - and finally, from the accounts of the first snowfall, <20> which was observed 86 days after the battle in Armenia by the Greeks as they were travelling home (IV 4, 8), that it must have been about November or December. In general then, the conclusion is correct, but a precise calendrical date cannot, of course, be figured out. Under the assumption that Xenophon’s account of the number of marching and resting days are correct, we are able to suppose that they set off from Sardis during March 401. <30> (On the chronology of the Anabasis cf. Rennel Illustrations of the history of the expedition of Cyrus 275ff., Lond. 1816. Ed. Meyer loc. cit. V 183 and Beloch III 1, 32 are right to avoid a ‘precise’ dating). Also, the topographical and historical accounts in Xenophon’s Anabasis aren’t as reliable as is often assumed. It’s very doubtful whether Xenophon would have been able to keep up a precise logbook during the tiring and, at least at the end, very dangerous campaign. <40> On the other hand, it’s as good as unthinkable that a few decades after the return he would have been able to describe the campaign in the way that his work does purely from his own memory. We ought to assume he took a few short notes, especially about the names and distances of the stations, which, if there weren’t any official sources at hand, were only estimated. <50>
From Sardis, Cyrus went to Colossae, where he was joined by the Thessalian Menon with 1500 men, then to Celaenae, where his ally Clearchus gave him 2000 men, and two more generals with 1300 men between them also joined him. At this point, he had almost reached the border of Pisidia. However, after stopping for a month, Cyrus changed the direction they were marching, by turning north-west to Peltae and Κεράμων ἀγορά, <60> where it continued to the east and south-east. In Καΰστρου πεδίον he welcomed the visit of the Cilician queen Epyaxa with her Cilician and Aspendian protective guard. He received from her a large sum of money, meaning that he was able to not only pay his solders for their last three months, but also to pay them for the next month in advance. <page break 1171/1172> Across Thymbrion, Tyrtaion, where a military review was held at the request of the Cilicians, Iconium, and Dana, the army reached the pass which lead to Cilicia. Cyrus rested here for one day, since he believed that the leader of Cilicia, Syennesis, had occupied the upcoming heights. Cyrus’s camp was passed 78 years later by Alexander the Great (Arrian. anab. II 4, 3. Strab. XII 2, 9; Curt. III 4, 1 incorrectly links the castra Cyri to Cyrus the Great). <10> Epyaxa had already been lead by Menon and his troops along the shortest way to Cilicia, and had reached it five days earlier. When Syennesis found out that Menon was already stationed in his land, he cleared out the post at the pass so that Cyrus could reach the capital city Tarsos unhindered. Menon’s men had been plundering while they were making their way into Cilicia, and had lost one hundred men doing so, who had been killed by the native inhabitants. <20> Angered by this, the Greeks also plundered Tarsos. Syennesis had retreated into a difficult to reach mountainous area with most of the inhabitants of his capital city, and was not intending to emerge at Cyrus’s request. Finally, Epyaxa organised a meeting and reconciliation between the two men. Once again, Cyrus received a large amount of money for his army, and gave Syennesis valuable gifts. <30> According to Diod. XIV 20, 3, he would even have given one of his sons to Cyrus, and sent the others home to Artaxerxes, to tell the Great King that he was only paying for the army because he had been forced to, and would desert to the Great King at his earliest opportunity. Cyrus remained in Tarsos for 20 days, since the Greeks refused to go along with them any further, because they suspected that they were actually marching against the Great King. Cyrus eased their concerns with difficulty: <40> he confessed that he was intending to put his enemy Abrokomas, who was 12 days’ journey away along the Euphrates, in his place, and he also promised to raise their pay. From Tarsos, the army reached Issos, where their fleet arrived along with 700 (800 according to Diodor.) men under Cheirisophos. There were also 400 more Greek mercenaries who had deserted from Abrokomas. The obstacle they had most