From Arshama to Alexander: reflections on Persian responses to attack

From Source to History Studies on Ancient Near Eastern

Worlds and Beyond

Dedicated to Giovanni Battista Lanfranchi on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday on

June 23 2014

Edited by Salvatore Gaspa Alessandro Greco

Daniele Morandi Bonacossi Simonetta Ponchia and Robert Rollinger

Alter Orient und Altes Testament Veroumlffentlichungen zur Kultur und Geschichte des Alten Orients und des Alten Testaments

begruumlndet von Manfried Dietrich und Oswald Loretzdagger

Band 412

Herausgeber

Manfried Dietrich bull Ingo Kottsieper bull Hans Neumann

Lektoren

Kai A Metzler bull Ellen Rehm

Beratergremium

Rainer Albertz bull Joachim Bretschneider bull Stefan Maul Udo Ruumlterswoumlrden bull Walther Sallaberger bull Gebhard Selz

Michael P Streck bull Wolfgang Zwickel


Worlds and Beyond


June 23 2014



2014 Ugarit-Verlag

Muumlnster

From Source to History Studies on Ancient Near Eastern Worlds and Beyond Dedicated to Giovanni Battista Lanfranchi on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday on June 23 2014

Edited by Salvatore Gaspa Alessandro Greco Daniele Morandi Bonacossi Simo-netta Ponchia and Robert Rollinger

Alter Orient und Altes Testament Band 412

copy 2014 Ugarit-Verlag Muumlnster wwwugarit-verlagde All rights preserved No part of this publication may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic mechanical photo-copying recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher Hubert und Co Goumlttingen Printed in Germany

ISBN 978-3-86835-101-9

Printed on acid-free paper

Lo studio della Storia Antica egrave sempre stato per Gianni piacere intellettuale dovere sociale e morale e prosecuzione di

quellrsquoidea di ldquouomo di studiordquo imparata dal padre Luigi e cosigrave ben impressa nel suo cuore e nella sua mente A lui Gianni fa

riferimento quando studia quando insegna quando scrive Fonti documenti testi sono imprescindibili punti di partenza delle sue analisi con il pensiero che guarda sempre al mondo dellrsquoOriente

Antico Uomo integerrimo e puro non conosce la competizione e forse per questo arriva sempre tra i primi Ha molto a cuore i suoi

allievi di loro non esita a metter in luce le qualitagrave positive soffocando in un ldquosono giovanirdquo le intemperanze e gli umani

difetti Lo ammiro percheacute non conosce invidia ira malizia sospetto lo amo percheacute mi ha insegnato a guardarmi da questi

subdoli amici Ines

TABLE OF CONTENTS A Festschrift for an Outstanding Scholar and a Real Friend V Bibliography of Giovanni-Battista Lanfranchi IX Tzvi Abusch Notes on the History of Composition of Two Incantations 1 Sanna Aro The Relief on the Slab NKL 2 at Karatepe-Azatiwataya Neo-Assyrian Impact in Cilicia 11 Ariel M Bagg Hezekiahrsquos Jerusalem Nineveh in Judah 33 Nicoletta Bellotto I contratti palāhum ad Emar 41 Reinhold Bichler Semiramis and her Rivals An Essay 55 Maria Giovanna Biga The Marriage of an Eblaite Princess with the King of Dulu 73 Olivier Casabonne Karmylessos une Lycie chimeacuterique 81 Eleonora Cussini Predial Servitudes and Easements in Aramaic Documents of Sale 87 Rociacuteo Da Riva Assyrians and Assyrian Influence in Babylonia (626ndash539 BCE) 99 Stefano de Martino The Hurrian ldquoSong of Releaserdquo an Up-to-Date Overview 127 Elena di Filippo Balestrazzi Il mostro ldquoanguipederdquo e il ldquodio in battellordquo nelle stele felsinee Una proposta di lettura 139 Betina Faist The Ordeal in the Neo-Assyrian Legal Procedure 189

II Table of Contents

Frederick Mario Fales The Two Dynasties of Assyria 201 Sebastian Fink Sardanapal ndash Ein Hedonist aus Mesopotamien 239 Massimo Forlanini The Survival of Dynastic Traditions of Bronze Age Anatolia During the Transition to the Iron Age the Case of Ḫalpa-šulubi and the Historical Connections Between Išuwa and Milidia 251 Salvatore Gaspa Golden Appliqueacutes in Assyrian Textiles an Interdisciplinary Approach to the Neo-Assyrian Evidence and Some Remarks on the Use of Dress Decorations in the Periphery of the Empire in Later Times 273 Alessandro Greco The Art of Propaganda in Aegean Iconography When Art Must Be Sung 305 Bruno Jacobs Historische Aussagen in den Achaumlmenideninschriften im Licht sich wandelnder Legitimationsstrategien 341 Martin Lang Assyrien im 7 Jahrhundert und die Literarische Produktion in der Levante und der Aumlgaumlis 353 Mario Liverani The King and His Audience 373 Paolo Matthiae Image Ideology and Politics a Historical Consideration of the Message of Neo-Assyrian Reliefs 387 Raija Mattila The Chief of Trade and the Chief Tailor ndash New Eponyms During the Reign of Assurbanipal 405 Mischa Meier Feuer uumlber Konstantinopel vom Umgang mit einem Nicht-Ereignis 413 Clelia Mora Symbols of Power in the Kingdom of Karkamiš (13thndash12th Centuries BC) 433 Daniele Morandi Bonacossi River Navigation and Transport in Northern Assyria The Stone Quay-walls of the Rivers Gomel and Al-khazir in the Navkur Plain Iraqi Kurdistan 441

