BOOK THIRTEENTH. THE HISTORY OF THE PERSIANS AND GRECIANS. SECTION I. OCHUS ASCENDS THE THRONE OF PERSIA. HIS CRUELTIES. REVOLT OF SEVERAL NATIONS. THE more the memory of Artaxerxes Mnemon was honoured and revered throughout the whole empire, the more Ochus believed he had reason to fear for himself; convinced, that in succeeding to him, he should not find the same favourable dispositions in the people and nobility, of whom he had made himself the horror by the murder of his two brothers. • To prevent that aversion from occasioning his exclusion, he prevailed upon the eunuchs, and others about the king's person, to conceal his death from the public. He began by Polyan. Stratag. vii. taking upon himself the administration of affairs, giv. ing orders, and sealing decrees in the name of Artaxerxes, as if he had been still alive; and by one of those decrees, he caused himself to be proclaimed king throughout the whole empire, always by the order of Artaxerxes. After having governed in this manner almost ten months, believing himself sufficiently established, he at length declared the death of his father, and ascended the throne, taking upon himself the name of Artaxerxes. Authors, however, most frequently give him that of Ochus, by which name I shall generally call him in the sequel of this history. с Ochus was the most cruel and wicked of all the prin ces of his race, as his actions soon explained. In a very short time, the palace and the whole empire were filled with his murders. To remove from the revolted provinces all means of setting some other of the royal family upon the throne, and to rid himself at once of all trouble, that the princes and princesses of the blood might occasion him, he put them all to death, without regard to sex, age, or proximity of blood. He caused his own sister Ocha, whose daughter he had married, to be buried alive;d and having shut up one of his uncles, with one hundred of his sons and grandsons, in a court of the palace, he ordered them all to be shot to death with arrows, only because those princes were much esteemed by the Persians for their probity and valor. That uncle is apparently the father of Sisygambis the mother of Darius Codomannus: for Quin b A. M. 3644.. Ant. J. C. 360. Justin. 1. x. c. 3. * Quint. Curt. I. x. c. 5. tus Curtius tells us, that Ochus had caused eighty of her brothers with her father to be massacred in one day. He treated with the same barbarity, throughout the whole empire, all those who gave him any umbrage, sparing none of the nobility, whom he suspected of the least discontent whatsoever. f 'The cruelties exercised by Ochus, did not deliver him from inquietude. Artabasus, governor of one of the Asiatic provinces, engaged Chares the Athenian, who commanded a fleet and a body of troops in those parts, to assist him, and with his aid defeated an army of seventy thousand men sent by the king to reduce him. Artabasus, in reward of so great a service, made Chares a present of money to defray the whole expenses of his armament. The king of Persia resented exceedingly this conduct of the Athenians in regard to him. They were at that time employed in the war of the allies. The king's menace to join their enemies with a numerous army obliged them to recal Chares. & Artabasus, being abandoned by them, had recourse to the Thebans, of whom he obtained five thousand men, whom he took into his pay, with Pamenes to command them. This reinforcement put him into a condition to acquire two other victories over the king's troops. Those two actions did the Theban troops, and their commander, great honour. Thebes must have been extremely incensed against the king of Persia, to send so powerful a succour to his enemies, at a time when that republic was engaged in a war with the f A. M. 3648. Ant. J. C. 356. Diod. L. xvi. p. 433, 434. Phoceans. It was perhaps an effect of their policy, to render themselves more formidable, and to enhance the price of their alliance. It is certain, that soon after, they made their peace with the king, who paid them three hundred talents, that is to say, three hundred thousand crowns. Artabasus, destitute of all support, was overcome at last, and obliged to take refuge with Philip of Macedon. Ochus being delivered at length from so dangerous an enemy, turned all his thoughts on the side of Egypt, which had revolted long before. About the same time, several considerable events happened in Greece, which have little or no relation with the affairs of Persia. I shall insert them here, after which I shall return to the reign of Ochus, not to interrupt the series of his history. SECTION II. WAR OF THE ALLIES AGAINST THE ATHENIANS. SOME few years after the revolt of Asia Minor, of which I have been speaking, in the third year of the hundred and fiftieth Olympiad, Chio, Cos, Rhodes, and Byzantium took up arms against Athens, upon which till then they had depended. To reduce them, they employed both great forces and great captains. Cha Diod. l. xvi. p. 438. A. M. 3646. Ant. J. C. 358. They were the honour to their last of the Athenian generals, who did country; no one after them being distinguished by merit or reputation. 1 Chabrias had already acquired a great name, when having been sent against the Spartans to the aid of the Thebans, and seeing himself abandoned in the battle by the allies, who had taken flight, he sustained alone the charge of the enemy; his soldiers, by his order, having closed their files with one knee upon the ground covered with their bucklers, and presented their pikes in front, in such a manner, that they could not be broke, and Agesilaus, though victorious, was obliged to retire. The Athenians erected a statue to Chabrias in the attitude he had fought. Iphicrates was of very mean extraction, his father having been a shoemaker: but in a free city like Athens, merit was the sole nobility. This person may be truly said to be the son of his actions. Having signalized himself in a naval combat, wherein he was only a private soldier, he was soon after employed with distinction, and honoured with a command. In a prosecution carried on against him before the judges, his accuser, who was one of the descendants of Harmodius, and made very great use of his ancestor's name, having reproached him with the baseness of his birth, "Yes," replied he," the nobility of my family begins in me: * Hæc extrema fuit ætas imperatorum Atheniensium, Iphicratis, Chabriæ, Timothei: neque post illorum obitum quisquam dux in illa urbe fuit dignus memoria. Cor. Nep. in Timoth. c. 4. |