Topic: succession (11)

• PersonArtaxerxes III

  Artaxerxes III (the throne name of Ochus; Babylonian Umakuš or Umasu, Greek Ôchos) was the Achaemenid King of Kings from 359/8 to 338 BCE. The son and successor of Artaxerxes II, he came to the throne late in a century the Greek sources present as one of dynastic murder, over-mighty satraps and…

• PersonArtaxerxes IV (Arses)

  Artaxerxes IV (personal name Arses; Babylonian Aršu) was the penultimate King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, the son whom Diodorus calls the youngest of Artaxerxes III's sons, who took the throne in the late summer of 338 BCE and was dead by 335, when a collateral kinsman acceded as Darius…

• PersonAtossa

  Atossa (Old Persian *Utauθā, corresponding to Avestan Hutaosā; lived c. 550 to after 480 BCE) was an Achaemenid queen, the daughter of Cyrus the Great and the mother of Xerxes I. She married in turn her brother Cambyses II, the usurper Bardiya (the 'Smerdis' of the Greek writers), and Darius I,…

• PersonBardiya and Gaumata

  Bardiya (Old Persian Bardiya; Greek Smerdis) was the younger son of Cyrus the Great and the full brother of Cambyses II. For some months in 522 BCE a man ruling as Bardiya held the Achaemenid throne, until Darius, son of Hystaspes, and six fellow Persians killed him and Darius took the crown.…

• PersonCambyses II

  Cambyses II (Old Persian Kambūjiya; r. 530–522 BCE) was the second Achaemenid Great King, elder son and heir of Cyrus the Great, who in 525 BCE conquered Egypt and added the last of the great old kingdoms of the Near East to the empire, the achievement that turned Cyrus's realm into a power…

• PersonParysatis

  Parysatis (Babylonian Purušatu; Iranian name reconstructed as *Paurušātiš) was a royal woman of the later fifth and early fourth centuries BCE. Ctesias's dynastic tradition makes her a daughter of Artaxerxes I by Andia and the wife and paternal half-sister of Darius II. Xenophon independently…

• PersonSogdianus

  Sogdianus (the Secyndianus or Sekyndianos of Ctesias; Sogdianos in Diodorus and Manetho) was a son of Artaxerxes I by the Babylonian concubine Alogune, and for some months of 424–423 BCE a claimant king of the Achaemenid empire. In the only connected account that survives, Ctesias's Persica in the…

• Survey essayThe Achaemenid dynasty

  The Achaemenid dynasty was the royal house that ruled the first Persian empire from its founding by Cyrus the Great about 550 BCE to its conquest by Alexander of Macedon in 330 BCE. Thirteen kings ruled across those two centuries, from Cyrus and his son Cambyses, through Darius the Great and…

• EventThe Battle of Cunaxa (401 BCE)

  The Battle of Cunaxa (401 BCE) was the decisive clash between the royal army of Artaxerxes II and the coalition raised by his younger brother, Cyrus the Younger, somewhere north of Babylon. It was a civil war fought by two mixed royal armies, not a simple contest between Greeks and Persians.…

• ConceptThe Seven

  The Seven are the seven Persian nobles, Darius among them, who in September 522 BCE killed the man ruling the empire as Bardiya, son of Cyrus, and made Darius king. They are unique in Achaemenid history in being attested by two versions of the same list, set down separately, in different languages…

• PersonXerxes II

  Xerxes II was the only legitimate son of Artaxerxes I, king of the Achaemenid empire, by his queen Damaspia, and when his father died at the end of 424 BCE he took, or claimed, the throne. About forty-five days later he was murdered in his sleep during a palace festival by partisans of his…