Table of Contents III

Antonio Panaino Daniel the ldquoMagusrdquo and the Magi of Bethlehem 455 Simo Parpola Mount Niṣir and the Foundations of the Assyrian Church 469 Francesco Pomponio Alcune considerazioni sul cosiddetto periodo di Isin-Larsa 485 Simonetta Ponchia The Neo-Assyrian Adecirc Protocol and the Administration of the Empire 501 Beate Pongratz-Leisten Bad Kings in the Literary History of Mesopotamia and the Interface between Law Divination and Religion 527 Claudia Posani La diffusione del culto di Kubaba in epoca neo‒assira 549 Daniel Potts Guriania γουράνιoι and the Gūrān 561 Karen Radner Zagros Spice Mills the Simurrean and the Hašimur Grindstones 573 Julian Reade ndash Irving Finkel Between Carchemish and Pasargadae Recent Iranian Discoveries at Rabat 581 Robert Rollinger Aornos and the Mountains of the East the Assyrian Kings and Alexander the Great 597 Kai Ruffing Der Reichtum Babyloniens 637 Paolo Scarpi La divina auctoritas di Ermete Trismegisto per una nuova religione di tolleranza 647 Gebhard J Selz Plant Metaphors on the Plant of Rejuvenation 655 Christopher J Tuplin From Arshama to Alexander Reflections on Persian Responses to Attack 669 Erik van Dongen The Extent and Interactions of the Phrygian Kingdom 697

IV Table of Contents

Lorenzo Verderame A Glimpse into the Activities of Experts (Ummacircnu) at the Assyrian Royal Court 713 Josef Wiesehoumlfer Alfred von Gutschmid und Eberhard Schrader eine Kontroverse 729 Anne-Maria Wittke Uumlberlegungen zur Lage von Pteria 745 Stefan Zawadzki Depicting Hostile Rulers in the Neo-Assyrian Royal Inscriptions 767 Index of Personal Names 779 Index of Place Names 793 Plates 805

FROM ARSHAMA TO ALEXANDER REFLECTIONS ON PERSIAN RESPONSES TO ATTACK

Christopher J Tuplin

Neither Arshama (prince of the blood royal and long-time satrap of Egypt) nor Alexander (who needs no parenthetic introduction) is really central to Gianni Lanfranchirsquos scholarly concerns Still one of the more celebrated documents associated with Arshama mentions Lahiru and Arbela places not without resonance for students of the Neo-Assyrian world and Alexander won his decisive victory over Darius III (and the only one of his battles to be mentioned in a cuneiform source1) in what had been heartland Assyria So my title does have some slender connections with our honorandrsquos academic home territory As for my topic Gianni has written illuminatingly about the Achaemenidsrsquo relationship (in reality and representation) with their Neo-Assyrian predecessors in the diadoche of ancient imperial states This chapter leads eventually to their Macedonian conqueror and the next stage in that diadoche To that modest extent it is part of the same long story

----------------------------------------------

The empire founded by Cyrus the Great lasted for rather over two centuriesmdashand then succumbed to foreign conquest rather suddenly Assyrian imperial history was both longer and shorter (shorter if one focuses on the Neo-Assyrian phase as conventionally defined longer if one takes into account all the Assyrian rulers who at one time or another sought to exert rule far from their North Mesopotamian homeland) but it too stopped rather suddenly In each case the reasons are doubtless complexmdashand there may even be the possibility that the appearance of abrupt unpredictability is misleading Still it is not in dispute that in both cases the coup (or for those so minded the coup de gracircce) was delivered by catastrophic military defeat The Assyrian kingsrsquo voluminous verbal and visual celebration of military prowess (and indeed technical professionalism) perhaps makes the events of the 610s particularly shocking But the events of the later 330s were also on the face of it pretty improbable A mere decade earlier Artaxerxes III had restored order at the western edge of his realm most notably by the recovery of Egypt after six decades of failure It cannot have seemed at all likely that that realm was actually on its last legs In this chapter I seek a context for assessment of what happened in 334ndash331 BC by considering the ways in which the Persian state or its agents responded to disorder or attack2

1 For a recent discussion of which see Rollinger ‒ Ruffing 2012 2 The investigation belongs in the general context of an intermittent engagement with the military aspect of Achaemenid imperial experience and was more specifically prompted by a

670 Christopher J Tuplin

The Arshama dossier

I start with three letters from the Arshama dossier3 The first deals with the case of thirteen Cilician slaves who found themselves on the wrong side of the lines during a rebellion and are now being re-integrated into Arshamarsquos workforce (A67) In the second Arshama writes to his estate-official Nakhthor to complain about his failure to protect Arshamarsquos estate-interests during a period of disturbance and contrast it with the behaviour of earlier and contemporary counterparts (A610) In the third we encounter an Egyptian who wishes to be given the lease on a property previously held by his late father who had lost the property and his life during a time of trouble (A611)

On the face of it the first two letters give two rather different impressions of the response to trouble in Egypt In the first the local military force is concentrated in one place (hndyz)4 and those who do not make it to a place of protection will end up in the hands of the enemy until (by whatever meansmdashnot revealed by the text) the proper status quo is restored In the second the estate-officials of high-ranking Iranian land-owners are expected to take charge of the situation prevent impairment of the estate and even exploit the situation to supplement the estatersquos work-force and one of themmdashArshamarsquos pqyd Nakhthormdashis told off for failing to follow suit

It sounds as though we are dealing with different scales of disruption and vocabulary may seem to validate that assumption since in A67 we are dealing with revoltmdashthe same word is persistently used in the Aramaic version of DB for the uprisings of 522ndash521 BCmdashwhereas in the bulk of A610 the context is one descri-bed as šwzyrsquo5 However it is not that simple For A610 begins with a reference to the past in which it is said that Arshamarsquos previous pqyd Psamshek had prevented estate-decrease and found craftsmen-garda of all kinds and other goods in sufficient numbers (all the things Nakhthor is failing to do)mdashand all this at the time when the Egyptians ldquorevoltedrdquo (mrdw) ie the same word used in A67

