Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

HISTORY OF PERSIA.
while the eunuchs of the palace rose to great power,
the central authority of the state was relaxed more
and more, the principal satraps being to a great
extent independent, nay, often holding their fiefs as
a sort of patrimony, passing on from father to son.
Nothus was succeeded by Artaxerxes II Mnemon
(B. c. 405), not however, without an effort on the part of
his mother Parysates, to substitute in his place her
younger and abler son, the Cyrus the Younger of his-
tory. Her plot, however, failed, and Cyrus retired to
his government of Western Asia, with the view of
accomplishing, by the aid of Greek mercenaries, what
he had not been able to execute by the silent dagger.
He had, however, to act with much circumspection, as
his brother, naturally doubting him, had sent his
satrap, the crafty Tissaphernes, to watch his movements.
With the view, therefore, of the better cloak-
ing his designs, Cyrus picked a quarrel
6 1
with Tis-
saphernes, and professed that he meant to occupy
his troops with an attack either on him or on the
Pisidians. Having thus thrown Tissaphernes
off his
guard, he urged as rapidly as possible, his real plans ;
and with about 13,000 Greeks, and 100,000 native
troops, commenced his march against his brother's
capital, in spite of the alarm his Greek contingent
pretended to feel, when at length they learned his real
object. Indeed, for a time even Persian gold seems
to have lost its wonted influence, these courageous
patriots having .at first proposed to disband and to
leave their benefactor to his fate.
Marching, as it would seem, by the Pylae Ciliciae,
Cyrus, in twenty-nine days from Tarsus, reached