Artaphernes the Younger

Artaphernes the Younger was joint commander with Datis of the Persian force defeated at Marathon in 490 BC, and was a nephew of Darius I. His father, Artaphernes the Elder, had been satrap of Sardis and was the man to whom the Athenians had sent an embassy around 507 BC seeking an alliance against Sparta. The ambassadors offered earth and water — the Persian token of submission — without authority, and the Athenians repudiated it when they got home. Artaphernes the Elder took the view that Athens had submitted and then rebelled, and that framing shaped Persian policy for a generation. He had also received Hippias, the exiled tyrant of Athens, and had told the Athenians to take him back. The son inherited the file. He and Datis were sent with a fleet across the Aegean in 490 BC with orders to punish Eretria and Athens, and Hippias sailed with them as the intended replacement government. Eretria fell and was deported. At Marathon the Persians were beaten decisively by a much smaller Athenian and Plataean force under Miltiades, who attacked at a run to cross the archers' ground quickly and who thinned his centre to overlap both flanks. Artaphernes survived and returned. He appears once more, ten years later, commanding the Lydian and Mysian contingents in Xerxes' invasion of 480 BC, which suggests the defeat cost him neither his standing nor the king's confidence. Nothing further is recorded of him. Marathon is his whole biography, and it was a raid rather than the invasion later Athenians remembered it as.

• Lived: 520 BCE – 470 BCE
• Nationality: Persian
• Roles: general