The Battle of Cunaxa was fought in the late summer of 401 BC between the Persian king Artaxerxes II and his brother Cyrus the Younger for control of the Achaemenid throne. The great battle of the revolt of Cyrus took place 70 km north of Babylon, at Cunaxa (), on the left bank of the Euphrates. The main source is Xenophon, a Greek soldier who participated in the fighting. Despite the success in the battle achieved by the interaction of the Greek mercenaries and the Persian troops of Cyrus, the outcome of the battle and the death of the pretender to the throne led to the defeat of the entire uprising and forced Greeks to commit Anabasis.

Inversely, Artaxerxes II placed his left on the river, with a unit of cavalry supporting it also. Artaxerxes was in the center of his line, with 6,000 units of Persian cavalry (which were some of the finest in the world) which was to the left of Cyrus, his line being so much the longer. Artaxerxes line overlapped Cyrus' line quite significantly, since he was able to field many more troops.

Cyrus then approached Clearchus, the leader of the Greeks, who was commanding the phalanx stationed on the right, and ordered him to move into the center so as to go after Artaxerxes. However, Clearchus, not desiring to do this—for fear of his right flank—refused, and promised Cyrus, according to Xenophon, that he would "take care that all would be well".

File:Battle_of_Cunaxapng_Stage_1.png|First phase of battle He reportedly was involved in negotiations with the Greeks after the battle, and also helped their Spartan general Clearchus before his execution. Ctesias was the author of treatises on rivers, and on the Persian revenues, of an account of India entitled Indica (Ἰνδικά), and of a history of Assyria and Persia in 23 books, called Persica (Περσικά), written in opposition to Herodotus in the Ionic dialect, and professedly founded on the Persian Royal Archives.

  • The battle is referenced at the start of The Warriors (1979).
  • The battle features predominantly in the novel The Lost Army (2007) by Valerio Massimo Manfredi.
  • The battle forms the basis of the novel The Falcon of Sparta (2018) by Conn Iggulden.

References

Full text of Xenophon's Anabasis online:

  • Freely downloadable, at Project Gutenberg [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1170]
  • Directly readable, at The University of Adelaide Library, Australia [https://web.archive.org/web/20080327185249/http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/x/xenophon/x5an/]

Further reading

  • Xenophon, The Persian Expedition, trans. by Rex Warner, Penguin, 1949.
  • Montagu, John D. Battles of the Greek and Roman Worlds, Greenhill Books, 2000.
  • Prevas, John. Xenophon's March: Into the Lair of the Persian Lion, Da Capo, 2002.
  • Waterfield, Robin. Xenophon's Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age, Belknap Press, 2006.