A STYAGES now ruled Media in place of his father Cyaxares. His name in Iranian, Arshtivaiga, meant “lance-hurler,” but it was quite inappropriate for the son, who in his long reign (585-550) showed only weakness. In Persian lands Ariaramnes had been succeeded by his son Arsames (Arshama); in the other line, Cyrus gave place, not to Arukku, but to a younger son, Cambyses (Kanbujiya) I, ‘ ‘Great King, king of Anshan.” To him Astyages married his daughter Mandane, who bore to Cambyses a second Cyrus. In 559 this Cyrus II became vassal king in Anshan and ruled from his open capital Parsagarda.
See our tour for Persepolis
Shut off from the hot, unhealthy coastal plain by mountains through which wound tortuous trails, the high plateau of Parsa was well fitted to retain the old Iranian fighting spirit. Scorning a master so weakened by luxury, Cyrus plotted revolt. His own tribe of the Pasargadae could be depended upon, for his family, the Achaemenidae, provided its rulers. With it were associated two other Persian tribes, the Maraphii and the Maspii. To these were added still other Persian tribes: the agricultural Panthialaei, Derusiaei, and Germanii (the last in the oasis of Kerman), and the nomad herders—the Dai, Mardi, Dropici, and Sagartii.3 Of these, the Mardians occupied the desert near the site of Persepolis and long retained the reputation of brigands, 4 but the Sagartians inhabited the oasis of Yazd and, while speaking the common language, were distinguished from their fellows by their lack of defensive metal armor, their only weapons being the dagger and the lasso.
Now that the Persians were all united under his rule, Cyrus looked about for an ally against Media among the other great powers. The nearest as well as the most logical was Babylonia. A generation before, Babylon had been an ally of Media, but only for the moment; as soon as their common enemy, Assyria, had been destroyed and the spoils of empire had been divided, the alliance became nominal. When Nebuchadnezzar’s engineers constructed the great chain of fortifications which seemed to make Babylon impregnable, the enemy he feared was his neighbor—Media.
After a long and successful reign, the great Babylonian conqueror passed away on October 7, 562. After less than two years of rule, his son Amel-Marduk had by August 13, 560, been followed by Nebuchadnezzar’s son-in-law, Nergal-shar-usur; he in turn lasted only until May 22, 556, when a tablet is dated by his youthful son, Labashi- Marduk.
Two such brief reigns gave hope to the nationalists, who had always resented the alien rule of the Chaldaean dynasty. Three days after the tablet dated by Labashi-Marduk, there is another dated by a rival, Nabu-naid. According to him, Labashi-Marduk was a youth without understanding who, contrary to the will of the gods, had seated himself upon the throne of the kingdom. There are hints of the palace revolution to which he owed his new position, of the support by nobles and army, but in very truth it was by the command of Marduk, his lord, that Nabu-naid was raised to the lordship of the land. He also claims that he is the representative of Nebuchadnezzar and Nergal-shar-usur, his predecessors. At any rate, after less than two months* rule, the young king was put to death with horrible torture, and Nabu-naid was sole ruler of the remnants of the Chaldaean
Empire.
Nabu-naid’s claims to be the true representative of the great conqueror’s policies were bolstered by the report of a convenient dream; by Marduk’s order, Nebuchadnezzar himself appeared to interpret a celestial phenomenon as favorable, portending a long reign. Other Babylonian divinities sent equally favoring visions and were adequately rewarded. Marduk’s great temple at Babylon, Esagila, was gloriously restored; the New Year’s feast, beginning March 31, 555, was celebrated with all due pomp, and Nabu-naid took the part reserved for the king. He grasped the hands of Marduk and was again recognized as the lawful monarch. Rich gifts were assigned to his temple. Then Nabu-naid journeyed through all Babylonia, the cities of the south in particular, and Sin of Ur, Shamash of Larsa, and Ishtar of Uruk were recipients of the royal bounty.
Although the nominee of the anti-Chaldaean party, Nabu-naid was not himself a native Babylonian. His father was a certain Nabubalatsu-iqbi, who is called the “wise prince/’ though actually he seems to have been the chief priest of the once famous temple of the moon-god Sin in Mesopotamian Harran. Since the last flicker of Assyrian rule from that city had been stamped out in 610, Harran had remained in the hands of the Medes, who had permitted the temple to lie in ruins. Quite literally, it was the life-dream of Nabu-naid to restore that temple, amid whose ruins his father was still living. But this required that Harran first should be taken from the Medes.