Before we try to resolve this let us note another era of disturbance in the third letter (A611) this time it is described as ywzrsquo6 the result is that a man and his staff

discussion about the Arshama material with John Ma (whom I absolve from any unwanted responsibility for the outcome) I thank Lindsay Allen (London) Jeremy McInerney and Julia Wilker (Philadelphia) and Paul Kosmin (Cambridge MA) for the opportunity to present versions of this material to seminar audiences at the Institute of Classical Studies the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University and for their hospitality―and that of their colleagues and students―on each occasion 3 These are cited from TADAE I 4 hndyz corresponds to Iranian handaiza- (Tavernier 2007 451) cognate with OP dida- = ldquofortrdquo and evidently conveying the idea of being gathered together in a fortified location 5 A hapax legomenon Considered possibly Iranian by Porten ‒ Lund 2002 and Muraoka ‒ Porten 2003 345 it is not recognized as such in Tavernier 2007 Driver 1965 64‒65 compared Syriac rsquowzy ldquocalcitravitrdquo Grelot 1972 314 thought it of Akkadian origin drawing attention to ezzu = furious ezēzu = be furious (Šuzuzu = ldquomake furiousrdquo would be particularly close) The similarity to ywzrsquo (cf next note) in A6112 is tantalising David Taylor has speculated that šwzy and ywzrsquo might both be attempts at same word with the first letter of šwzy identified as an Akkadian causative prefix 6 ywzrsquo = yauza- ldquorevolt turmoil rebellionrdquo (Tavernier 2007 452) It recurs in TADAE D612g Compare Avestan yaoza- = ldquoexcitementrdquo and more pertinently OP yaud- ldquoto be in turmoilrdquo a word used in DSe sect5 DNa sect4 and XPh sect4 of the ldquocommotionrdquo of lands or the earth to which Darius or Xerxes with Ahuramazdarsquos assistance put an end

From Arshama to Alexander 671

perish and his 30 ardab estate is abandoned and the estate remains abandoned until his son successfully petitions to take it on The possibility (envisaged in the letter) that the estate might have been added to Arshamarsquos holdings andor assigned to someone else would fit a context in which men were going out rounding up garda (as in A610)mdashbut we cannot be sure of the time-scale involved the abandonment is perhaps more likely to show precisely that people were not going round tidying up while the state of trouble was on-going Where A611 belongs on the spectrum of responses to trouble may thus be arguable

An essential fact in all of this is that we do not know exactly where the relevant estates were located and we do not know how long the so-called Egyptian ldquorevoltrdquo lasted or over how wide an area it had an impact The disturbance generated in the place where Psamshek found himself during the Egyptian ldquorevoltrdquo may have been consistent with his taking the robust action that Arshama attributes to him even though elsewhere (on the evidence of A67) the only thing to domdashat least in the short termmdashwas to take refuge in a fort Contrariwise Nakhthorrsquos supposedly inadequate response during the later šwzyrsquo may be due to the fact that (whatever the cause or context of these disturbances) conditions in his area were worse than elsewhere The alternative of course is that he was actually failing to his job pro-perly

If he had been doing what Arshama thought he should be doing how would he have done it Preventing impairment of the estate and (certainly) acquiring new workersmdashwhich involves taking them to the ldquocourtyardrdquo (trbṣ)7 and having them brandedmdashare not activities to be achieved by an individual working alone Implicit is the availability of coercive force A68 in which Arshama instructs rsquoArmapiya (a man with soldiers under his command) to do what he is told by the pqyd Psamshek ldquoin the affair of my estaterdquo gives us a small explicit glimpse of this sort of situationmdashwhile also indicating that there might be tensions between the parties There is of course no way of knowing (a) what the situation was in which rsquoArma-piya was being uncooperative or (b) how it might have related to the times of disturbance mentioned elsewhere in the dossier or (c) how rsquoArmapiyarsquos force related to the one that was brought together in A67 or (d) what the further characteristics of either force might have beenmdashexcept for the observation that the commander rsquoAr-mapiya has a non-Iranian and possibly Lycian name8 which makes it relatively unlikely that he was commanding Iranian troops

These Arshama letters then give us a tantalising taste of possible responses to instability in what we are naturally inclined to characterize as the rural environment local reaction to local trouble (which might or might not be the local manifestation

7 This reproduces Akkadian tarbaṣu (Muraoka ‒ Porten 2003 350) a word variously used of animal-pens or of the court of a temple or palace (CAD T 216‒221 meaning 1)mdasha combination reminiscent of the range of associations of Greek aule In Egyptian Aramaic trbṣ recurs in TADAE B37 4 B310 471415 B34 4 B311 3 in reference to part of a house for which the equivalent Egyptian term was hyt Elsewhere trbṣ is found in a fourth century Lydian text (Gusmani 1964 no1 = KAI 260 349 BC) as part of the property of a tomb-desecrator on which the destructive divine vengeance is called down TRBṢH BYTH QNYNH ṬN WMYN WMNDlsquoMTH YBDRWNH WYRTH ie ldquohis trbṣ his house his possessions earth water and whatever is his they are to destroy and his inheritancerdquo (wyrth seems an afterthought) 8 The name is certainly Anatolian and particularly abundantly attested in Lycia (nearly 30 examples)


of larger-scale disturbance) away from the metropolitan centre of Memphis and perhaps not adjacent even to regional urban centres such as Elephantine or Thebes This is not something we often glimpse at least in quasi-narrative mode and in reference to particular events rather than through generic descriptions or by ima-ginative inference from institutional information

Responses to local trouble in other documentary sources

Is there other similar material I start with three further types of documentary source

The Khalili texts from Bactria (Naveh ‒ Shaked 2012) are of somewhat similar character to the Arshama dossier (both are sets of Aramaic documents related to a satrap) but differ inter alia inasmuch as the Bactrian satraprsquos best defined corre-spondent is a local governor (pḥt) not an estate-manager (pqyd) Perhaps as a consequence they contain more numerous allusions to military matters than the Arshama lettersmdashallusions that however vary between the opaque and very opa-que9 Most interesting (or most tantalising) are A2 and A4

