After the fall of Sidon, Ochus invaded Egypt with a Persian army of three hundred and thirty thousand men, assisted by fourteen thousand Greek mercenaries, six thousand or whom were furnished by the Greek cities of Asia Minor, four thousand under Mentor consisting of the troops which he had brought from Egypt to assist the Phonicians, three thousand being sent from Argos, and four thousand from Thebes. He divided his expedition into three portions, over each of which he placed a Persian and also a Greek general. The Greek commanders were Lacrates of Thebes, Mentor of Rhodes, and Nicostratus of Argos; the latter a man of such enormous physical strength that he regarded himself as a second Hercules, and adopted the traditional costume of that fabulous hero-a club and a lion's skin. The Persian generals were Rhoesaces, Aristazanes and Bagôas, the chief of the eunuchs. The Egyptian king had only one hundred thousand men to oppose to the vast host of Ochus, and twenty thousand of these were Greek mercenaries. He occupied the Nile and its various branches with a powerful navy. The Greek generals in the Persian service outmaneuvered Nectanebo, who hastily retreated to Memphis, leaving the fortified towns to the defense of their garrison. The Persian leaders excited jealousies and suspicions between the Greek and Egyptian troops composing these garrisons, and thus reduced the secondary cities of Lower Egypt, after which they advanced on Memphis, Nectanebo fleeing in despair to Ethiopia. Thereupon all Egypt submitted to Artaxerxes Ochus, who demolished the walls of the cities, plundered the temples, and after fully rewarding his mercenaries, returned triumphantly to his capital with a vast booty. Grote has truly said that "the reconquest of Egypt by Ochus must have been one of the most impressive events of the age," and that it "exalted the Persian Empire in force and credit to a point nearly as high as it had ever occupied before." Ochus thus raised himself to a degree of prestige and glory above that of any Persian king since the time of Darius Hystaspes. Revolts or rebellions did not again disturb the empire. Mentor and Bagôas, the two generals who had borne the most conspicuous part in the Egyptian campaign, were rewarded by Ochus with the most important posts. Mentor, as governor of the whole sea-coast of Asia Minor, reduced the many chiefs who had assumed an independent sovereignty to submission within a few years. Bagôas, as the king's minister at the capital, maintained tranquillity throughout the empire. The last six years of the reign of Ochus formed the most tranquil and prosperous period of the later Medo-Persian history; and this happy state of affairs must be ascribed to the talents of Bagôas and Mentor, and reflect credit upon the king himself who selected such able officials and retained them in office. Persian Recon quest of Egypt. Rein vigoration of the Empire. Mentor and Bagoas. New Menace But while the Medo-Persian Empire seemed to have been thus reinto Persia vigorated with new life and strength, and when it seemed to have started on a new career of power and glory, its existence was menaced Macedon. by a new power which had suddenly risen into prominence on its north in the Rise of Assas sination of Arta xerxes Ochus. Short Assas of Arses. western frontier. Artaxerxes Ochus and his counselors perceived the future danger. A Persian force was sent to aid the Thracian prince, Cersobleptes, to maintain his independence; and the city of Perinthus, with Persian aid, made a successful defense against the besieging army of Philip of Macedon (B. C. 340). Thus before Philip had subdued Greece, Persian statesmen saw a formidable rival in the rapidly-rising Macedonian monarchy. While the empire was thus threatened from without, conspiracy and revolution again distracted the court and paralyzed the action of the government. The violence and cruelty of Artaxerxes Ochus made him unpopular with his subjects. Bagôas himself grew so suspicious of his sovereign that he poisoned him in B. C. 338, and placed the king's youngest son, ARSES, upon the throne, while he likewise assassinated Reign and all the new monarch's brothers. Bagôas was now virtual ruler, but in sination the course of a year Arses began to assert himself and uttered threats against Bagôas, who thereupon caused Arses and his infant children to be assassinated, and placed Codomannus, the son of Arsanes, upon the throne, B. C. 336. The new king assumed the name of Darius, and is known in history as DARIUS CODOMANNUS. The account of these events has been