Great Satraps' Revolt
The Great Satraps' Revolt was a series of rebellions against Artaxerxes II in the western Persian Empire in the 360s BC, and the sources for it are poor enough that historians dispute whether it was one event at all. Diodorus Siculus describes a coordinated rising in which most of the satraps of Asia Minor, together with Egypt and several Greek cities, joined against the king around 362 BC. Modern scholarship generally treats this as a compression of separate and overlapping revolts running from about 372. The participants included Datames of Cappadocia, an outstanding soldier whom Cornelius Nepos treated as the last great commander of the barbarians; Ariobarzanes of Hellespontine Phrygia; Mausolus of Caria, who built the tomb at Halicarnassus that gave the language the word mausoleum; and Orontes of Armenia, who was given overall command. Egypt, independent since 404 BC, supplied money and ships under Tachos, who hired the aged Agesilaus of Sparta and the Athenian admiral Chabrias. The revolt destroyed itself. Orontes betrayed the confederates to the king to secure his own position; Datames was assassinated by a man who embraced him with a concealed dagger; Ariobarzanes was betrayed by his own son; and Tachos was overthrown by his nephew while campaigning in Syria, whereupon Agesilaus changed sides. Artaxerxes recovered the west without fighting a major battle, largely by buying the participants individually. The episode is usually cited as evidence of Achaemenid decline, though the outcome shows the opposite: the centre absorbed a simultaneous rising across its wealthiest provinces. Artaxerxes II reigned forty-six years, longer than any other Persian king. Egypt stayed independent for another twenty years.
- Year: 366 BCE
- Category: Political
