Latest / The Achaemenid Empire: Persia's Golden Age of Power — Fexingo History / Artaxerxes I and the Peace That Shaped the Aegean
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've spent a lot of time on Darius and Xerxes, the big names, the invasions, the monuments. But after Xerxes came back from Greece in defeat, his son Artaxerxes I took the throne, and his reign was a real turning point—just in a quieter way. Luna: What do you mean by quieter? Lucas: Well, no massive invasion of Greece, no crossing the Hellespont with a bridge of boats. Instead, Artaxerxes faced a series of revolts—most seriously in Egypt—and he had to deal with a newly confident Athenian-led alliance. His response was to shift from full-scale war to a more subtle strategy: funding Greek city-states to fight each other, playing them off against one another. Lucas: But let's start at the beginning. Artaxerxes became king in 465 BC after Xerxes was assassinated by the commander of the royal bodyguard, Artabanus. It was a bloody transition—Artaxerxes had to kill his own brother, a man named Hystaspes, who was satrap of Bactria and had revolted. Luna: So he started his reign with a civil war. Lucas: Exactly. And while he was putting down that revolt, Egypt exploded. A Libyan chief named Inaros led a rebellion, killed the Persian satrap, and invited the Athenians to help. The Athenians sent a fleet, and they took control of much of the Nile Delta. For a moment, it looked like Egypt might be lost. Lucas: Artaxerxes sent a massive army under his best general, Megabyzus, to crush the revolt. It took a few years, but eventually the Persians besieged the rebels on an island in the Nile, called Prosopitis. They even diverted a canal to drain the river around it—a classic Achaemenid engineering move. Luna: Like Darius with his Suez Canal. Lucas: Exactly. Megabyzus defeated the rebels, captured Inaros, and later had him executed—despite promising to spare him, which caused a fallout between Megabyzus and the court. The Athenians who survived were utterly destroyed, and Persia reasserted control over Egypt. Lucas: But here's the thing: while Persia was busy with Egypt, the Delian League—under Athenian leadership—kept raiding Persian territory. They won a major naval victory at the Eurymedon River back in 466, but after the Egyptian disaster, the balance shifted. Both sides were exhausted. Luna: So that's when they made peace? Lucas: Yes, or at least that's when tradition says they made the Peace of Callias, named after the Athenian ambassador Callias. According to later Greek writers like Diodorus Siculus, the treaty was signed around 449 BC. It supposedly recognized Persian control of Asia Minor and Cyprus, while the Athenians agreed not to attack Persian territory, and the Persians agreed not to send warships into the Aegean. Lucas: But here's the controversy: some historians doubt the peace ever existed. The Greek historian Herodotus doesn't mention it. Thucydides barely mentions a possible agreement. It might have been an informal understanding rather than a formal treaty—Greek propaganda to make Athens look powerful. Luna: So it's like the Behistun Inscription—propaganda. Lucas: In a way. Except this time it's Greek propaganda. But regardless of whether it was a signed document, there was definitely a period of peace. Persian ships stopped patrolling the Aegean, and Athens focused on building its empire among the Greek allies. That peace lasted for about thirty years, until the Peloponnesian War. Lucas: And Persia played a key role in that war too, but that's a later episode. For Artaxerxes, the peace allowed him to focus on internal matters—building projects at Persepolis, administrative reforms, and maintaining the loyalty of his satraps. Luna: Was he a successful king, then? Lucas: I think so, though he's often overlooked. He kept the empire intact for forty years, suppressed major revolts, and used diplomacy to neutralize the Greek threat. He also built a new palace at Persepolis, the so-called 'Palace of Artaxerxes I,' and restored the tomb of his father Xerxes. He died in 424 BC, and his reign marked the end of the aggressive expansion phase of the Achaemenid Empire. Lucas: After him, things got messier—there were succession crises, harem intrigues, and the rise of the satraps' power. But Artaxerxes I held the line. Luna: It's interesting how the quieter reigns are the ones that actually preserve the empire. Lucas: Exactly. Sometimes the best leadership isn't the most dramatic. And in the long run, the peace he brokered with the Greeks reshaped the Eastern Mediterranean for decades.