transmitted to us from ancient times by Diodorus, Arrian, Strabo and Quintus Curtius. According to Strabo, Darius Codomannus did not belong to the royal house; but according to Diodorus, he was the grandson of Ostanes, a brother of Artaxerxes Mnemon. In the very year that Darius became King of Persia (B. C. 336), Alexander the Great became King of Macedon upon the assassination of his father, Philip, by Pausanius, a Macedonian nobleman. Darius Codomannus. His Excellent Charac ter. Invasion of the by Alexan der the Great. Darius Codomannus, the last of the Medo-Persian kings, was morally superior to most of his predecessors, but he was destitute of sufficient intellectual ability to enable him to wrestle with the difficult circumstances of his situation. He was personally brave, tall and handsome, amiable in disposition, capable of great exertion, and possessed of some military capacity. The invasion of Asia Minor by Alexander the Great, which occurred in B. C. 334, did not alarm Darius, who seemed to have no full comprehension of the peril which thus threatened the existence of his empire. He seems to have despised the youth and inexperience of Alexander, who was then but twenty years of age; and he made no sufficient preparation to resist this formidable attack upon the Medo-Persian Empire. Since the battle of Marathon the final struggle between Greece and Persia was only a question of time, but the liberal employment of Persian gold had delayed the inevitable contest for more than a century and a half. The Greeks now had a leader more ambitious than Cyrus and more able than Xerxes. der in Asia Minor. The satraps and generals of Persia shared the confidence of their Alexansovereign, and though a large army was collected in Mysia and a powerful fleet was sent to the coast, no effort was made to prevent the passage of the Hellespont by Alexander's army. In the spring of B. C. 334 Alexander with his thirty-five thousand Græco-Macedonian troops crossed the strait which Xerxes had passed with his hosts of five millions less than a century and a half before. The inferiority of the Greek army in numbers was far overbalanced by its superior efficiency. It consisted of veteran troops in the highest possible condition of discipline and equipment, and every Macedonian and Grecian soldier was animated by the most enthusiastic devotion to his youthful leader and confident of victory. the Granicus. Had the Persian leaders made any serious opposition Alexander's Battle of invasion of Asia Minor might have been prevented. The first earnest effort to stay the progress of the invader was made in the attempt to prevent the passage of the Granicus, a little river in Mysia flowing into the Propontis (now Sea of Marmora). In the battle which ensued the Persians were defeated, and Alexander succeeded in crossing the stream. In consequence of this defeat, the Persians were thrown on the defensive, and Alexander's conquest of Asia Minor was the immediate result. The death of Memnon, the brother of Mentor, deprived the King of Persia of his ablest general, who had already collected a large fleet, captured many islands in the Ægean, and prepared to carry the war into Greece and thus compel Alexander to withdraw from Asia Minor. After besieging and capturing Miletus and Halicarnassus, Alexander's triumphant progress through Asia Minor was unopposed, and by the spring of B. C. 333 the youthful conqueror was at the gates of Syria. Darius Codomannus assembled a vast army in the spring of B. C. 333, and, now obliged to act wholly on the defensive, endeavored to stop the further advance of the invader. With seven hundred thousand men, Darius encountered Alexander on the plain of Issus; but hemmed in in a narrow defile between the mountain, the river and the sea, the immense Persian hosts were routed, and Darius himself was obliged to flee for his own life. His wife, mother and children were made prisoners by Alexander, who treated them with the utmost respect, and honored Darius's wife, who died soon afterward, with a most magnificent burial. The defeat of Darius Codomannus at Issus was followed by the conquest of Syria, Phoenicia and Egypt by Alexander, who captured Tyre and Gaza, after vigorous sieges. der's Conquest of Asia Minor. Battle of the Issus. Alexan der's Conquest of Syria, Phoenicia and Egypt. Battle of Its Decisive Result. Flightand Assassination Codo mannus. In the spring of B. C. 331 Alexander retraced his triumphant march through Syria, and, directing his course toward the heart of the MedoPersian Empire, crossed the Euphrates at