feared, the Cilician-Syrian gate, which Cyrus had thought the satrap Abrokomas had occupied, was found empty against all expectations, <50> since Abrokomas had seemingly set off with allegedly 300000 men. This was how Cyrus managed to reach the port Myriandros in northern Syria without difficulty, where the fleet was sent back, and they began marching along the Euphrates. From this point onwards, Xenophon’s account becomes somewhat less precise. He neither mentions the climb over the Nur Mountains (Diod. XIV 21, 4 at least mentions the mountains, though he does call them Libanos), <60> nor the crossing of the northern tributaries of the sea of Antioch, but instead he first mentions the Chalos, abundant in fish (a river in Halab, Kuaik), and the Daradax, which is probably equivalent to the river Nahr eḏ-ḏeheb. The army needed 12 (Diod. 20) days to get from the coast from Thapsakos to the Euphrates. Here, they stopped for five days, and it was finally revealed to the army that they were going against the Greak King. <page break 1172/1173> The soldiers’ discontent was appeased through new and large promises. After walking through the river, the army moved down from the east bank of the Euphrates, allegedly as quickly as possible (Xen. anab. I 5, 9. Diod. XIV 21, 4), though in actual fact very slowly. Although a party - admittedly on the western bank - could travel the Meskene-Fellūǧa route, <10> which is roughly equivalent to the route taken by Cyrus along the other bank, in sixteen days on average, Cyrus’s army needed 31 marching days and 6 rest days for it. The terrain to the east of the Euphrates is somewhat more difficult, because there two major tributaries of the Euphrates, the Balīḫ and the Ḫābūr, need to be crossed. But Xenophon doesn’t mention either of these rivers, and instead mentions the Araxes and the Maskas. Also, his place names along this route: Korsote, Pylai, Charmande (this one on the western bank) are topographical ἅπαξ λεγόμενα, and are hardly identifiable. <20> However, Xenophon’s Araxes cannot be any river other than the Ḫābūr. This means that the Balīḫ is completely skipped over, and since no other tributary joins the Euphrates on the left beneath the Ḫābūr, the Maskas, which flowed around the abandoned city Korsote (see there), can only have been a channel or a branch of a river. Xenophon is also wrong when he calls the area from Thapsakos to his Araxes syria, and the area from there to Pylae Arabia. Both names only refer to the land on the western side of the Euphrates. Xenophon was unaware of the name Mesopotamia for the land between the middle of the Euphrates and the middle of the Tigris.
Beneath Pylae, the army came upon the first traces of the enemy. It was a cavalry contingent, who had set off, making their path by force, and had burnt all the feed and other useful things. <40> A relative of Cyrus by the name of Orontes offered to pursue the enemy troop with 1000 cavalry, and put a stop to their destruction. In reality, he was planning a betrayal, but he was immediately found out, condemned, and eliminated. In the trial of martial law, which Xenophon (anab. I 6, 4ff.) shares in detail, Cyrus charged Orontes of intending to betray him twice already: <50> the first time when he was sent with him as a subordinate by his father. According to Cyrus, at that time, Orontes, urged on by Artaxerxes, had fought against Cyrus and occupied the citadel of Sardis, until he was overcome by Cyrus. Cyrus forgave him then and once more. If this account is true - we are missing an account on the other side to compare - then Artaxerxes would be most to blame for the conflict between the brothers. <60> After marching on for three more days, the men were counted: there were 12800 Greeks, 100000 barbarians, and around 20 scythed chariots (Xen. anab. I 7, 10). According to Diod. XIV 19, 7, there were only 70000 Asians. Also, the accounts on both sides differ wildly with respect to the enemy. Xenophon lists 900000 men (this total is also in Plut. Art. 7, 2) with 150 scythed chariots and 6000 knights, <page break 1173/1174> Ephoros (in Diod. XIV 22, 2; cf. Ktes. in Plut. Art. 13, 2) lists 400000 men in total. On the fourth day, Cyrus’s army moved on four parasanges, and halfway along they found a deep wide trench which was newly laid. Supposedly, it stretched inland 12 parasanges wide up to the