During the first years of his reign, Evagoras doubtless paid his tribute regularly, and took no steps calculated to offend the Persian king. But as his power increased, his ambition increased also. We find him towards the year 390 B.C., engaged in a struggle not merely with the Persian king, but with Amathus and Citium in his own island, and with the great Phœnician cities on the mainland. By what steps, or at what precise period, this war began, we cannot determine. At the time of the battle of Cnidus (394 B.C.) Evagoras not only paid his tribute, but was mainly instrumental in getting the Persian fleet placed under Conon to act against the Lacedæmonians, himself serving aboard. It was in fact (if we may believe Isocrates) to the extraordinary energy, ability, and power displayed by him on that occasion in the service of Artaxerxes himself, that the jealousy and alarm of the latter against him are to be ascribed. Without any provocation, and at the very moment when he was profiting by the zealous services of Evagoras, the Great King treacherously began to manœuvre against him and forced him into the war in self-defence. Evagoras accepted the challenge, in spite of the disparity of strength, with such courage and efficiency, that he at first gained marked successes. Seconded by his son Pnytagoras, he not only worsted and humbled Amathus, Citium, and Soli, which cities, under the prince Agyris, adhered to Artaxerxes, but he also equipped a large fleet, attacked the Phœnicians on the mainland with so much vigour as even to take the great city of Tyre; prevailing, moreover, upon some of the Cilician towns to declare against the Persians. He received powerful aid from Acoris, the native and independent king in Egypt, as well as from Chabrias and the force sent out by the Athenians. Beginning apparently about 390 B.C., the war against Evagoras lasted something more than ten years, costing the Persians great efforts and an immense expenditure of money. Twice did Athens send a squadron to his assistance, from gratitude for his long protection to Conon and his energetic efforts before in the battle of Cnidus—though she thereby ran every risk of making the Persians her enemies.
[380-374 B.C.]
The satrap Tiribazus saw that so long as he had on his hands a war in Greece, it was impossible for him to concentrate his force against the prince of Salamis and the Egyptians. Hence, in part, the extraordinary effort made by the Persians to dictate, in conjunction with Sparta, the Peace of Antalcidas, and to get together such a fleet in Ionia as should overawe Athens and Thebes into submission. It was one of the conditions of that peace that Evagoras should be abandoned; the whole island of Cyprus being acknowledged as belonging to the Persian king. Though thus cut off from Athens, and reduced to no other Grecian aid than such mercenaries as he could pay, Evagoras was still assisted by Acoris of Egypt, and even by Hecatomnus, prince of Caria, with a secret present of money. But the Peace of Antalcidas being now executed in Asia, the Persian satraps were completely masters of the Grecian cities on the Asiatic seaboard, and were enabled to convey round to Cilicia and Cyprus not only their own fleet from Ionia, but also additional contingents from these very Grecian cities.
Evagoras defended himself with unshaken resolution, still sustained by aid from Acoris in Egypt; while Tyre and several towns in Cilicia also continued in revolt against Artaxerxes; so that the efforts of the Persians were distracted, and the war was not concluded until ten years after its commencement. It cost them on the whole (if we may believe Isocrates) 15,000 talents in money [£3,000,000 or $15,000,000], and such severe losses in men, that Tiribazus acceded to the propositions of Evagoras for peace, consenting to leave him in full possession of Salamis, under payment of a stipulated tribute.
Statue of Minerva in a Ruined Temple at Athens
It was seemingly not very long after the peace, that a Salaminian named Nicoreon formed a conspiracy against his life and dominion, but was detected, by a singular accident, before the moment of execution, and forced to seek safety in flight. He left behind him a youthful daughter in his harem, under the care of a eunuch (a Greek, born in Elis) named Thrasydæus; who, full of vindictive sympathy in his master’s cause, made known the beauty of the young lady both to Evagoras himself and to Pnytagoras, the most distinguished of his sons, partner in the gallant defence of Salamis against the Persians. Both of them were tempted, each unknown to the other, to make a secret assignation for being conducted to her chamber by the eunuch: both of them were there assassinated by his hand.
Thus perished a Greek of pre-eminent vigour and intelligence, remarkably free from the vices usual in Grecian despots, and forming a strong contrast in this respect with his contemporary Dionysius, whose military energy is so deeply stained by crime and violence. Nicocles, the son of Evagoras, reigned at Salamis after him, and showed much regard, accompanied by munificent presents, to the Athenian Isocrates; who compliments him as a pacific and well-disposed prince, attached to Greek pursuits and arts, conversant by personal study with Greek philosophy, and above all, copying his father in that just dealing and absence of wrong towards person or property which had so much promoted the comfort as well as the prosperity of the city.
[387 B.C.]
We now revert from the episode respecting Evagoras—interesting not less from the eminent qualities of that prince than from the glimpse of Hellenism struggling with the Phœnician element in Cyprus—to the general consequences of the Peace of Antalcidas in Central Greece. For the first time since the battle of Mycale in 479 B.C., the Persians were now really masters of all the Greeks on the Asiatic coast. The satraps lost no time in confirming their dominion. In all the cities which they suspected, they built citadels and planted permanent garrisons. In some cases, their mistrust or displeasure was carried so far as to raze the town altogether. And thus these cities, having already once changed their position greatly for the worse, by passing from easy subjection under Athens to the harsh ride of Lacedæmonian harmosts and native decemvirs, were now transferred to masters yet more oppressive and more completely without the pale of Hellenic sympathy. Both in public extortion, and in wrong-doing towards individuals, the commandant and his mercenaries whom the satrap maintained, were probably more rapacious, and certainly more unrestrained, than even the harmosts of Sparta. Moreover, the Persian grandees required beautiful boys as eunuchs for their service, and beautiful women as inmates of their harems. What was taken for their convenience admitted neither of recovery nor redress. While the Asiatic Greeks were thus made over by Sparta and the Perso-Spartan convention of Antalcidas, to a condition in every respect worse, they were at the same time thrown in, as reluctant auxiliaries to strengthen the hands of the Great King against other Greeks—against Evagoras in Cyprus, and above all, against the islands adjoining the coast of Asia—Chios, Samos, Rhodes, etc. These islands were now exposed to the same hazard, from their overwhelming Persian neighbours, as that from which they had been rescued nearly a century before by the confederacy of Delos, and by the Athenian empire into which that confederacy was transformed. All the tutelary combination that the genius, the energy, and the Panhellenic ardour of Athens had first organised, and so long kept up, was now broken up; while Sparta, to whom its extinction was owing, in surrendering the Asiatic Greeks, had destroyed the security even of the islanders.[e]