In A2 one set of soldiers under the governor Bagavantrsquos authority10 is described as ldquothose who go to mḥztrsquordquo a term variously understood as designating ports harbours (market) towns or outlying provinces (Naveh ‒ Shaked 2012 29 84 280) This presumably indicates that their function is the defence of whichever category is in question but leaves unclear whether they are primarily fixed-point garrison-soldiers or a force available for ad hoc deployment to meet particular situa-tions Meanwhile in the specific circumstance covered by the letter another set of soldiers (ldquoyour bodyguard [] with the rest of the troops that are thererdquo)mdashthough one that is also Bagavantrsquos and is not necessarily fundamentally different in type from the firstmdashare to do something about the ldquoprovisions (of) the wayfarers and the horses in the [desert of Arta]datanardquo and to ldquotake out that sandvinegar from that house of minerdquo (ie of the satrap Akhvamazda) In the light of the rsquoArmapiya docu-ment (above) it is a little tempting to see the ldquohouserdquo as Akhvamazdarsquos personal estate and infer that here as in Egypt the boundary between state and estate busi-ness was rather porous But the view of Naveh ‒ Shaked (2012 81 84) is that the letter deals with the state-managed road-network and that this ldquohouserdquo is an official caravanserai (and so ldquobelongsrdquo to Akhvamazda in his capacity as satrap) in which case we are simply seeing another aspect of the local security system

In A4 (rather more remarkably) we encounter soldiers being diverted from wall-building to the protection of crops against locusts

9 Very opaque are the troops (ḥyl) who are perhaps said to ldquopossess leatherrdquo in A7 the fortress (byrtrsquo) Zarimpi (or perhaps Zariaspis Naveh ‒ Shaked 2012 121) that may be the destination of mndt mlkrsquo (renttax of the king) in A8 the unit (degel) in B5 and the two references in B1 one of which is translated as ldquoanoint a whole large army by my desirerdquo though the alternative meaning of the relevant verb mšḥ ldquomeasurerdquo would on the face of it is be at least as plausible a translation The military may be unspokenly present in other documents as well The journey during with Bessus drew the provisions listed in C1 will not have been undertaken without some military accompaniment but neither there nor in other list-documents C2‒10 are soldiers mentioned 10 Literally ldquoin your handrdquo (A2) Compare ldquoappointed in your presencerdquo in A4 (immediately below)


From Akhvamazda to Bagavant And now concerning that which you sent to me saying ldquo(A message) was sent to me from you to give instruction to build the wall and the ditch around the town of Nikhshapaya Subsequently I set a time and made the troops come close Spaita the magistrates and others (of) the garrison of the land came to me saying thus lsquoThere is locust heavy and numerous and the crop is ripe () for reaping If we build this wall then the locust the blight that is in the town [will increase] and it will cause [a flow ()] and a renewed flow () in the landrsquo (But) I have no authority to let them go And another (matter) That which you say concerning that which you communicated to me (in your message) [rdquo And now ] those troops that are appointed in your presence set them free to go about their work That locust let them [smash ()] and let them reap the crop And when the time comes they will build that wall and ditch

Here as in A2 there is a contextual distinction between different sets of soldiersmdashldquothe garrison (ḥyl) of the landrdquo ldquothose troops that are appointed in your presencerdquomdashthat may or may not correspond to a fundamental categorical distinc-tion There is also the question of the troopsrsquo ethnic identity In A2 Naveh ‒ Shaked read a supralinear annotation to the troops under Bagavantrsquos authority krhtrn whyrkyn as consisting of two ethnic terms one unidentifiable the other to be ren-dered as ldquoAreianrdquo (Haraivaka-)mdashmaking some of them at least outsiders to Bactria (albeit perhaps fellow-Iranians) Since these are the troops who are also said to ldquogo to mḥztrsquordquo one might even wonder whether there is an intrinsic connection between that designation and their being outsiders But since krhtrn is unidentifiable and hyrkyn would be a defective Aramaic rendering of Haraivaka- the situation is actually very unclear In A4 Pierre Briant (2009 149) inferred that the troops sent to combat locusts were of local originmdashpeasant-soldiers part of the native community whose land is under threat By contrast Naveh ‒ Shaked (2012 25) suppose that the soldiers held land-plots as part of their remuneration (and thus implicitly leave open the question of the ultimate origin) The request that they be allowed to help deal with the locusts hardly settles the matter either way since everyone would surely have some sort of interest in protecting the crops The fact that the satraprsquos authority is required for their redeployment is also unhelpful The satrap himself had given instructions for the wall to be built (and it was he who had ldquoappointedrdquo them ldquoin [Bagavantrsquos] presencerdquo in the first place) so it was prudent of the governor to get his imprimatur for a change of function whoever the soldiers were In any event it is good to see soldiers building walls as well as defending them11 an activity broadly comparable with their logistical functions in A2 while the spectacle of military men being sent to deal with locusts is if only at an anecdotal level capti-vatingly colourful

Next from early fifth century Egypt we have a letter in Demotic from Khnu-memakhet to Farnava the governor of Elephantine12 The letter complains about the behaviour of one Atṛpana- in relation to a grain-consignment coming up from Nubia and the arrangements for storing it so it should not be stolen by brigands In particular his complaint is thatAtṛpana- has ordered that the grain which had been brought from the mountain to the quay should be moved to ldquothe groundrdquo ( inland)

11 Wall building but without explicit reference to soldiers appears also in ADAB A5 12 PLoeb 1 = Martin 2011 C4 (written 5 October 486 BC)


and left there the writer says this will leave it exposed to the ldquobrigands who are on the mountainrdquomdashevidently a familiar quantity regularly seen in broad daylight though from a considerable distance The charge is that if no armed men guard the grain these brigands will steal it at night His request seems to be that armed men will guard it on the quaymdashor some of it Martin (2011 296) thinks some is to be left on the quay under guard and the rest taken to Osirouerrsquos house but none is to be just left ldquoon the groundrdquo

