74. Artaxerxes was haunted by the desire to restore the empire to its greatest extent under Darius Hystaspes. He reöccupied Samos, which he intended as a stepping-stone to the rest of the Greek islands; and sent a great expedition into Egypt under the joint command of Iphic´rates, an Athenian, and Pharnabazus, a Persian general. This enterprise failed, partly through the jealousies of the two commanders; and the failure hastened a revolt in the western satrapies, which came near to overturn the empire. Egypt now retaliated, and attempted to revive her ancient glories by the conquest of Syria and Phœnicia. But these movements were defeated by management and gold, and Artaxerxes left his dominion with nearly the same boundaries which it had at the beginning of his reign.
75. Reign of Artaxerxes III. B. C. 359-338. The death of Artaxerxes II was followed by the usual crimes and atrocities which attended a change upon the Persian throne. His youngest son, Ochus, seized the crown after the murder of his eldest and the suicide of his second brother. He assumed the name of Artaxerxes III, and by his energy and spirit did much to retrieve the failing prosperity of the empire. He did not, however, abate the inherent sources of its weakness in the corruptions of the court. Family affection had been replaced by jealousy and hatred. The first act of Ochus was the extermination of his own royal race, in order that no rival might remain to dispute his throne. His more ambitious enterprises were delayed by a revolt of Artabazus in Asia Minor, which was abetted by Athens and Thebes. The defeated satrap fled to Philip of Macedon, whose ready protection and Ochus’s retaliatory measures led to the most important results. These will be detailed in Book IV.
76. About B. C. 351, Ochus was ready to attempt the subjugation of Egypt. He was defeated in his first campaign, and retired into Persia to recruit his forces. This retreat was the signal for innumerable revolts. Phœnicia placed herself under the independent government of the king of Sidon; Cyprus set up nine native sovereigns; in Asia Minor a dozen separate kingdoms were asserted, if not established. But the spirit of Artaxerxes III was equal to the occasion. He raised a second armament, hired ten thousand Greek mercenaries, and proceeded in person to war against Phœnicia and Egypt. Sidon was taken and Phœnicia subdued. Mentor the Rhodian, who, in the service of the king of Egypt was aiding the Sidonians, went over to the Persians with four thousand Greeks. Egypt was then invaded with more success. Nectanebo was defeated and expelled, and his country again reduced to a Persian satrapy.
77. Most of the later victories of Artaxerxes were due to the valor of his Greek auxiliaries, or to the treachery or incapacity of his opponents. After the reëstablishment of his government, he abandoned himself to the pleasures of his palace, while the control of affairs rested exclusively with Bago´as, his minister, and Mentor, his general. The people were only reminded from time to time of his existence by some unusually bloody mandate. Whatever hope might have been inspired by his really great abilities, was disappointed at once by his unscrupulous violence and indolent self-indulgence. He died of poison by the hand of Bagoas, B. C. 338.
78. Arses. B. C. 338-336. The perfidious minister destroyed not merely the king himself, but all the royal princes except Ar´ses, the youngest, whom he placed upon the throne, believing that, as a mere boy, he would be subservient to his control. After two years he was alarmed by some signs of independent character in his pupil, and added Arses to the number of his victims. He now conferred the sovereignty upon Darius Codoman´nus, a grandson of Darius II, whom he regarded as a friend, but who commenced his reign by an act of summary justice, in the execution of the wretch to whom he owed his crown. B. C. 336.
79. Reign of Darius III. B. C. 336-331. As has often happened in the world’s history, one of the best of the Persian kings had to bear the results of the tyrannies of his predecessors. Darius was not more distinguished for his personal beauty than for the uprightness and benevolence of his character; and as satrap of Armenia, before his accession to the throne, he had won great applause both for his bravery as a soldier and his skill as a general. But the Greeks, whose reasons for hostility against the Persians had been two hundred years accumulating, had now, at last, a leader more ambitious than Xerxes, and more able than Cyrus. Already, before Darius had mounted the throne, Alexander the Great had succeeded his father in Macedon, had been appointed general-in-chief of all the Greek forces, and had commenced his movement against Asia.
80. The Persian monarch despised the presumption of an inexperienced boy, and made no effort, by aiding the European enemies of Alexander, to crush the new foe in his cradle. The satraps and generals shared the confidence of their master, and though a large force was collected in Mysia, no serious opposition was made to his passage of the Hellespont. In B. C. 334, Alexander with his 35,000 Greeks crossed the strait which had been passed by Xerxes, with his five millions, less than 150 years before. The Greek army was scarcely more inferior to the Persian in number than superior in efficiency. It was composed of veteran troops in the highest possible state of equipment and discipline, and every man was filled with enthusiastic devotion to his leader and confidence of success.
Memnon, a brother of Mentor the Rhodian, with the satraps Spithrida´tes and Arsi´tes, commanded the Persians in Asia Minor. Their first collision with Alexander was in the attempt to prevent his passage of the Grani´cus, a little Mysian river which flows into the Propon´tis. They were totally defeated, and Alexander, advancing southward, subdued, or rather liberated all the cities of the western coast without long delay. Halicarnas´sus, under the command of Memnon, made an obstinate resistance, and it was only at the end of autumn that it surrendered. Memnon then resolved to carry the war into Greece. He gathered a large fleet and captured many islands in the Ægean; but his death at Mytile´ne relieved Alexander of the most able of his opponents.
81. The king of Macedon wintered at Gor´dium, where he cut or untied the celebrated knot, which an ancient prophecy had declared could never be loosened except by the conqueror of Asia. With fresh reinforcements from Greece, he commenced his second campaign, in the spring of 333, by marching through Cappadocia and Cilicia to the gates of Syria. Darius met him, in the narrow plain of Issus, with an army of half a million men. Hemmed in between the mountains, the river, and the sea, the Persian horsemen could not act, and their immense numbers were rather an incumbrance than an advantage. Darius was defeated and fled across the Euphrates. His mother, wife, and children fell into the hands of the conqueror, who treated them with the utmost delicacy and respect.
82. B. C. 333-331. The conquests of Syria, Phœnicia, and Egypt, which Alexander now accomplished in less than two years, will be described in the Macedonian history. In the spring of 331, he retraced his triumphant march through Syria, crossed the Euphrates at Thapsacus, traversed Mesopotamia, and met Darius again on the great Assyrian plain east of the Tigris. The Persian king had spent the twenty months which had intervened since the battle of Issus in mustering the entire force of his empire. The ground was carefully selected as most favorable to the movements of cavalry, and as giving him the full advantage of his superior numbers. A large space was leveled and hardened with rollers for the evolutions of the scythe-armed chariots. An important part of the infantry was formed of the brave and hardy mountaineers of Afghanistan, Bokhara, Khiva, and Thibet; and the cavalry, of the ancestors of the modern Kurds and Turcomans, a race always distinguished for bold and skillful horsemanship. A brigade of Greek auxiliaries was alone considered able to withstand the charge of Alexander’s phalanx. Altogether the forces of Darius numbered more than a million of men, and they surpassed all former general levies of the Persians in the efficient discipline which enabled them to act together as one body.