Artaxerxes II

Eldest son of Darius II and Parysatis; throne-name 'Mnemon' ('the Mindful'). Inherited the empire at a crisis point in 404 BC — Egypt had already revolted, the Peloponnesian War was just ending, his brother Cyrus would move against him within three years. After Cunaxa (401) he recovered the western satrapies through the diplomacy of Tissaphernes, Pharnabazus, and the Peace of Antalcidas with Sparta (387 BC, Xen. *Hell.* 5.1.30–36 — the 'King's Peace' that restored Persian control of the Anatolian coast and was the single greatest diplomatic success of the Achaemenid fourth century). Faced the Satraps' Revolt in the 360s and died at eighty-six in 358, the longest-reigning Great King after Artaxerxes I. Plutarch's *Life of Artaxerxes* is the single most circumstantial surviving account of an Achaemenid king from inside the dynasty's own tradition.

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