Two points should be noted (a) The general response to the presence of brigands is to keep out the way and not leave valuables lying around In other words it is not very pro-active There is of course a parallel between dealing with the locusts indirectly by protecting the crops and dealing with the brigands indirectly by pro-tecting the grain-shipments But whereas no one could be expected to eradicate the locusts one might have thought that the forces at the disposal of the governor of Elephantine would be expected to deal with brigands Perhaps the fact that (if Herodotus 71 7 is to be trusted) there was a rebellion going on in Egypt at the time has a bearing The brigands were certainly not political rebelsmdashdespite what used sometimes to be thoughtmdashbut a background of challenge to Persian rule (even if only manifested elsewhere in the country) might have made it seem imprudent to get involved in aggressive policing unless absolutely necessary13 (b) Any soldiers involved are ldquoMardquo (who are the ones to take the grain ldquoto the groundrdquo) and makhi-moi = rmt ḳnḳn (who are the ones who are to guard it once it is there) In both cases we are certainly dealing with types of troopsmdashand actual peoplemdashnative to Egypt14 This is an important corrective to Elephantinersquos fame as the locus of Jewish and Aramaean garrison-troopsmdasha force long-established in the place but outsiders nonetheless

Finally some material from the Persepolis Fortification archive A number of texts mention a man called Ukama together with groups of taššup (a word of somewhat flexible meaning but certainly capable of designating soldiers15) and sometimes label him as a ldquoBeziyamatiyanrdquo16 Beziyamatiya is the place otherwise known as Paišiyauvada or Naširma at which Gaumata laid claim to the throne in 522 and a second opponent of Darius Vahyazdata raised troops during the wars of 522ndash521 (DB sectsect11 42) It has therefore been inferred that it was a military stronghold A notable feature of almost all the texts about Ukama is that his groups receive rations at the estate of a named individual That calls to mind PF 1857 a letter sent to Parnakka in

13 Darius died not long after the date of this letter (precisely when is a little obscure Zawadzki 1992) One wonders whether his illness was prolonged if so did Iranian officials in Elephantine (or indeed Egyptian rebels) know about it and how much did it contribute to instability Dariusrsquo reign had started in chaos and there are hints that Xerxesrsquo succession was not in the event entirely unproblematic perhaps some feared (or hoped for) greater disruption than actually occurred 14 Ma Vittmann 1998 ad 129 Vittmann 1999 123‒124 (replacing the previous reading mdw) Makhimoi Winnicki 1977 1986 and 1998 15 That is certainly the case in the Elamite version of DB On the word more generally see Tuplin 2008 369‒372 16 PF 330 2027 PFNN 1044 PFNN 1159 PFNN 1254 PFNN 1711 PFNN 1816 R558 = Jones ‒ Stolper 2006 19 Henkelman has variously seen these people as soldiers (2003 133‒4 n 54) and porters (2011 137) Ukama was incidentally the owner of a seal (PFS 0284) with unusual stylistic characteristics and an inscription in Greek letters (though not appparently language)


502501 in the name of ldquoUkama and his companionsrdquo The letter concerns grain at seven individual sites four of which are associated with the estates of named individuals A fifth Matannan is linked with Queen Irtašduna and known from other sources as the site of a royal establishment17 Moreover the list is identified as an inventory of grain ldquostored in our tiddardquo which must here mean ldquofortressrdquo (Tavernier 2007 438) We thus have another Ukama associated with estates and a fortress to set alongside the Ukama associated with estates taššup and the putative fortress PaišiyauvadaBezimayatiyaNaširma whom we have already met Is this mere coinci-dence The match is certainly not perfect If this is the same Ukama we are seeing aspects of his official activity at different dates (all the dated taššup documents are from two to three years later than the letter to Parnakka) and at different placesmdashthe places in PF 1857 are associable with a region north-west of Persepolis (Kamfiruz) whereas those involved with Ukamarsquos taššup lie further to the west in Fahliyan or eastern Elam and although we do not know exactly where Paišiyauvada was it is not normally assumed to be in either of these regions But it is plainly tempting to make the identification In any event the linkage between estates and fortresses in these Perse-polis texts not only calls to mind the Elamite version of DB sect47 where Arshada (in Arachosia) is both the estate (irmatam) of Vivana and a fortress18 but also resonates with the flight of Egyptian estate-workers to a fortress in TADAE A67 and may cast light on the relationship between rsquoArmapiya and Psamshek in TADAE A68 and even make one wonder whether the land under threat in ADAB A4 was (or in-cluded) estate-land

Reponses to local trouble in Greek sources

There are also some resonances with material in non-documentary Greek sources The people in TADAE A67 call to mind a famous passage of Xenophonrsquos Anabasis the attack on the tursis of Asidates in the Caicus valley (788ndash19) in 399 Andrapoda are a feature of the storymdashand here too they find themselves trapped outside the place of potential protection though the episode was much less prolonged than that involving the thirteen Cilicians But one reason it was less prolonged is that there were immediately local forces that could be mobilised at once and that is evidently a contrast with the situation in the relevant part of late fifth century Egypt There is also a contrast with the southern frontier of early fifth century Egypt Xenophonrsquos bandits are confronted whereas those in the letter to Farnava seem to be avoided But they were probably a less ad hoc groupmdashand Elephantine was a larger and safer place in which to take a laissez faire attitude

Returning to TADAE A67 the implicit suspicion about the Cilicians (though one effectively set aside by Arshama) was that they had willingly gone over to the rebels and that reminds one of another group of workers the Paeonian deportees who exploited the disruption caused by the Ionian revolt to decamp from Phrygia and set off for home (Herodotus 598) Remarkably (one may feel) they succeeded in reaching the coast and crossing to Chios before Persian forces (a group of cavalry) came on the scene too late to do anything but issue ineffective instructions to them to return Another episode in roughly the same region turned out better for

