Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
which had been smeared with the drug, the other side being clear
of it, ate the untouched and wholesome part herself, and gave
Statira that which was thus infected; but Dinon will not have it
to be Parysatis, but Melantas, that cut up the bird and
presented the envenomed part of it to Statira; who, dying with
dreadful agonies and convulsions, was herself sensible of what
had happened to her, and aroused in the king's mind suspicion of
his mother, whose savage and implacable temper he knew. And
therefore proceeding instantly to an inquest, he seized upon his
mother's domestic servants that attended at her table, and put
them upon the rack. Parysatis kept Gigis at home with her a
long time, and, though the king commanded her, she would not
produce her. But she, at last, herself desiring that she might
be dismissed to her own home by night, Artaxerxes had intimation
of it, and, lying in wait for her, hurried her away, and
adjudged her to death. Now poisoners in Persia suffer thus by
law. There is a broad stone, on which they place the head of
the culprit, and then with another stone beat and press it,
until the face and the head itself are all pounded to pieces;
which was the punishment Gigis lost her life by. But to his
mother, Artaxerxes neither said nor did any other hurt, save
that he banished and confined her, not much against her will, to
Babylon, protesting that while she lived he would not come near
that city. Such was the condition of the king's affairs in his
own house.
But when all his attempts to capture the Greeks that had come up
with Cyrus, though he desired to do so no less than he had
desired to overcome Cyrus and maintain his throne, proved
unsuccessful, and they, though they had lost both Cyrus and
their own generals, nevertheless escaped, as it were, out of his
very palace, making it plain to all men that the Persian king
and his empire were mighty indeed in gold and luxury and women,
but otherwise were a mere show and vain display, upon this, all
Greece took courage, and despised the barbarians; and
especially the Lacedaemonians thought it strange if they should
not now deliver their countrymen that dwelt in Asia from their
subjection to the Persians, nor put an end to the contumelious
usage of them. And first having an army under the conduct of
Thimbron, then under Dercyllidas, but doing nothing memorable,
they at last committed the war to the management of their king
Agesilaus, who, when he had arrived with his men in Asia, as
soon as he had landed them, fell actively to work, and got
himself great renown. He defeated Tisaphernes in a pitched
battle, and set many cities in revolt. Upon this, Artaxerxes,
perceiving what was his wisest way of waging the war, sent
Timocrates the Rhodian into Greece, with large sums of gold,
commanding him by a free distribution of it to corrupt the
leading men in the cities, and to excite a Greek war against
Sparta. So Timocrates following his instructions, the most
considerable cities conspiring together, and Peloponnesus being
in disorder, the ephors remanded Agesilaus from Asia. At which
time, they say, as he was upon his return, he told his friends
that Artaxerxes had driven him out of Asia with thirty thousand
archers; the Persian coin having an archer stamped upon it.
Artaxerxes scoured the seas, too, of the Lacedaemonians, Conon
the Athenian and Pharnabazus being his admirals. For Conon,
after the battle of Aegospotami, resided in Cyprus; not that he
consulted his own mere security, but looking for a vicissitude
of affairs with no less hope than men wait for a change of wind
at sea. And perceiving that his skill wanted power, and that
the king's power wanted a wise man to guide it, he sent him an
account by letter of his projects, and charged the bearer to
hand it to the king, if possible, by the mediation of Zeno the
Cretan or Polycritus the Mendaean (the former being a
dancing-master, the latter a physician), or, in the absence of
them both, by Ctesias; who is said to have taken Conon's letter,
and foisted into the contents of it a request; that the king
would also be pleased to send over Ctesias to him, who was
likely to be of use on the sea-coast. Ctesias, however,
declares that the king, of his own accord, deputed him to this
service. Artaxerxes, however, defeating the Lacedaemonians in a
sea-fight at Cnidos, under the conduct of Pharnabazus and Conon,
after he had stripped them of their sovereignty by sea, at the
same time, brought, so to say, the whole of Greece over to him,
so that upon his own terms he dictated the celebrated peace
among them, styled the peace of Antalcidas. This Antalcidas was
a Spartan, the son of one Leon, who, acting for the king's
interest, induced the Lacedaemonians to covenant to let all the
Greek cities in Asia and the islands adjacent to it become
subject and tributary to him, peace being upon these conditions
established among the Greeks, if indeed the honorable name of
peace can fairly be given to what was in fact the disgrace and
betrayal of Greece, a treaty more inglorious than had ever been
the result of any war to those defeated in it.
And therefore Artaxerxes, though always abominating other
Spartans, and looking upon them, as Dinon says, to be the most
impudent men living, gave wonderful honor to Antalcidas when he
came to him into Persia; so much so that one day, taking a
garland of flowers and dipping it in the most precious ointment,
he sent it to him after supper, a favor which all were amazed
at. Indeed he was a person fit to be thus delicately treated,
and to have such a crown, who had among the Persians thus made
fools of Leonidas and Callicratidas. Agesilaus, it seems, on
someone having said, "O the deplorable fate of Greece, now that
the Spartans turn Medes!" replied, "Nay, rather it is the Medes
who become Spartans." But the subtlety of the repartee did not
wipe off the infamy of the action. The Lacedaemonians soon
after lost their sovereignty in Greece by their defeat at
Leuctra; but they had already lost their honor by this treaty.
