Artaxerxes II., reigned 405-359. At the beginning occurred the revolt of
his younger brother Cyrus, satrap in Western Asia, who marched against
Babylon, and fell in the battle of Cunaxa, 401 B. C. He was supported by
a body of Greek mercenaries, whose retiring march to the Black Sea over
the mountains of Kurdistan has been immortalized by Xenophon’s
description in his Anabasis, and is known as the “Retreat of the Ten
Thousand Greeks.” After many conflicts between the Persians and Greeks,
the peace of Antalcidas, concluded in 387 B. C., gave to the Persians
all the Greek cities in Asia Minor. The Persian Empire, however, was now
going to decay. Artaxerxes failed to recover revolted Egypt, and was
constantly at war with tributary princes and satraps. The want of
cohesion in the unwieldy, ill-assorted aggregate of “peoples, nations,
and languages,” was being severely felt.