17 Henkelman ‒ Kleber 2007 18 Grillot ‒ Herrenschmidt ‒ Malbran-Labat 1993 53


the Persiansmdashand takes us into a context of more conventional warfare Some years after the Paeoniansrsquo flight the renegade Milesian Histiaeus landed in the territory of Atarneus intent on ldquoharvesting the cropsrdquo there and in the Caicus valley (making this a sort of precursor to Xenophonrsquos raid nearly a century later) but had the misfortune to run into Harpagus who happened to be in the area with a largish infantry and cavalry force In the ensuing battle at Malene Histiaeus was defeated and captured alive (Herodotus 528ndash30) This in turn resembles another episode a mere decade before Xenophonrsquos raid and somewhat further south Troops from an Athenian fleet invaded Lydia at the time the corn is ripening and started burning villages and taking property slaves and other booty Stages the Persian was in the vicinity with a cavalry unit and attacked the Athenians while they were scattered across the landscape capturing one of them and killing seven others (Xenophon Hellenica 125) In both cases the Persians do produce a response to local military threat though both Herodotus and Xenophon allow one to imagine that the presence of defence forces was somewhat fortuitous

By way of contrast with these episodes which are entirely played out in open country we might consider the role of Leonton Cephalae Gordium and Miletou Teichos during Agesilausrsquo incursion into the Phrygian hinterland in 394 These fortified sites successfully resisted Agesilausrsquo attacksmdashbut did nothing to protect the wider landscape from looting Agesilaus ran into no Persian cavalry or infantry fortuitously or otherwise Later in the same campaign Agesilaus came to the region of Dascylium Dascylium was also a well fortified place19 and once again this did nothing much to protect the landscape This time it is true there was a bit of fight-ing out in the open (Hellenica 4115ndash28) but on the whole Pharnabazus (unlike the people in Phrygia) not only avoided a fort-based strategy but apparently did his best to avoid any confrontation with the enemy at all He was not always so evasive Xenophon tells us that he mounted regular invasions of Mysia and Pisidia in the hope of curbing bandit-like attacks on his territory (3113) The reference to Pisidia is surprising since one would not normally regard it as contiguous with Helles-pontine Phrygia but the proposition can certainly be true of Mysia What we have here is yet another type of response to local troublemdashnot meeting it in situ when it happens (though that might have happened too of course) but launching punitive pre-emptive invasions as a form of deterrent Of course Agesilausrsquo campaign was a major military incursion by a foreign sovereign power whereas the Mysians and Pisidians (and indeed Xenophon and Histiaeus) might be categorized as bandits Different scales of threat provoke different responses (or lack of response)

We have been straying into narrative history (though we do not alas have any actual narratives of Persian invasions of Mysia) There is also a non-narrative Greek presentation of the Persian system for inhibiting local disorder embedded in two Xenophontic texts Cyropaedia 861ndash9 and Oeconomicus 45ndash11 These offer a picture in which a satrapy contains two categories of phrouroi associated with akrai and the khōra and commanded by phrourarchs and chiliarchs (both categories being royally-appointed) All phrouroi are paid though only the akra people are called misthophoroi and all are subject to annual inspection though only the khōra people go to the syllogos point The only hint about the ethnicity of these phrouroi is that the types

19 As is affirmed by HellOxy223 (Bartoletti) = 253 (Chambers) quite aside from the archaeological evidence


of troops found in the khōra conform to the standard oriental troop type met throughout Cyropaedia Alongside this basic garrison model we have salient material in the fictive narrative of Cyropaedia First there is the estate + fortress landscape associated with Gadatas and Gobryas (Gobryas rules land surrounding a fortress pays dasmos and provides cavalry Gadatas controls various khōria at least one of which has villages around it and can provide military forces)20 and then there is the story about Armenia and Chaldaea which provides a paradigm for defence of an imperial area (Armenia) against external banditry (311ndash3231) The episode con-cludes with a garrison (of unstated ethnic make-up) under a Median commander occupying a fort to police the deal between Armenia and Chaldaeamdashan epimakhia between reciprocally free parties who however enjoy epigamia epergasia and epi-nomia This is not simply a question of assuring order in the imperial landscape since there is an international dimension (the Chaldaeans are outside the Median empire) and the garrison is therefore not a straightforward analogue to the khora garrisons of the general model But what it has in common with that model and with some of the other pieces of narrative examined above is protection of productive land that is of course the context in which the general model is proposed in Oeconomicusmdashit is part of the Kingrsquos alleged passionate concern for agriculturemdashand that in turn takes us back to the documentary material with which we started

Nor is that the only pertinent documentary material There is for example the evidence about the deployment of archers to protect the livestock assets of Babylonian templesmdashan enterprise that also contributed to general good order21 Or one might contemplate the various sets of Aramaic ostraca from South Palestine notably Arad (Naveh 1981) Beersheva (Naveh 1973 and 1979) and Makkedah22 Here we have a good deal of productive land (Makkedah Beersheva) but also the provisioning of soldiers (organised in degelin as at Elephantine and Bactria) or officials (Arad) The military-political historian is apt to place evidence for military emplacements in fourth century southern Palestine in the context of the empirersquos relationship with Egypt fortifications or silos in places like Lachish Tel es Hesi Tel Jemmeh Tel es-Serah or Tel Farah are to do with defending the southern frontier or providing logistical framework for invasions across Sinai23 Perhaps in certain circumstances they might be but a lot of these places a lot of the time will have far more to do with local policing than imperial narrative The marches of southern Palestine are not only the route to Egypt but also home to more imme-diately disruptive forces

20 Gadatas 5228 5312 15 26 542‒3 9 29 544‒6 Gobryas 462 9 21 Joannegraves 1982 179‒183 Kleber 2008 204‒214 Tolini 2011 105‒116 MacGinnis 2012 22 A large cache of irregularly excavated ostraca has been attributed to this site The material (dispersed among various museums and private collections) is only incompletely published See (at least) Ahituv 1999 Ahituv ‒ Yardeni 2004 Epharsquoal ‒ Naveh 1996 Lemaire 1996 1999 2002 2006 and 2007 Lozachmeur ‒ Lemaire 1996 Porten ‒ Yardeni 2003 2004 2006 2007 2008 2009 and 2012 23 On these see eg Tuplin 1987 Bennet 1989 Hoglund 1992 165‒206 Edelman 2005 281‒331 Tal 2005 Betlyon 2005 Fantalkin ‒ Tal 2006


