A Manual of Ancient History

by M. E. Thalheimer

56. Mardonius engaged to complete the conquest of Greece with 300,000 men. The fleet was ordered to the Hellespont, and the king with the remainder of his forces set out for home. His magazines had been exhausted, and during this forced retreat many died of hunger. Forty-five days after his departure from Attica he arrived at the Hellespont, and finding his second bridge of boats destroyed, returned to Asia by ship. He entered Sardis at the end of the year 480, humbled and depressed, only eight months from the time when he left it full of vain hopes of subduing the western world.

57. The operations of Mardonius will be more fully detailed in the History of Greece;[31] a mere outline is here presented. Wintering in Thessaly, he sought by magnificent promises to detach the Athenians from the Greek interests. Diplomacy failing, his army was at once poured into Attica, filling Athens, whose inhabitants had taken refuge again at Salamis. He destroyed the beautiful city by fire, completing the destruction which Xerxes had begun. Then finding that the Greeks were concentrating their forces at the Isthmus, he retired into Bœotia, where, in September, 479, the great battle of Platæ´a was fought. Mardonius was slain and his forces routed with terrible carnage. The last remnant of the Persian fleet was similarly routed at Myc´ale, on the opposite side of the Ægean, and the deliverance of Europe was complete. No Persian army henceforth trod the soil of European Greece, and for twelve years no Persian sail appeared in the Ægean.

58. Having spent his own best strength and that of his empire in this disastrous war, Xerxes made no further effort for military glory, but gave himself up to luxurious indolence. The highest rewards were offered to him who could invent a new pleasure. His subjects followed the example of their king; the empire was weakened by licentiousness and distracted by violence. It was only a fitting close to such a reign, when, at the end of twenty years, Xerxes was murdered by Artaba´nus, the captain of his guard, and Aspami´tres, his chamberlain.

59. Reign of Artaxerxes I. B. C. 465-425. The assassins placed upon the throne the youngest son of their victim, Artaxerxes Longimanus, or the Long-Handed. The eldest son, Darius, was executed on a false charge of having murdered his father. The second, Hystas´pes, claimed the crown, but was defeated and slain in battle. The crimes of the real assassins were proved against them, and they were punished with death. Artaxerxes enjoyed an undisputed reign of forty years, during which the power of the empire declined, notwithstanding his beneficent efforts to promote the interests of his people.

B. C. 460.

B. C. 455.

60. Egyptian Revolt. In the early part of his reign Egypt revolted under I´narus, son of Psammet´ichus, who was aided by the Athenians. Achaemenes, brother of the king, was sent with a great army to punish the rebellion; but he was defeated and slain by the hand of Inarus in the battle of Papre´mis, and a vast number of Persians perished. The remainder of the army were shut up in the White Castle at Memphis, and suffered a siege of three years. A new force, led by Megaby´zus, was more successful: Memphis was relieved, Inarus taken, and the Athenian fleet destroyed. Amyrtæ´us, the ally of Inarus, held out six years longer in the marshes of the Delta, until, by the intervention of Athens, peace was made. The Persians were defeated with great loss off Salamis, in Cyprus, and consented to very humiliating terms. They engaged not to visit with fleet or army the western shores of Asia Minor, but to respect the independence of the Asiatic Greeks. Even the leader of the revolt was punished only by the loss of his principality.

61. Contrary to the solemn agreement of Megabyzus, Inarus, after five years at the Persian court, was given up, with fifty Athenian companions, to the vengeance of the queen-mother, and suffered a barbarous death for having slain Achaemenes. Disgusted by this violation of his honor, Megabyzus stirred up a revolt in his province of Syria. He was the greatest general in the empire, and the success of his operations against the forces sent to subdue him, so alarmed his master that he was permitted to dictate his own terms of peace. The intercessions of his wife, Am´ytis, sister of the king, aided much in his reconciliation; but the example was ruinous to the strict organization of the provinces which Darius had introduced. The tendencies to decay now acted with greater and greater rapidity.

62. In the seventh year of Artaxerxes’ reign, a new migration of Jews was led from Babylon by Ezra, a man of priestly lineage and high in favor at the Persian court. Laden with contributions from the Jews of Babylonia, he arrived in Jerusalem with great treasures for the completion of the temple, and for the reëstablishment of civil government throughout the country. He found that the people had allied themselves with the neighboring tribes by marriage, and insisted on the immediate dismissal of all heathen members from Jewish households.

63. The defeat of the Persians at Cyprus, 449 B. C., operated to a certain degree in favor of the Jews; for all the maritime ports of the empire having been ceded, the natural fortress of Zion, commanding the roads between Egypt and the capital, became of great importance. Hitherto the Persian monarchs had forbidden Jerusalem to be fortified, but in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes’ reign, Nehemi´ah, the Jewish cup-bearer of the great king, received a commission to rebuild its walls. He moved with great celerity and secrecy, for the neighboring Samaritans, Ammonites, and Arabians, no longer awed, as formerly, by a decree of the empire, violently opposed the work. Laboring by night, with tools in one hand and weapons in the other, the Jews of every rank gave themselves so zealously to the task, that in fifty-two days Jerusalem was inclosed by walls and towers strong enough to defy her foes. (Nehemiah i-v: 16.)