Thapsacus, traversed Mesopotamia and encountered Darius Codomannus a second time near the Assyrian city of Arbela, on the plain of Gaugamela, east of the Tigris. The Persian king, since his defeat in the battle of Issus twenty months before, had collected the entire force of his vast dominion for the final struggle, which was to decide the fate of his empire. With only fortyseven thousand men Alexander totally defeated and routed the immense hosts of Darius, said to number over a million men, in the great battle of Arbela, which was the death-blow to the Medo-Persian Empire. Darius Codomannus fled to the city of Arbela, about twenty miles distant from the battlefield. Here the unfortunate monarch was seized of Darius by his own officers, headed by the treacherous Bessus, satrap of Bactriana, who, seeing their master's fortunes ruined, had contrived a plan to deliver him to Alexander and thereby advance their own interests. They loaded him with chains and forced him to accompany them in their flight toward Hyrcania, on the approach of Alexander to Arbela. The next day Alexander arrived at Arbela and took possession of the king's treasures; after which he went in hot pursuit of Darius and his fleeing officers. Hemmed in on all sides and finding escape impossible, the treacherous Bessus and his fellow-conspirators basely turned upon their king, mortally wounding him and leaving him to die by the roadside in the mountains. A Macedonian soldier discovered the former lord of Asia in his dying condition, and, in response to his appeal, brought him a cup of cold water. Darius sincerely thanked his generous enemy, expressing sorrow at his inability to reward him for this kindness to him in his dying moments. He commended the soldier to the notice of Alexander, saying he had sufficient magnanimity to grant his dying request, and then expired. Alexander arrived shortly after his death, and, deeply affected, covered the dead body of the last Medo-Persian king with his own royal mantle, and directed that a magnificent funeral procession should convey it to Pasargada, where it was interred in the tombs of his illustrious ancestors, with royal honors. The conqueror also provided for the fitting education of the children of his fallen adversary. End of the Medo Although the battle of Arbela sealed the fate of the Medo-Persian Empire, the reduction of its north-eastern and eastern provinces occuPersian pied the conqueror several years longer; but their final conquest made Empire. Alexander lord of Asia, and master of the vast empire founded by Cyrus the Great, which for two centuries had been the great dominating power of Asia, ruling the vast region from the Indus to the African deserts. ALREADY We have alluded to the ethnic identity of the Persians with the Medes; and we have seen that their primeval home was in Bactria, and that in prehistoric times they migrated to the south-west. The Medes and Persians were a kindred branch of the great Iranic, or Aryan family-the Indo-European division of the Caucasian race. The name Aryan has been assigned to this portion of the Caucasian race on grounds of actual tradition and history. In the Zend-Avesta, "the first best of regions and countries," the original home of AhuraMazda's peculiar people was Aryanem vaejo-"the source of the Aryans." Herodotus states that in his time the Medes were known as Aryans by all the surrounding nations. The sculptor employed by Darius Hystaspes at Behistun explained to the Scythian aborigines of the Zagros mountain region, in a note of his own, that Ahura-Mazda, of whom so much was said in the inscription, was "the God of the Aryans." Darius Hystas pes, in another inscription, boasted that he was a "Persian, the son of a Persian, an Aryan of Aryan descent." Eudemus, the disciple of Aristotle, called the people whose priests were the Magi “the Aryan nation." Strabo introduced the term Ariana into geography, and assigned it a meaning almost identical with that of the modern Iran. The Sassanian kings divided the world into Airan and Aniran, and claimed to be sovereigns of both the Aryan and non-Aryan nations. The term Iran is the only name by which a modern Persian knows his country. Obscure in their early annals, the Medes and Persians became the most important Aryan tribes towards the eighth or seventh century before Christ. They were close kindred, united together, each wielding the superiority by turns. They claimed and exercised supremacy over all the other Aryan tribes, and likewise over certain alien races. Aryan of the Medesand Persians. Their Kinsaip. |