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Xerxes I, commonly known as Xerxes the Great, was a Persian ruler who served as the fourth King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 486 BC until his assassination in 465 BC. He was the son of Darius the Great and Atossa, a daughter of Cyrus the Great. In Western history, Xerxes is best known for his invasion of Greece in 480 BC, which ended in Persian defeat. Xerxes was designated successor by Darius over his elder brother Artobazan and inherited a large, multi-ethnic empire upon his father's death. He consolidated his power by crushing revolts in Egypt and Babylon, and renewed his father's campaign to subjugate Greece and punish Athens and its allies for their interference in the Ionian Revolt. In 480 BC, Xerxes personally led a large army and crossed the Hellespont into Europe. He achieved victories at Thermopylae and Artemisium before capturing and razing Athens. His forces gained control of mainland Greece north of the Isthmus of Corinth until their defeat at the Battle of Salamis. Fearing that the Greeks might trap him in Europe, Xerxes retreated with the greater part of his army back to Asia, leaving behind Mardonius to continue his campaign. Mardonius was defeated at Plataea the following year, effectively ending the Persian invasion.
Darius I, commonly known as Darius the Great, was the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his death in 486 BCE. He ruled the empire at its territorial peak, when it included much of Western Asia, parts of the Balkans and the Caucasus, most of the Black Sea's coastal regions, Central Asia, the Indus Valley in the far east, and portions of North Africa and Northeast Africa including Egypt (Mudrâya), eastern Libya, and coastal Sudan.
Bardiya or Smerdis, also named as Tanyoxarces by Ctesias, was a son of Cyrus the Great and the younger brother of Cambyses II, both Persian kings. There are sharply divided views on his life. Bardiya either ruled the Achaemenid Empire for a few months in 522 BCE, or was impersonated by a magus called Gaumata, whose name is given by Ctesias as Sphendadates, until he was toppled by Darius the Great.
Mardonius was a Persian military commander during the Greco-Persian Wars. Though he secured initial victories in the first Persian invasion of Greece, he was ultimately forced to retreat into Anatolia after suffering catastrophic losses in both men and material due to a storm off the coast of Mount Athos, following which he was relieved of his command by Darius the Great. He was later re-appointed by Xerxes I and took part in the second Persian invasion of Greece. In 480 and 479 BC, Mardonius spearheaded the Persian army's destruction of Athens. Shortly thereafter, he was killed during the Battle of Plataea.
Cyrus II of Persia, commonly known as Cyrus the Great, was the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Hailing from Persis, he brought the Achaemenid dynasty to power by defeating the Median Empire and embracing all of the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East, expanding vastly and eventually conquering most of West Asia and much of Central Asia to create what would soon become the largest polity in human history at the time. The Achaemenid Empire's largest territorial extent was achieved under Darius the Great, whose rule stretched from Southeast Europe in the west to the Indus River valley in the east.
Scylax of Caryanda was a Greek explorer and writer of the late 6th and early 5th centuries BCE. His own writings are lost, though occasionally cited or quoted by later Greek and Roman authors. The periplus sometimes called the Periplus of Scylax is not, in fact, by him; that so-called Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax was written in about the early 330s BCE by an unknown author working in the ambit of the post-Platonic Academy and/or the Aristotelian Peripatos (Lyceum) at Athens.
The Nabonidus Chronicle is an ancient Babylonian text, part of a larger series of Babylonian Chronicles inscribed in cuneiform script on clay tablets. It deals primarily with the reign of Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, covers the conquest of Babylon by the Persian king Cyrus the Great, and ends with the start of the reign of Cyrus's son Cambyses II, spanning a period from 556 BC to some time after 539 BC. It provides a rare contemporary account of Cyrus's rise to power and is the main source of information on this period; Amélie Kuhrt describes it as "the most reliable and sober [ancient] account of the fall of Babylon."
The Achaemenid dynasty was a royal house that ruled the Persian Empire, which eventually stretched from Egypt and Thrace in the west to Central Asia and the Indus Valley in the east.
Cyaxares II was a king of the Medes whose reign is described by the Greek historian Xenophon. Some theories have equated this figure with the "Darius the Mede" named in the Book of Daniel. He is not mentioned in the histories of Herodotus or Ctesias, and many scholars doubt that he actually existed. The question of his existence impacts on whether the kingdom of the Medes merged peacefully with that of the Persians in about 537 BC, as narrated by Xenophon, or was subjugated in the rebellion of the Persians against Cyrus' grandfather in 559 BC, a date derived from Herodotus (1.214) and almost universally accepted by current scholarship.
