Before risking his generals in the Delta, the Great King sent his envoys to Greece to try and buy the Lacedæmonians’ assistance for the invasion of Attica. But Spartan virtue happened just then to be proof against the Persian darics, so the troops of the Great King were assembled in Phœnicia and Cilicia, and the three hundred thousand foot-soldiers and the fleet of three hundred vessels were placed under the command of Megabyzus. On the approach of the enemy, the allies raised the siege of the White Wall, and beaten in a first engagement, in which Charitimides was killed, and Inarus wounded in the thigh, they entrenched themselves in the island of Prosopitis, where they sustained a long siege of eighteen months, which ended by Megabyzus succeeding in turning off one of the arms of the river, and the Athenian fleet thus stranded, an opportunity was afforded of storming the place. The majority of the Greek allies perished in the battle, but some succeeded in getting back to Cyrene, and returning thence to their country, and others fled with Inarus, and were forced to give themselves up a little later. To add to their misfortunes, a reinforcement of fifty ships, which arrived at the Mendesian mouth of the Nile, was more than half destroyed by the Phœnician fleet. When laying down his arms, Inarus had stipulated that his life and that of his companions should be saved. Artaxerxes seemed at first inclined to respect the capitulation, but five years later he gave over the prisoners to his mother Amestris, who had Inarus crucified to avenge the death of Achæmenes.
PERSIAN INSCRIPTIONS OF DARIUS AND XERXES
(From casts in the British Museum, London.)
[454-449 B.C.]
The victory of Prosopitis concluded the rebellion, and Thannyras, the son of Inarus, was made king of Libya in his father’s place. But some bands of refugees retired to the marshes on the seacoast, which had often been a sanctuary to the people of the Saïd, and having proclaimed Amyrtæus king, they successfully repelled all the attacks of the Persians. The integrity of the empire was re-established, but the war with the Greeks went on.
Six years after their defeat, the Athenians equipped a fleet of two hundred sail, and put it under the command of Cimon, with orders to conquer Cyprus or at least occupy several of its towns. Cimon, wishing to divide the force of the enemy, sent a squadron of sixty ships to King Amyrtæus, as if he were going to recommence the campaign in Egypt, and then, with the remaining men and ships, he laid siege to Citium. He died soon afterwards from a wound, and for want of provisions his successors were forced to raise the siege; but in sailing past Salamis they defeated the Phœnician and Cilician fleet, and then landed and routed a Persian army stationed near the town. Artaxerxes was overcome by this last reverse, and fearing that the Athenians, if once they had Cyprus, would take possession of Egypt, which was always disaffected, he decided to treat for peace at any price. Peace was therefore concluded on condition of freedom being granted to the Greeks of Asia, no Persian army was to approach the Ionian coast within a distance of three days’ journey, no Persian man-of-war was to sail in Greek waters, which extended from the eastern point of Lycia to the entrance of the Bosporus.
This treaty in 449 terminated the first war between the Persians and Greeks, after it had lasted from the burning of Sardis to the seventeenth year of the reign of Artaxerxes, from 501 to 449.
Eastern empires could not exist without the excitement of constant wars and victories, and directly they gave up their aggressive policy they began to go down—they were conquerors, or nothing—and Persia was no exception to the rule. Darius I had been a very great king, greater perhaps than Cyrus himself. The vigour and skill with which he organised armies, conceived plans of campaigns, and chose his officers, and the promptitude with which he quelled the revolts on his accession to the throne, show us that he was at least equal to the best generals of his time, and as a ruler he was superior to the whole line of the Achæmenidæ.
[448-405 B.C.]
Both Darius and Xerxes turned to Europe when their conquests in Asia had extended their empire to where their frontiers were bounded by the almost impassable barrier of the deserts of Africa and Arabia, the mountains of India and the Caucasus, and the steppes of central Asia; but when the Greek victories obliged them to retire, the day of Persia’s decadence dawned. Her fall was not so sudden as had been that of Assyria, Chaldea, and Media, for the administrative organisation of Darius had been too skilfully adjusted to fall at a single blow, but the nonchalance and inaptitude of the sovereigns finally destroyed its action. Several satrapies were now governed by a single satrap, who commanded the armies and acted as king, and there was not only an incessant succession of rebellions in the provinces and in Egypt, where the national sentiment was not attuned to peace, but in Chaldea, Bactriana, and Asia Minor; and tragedies in the palaces, where the dagger and poison made havoc in the royal family, were as common as civil wars between the satraps.
Peace was hardly signed with Greece when Megabyzus, governor of Syria, discontented with the way the king had treated Inarus after his victory, raised an army under his command. He defeated two generals, one after the other, and only disbanded his force after having dictated the terms of peace.
Some years later his son Zopyrus headed a rebellion in Caria and Lydia, and the success of the revolt was so fatal to the other satraps that their fidelity henceforth was only a question of caprice or circumstance. Artaxerxes died in 424, and the intrigues which had cost so much blood at the beginning of his reign now recommenced. His eldest legitimate son, Xerxes II, was assassinated at the end of forty-five days by Sogdianus, one of his illegitimate brothers; he in his turn was dethroned and killed after a reign of six months and a half by Ochus, another bastard of the old king, who, on ascending the throne, took the name of Darius, and whose life was one long tissue of miseries and crimes. His reign from the beginning was disturbed by the rebellion of his brother Arsites and Artyphius, son of Megabyzus, who took up arms in Asia Minor, enrolled Greek mercenaries, and gained two important victories. Persian gold now compassed what was beyond Persian bravery, and the rebels, abandoned by their soldiers, surrendered on condition that their lives should be spared.