Cunaxa, battle of (401 bc), the decisive encounter between the rebel army of Cyrus ‘the Younger’ (424-401 bc) and that of his brother Artaxerxes II, and the only major Achaemenid land battle between Plataea and Granicus about which detailed (partly eyewitness) information survives. The site lay on the Euphrates in northern Babylonia. Cyrus' Greek mercenaries chased their adversaries from the field without difficulty and so had no influence upon the crucial episode: a cavalry encounter in which Cyrus wounded the king but was killed in the ensuing mêlée. Much else (the armies' relative size, the role of Cyrus' barbarian levies, Tissaphernes' contribution) remains unclear.
Bibliography
- Wylie, G., ‘Cunaxa and Xenophon’, Antiquité classique, 61 (1992)
— Christopher Tuplin
