Artaxerxes

He crossed over to Asia with a fleet, went to work at once, won great fame, defeated Tissaphernes in a pitched battle, and set the Greek cities in revolt. This being the case, Artaxerxes considered how he must carry on the war with Agesilaüs, and sent Timocreon the Rhodian into Greece with a great sum of money, bidding him use it for the corruption of the most influential men in the cities there, and for stirring up the Greeks to make war upon Sparta.

Timocrates did as he was bidden, the most important cities conspired together against Sparta, Peloponnesus was in a turmoil, and the Spartan magistrates summoned Agesilaüs home from Asia. It was at this time, as we are told, and as he was going home, that Agesilaüs said to his friends; The king has driven me out of Asia with thirty thousand archers; for the Persian coin has the figure of an archer stamped upon it.[*](Cf. the Agesilaüs, xv. 6. )

The king also expelled the Lacedaemonians from the sea, employing Conon the Athenian as his commander along with Pharnabazus. For Conon passed the time at Cyprus, after the sea-fight at Aegospotami,[*](405. B.C. Cf. the Alcibiades xxxvii. 2. ) not satisfied with mere safety, but awaiting a reversal in the course of affairs, as he would a change of wind at sea.

And seeing that his own plans needed a military force, and the king’s force needed a sagacious leader, he wrote a letter to the king explaining his purposes. This letter he ordered the bearer, if possible, to give the king by the hand of Zeno the Cretan or Polycritus the Mendaean (Zeno was a teacher of dancing, and Polycritus was a physician); but if these were not at court, by the hand of Ctesias the physician.

And it is said that Ctesias, on receiving the letter, added to the suggestions which Conon made to the king a request to send Ctesias also to him, as likely to be of service in matters on the sea-coast. Ctesias, however, says that the king of his own accord conferred upon him this new duty.

But after Artaxerxes, by the sea-fight which Pharnabazus and Conon won for him off Cnidus, had stripped the Lacedaemonians of their power on the sea, he brought the whole of Greece into dependence upon him, so that he dictated to the Greeks the celebrated peace called the Peace of Antalcidas.[*](In 387 B.C. Cf. the Agesilaüs, xxiii. 1. ff. )