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Cunaxa

 
Dictionary: Cu·nax·a   (kyū-năk') pronunciation

An ancient town of Babylonia northwest of Babylon. It was the site of a battle (401 B.C.) in which Artaxerxes II of Persia defeated his brother Cyrus the Younger, leading to the Retreat of the Ten Thousand described by Xenophon in his Anabasis.

 

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Cunaxa (kyūnăk'), ancient town of Babylonia, near the Euphrates River, NE of Ctesiphon. It was the scene of a battle (401 B.C.) between Cyrus the Younger and Artaxerxes II, described by Xenophon in the Anabasis. Clearchus, Spartan mercenary leader under Cyrus, chose to attack the Persian left wing (under Tissaphernes), which he completely routed and pursued. When he and his Ten Thousand returned, they found that Cyrus had fought hard in the center, had broken Artaxerxes' bodyguard, but in the moment of victory had been killed. Cyrus' army, demoralized, had broken up, and the Persians had taken the field. The retreat of the Ten Thousand northward is the most famous feature of the campaign.


WordNet: Cunaxa
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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: battle in 401 BC when the Persian King Artaxerxes II defeated his younger brother who tried to usurp the throne
  Synonym: battle of Cunaxa


Wikipedia: Battle of Cunaxa
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Coordinates: 33°19′29.48″N 44°04′46.33″E / 33.3248556°N 44.0795361°E / 33.3248556; 44.0795361

Battle of Cunaxa
Date 3 September 401 BC [1]
Location On the banks of the Euphrates near present-day Baghdad, Iraq
Result Tactical draw;
Strategic victory for Artaxerxes II of Persia;
Thousands of Greek mercenaries march home against opposition
Territorial
changes
Legitimate Persian king still alive and in full control of the kingdom.
Belligerents
Cyrus the Younger
Greek mercenaries
Achaemenid Empire
Commanders
Cyrus the Younger †
Clearchus
Ariaeus
Artaxerxes II
Gobrias
Strength
A large force of Persian soldiers
10,400 mercenary hoplites
2,500 mercenary peltasts
1,000 Paphlagonian cavalry
600 bodyguard cavalry
20 scythed chariots
Persian army substantially outnumbered that of Cyrus
6,000 bodyguard cavalry
400,000 infantry
200 scythed chariots
Casualties and losses
Minimal, death of Cyrus Unknown

The Battle of Cunaxa was fought in 401 BC between Cyrus the Younger and his elder brother Arsaces, who had inherited the Persian throne as Artaxerxes II in 404 BC. The great battle of the revolt of Cyrus took place 70 km north of Babylon, at Cunaxa, on the left bank of the Euphrates River. The main source is a Greek eyewitness and soldier, Xenophon.

Contents

Preparations

Cyrus gathered an army of Greek mercenaries, consisting of 10,400 hoplites and 2,500 peltasts, under the Spartan general Clearchus, and met Artaxerxes at Cunaxa. He also had a large force of levied troops under his second-in-command Ariaeus. Xenophon gives the strength of the Persian army at an impossible 1,200,000 men, excluding the scythed chariots. No modern commentator finds this figure credible, but educated guesswork is now the only way to fill the gap in our knowledge. Artaxerxes certainly seems to have enjoyed a superiority in cavalry.

Battle

The Greeks, deployed on Cyrus's right and outnumbered, charged the left flank of Artaxerxes' army, which fled (or executed a planned evasive manoeuvre) before they came within arrowshot. However, on the Persian right the fight between Artaxerxes' army and Cyrus was far more difficult and protracted. Cyrus personally charged his brother's bodyguard and was killed by a javelin, which sent the rebels into retreat. Only the Greek mercenaries, who had not heard of Cyrus's death and were heavily armed, stood firm. Clearchus advanced against the much larger right wing of Artaxerxes' army and sent it into retreat. Meanwhile, Artaxerxes' troops took the Greek encampment and destroyed their food supplies.

Aftermath

According to the Greek soldier and writer Xenophon, the Greek heavy troops scattered their opposition twice; only one Greek was even wounded. Only after the battle did they hear that Cyrus himself had been killed, making their victory irrelevant and the expedition a failure. They were in the middle of a very large empire with no food, no employer, and no reliable friends. They offered to make their Persian ally Ariaeus king, but he refused on the grounds that he was not of royal blood and so would not find enough support among the Persians to succeed. They offered their services to Tissaphernes, a leading satrap of Artaxerxes, but he refused them, and they refused to surrender to him. Tissaphernes was left with a problem; a large army of heavy troops, which he could not defeat by frontal assault. He supplied them with food and, after a long wait, led them northwards for home, meanwhile detaching Ariaeus and his light troops from their cause.

The Greek senior officers foolishly accepted the invitation of Tissaphernes to a feast. There they were made prisoner, taken up to the king and there decapitated. The Greeks elected new officers and set out to march northwards to the Black Sea through Kurdistan and Armenia. Their eventual success, the march of the Ten Thousand, was recorded by Xenophon in his Anabasis.

In popular culture

The battle is referenced at the start of the The Warriors (film).

References

Full text of Xenophon's Anabasis online:

Further reading

  • Xenophon, The Persian Expedition, trans. by Rex Warner, Penguin, 1949.
  • Montagu, John D. Battles of the Greek and Roman Worlds, Greenhill Books, 2000.
  • Prevas, John. Xenophon's March: Into the Lair of the Persian Lion, Da Capo, 2002.
  • Waterfield, Robin. Xenophon's Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age, Belknap Press, 2006.

External links

  • Battles of Artaxerxes II, in Mark Drury's Achaemenid Persian Page, a reinterpretation of the Anabasis from a supposedly Persian point of view. For example:
    «Unfortunately the stubbornness of the Greeks to accept defeat, and the inability of both sides to overcome ethnic and cultural biases, led to the unnecessary loss of many lives in the Greek's courageous, but wasted retreat» (sic).

 
 
Learn More
Ctesias (Ancient Greek historian & physician)
Cyrus the Younger (Persian royalty)
Tissaphernes (Persian military leader)

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