As Nabu-naid tells it, in his accession year the gods Marduk and Sin appeared to him in a dream. Marduk bade him restore the Harran temple; we wonder whether the priests of Esagila approved. When Nabu-naid fearfully protested that the Mede surrounded it and that he was exceeding strong, Marduk answered: * The Mede of whom you are speaking, he himself, his land, and the kings who march at his side are not! When the third year comes, the Gods will cause Cyrus, king of Anshan, his little slave, to advance against him with his small army. He will overthrow the wide extending Medes; he will capture Astyages, king of the Medes, and take him captive to his land.
TRIUMPH OVER THE MEDES
In this hope, Nabu-naid made alliance with Cyrus, who thereupon openly rebelled against Media. To fulfil his part of the agreement, Nabu-naid promptly levied an army against the ”rebels’* who lived in the countries once held by Nebuchadnezzar. Before he left, Nabunaid handed over the 4 kingship” of Babylonia to his eldest son, Belshar- usur (Belshazzar as he is called in the Book of Daniel), and started off for Harran. No aid for the city was possible, since the revolt of Cyrus kept Astyages busy at home, and Harran was quickly recovered. The city was rebuilt, and the army had laid the temple foundations by 555.
The next year the reconquest of Syria continued. By January 553, Nabu-naid was in Hamath. By August, he had raided the Amanus Mountains. By December he had killed the king of Edom, while his troops were in Gaza on the Egyptian frontier. Disaffected Jewish captives were predicting the fall of Babylon at the hands of the warlike Medes,15 but, as so often, they were disappointed. Astyages did send out against his rebellious vassal an army under Harpagus, but he had forgotten how he had cruelly slain that general’s son; Harpagus did not forget and promptly deserted to Cyrus, bringing over with him most of his soldiers. A second army, commanded by Astyages in person, reached the capital of Parsa; here it mutinied, seized its king, and handed him over to Cyrus. Ecbatana was captured, and its wealth of gold, silver, and precious objects was carried off to Anshan (550).
Media ceased to be an independent nation and became the first satrapy, Mada. Nevertheless, the close relationship between Persians and Medes was never forgotten. Plundered Ecbatana remained a favorite royal residence. Medes were honored equally with Persians; they were employed in high office and were chosen to lead Persian armies. Foreigners spoke regularly of the Medes and Persians; when they used a single term, it was “the Mede.”
By his conquest of the Median Empire, Cyrus had taken over the Median claims to rule over Assyria, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia, and Cappadocia. In large degree, these claims were in conflict with those of Babylonia. All reason for the alliance had disappeared when each party to the agreement had attained his immediate objective.
Destruction of the Median Empire upset the delicate balance of power, and war between Cyrus and the three surviving powers—Lydia, Babylonia, and Egypt—might be expected to follow.
BEGINNINGS OP BABYLONIAN DECLINE
No vision from the abandoned Babylonian divinities warned Nabunaid that the international situation had so dangerously shifted. With his mind set on further conquests in the west, he left Edom on its desert border and struck deep into the heart of the Arabian Peninsula. Tema was attacked in its central oasis and its king was slain. For some strange reason, Nabu-naid built there a palace like that in Babylon and took up his residence in it.17 Business documents from the years immediately following tell of camel caravans which carried food to the king at Tema.
Meanwhile, Belshazzar exercised in Babylonia the “kingship” with which his father had intrusted him. Numerous letters and business documents refer to the king’s son as the chief authority.19 From the king’s seventh year to at least the eleventh (549-545), our chronicle regularly begins each year: “The king was in Tema. The king’s son, the nobles, and his soldiers were in Akkad. In the first month, the king did not come to Babylon. Nabu did not come to Babylon. Bel did not go out (from Esagila). The New Year’s festival was omitted.”20 Thus deprived of the great annual-show, with its opportunities for moneymaking, the inhabitants of Babylon were naturally angered. The influential priests of Marduk were completely alienated.
That the great lord of their city was snubbed while the alien moongod of Harran was extravagantly honored did not lessen the resentment.
PERSIAN CONQUEST OF LYDIA
On news that his Median ally had been dethroned, Croesus of Lydia hastily, collected his levies and crossed the former Halys boundary to pick up remnants of the empire. Cyrus, who had just revived the title “king of Parsa,” felt this a challenge to his own pretensions, and in April, 547, he set out from looted Ecbatana to meet the invader.