So long then as Sparta continued to be the first state in
Greece, Artaxerxes continued to Antalcidas the honor of being
called his friend and his guest; but when, routed and humbled at
the battle of Leuctra, being under great distress for money,
they had dispatched Agesilaus into Egypt, and Antalcidas went up
to Artaxerxes, beseeching him to supply their necessities, he so
despised, slighted, and rejected him, that finding himself, on
his return, mocked and insulted by his enemies, and fearing also
the ephors, he starved himself to death. Ismenias, also, the
Theban, and Pelopidas, who had already gained the victory at
Leuctra, arrived at the Persian court; where the latter did
nothing unworthy of himself. But Ismenias, being commanded to
do obeisance to the king, dropped his ring before him upon the
ground, and so, stooping to take it up, made a show of doing him
homage. He was so gratified with some secret intelligence which
Timagoras the Athenian sent in to him by the hand of his
secretary, Beluris, that he bestowed upon him ten thousand
darics, and because he was ordered, on account of some sickness,
to drink cow's milk, there were fourscore milch kine driven
after him; also, he sent him a bed, furniture, and servants for
it, the Grecians not having skill enough to make it, as also
chairmen to carry him, being infirm in body, to the seaside.
Not to mention the feast made for him at court, which was so
princely and splendid that Ostanes, the king's brother, said to
him, "O, Timagoras, do not forget the sumptuous table you have
sat at here; it was not put before you for nothing;" which was
indeed rather a reflection upon his treason than to remind him
of the king's bounty. And indeed the Athenians condemned
Timagoras to death for taking bribes.
But Artaxerxes gratified the Grecians in one thing in lieu of
the many wherewith he plagued them, and that was by taking off
Tisaphernes, their most hated and malicious enemy, whom he put
to death; Parysatis adding her influence to the charges made
against him. For the king did not persist long in his wrath
with his mother, but was reconciled to her, and sent for her,
being assured that she had wisdom and courage fit for royal
power, and there being now no cause discernible but that they
might converse together without suspicion or offense. And from
thenceforward humoring the king in all things according to his
heart's desire, and finding fault with nothing that he did, she
obtained great power with him, and was gratified in all her
requests. She perceived he was desperately in love with Atossa,
one of his own two daughters, and that he concealed and checked
his passion chiefly for fear of herself, though, if we may
believe some writers, he had privately given way to it with the
young girl already. As soon as Parysatis suspected it, she
displayed a greater fondness for the young girl than before, and
extolled both her virtue and beauty to him, as being truly
imperial and majestic. In fine, she persuaded him to marry her
and declare her to be his lawful wife, overriding all the
principles and the laws by which the Greeks hold themselves
bound, and regarding himself as divinely appointed for a law to
the Persians, and the supreme arbitrator of good and evil. Some
historians further affirm, in which number is Heraclides of
Cuma, that Artaxerxes married not only this one, but a second
daughter also, Amestris, of whom we shall speak by and by. But
he so loved Atossa when she became his consort, that when
leprosy had run through her whole body, he was not in the least
offended at it; but putting up his prayers to Juno for her, to
this one alone of all the deities he made obeisance, by laying
his hands upon the earth; and his satraps and favorites made
such offerings to the goddess by his direction, that all along
for sixteen furlongs, betwixt the court and her temple, the road
was filled up with gold and silver, purple and horses, devoted
to her.
He waged war out of his own kingdom with the Egyptians, under
the conduct of Pharnabazus and Iphicrates, but was unsuccessful
by reason of their dissensions. In his expedition against the
Cadusians, he went himself in person with three hundred thousand
footmen and ten thousand horse. And making an incursion into
their country, which was so mountainous as scarcely to be
passable, and withal very misty, producing no sort of harvest of
corn or the like, but with pears, apples, and other tree-fruits
feeding a warlike and valiant breed of men, he unawares fell
into great distresses and dangers. For there was nothing to be
got fit for his men to eat, of the growth of that place, nor
could anything be imported from any other. All they could do
was to kill their beasts of burden, and thus an ass's head could
scarcely be bought for sixty drachmas. In short, the king's own
table failed; and there were but few horses left; the rest they
had spent for food. Then Teribazus, a man often in great favor
with his prince for his valor, and as often out of it for his
buffoonery, and particularly at that time in humble estate and
neglected, was the deliverer of the king and his army. There
being two kings amongst the Cadusians, and each of them
encamping separately, Teribazus, after he had made his
application to Artaxerxes and imparted his design to him, went
to one of the princes, and sent away his son privately to the
other. So each of them deceived his man, assuring him that the
other prince had deputed an ambassador to Artaxerxes, suing for
friendship and alliance for himself alone; and, therefore, if he
were wise, he told him, he must apply himself to his master
before he had decreed anything, and he, he said, would lend him