The threat of rebellion and external attack models of response

This is a cue however to turn to the imperial narrativemdashand to begin the approach to Alexander More precisely I want to sketch the types of reaction to major threats to the imperial order that we find in (mostly Greek) narrative sources to provide some background for the Alexander story

In essence this involves considering either entirely external attackers or internal attackers in the form of rebels active in a particular provincial area In practice of course there are some episodes that for one reason or another are of ambiguous status or are hard to fit into the models of behaviour that I shall articulate shortly or are best discussed pre-emptively

The rebellion of the younger Cyrus was just that a rebellion But it involved an invasion of the imperial heartland so it also had the character of external attack The disruption in Phoenicia-Cilicia allegedly caused by Evagoras and his Egyptian ally Achoris also gives Evagorasrsquo rebellion some of the characteristics of an external attack24 The rebellion of Amorges was caught up in wider developments (see below p 683) and the Ionian Revolt and the Egyptian rebellion of c 460 also provoked supportive attacks by outside powers

The upheavals of 522ndash521 certainly involved numerous battles against rebels but the events of the Year of Four Kings just under a century latermdashthough they may involve the mobilisation of armiesmdashseem to have played out largely without actual fighting25 A more problematic context of rebellion is the era of the Satrapsrsquo Revolt a set of events defined by Diod 1590ndash91 and a series of disconnected Anatolian episodes (extending as late as the 350s) mostly preserved in epigraphic documents or in excerpting or fragmentary literary authors Capturing the scope and story-line of this era is a difficult task and categorization of at least some of its contents for the present purpose might beg questions I return to this at the end of the section on responses to rebellion

There are several entries in Babylonian Astronomical Diaries from the reign of Artaxerxes II about (apparently) military actions by the king the kingrsquos son or ldquotroops of the kingrdquo26 None of them is well enough preserved andor sufficiently detailed to admit of much discussion as it stands and attempts to rectify this problem by finding a link with events or contexts also known from Greek sources beg a lot of questions The Greek record of pre-Alex-ander fourth century military activity away from the western reaches of the empire is not completely empty of course we may recall the campaigns of Darius II or Artaxerxes II against Cadusia or the suggestion in Polyaenus that the latter once marched to the upper Euphrates to confront the rebel Data-mesmdasha confrontation that did not eventually materialise27 and both have

24 Isoc 4161 962 Diod 1523 25 Ctesias 688 F15 (47‒50) 26 AD -440 (actually dates to 3821 van der Spek 1998 240) -373 -369 -366 in Sachs ‒ Hunger 1988 AD -362 in Hunger ‒ van der Spek 2006 27 Cadusia see below n 30 Datames Polyaen 7213


figured in efforts to contextualize Astronomical Diaries entries28 But even if this were right it would add little of use for our present purposes AD -440 (redated to 3821 BC) does certainly refer to Salamis and Cyprus but what it means to say about the King in this connection is unclear and any inference that Artaxerxes II was present in person at some stage of the war with Evagoras (eg Briant 2002 992 985ndash986) is hard to accept unless his ldquopresencerdquo was so geographically remote from the Eastern Mediterranean as to have remained unknown to Greek observers for it is inconceivable that the sort of celebration of the Persiansrsquo failure to defeat Evagoras militarily that we find in Isocrates would not have registered the kingrsquos personal discom-fiture

The situation with the Ten Thousand between Cunaxa and their departure from Mesopotamia was oddmdashthe diplomatic and military management of an army whose primary wish was to go away The forces deployed by Tissa-phernes were not solely local he was on his way home too But he only came east in the first place with 500 cavalrymen (Anabasis 125) so he must also have been using soldiers from Mesopotamia andor from other forces assem-bled for the army that fought at Cunaxa This may help to explain the fact that the Ten Thousand did not encounter garrisons or other fixed-location troops as they marched north Perhaps the local defence-network had been temporarily denuded by a major army-mobilisation But perhaps it would in any case have been inadequate to deal with a Greek mercenary army and so simply kept out of the waymdashlike Pharnabazus confronted by Agesilaus (above p 676)

Isocratesrsquo reflections on these events introduce the kingrsquos peripolousa stratia (4145) He has argued that the Persiansrsquo military showing in west has been poor He now says Greeks should not fear the ldquoperipolousa stratia with the Kingrdquo or Persian valour these were proved worthless by the Ten Thousand who defeated the Persians ldquoin front of the palacerdquo (hupo tois basileiois) even when the entire population of Asia had been assembled In context the peripolousa stratia is arguably contrasted with (a) forces in the west and (b) forces putatively assembled from all of Asia and is thus figured as the kingrsquos homeland (ldquoin front of the palacerdquo) protection forcemdashan idea for which peripolousa is certainly not an inappropriate word29 Whether this is a reliable aperccedilu about Achaemenid military organisation is of course another matter The assimilation of the empire or even its heartland to Attica is after all a bit of a stretch

Response to rebellion

One may detect the following models of response to rebellion (The presentation of this material is simplistic and lightly referenced but not I hope misleading)

28 Van der Spek 1998 252‒253 (on -369 -366) Hunger ‒ van der Spek 2006 (-362) A further suggestion that the ldquotroops of the kingrdquo in a broken entry in AD -373 relating to FebruaryMarch 373 alludes to the Egyptian invasion of that year seems quite arbitrary 29 Cf Xen Por 452 Ps-Arist AthPol 424


Model 1 allow attack and resist with centrally assembled army

Cyrus 401

Model 2 send in external forces (sometimes royal sometimes not)

The wars of Dariusrsquo succession 5221 (mostly) (DB passim) Babylon (early Darius Herodotus 3150ndash159) Cyprus 498 (Herodotus 5108) Egypt 486 (Herodotus 77) Bactria 460s (Ctesias 688 F13 [45]) Megabyzus 440s (Ctesias 688 F14[40ndash42]) ArsitesArtyphius post 4243 perhaps post 417 (Ctesias 688 F15[52]) Pissuthnes post 4243 perhaps post 417 (Ctesias 688 F15[53]) Cadusia 405 380s and reign of Artaxerxes III30 Egypt 404ndash343 (seven actual or planned attacks see Ruzicka 2012 66ndash198) Pnytagoras 340s (Diodorus 16427ndash916461ndash3) Egypt Chababash31