After he had traversed the pass, high above the city, his road wound steadily downward until he reached the main line of the Zagros at the “Gate of Asia.” Beyond the “Gate,” the descent was even more rapid. The cold air suddenly became warmer, the poplars, cypresses, and plane trees of the plateau gave way to a few palms, and Cyrus was on the edge of the great Mesopotamian plains.
Cyrus might easily have turned south against Babylon, had not the skill of Nebuchadnezzar’s engineers formed that city and its surroundings into the world’s mightiest fortress. Wisely he postponed the assault and marched north into Assyria, already a Median dependency and therefore prepared to accept him without question. Arbela, for so many centuries overshadowed by Ashur and Nineveh, regained its prestige as the new capital of Athura. Cyrus crossed the Tigris below Arbela, and Ashur fell; the gods of Ashur and Nineveh were saved only through refuge behind the walls of Babylon. Farther west on the main road lay Harran; it could be claimed as part of Athura.
Nabu-naid’s father had passed away at the ripe age of one hundred and four just three years earlier (550), and his successor as priest of Sin could not resist the conqueror. There is no mention of its fall in our extant sources; only the line of march and the situation which followed betrays the fact that Harran was lost and with it the temple for whose restoration Nabu-naid had sacrificed the good will of Marduk.
For these losses, the only revenge possible was a Babylonian alliance with Lydia. By May, Cyrus was ready to proceed against Croesus. The Great Road was again followed through North Syria, which also was detached from Nabu-naid’s recent empire, and into Cilicia; on their own initiative, the hitherto independent Cilicians accepted Persian vassalage and as reward were permitted to retain their native kings, who regularly bore the name Syennesis.25 Through the Cilician Gates the army entered Cappadocia, which was organized as another satrapy, Katpatuka. At the same time, presumably, Armenia received Cyrus as successor to Astyages and henceforth was the satrapy of Armina.
After an indecisive battle in the land of Pteria, the country about the recently excavated Alaca Huyiik, Croesus retired to Sardis. His provincial levies were disbanded, while he summoned his allies, Amasis of Egypt, Nabu-naid of Babylon, and the Spartans on the Greek mainland, to meet him in the spring. Cyrus had no intention of allowing the enemy time for reinforcements. Although winter, severe on the Anatolian Plateau, was nearing, he pushed rapidly west.
In the small plain east of the capital, at the junction of the Hyllus with the Hermus, which hereafter was known as 4’Cyrus’ Field,” the mounted Lydian spearmen barred his road. By the advice of Harpagus, Cyrus stationed the baggage camels in front of his line; their horrid and unaccustomed odor frightened the horses and drove them off in wild flight. The dismounted Lydians re-formed and fought bravely, but at last they were forced back into the citadel. More urgent appeals were sent to the allies; there was no time to answer, for after but fourteen days of siege, the supposedly impregnable acropolis of Sardis was scaled and Croesus made prisoner (547)
“In May he marched to the land of Lydia. He killed its king. He took its booty. He placed in it his own garrison. Afterward his garrison and the king were in it.” Such was the official report given by Cyrus. In actual fact, Croesus followed oriental custom and immolated himself to escape the usual indignities heaped upon a captured monarch before he was put to death. Within the next half-century, the Attic vase painter Myson depicted Croesus enthroned upon a pyre which a servant was about to light.
Apollo of Delphi had been highly honored by Lydian kings. To Croesus he had uttered an ambiguous oracle which clearly had lured him to his death. Such a blot on Apollo’s prestige could not be allowed, and soon there were published “true” accounts of Croesus’ fate. First the priests declared that the god himself had carried the deposed monarch to immortality in the land of the fabled Hyperboraeans, conveniently far in the north. Then came the familiar story that at the last moment, when Croesus was already on the pyre, Cyrus was seized with remorse; he attempted to save him, although the fire was already blazing fiercely. Then Apollo sent an unexpected rain which miraculously extinguished the flames, and Croesus was saved to become the king’s chief adviser. Finally, the Hyperboraeans were rationalized and Croesus was settled in Barene near Ecbatana!
Lydia was formed into the satrapy Saparda or Sardis. The satrap was the Persian Tabalus. Provincial administration was still in the experimental stage. Cyrus accordingly tried out the appointment of a native, a certain Pactyas, to have charge of the captured treasure of Croesus.
