What if Cyrus the Younger had survived at Cunaxa?
In 401 BC the Persian prince Cyrus led some ten thousand Greek mercenaries against his brother's throne and was killed at Cunaxa. What if he had lived to become King of Kings?
What actually happened
Cyrus, the second son of Darius II, had been governor in Asia Minor at Sardis since he was about sixteen, and at the end of the Peloponnesian War he gave the Spartan Lysander the money to build a fleet. When his father died in 404 BC and his elder brother Artaxerxes II took the throne, Cyrus was accused of plotting against his brother around the coronation, and escaped with his life only thanks to his mother Parysatis. Back in Sardis, he raised Greek mercenaries on the pretext of a campaign against the bandits of Pisidia.
Leaving Sardis in spring 401 BC, the army marched through the Cilician Gates and Syria and down the Euphrates into Babylonia. Xenophon records that at a review on the march there were 10,400 Greek hoplites and 2,500 light troops. When they met the Great King's army that September at Cunaxa, not far from Babylon, the Spartan general Clearchus did not obey Cyrus's order to move, with his right flank on the Euphrates, towards the centre where the king stood. The Greek line routed the Persians facing it and chased them far off.
Meanwhile Cyrus charged his brother's bodyguard with 600 horsemen. He pierced the king's breastplate and wounded him, but was soon struck below the eye by a javelin and fell. The man who treated the king's wound was Ctesias, a Greek physician at the Persian court. The Greeks, who had been on the winning side, found themselves overnight stranded in the middle of enemy country; after their generals were tricked and seized by Tissaphernes they elected new generals, Xenophon among them, and passed through the mountains of the Carduchi and the snows of Armenia to reach Trapezus on the Black Sea the next year. This is the “march of the Ten Thousand” told in Xenophon's Anabasis.
The turning point
Seen from the Greek side, Cunaxa was a battle won. The Greek mercenaries broke the enemy facing them almost without loss, and the Great King himself was wounded. What decided the outcome was Cyrus's own charge. Xenophon says he cried “I see the man” and rushed at his brother, and Plutarch, quoting Ctesias, describes the moment in detail. That the king's bodyguard might have broken first if Clearchus had turned the line towards the centre as ordered is a criticism made since antiquity.
But even if Cyrus had survived, whether the throne would simply have fallen to him is open to question. The armies of hundreds of thousands, over a million, that Xenophon reports are exaggerations, but the Great King's army was clearly far larger than Cyrus's. Historians of Persia such as Pierre Briant stress that Achaemenid power depended on the loyalty of nobles and satraps. Still, his mother Parysatis was on her younger son's side, and Cyrus's reputation for keeping his word counted in his favour.
The world that might have been
In Crown & Plough the alternative reads: Cyrus saw his brother's bodyguard but did not charge, and the Greek mercenaries, having routed the enemy facing them, came back and struck the king's centre. Artaxerxes fell from his horse and died, and seven days later the gates of Babylon opened. Cyrus gave each Greek a golden crown, as he had promised. Xenophon does record that Cyrus promised every Greek a golden crown if he reached Babylon.
In the game's altered world the satrapy of Sardis goes to Cyrus's friend Ariaeus, and the Greek cities of Ionia, Smyrna and Caria among them, become a self-governing league that pays tribute to the Great King with no satrap over them. Sparta and Persia become allies. The next year the queen mother Parysatis gets Tissaphernes, who first denounced Cyrus's treason, handed over to her and has him killed; in 398 BC Agesilaus, Sparta's new king, swears the alliance afresh, and the Spartan fleet pays its rowers with Persian silver.
Mainland Greece gets a quieter age than in reality. Theban and Athenian envoys seeking help against Sparta come home from Susa empty-handed, with no Persian gold the Corinthian War never happens, and the Long Walls of Athens stay in ruins. In 391 BC Cyrus's Greek mercenaries reconquer Egypt, and the rescript of 386 is called “the Peace of Cyrus”. Cyrus dies in Babylon in 358 BC at sixty-six. In real history Artaxerxes II also died that year.
Ripples through time
This turning point occurs only in a world where the Sicilian Expedition failed as it really did. In a world where Athens took Syracuse, the end of the Peloponnesian War plays out differently, and Cyrus's revolt itself goes another way.
In real history the march of the Ten Thousand spread the belief in Greece that Persia was weaker than it seemed. Isocrates used it to argue that the Greeks should unite and attack Persia, and it became the seed of an idea that led to Agesilaus's Asian campaign of 396 BC and, two generations later, Alexander's. In a world where Cyrus became king, the Greeks come to see Persia not as something to conquer but as a king whose bodyguard they serve.
Play this turning point
Choose the scenario The Return of the Ten Thousand, which begins as Xenophon in 401 BC. In this scenario the Cunaxa scene decides the turning point directly. Calming the soldiers at Tarsus who refuse to go further raises Cyrus's odds a little; staying at Cyrus's side on the field of Cunaxa with “Even if you see the king, do not charge” raises them a lot; and running to Clearchus to urge him to turn the line towards the centre also raises them. Going back to Proxenus's ranks and taking up your spear makes it likely history runs its course.
In other scenarios this turning point does not open; it opens as an ordinary turning point only when you start the Classical Greece era without a scenario. Then, in 402 BC, a recruiter from Sardis comes to Greeks, and joining Cyrus's mercenaries adds weight to Cyrus's side. In a world where the Sicilian Expedition succeeded, this turning point does not occur.
Play this turning point → Start the scenario “The Return of the Ten Thousand” →
Questions and answers
When and where was the Battle of Cunaxa fought?
In September 401 BC at Cunaxa on the Euphrates, north of ancient Babylon in modern Iraq. Its exact location has not been identified.
What is the Anabasis?
The book in which the Athenian Xenophon recorded Cyrus's campaign and the return of the Greek mercenaries; the title means “the march up country”. Xenophon is said to have published it under the name Themistogenes, and the scene where the soldiers saw the sea and shouted “The sea, the sea!” is famous.
How many of the Ten Thousand came back alive?
Xenophon writes that when they were counted again at Cerasus on the Black Sea coast there were 8,600 hoplites. Compared with nearly 13,000 hoplites and light troops just before Cunaxa, a good many were lost on the march home of almost a year.
Sources and further reading
Xenophon, Anabasis, books 1–4; Plutarch, Life of Artaxerxes (quoting Ctesias); Diodorus, Library of History, book 14. Modern accounts: Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander; Robin Lane Fox (ed.), The Long March.
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