The Battle of Cunaxa was fought in 401 BC between Cyrus the Younger and his elder brother Arsaces, who had seized the Persian throne as Artaxerxes II in 404 BC. The great battle of the revolt of Cyrus took place 70 km north of Babylon, at Cunaxa, on the left bank of the Euphrates River. The main source is a Greek eyewitness and soldier, Xenophon. The Places of Dragon Prince consist of the Princedoms, Keeps, and isles that make up the setting of Melanie Rawns Dragon Prince and Dragon Star trilogies. ... Centuries: 6th century BC - 5th century BC - 4th century BC Decades: 450s BC 440s BC 430s BC 420s BC 410s BC - 400s BC - 390s BC 380s BC 370s BC 360s BC 350s BC Years: 406 BC 405 BC 404 BC 403 BC 402 BC - 401 BC - 400 BC 399 BC... Artaxerxes II Memnon (c. ... Cyrus the Younger, son of Darius II and Parysatis, was a Persian prince and general. ... This article or section should be merged with Hellenes Greeks in Ancient History In Latin literature, Græci (or Greeks, in English) is the name by which Hellenes are known. ... Achaemenid Empire The Achaemenid Dynasty was a dynasty in the ancient Persian Empire, including Cyrus II the Great, Darius I and Xerxes I. At the height of their power, the Achaemenid rulers of Persia ruled over territories roughly emcompassing some parts of todays Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon... Cyrus the Younger, son of Darius II and Parysatis, was a Persian prince and general. ... Clearchus (Greek: Κλέαρχος), the son of Rhamphias, was a Spartan general and mercenary. ... Artaxerxes II (c. ... Centuries: 6th century BC - 5th century BC - 4th century BC Decades: 450s BC 440s BC 430s BC 420s BC 410s BC - 400s BC - 390s BC 380s BC 370s BC 360s BC 350s BC Years: 406 BC 405 BC 404 BC 403 BC 402 BC - 401 BC - 400 BC 399 BC... Cyrus the Younger, son of Darius II and Parysatis, was a Persian prince and general. ... Persia redirects here. ... Artaxerxes II (c. ... For other uses, see Babylon (disambiguation). ... The Battle of Cunaxa was fought in 401 BC between Cyrus the Younger and his elder brother Arsaces, who had seized the Persian throne as Artaxerxes II in 404 BC. Cyrus gathered an army of Greek mercenaries under the Spartan general Clearchus, and met Artaxerxes at Cunaxa on the left... Xenophon, Greek historian Xenophon (In Greek , ca. ...

Preparations

Cyrus gathered an army of Greek mercenaries, consisting of 10,400 hoplites and 2,500 peltasts, under the Spartan general Clearchus, and met Artaxerxes at Cunaxa. He also had a large force of Asiatic trooops under his second-in-command Ariaeus. Xenophon gives the strength of the Persian army at an impossible 1,200,000 men, excluding the scythed chariots. No modern commentator finds this figure credible, but educated guesswork is now the only way to fill the gap in our knowledge. Artaxerxes certainly seems to have enjoyed a superiority in cavalry. For other uses, see Mercenary (disambiguation). ... Warfare in Hellenic Greece centered mainly around heavy infantrymen called hoplites. ... A peltast was a type of light infantry in Ancient Greece who often served as skirmishers. ... For modern day Sparta, see Sparti (municipality). ... Clearchus (Greek: Κλέαρχος), the son of Rhamphias, was a Spartan general and mercenary. ... The Battle of Cunaxa was fought in 401 BC between Cyrus the Younger and his elder brother Arsaces, who had seized the Persian throne as Artaxerxes II in 404 BC. Cyrus gathered an army of Greek mercenaries under the Spartan general Clearchus, and met Artaxerxes at Cunaxa on the left... Not to be confused with Golgotha, which was called Calvary. ...

Battle

The Greeks, deployed on Cyrus's right and outnumbered, charged the left flank of Artaxerxes' army, which fled (or executed a planned evasive manoeuvre) before they came within arrowshot. However, on the Persian right the fight between Artaxerxes' army and Cyrus was far more difficult and protracted. Cyrus personally charged his brother's bodyguard and was killed, which sent the rebels into retreat. Only the Greek mercenaries, who had not heard of Cyrus's death and were heavily armed, stood firm. Clearchus advanced against the much larger right wing of Artaxerxes' army and sent it into retreat. Meanwhile, Artaxerxes' troops took the Greek encampment and destroyed their food supplies.

Aftermath

According to the Greek soldier and writer Xenophon, the Greek heavy troops scattered their opposition twice; only one Greek was even wounded. Only after the battle did they hear that Cyrus himself had been killed, making their victory irrelevant and the expedition a failure. They were in the middle of a very large empire with no food, no employer, and no reliable friends. They offered to make their Persian ally Ariaeus king, but he refused on the grounds that he was not of royal blood and so would not find enough support among the Persians to succeed. They offered their services to Tissaphernes, a leading satrap of Artaxerxes, but he refused them, and they refused to surrender to him. Tissaphernes was left with a problem; a large army of heavy troops, which he could not defeat by frontal assault. He supplied them with food and, after a long wait, led them northwards for home, meanwhile detaching Ariaeus and his light troops from their cause. Xenophon, Greek historian Xenophon (In Greek , ca. ...

The Greek senior officers foolishly accepted the invitation of Tissaphernes to a feast. There they were made prisoner, taken up to the king and there decapitated. The Greeks elected new officers and set out to march northwards to the Black Sea through Kurdistan and Armenia. Their eventual success, the march of the Ten Thousand, was recorded by Xenophon in his Anabasis. The story rapidly became widely known in Greece, spreading the idea of Persian weakness, and may have partly inspired the eventual conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great. 60 BC Kingdom of Corduene Corduene (also known as Cordyene, Cardyene, Gordyene, Gordyaea, Korduene, Korchayk and Girdiyan) was an ancient region located in northern Mesopotamia, known today as Kurdistan. ... The Ten Thousand were a group of mercenary units, mainly Greek, drawn up by Cyrus the Younger to attempt to wrest the throne of the Persian Empire from his brother, Artaxerxes II. Their march to the Battle of Cunaxa and back to Greece (401 BC-399 BC) was recorded by... Xenophon, Greek historian Xenophon (In Greek , ca. ... The Persian Expedition, Penguin Classics edition of Xenophons Anabasis, translated by Rex Warner Anabasis Aνάβασις is the most famous work of the Greek writer Xenophon. ... For the film of the same name, see Alexander the Great (1956 film). ...

References

Full text of Xenophon's Anabasis online:

• Freely downloadable, at Project Gutenberg [1]
• Directly readable, at The University of Adelaide Library, Australia [2]

Further reading

• Xenophon, The Persian Expedition, trans. by Rex Warner, Penguin, 1949.
• Montagu, John D. Battles of the Greek and Roman Worlds, Greenhill Books, 2000.
• Prevas, John. Xenophon's March: Into the Lair of the Persian Lion, Da Capo, 2002.
• Waterfield, Robin. Xenophon's Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age, Belknap Press, 2006.

External links

• Battles of Artaxerxes II, in Mark Drury's Achaemenid Persian Page, a reinterpretation of the Anabasis from a supposedly Persian point of view. For example:
  « Unfortunately the stubborness of the Greeks to accept defeat, and the inability of both sides to overcome ethnic and cultural biases,
  led to the unneccessary loss of many lives in the Greek's courageous, but wasted retreat » (sic).