Median Wall (other measurements in Diod. XIV 22, 4. Plut. Art. 7, 1). <10> By the Euphrates itself, there was a narrow passage left between the river and the trench, so that the army could get behind the trench without difficulty. No actual enemy themselves could be seen, but there were tracks from a large number of horses and men, the direction of which showed that it was their return journey. On the following day, Cyrus marched on carefree, and on the third day he was even travelling in a chariot, until the approach of the army of the Great King was announced at about midday, and soon after it was spotted in the distance. <20> The army was drawn up for battle in a hurry, the Greeks under Clearchus in the right wing, which leant against the Euphrates, as well as 1000 cavalry from Paphlagonia; Cyrus was in the middle with 600 armoured cavalry; and on the left wing were the rest of the Persians under Ariaeus. According to Diodorus (XIV 22), Cyrus had 1000 armed cavalry in the middle, with around 10000 barbarians behind them. The enemy’s front line was considerably longer, <30> and stretched far beyond Cyrus’s left wing. The Great King, who was in the middle of his army, even found himself facing Cyrus’s left wing. The Greeks began the attack with a battle-cry, and slowly at first before breaking into a run, they charged against the enemy’s left wing. The enemy retreated backwards, and were pursued further by the Greeks. Only Tissaphernes, who was leading the armed cavalry on the outside of the left wing of the Great King, not only stood his ground, <40> but pressed in to the Greek peltasts at the riverbank himself. However, lead by the cautious Episthenes, they cleverly split apart, meaning that they managed to grant their enemy losses and force them to retreat, without incurring damage themselves. Cyrus was first waiting for the success of his Greek attack. However, once he noticed that the enemy was planning to sweep around in front of him, <50> he charged with his armed cavalry against the enemy horses, whose leader Artagerses was supposedly killed by Cyrus himself, and he forced them to retreat. When he was in sight of his brother, he dashed against him with the words “I see the man,” and wounded him in the chest with a throw of his spear. In doing so, however, he himself was struck by a spear deep in his eye, he fell, and he met his death. The circumstances of his death are told in different ways. <60> Ktesias would have been able to give the most precise account, since he was behind the Great King’s front-line, and dealt with and healed Artaxerxes’ wound. Xen. anab. I 8, 27 is based on him, and Diod. XIV 23f. and Plut. Art. 11ff. trace back to him, but Plut. Art. 10 gives the report of Dinon. During the battle, the Greeks found out that the enemy had invaded their camp and were plundering their supplies; <page break 1174/1175> for this reason, they wanted to move backwards. However, since they could see the enemy once more drawn up for battle ahead of them, they attacked again, again forced them to retreat, and pursued them to a village, behind which the enemy cavalry was gathering itself on a hill. When they had pushed forward and reached this place, the enemy abandoned their position. Since the sun was going down, they remained standing and finally retreated back to their camp, <10> which they found plundered. They only found out about the death of Cyrus, whose head and right hand had been cut off from his corpse under the Great King’s orders, on the next day at the earliest. Xen. anab. I 10, 12 does not give the name of the village: we only know it from Plut. Art. 8, 2 (see the article Κούναξα vol. XI p.2193f.).
By the death of Cyrus, not only was the battle decided in favour of the Great King, <20> but even the entire undertaking became pointless. Nevertheless, the Greeks had remained on the battlefield, though they found themselves in a desperate position. However, although their victory couldn’t directly help them, it nevertheless clearly showed them the weaknesses of the Persian giant, and granted them the courage to cleave their way from the land of their enemy all the way back home. Famously, they did manage to make their return journey into allied land, <30> without particularly severe losses, though not without unspeakable troubles and dangers (cf. also Isocr. IV 144. Diog. Laert. II 6, 7).
