oused the cause
of the Peloponnesians, and the support he gave them was not without its
influence on the issue of the struggle: the terrible day of AEgos Potamos
was a day of triumph for him as much as for the Lacedaemonians (405
B.C.).

His intimacy with Lysander, however, his constant enlistments of
mercenary troops, and his secret dealings with the neighbouring
provinces, had already aroused suspicion, and the satraps placed under
his orders, especially Tissaphernes, accused him to the king of treason.
Darius summoned him to Susa to explain his conduct (405 B.C.), and he
arrived just in time to be present at his father's death (404), but
too late to obtain his designation as heir to the throne through the
intervention of his mother, Parysatis; Arsaces inherited the crown, and
assumed the name of Artaxerxes.

[Illustration: 280.jpg ARTAXERXES MNEMON]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin in the Cabinet des
Medailles. This coin, which was struck at Mallos, in
Cilicia, bears as a counter-mark the figure of a bull and
the name of the city of Issus.

Cyrus entered the temple of Pasargadae surreptitiously during the
coronation ceremony, with the intention of killing his brother at the
foot of the altar; but Tissaphernes, warned by one of the priests,
denounced him, and he would have been put to death on the spot, had not
his mother thrown her arms around him and prevented the executioner from
fulfilling his office. Having with difficulty obtained pardon and been
sent back to his province, he collected thirty thousand Greeks and a
hundred thousand native troops, and, hastily leaving Sardes (401 B.C.),
he crossed Asia Minor, Northern Syria, and Mesopotamia, encountered the
royal army at Cunaxa, to the north of Babylon, and rashly met his end
at the very moment of victory. He was a brave, active, and generous
prince, endowed with all the virtues requisite to make a good Oriental
monarch, and he had, moreover, learnt, through contact with the Greeks,
to recognise the weak points of his own nation, and was fully determined
to remedy them: his death, perhaps, was an irreparable misfortune for
his country. Had he survived and supplanted the feeble Artaxerxes, it is
quite possible that he might have confirmed and strengthened the power
of Persia, or, at least, temporarily have arrested its decline. Having
lost their leader, his Asiatic followers at once dispersed; but the
mercenaries did not lose heart, and