SUBJUGATION OP THE GREEKS AND LYCIANS
This year 547 marks also the first contact between Persians and Greeks. Neither people recognized its fateful character. To the Greeks, Persia was simply one more barbarian monarchy, whose trade their merchants might exploit and to which, if necessary, the nearer city-states might give a nominal allegiance. They never dreamed that in a single generation the wealthiest, the most populous, and the most advanced half of the Greek world would be permanently under Persian domination and that the next generation would be compelled to resist the whole might of the Persian Empire in an attempt to subjugate the more backward Greek states which still retained their independence.
They could not foresee that throughout the whole period, while these states remained free, their international relations would be dominated by the Achaemenid great king and that, even in internal affairs, political parties would succeed or fail as they were pro- or anti-Persian. To the Persians, however, during the next half-century, Greeks on the western boundary would remain only a minor frontier problem. Before the final battle with the Lydians, Cyrus had offered terms to the Greek coastal cities. For long years they had been subjects of the Lydians, but their yoke had been made easy, while the commercial classes who now controlled their governments had grown rich through the opportunities afforded by trade as part of the wealthy Lydian Empire. Quite naturally, the city states refused the generous offer, with the exception of Miletus, which was shrewd enough to
divine who would be the coming power.37 The Persians had learned their first lesson in handling the Greeks: Divide and conquer. At the same time they probably learned their second lesson.
Apollo, venal god of oracles, from his chief shrine at Delphi had delivered an ambiguous saying to Croesus which contributed to his overconfidence and downfall. At Branchidae was Apollo’s shrine for Miletus; he, too, might be bribed through his priests. The question inevitably arises: Did they have a part in the easy surrender of Miletus?
However we answer the question, the fact remains that both Apollo of Miletus and Apollo of Delphi for the next half-century remained consistent friends of the Persians.
By right of conquest, title to the former Lydian subjects passed to Cyrus. Refusal of most Greeks to submit automatically made them rebels. Their position was not improved by what Cyrus must have considered an insolent demand that they should enjoy the same favored status as under Croesus. When this demand was refused as coming too late, the fortifying of their cities meant war. The rebellious Greeks appealed to Sparta, which Cyrus knew only as a summoned ally which had failed to make an appearance. To his astonishment, the victorious great king received an embassy which forbade him to injure any Greek city on pain of punishment by the Spartans I38 On the king’s departure for Ecbatana, Pactyas revolted and, with the treasure intrusted to him, hired Greek mercenaries. Tabalus was besieged on the Sardis acropolis until reinforcements under the Mede Mazares drove off the rebels and completely disarmed the Lydians.
Pactyas fled to Cyme, which inquired of Apollo’s oracle at Milesian Branchidae. The answer might have been expected; as consistent friend of the Persians, Apollo ordered the surrender of the suppliant.
A prominent citizen of Cyme, Aristodicus, son of Heracleides, won unique reputation among the Greeks by refusing to accept so obviously prejudiced an oracle. Again an embassy visited Apollo at Branchidae.
Aristodicus as spokesman repeated the inquiry and received the same answer. As he had already planned, Aristodicus then stole all the birds nesting in the temple. From the holy of holies a voice was heard:4’Most wicked of men, how dare you do this? Will you steal my suppliants from the temple?’* Aristodicus did not hesitate: “O Lord, how can you thus aid your own suppliants while you order the Cymaeans to hand over their suppliant?” The rebuke must have stung, for the priest furiously answered: “Yes, I do so order you, that you may the more quickly perish for your impiety and may never again come to ask my oracle about the handing-over of suppliants!
Apollo’s bluff had for once been called, and, as far as we know,
Aristodicus suffered no harm for his temerity. Cyme was not super-stitious; but Pactyas was a dangerous suppliant, and so he was sent for refuge to safer Mitylene. Lesbos was an island; as yet the Persians had no fleet, and Pactyas might have remained safe had not Mazares added bribes to threats. The Mitylenians were about to sell the refugee when the Cymaeans learned of their plans and brought Pactyas by ship to Chios and to the presumed safety of the temple of Athena, guardian of the city. Chios, another island, was equally safe from threats but not from bribery, and the sorry tale was ended by the surrender of Pactyas in exchange for mainland Atarneus. The Persians had learned another lesson: Greeks could easily be bought.
