Cyrus the Younger

Second son of Darius II Ochus and Queen Parysatis, younger brother of the future Artaxerxes II. Appointed karanos (supreme military commander in Asia Minor) by his father at about sixteen, c. 408 BC, with a brief to end the Peloponnesian War on terms favourable to Sparta — it was his personal friendship with the Spartan navarchs Lysander and Callicratidas that tipped the naval balance at Aegospotami in 405 (Xen. *Hell.* 1.5.1–7 + 2.1.11–14). On Darius II's death in 404 his elder brother took the throne as Artaxerxes II and Cyrus returned to Sardis nominally loyal; in secret he assembled both a Persian army from his satrapal revenues and a Greek mercenary corps through his Spartan contacts. In spring 401 he marched east, ostensibly against the Pisidian highlanders but actually for Babylon. At Cunaxa, late summer 401 BC, he personally charged his brother's bodyguard and was killed by a javelin thrown by a soldier named Mithridates (Xen. *Anab.* 1.8.24–29; Plut. *Artaxerxes* 11–14 for the most circumstantial death-scene). Parysatis's long vengeance on the killers of her favourite son — Mithridates, the eunuch who had beheaded the body, and finally Stateira his queen — fills Plut. *Artax.* 14–19.

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