“And so, this was how Cyrus met his end, a man who, according to the unanimous judgement of everyone who believed they knew him, stood out the most above all Persians, second only to the old Cyrus in kingly attitude, and who had been able to assert the greatest claim to the title of ruler.” <40> With these words, Xenophon (anab. I 9, 1) begins the chapter which gives a description of the dead Cyrus’s character, and which became a panegyric. The same author at one point (oik. 4. 14) promotes him to an actual εὐδοκιμώτατος βασιλεύς instead of the ἀνὴρ βασιλικώτατος (hence Cic. de sen. 59: Cyrum minorem Persarum regem praestantem ingenio: cf. also Hieron. chron. on 401: Cyri regis ascensus). The younger son of Dareios Nothos was a strong personality, excelling far above average: that much is certain. <50> From the days of his early youth, he was likely experienced in handling weapons and riding horses, he was brave in the hunt and in war to the point of recklessness, endearingly kind towards those he was allied with, generous and loyal to his friends, thankful for their service. These were the virtues he could base his claims to the kingship on. <60> Alongside these was also his self-esteem, which was high, and often too high for our own taste, eg. when he wrote to the Spartans (Plut. Art. 6, 2, repeated apophth.), saying that he bore a “deeper” heart than his brother, that he understood philosophy and magic better, that he could trink and tolerate more wine than him (cf. also Plut. quaest. conv. I 4, 2 ὅτι τά τ’ ἄλλα τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ βασιλικώτερος εἴη, καὶ φέροι καλῶς πολὺν ἄκρατον), <page break 1175/1176> and he also questions and belittles his brother’s skill at riding and his courage. Of course, whether tradition is always reliable on these matters should be doubted. The matter with magic and drinking and tolerating wine was supposedly on the epitaph of Dareius Hystaspis (Porphyr. de abst. IV 16. Athen. X 434 f), so it seems to have been some kind of travelling motif. <10> Various statements attributed to Cyrus show a tendency for boasting. He offered to give Lysander all his possessions (Plut. Lys. 9, 1), and if that wasn’t enough, he offered to melt down his gold and silver throne. He wanted to give the Spartan reinforcements horses when they came on foot, wagons when they rode, villages when they had fields, cities when they had villages, and he didn’t pay the soldiers their wages, but distributed land to them (Plut. Art. 6, 1). <20> Shortly before the battle at Kunaxa, Cyrus was less afraid that he wouldn’t have enough property after a successful outcome to reward all his allies, and more afraid that he wouldn’t have enough allies to reward, and promised each of his Greek soldiers a golden crown (Xen. anab. I 7, 1). “However, it was also well known that he sought to outdo anyone who had done him either good or bad” (Xen. anab. I 9, 11), <30> and so he wrought the most merciless and unrelenting revenge. He kept his own land under strict order, so that an innocent traveller could cross through without danger. Cyrus seems to have had a sense for nature. Both of his castles in Sardis and Celaenae were surrounded by magnificent parks, and he supposedly set up the part at Sardis personally, as well as planting some of the trees with his own two hands (Xen. oik. 4, 22. Cic. de sen. 59. Aelian. nat. an. I 59). <40> Cyrus was unmarried, but during his campaign against his brother he had two beautiful Greek women with him. The younger, a Milesian woman whose name is unknown, saved herself when the camp was plundered and escaped naked to the Greek guards; the older, Milto of Phocaea, was named Aspasia by Cyrus himself, and fell into the hands of the enemy, was taken into the Great King’s harem, and later became the innocent cause of the fall of Dareius, <50> the oldest son of Artaxerxes’ II. (Xen. anab. I 10, 2f. Plut. Perikl. 24, 12; Art. 26ff. Athen. XIII 576 d. Aelian. v. h. XII 1. Iustin. X 2). Of course, such an unusual circumstance as there being the Cilician queen with the army gave rise to all kinds of rumours (Xen. anab. I 2, 12), but even worse allegations came from the fact that Cyrus was his mother Parysatis’s favourite (Aelian. nat. an. VI 39). No other member of the house of Achaemenides came in such close contact with the Greek world, <60> nor has anyone found so many allies and admirers among the Greeks as Cyrus. People have often raised the question of how the relationship between Persia and Greece would have looked, had the battle at Kunaxa turned out differently. From antiquity, we know of two answers to this question. <page break 1176/1177> Xenophon’s Socrates (oik. 4, 18) gives the view: Κῦρός γε, εἰ ἐβίωσεν, ἄριστος ἂν δοκεῖ ἄρχων γενέσθαι. The Asian Greeks had a much harsher opinion, of course: ἡγοῦντο γὰρ Κύρου μὲν καὶ Κλεάρχου κατορθωσάντων μᾶλλον ἔτι δουλεύσειν, βασιλέως δὲ κρατήσαντος ἀπαλλαγήσεσθαι τῶν κακῶν τῶν παρόντων· ὅπερ καὶ συνέπεσεν αὐτοῖς (Isocr. V 95). The apodosis is all the more surprising, since these words were written centuries after the peace with Antalkidas. <10>
There hasn’t been a recent monograph on Cyrus the Younger [as of 1924]. However, cf. G. Cousin Kyros le jeune en Asie mineure, Thèse Paris, Nancy 1904.
[Weißbach.]
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