The Battle of Opis was the last major military engagement between the Achaemenid Empire and the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which took place in September 539 BC, during the Persian invasion of Mesopotamia. At the time, Babylonia was the last major power in Western Asia that was not yet under Persian control. The battle was fought in or near the strategic riverside city of Opis, located north of the capital city of Babylon in modern-day Iraq, and resulted in a decisive victory for Persia. Shortly afterwards, the Babylonian city of Sippar surrendered to Persian forces, who then supposedly entered Babylon without facing any further resistance. The Persian king Cyrus the Great was subsequently proclaimed as the king of Babylonia and its subject territories, thus ending its independence and incorporating the entirety of the fallen Neo-Babylonian Empire into the greater Achaemenid Empire.
The fall of Babylon was the decisive event that marked the total defeat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire to the Achaemenid Empire in 539 BC.
The Amyrgians were a Saka tribe.
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the Persian Empire or First Persian Empire, was an Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, it was the largest empire by that point in history, spanning a total of 5.5 million square kilometres. The empire spanned from the Balkans and Egypt in the west, West Asia as the base, the majority of Central Asia to the northeast, and the Indus Valley to the southeast.
Doriscus was a settlement in ancient Thrace, on the northern shores of Aegean Sea, in a plain west of the river Hebrus. It was notable for remaining in Persian hands for many years after the Second Persian invasion of Greece, and remained thus known as the last Persian stronghold in Europe.
Artabanus was a son of Hystaspes, and therefore brother of Darius I as well as uncle of Xerxes I.
Mascames, also spelled Maskames was a Persian official and military commander, who flourished during the reign of Xerxes I. He was the son of Megadostes, and was appointed governor of Doriscus in 480 BC by Xerxes I, succeeding the governor who had been appointed by Darius the Great. According to Herodotus, Mascames resisted all Greek attacks following the Second Persian invasion of Greece, and remained thus known as the only remaining Persian governor in Europe. Though the Greeks managed to clear other Persian garrisons in Europe, such as Eion, they were unable to take Doriscus from Mascames, which irked the Athenian military.
Arsamenes was a prince of ancient Persia, the son of Darius the Great. We know very little about him today other than that he was, according to the historian Herodotus, the commander of the Utians and Mycae people in the army of Xerxes I during the Second Persian invasion of Greece.
Artachaees, son of Artaeus, was an Achaemenid engineer of ancient Persia, who lived around the 5th century BCE.
Artanes was a prince of ancient Persia, the son of the satrap Hystaspes, and brother of Darius the Great.
Artybius was a general of ancient Persia during the reign of Darius the Great. After the Ionian Revolt had broken out, he sailed with a fleet to Cyprus to conquer that island.
References
- 1 2 Zaghamee, Reza (2013). Discovering Cyrus: The Persian Conqueror Astride the Ancient World. Mage Publishers Incorporated. ISBN 9781933823799 . Retrieved 2023-06-15.
- 1 2 3 Bryce, Trevor (2009). "Utians". The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia: The Near East from the Early Bronze Age to the Fall of the Persian Empire. Taylor & Francis. p. 757. ISBN 9781134159086 . Retrieved 2023-06-15.
- ↑ Herodotus, Histories 3.93
- ↑ Briant, Pierre (2002). From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire. Penn State University Press. p. 195. ISBN 9781575065748 . Retrieved 2023-06-15.
- ↑ Herodotus, Histories 7.68
- ↑ Oetjen, Roland, ed. (2019). New Perspectives in Seleucid History, Archaeology and Numismatics: Studies in Honor of Getzel M. Cohen. De Gruyter. ISBN 9783110388558 . Retrieved 2023-06-15.
- ↑ Christensen, Peter (2015). The Decline of Iranshahr: Irrigation and Environment in the Middle East, 500 B.C. - A.D. 1500. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 36. ISBN 9781838609368 . Retrieved 2023-06-15.
- ↑ Potts, D. T. (2014). Nomadism in Iran: From Antiquity to the Modern Era. Oxford University Press. pp. 103, 106. ISBN 9780199330805 . Retrieved 2023-06-15.
- ↑ Marquart, Joseph (1896). Untersuchungen zur Geschichte von Eran II (in German).
- ↑ Pliny the Elder, Natural History 6.42
- ↑ Kuhrt, Amélie (2013). The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period. Taylor & Francis. p. 528. ISBN 9781136016943 . Retrieved 2023-06-15.