Obviously, the next step should be the subjugation of those main land Greeks who refused to submit. They resisted bravely, but each for himself, and were taken one by one. Priene was enslaved. The Maeander Plain and Magnesia were ravaged. Harpagus the Mede, rewarded for his treachery, was the new satrap. He offered peace to Phocaea if only the citizens would demolish a section of the city wall and hand over one house for royal occupancy; the Phocaeans sailed off by night from a deserted city, but soon a good half lost heart and returned.41 Teos followed their example. The other Ionian cities on the mainland were quickly taken. The islands inhabited by Ionians, having treacherously handed over Pactyas, submitted abjectly to his
executioners and were formed into a satrapy.42 As for the Dorian cities, they showed no fight; only Cnidus attempted to insure safety by cutting through the isthmus. Apollo of Delphi followed the example of Apollo of Branchidae and forbade the project; on the approach of Harpagus, Cnidus also surrendered. Carians had fought bravely as mercenaries for Egyptian kings of the Saite dynasty; now only the Pedasians made a brief resistance to the Persians at Lide, for Ionian and Aeolian contingents were already fighting in the army led by Harpagus.
But while Greeks and Carians surrendered so cravenly to the invader, their neighbors, the Trmmela (Termilae)44 or Lycians, taught them how they should have resisted. These had not forgotten how, as Lukku, they had harried the Egypt of the Nineteenth Dynasty, how under Glaucus and Sarpedon they had aided Trojans against the armada collected by Agamemnon from the Mycenaean Empire. They had retained better than other Anatolians their Caucasian language and their unwritten ancestral customs, counting descent through the mother. Constant warfare with the Solymi hillmen had kept them hardy, and the colonizing Greeks had been able to effect only one settlement—at Phaselis on their border. Even Croesus had not been
able to subdue them.
Shutting themselves up in their chief city, Arnna or Xanthus, the Lycians fought until all hope was gone, then burned their wives and treasure in the citadel and sallied out to die.46 In the same manner, the Caunians perished. Now the whole seacoast could be formed into the satrapy of Yauna or Ionia; it was not a true satrapy, for it possessed no satrap of its own but was under the satrap of Sardis. The Greeks along the Hellespont, on the contrary, were ruled by a satrap Mitrobates, 47 who from Dascyleium on the south shore of the Propontus administered Hellespontine Phrygia or Tyaiy Drayaha, “Those of the Sea.”
This brief episode taught the Persians much about the Greeks. They learned that as individuals they were excellent fighters, clever and well-armed, and worthy of incorporation into their own armies. They discovered also that Greek city-states, bitterly jealous of one another, were incapable of united action, and that it was not difficult to find purchasable friends among them. Of such friends, Apollo, the god of oracles, was the most valuable. But the greatest discovery of all was that there were class divisions within the city-states themselves. Most of these city-states had long ago abandoned kingship for a government by a hereditary nobility of landholders. Then new economic forces had brought into prominence an aristocracy of trade bought wealth, which often, through the tyrant, supplanted this older aristocracy of birth. While the patriotism of the older nobility was inevitably narrow, men of commerce could appreciate trade opportunities offered by inclusion in a wide-flung empire. Obviously, it was to Persian advantage that Greek cities be intrusted to tyrants.
BABYLONIA IN FERMENT
Under the rule of friendly tyrants, the conquered Greeks remained quiet while Cyrus rapidly expanded his empire. Now that Nabu-naid had made his alliance with Croesus, Cyrus might continue openly his whittling-away of the Babylonian territory. On his return from Sardis, we should expect, he would take over the remaining portions of Syria yet held by Nabu-naid’s soldiers and perhaps demand some expression of loyalty from the Arabs along the border.49 If Tema was threatened by these operations, this would be one reason why sometime after 545 Nabu-naid reappeared in Babylon.
There were other good reasons. Highly centralized in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Babylonia had progressively disintegrated under the weakling rule of Belshazzar. Misrule and graft were rampant, the peasants were oppressed, and their fields went out of cultivation. By 546 once fertile Babylonia faced the threat of actual starvation.60 In this same fateful year Nabu-naid suffered another terrible loss. From its earliest days the Chaldaean dynasty had safely held the acropolis of Susa, the most important city of Elam. One of the outstanding generals of Nebuchadnezzar, Gobryas (Gubaru) by name,51 had been appointed governor of Gutium (as the Babylonians continued to describe Elam). Now he revolted to Cyrus, and Nabu-naid
was able to save only Susa’s gods by transporting them to Babylon. By June 9, 546, the troops of the Elamite had entered Akkad and were
attacking the loyal governor of Uruk.52