Model 3 respond with local forces

Parthia 5221 (DB sect35) Hermias of Atarneus and others 34132

Model 4 respond with local and near-local and then with distant forces33 Sidon 340s (1) Belesys and (2) a royal army (Diodorus 1640ndash45) Ionia 490s (1) Local nomoi-holders and (2) fleet from Phoenicia (Herodotus

5102 66)34

Model 5 respond with near-local and then with distant forces35 Evagoras I 380s (1) Hecatomnus (2) An armyfleet under Orontes and

Tiribazus36

30 405 Xen Hel 2113 380s Plut Art 24 Diod 1585 101 Nep Dat12 Trog prol 10 Artaxerxes III Just 1033 Diod 176 31 See Burstein 2000 Ruzicka 2012 199‒205 32 Diod 16524‒8 Polyaen 648 Theop 115 F250 291 Strab 13157 Dem 1032 Didym In Dem 447‒618 Diod 16528 notes that there were other unnamed hēgemones hostile to the Persians whom Mentor dealt by force or stratagem 33 The categorisation local and near-local assumes that (i) Belesysrsquo authority included Phoenicia so some Transeuphratene forces are technically local and (ii) the nomoi holders from within the Halys forces do include some Lydian ones (despite the fact that Artaphernes himself was holed up in Sardis) 34 In the longer term the response could be represented as involving a retaliatory attack on Eretria and Athens but that can be left to one side for present purposes 35 Orontes and Tiribazus allegedly got some forces from Phocaea and Cyme not much more distant than Caria or wherever else Hecatomnus mobilised troops But they are out-of-theatre leaders by comparison with Hecatomnus and may have brought assets from beyond the Levant 36 Theopomp 115 F103(4) Diodorus 1498 152


Model 6 respond unsuccessfully with local forces then occupy a fort and await help37

Pactyes 540s (Herodotus 1153ndash161) Egypt 450s38

The statistically dominant model (Model 2) entirely ignores the possibility of local resistance Perhaps that is primarily because records of response to rebellion are apt to be so thin that most of the story is missing anyway At the same time even where that is not true the report of initial response makes clear the involvement of forces that are either wholly non-local (Evagoras)39 or at any rate not wholly local ndash that being the situation with Sidon in the 340s and Ionia in the 490s That leaves Pactyes Egypt in 460 Parthia and Hermiasmdashtwo cases where the Persians manage to hold onto a relatively impregnable fortress and two in which a local commander defeats the rebels The cases of Parthia and Hermias are not straightforward External force were also sent into Parthia by Darius (DB sect36) and there is perhaps no guarantee that the success Vishtaspa enjoyed in the first fight with the rebels at Vishpahuzati would have lasted without the external reinforcement he was after all fighting with an army that was only part of the force originally under his commandmdashthe rest had declared for the Median pretender Phraortes Hermias and others were dealt with by Mentor who had recently come into the region as ldquocommander-in-chief in the coastal regionsrdquo (Diodorus 16508) or ldquosatrap of the coastal regionrdquo (16522) with the specific remit of dealing with rebels So although the problem is being confronted by a local authority the case is as at least as close to Model 2 and Model 3 in fact the whole point is that with the Levant and Egypt subdued Artaxerxes III was now redeploying resource (in the shape of Mentor) from those theatres to a remaining area of potential instability one of concern because of a potential threat from Philip of Macedonmdashthough views have differed about the extent to which Hermiasrsquo principality was a prospective bridgehead for Macedonian intrusion into Anatolia Note incidentally that Mentor disposed of Hermias and at least some of his other targets by treachery rather than brute forcemdashperhaps a sign that he did not have immense military resources perhaps just a matter of strategic preference40 That leaves us with Pactyes and Egypt In the case of Pactyes we seem to be dealing with a rather ill-planned revolt and one where an external rescue force was available rather close at hand It is not clear whether Pactyesrsquo Lydians had fought with or inflicted any sort of preliminary military defeat on the Persians In Egypt on the other hand there was certainly an initial confrontation in the field at Papremis one which the Persians lost (perhaps because the salient local forces were inadequate)41

37 There is element of this at the start of the Ionian revolt too 38 Hdt 312 15 160 77 Thuc 1104 109‒111 Diod 1171 74‒75 77 Ctes 688 F14 (36‒39) For a novel chronology for these events see Kahn 2008 39 I am assuming that resistance to Evagoras by Citium Amathus and Soli is not primarily construed as the deployment of local imperial military assets 40 The stories about him in Diod 1645 49‒50 show a similar predilection for treachery and trickery 41 Ctesias and Diodorus represent Papremis as the defeat of forces sent in from outside Since the Persian commander was the satrap of Egypt (Achaemenes) that may seem unlikely Of course since satraps were not always in their satrapies it is not inconceivable that Achaemenes actually had to return to his province to confront the rebellion in person and


but there were still sufficient local military assets to enable effective occupation of the White Fort for some time thereafter In this instance interestingly Thucydides specifically observes that those taking refuge in the White Fort included Egyptians as well as Persians my suspicion is that this does not just mean the Udjahorresnets and Ptah-hoteps of the Achaemenid Egyptian world but elements of the native soldiery Inarosrsquo insurrection had partly the character of an external Libyan invasion not all Egyptians need have considered this a desirable development Finally we must return to the Satrapsrsquo Revolt Here the overwhelming impression is that the fighting goes on between forces that are essentially local to Anatoliamdashincluding Greek mercenaries hired there even if sourced further west The army of Autophradates in Nepos Datames 8 is a partial exception it is brought in from the Levant but many of its alleged constituents are certainly Anatolian and on some views that might even go for its Cardaces as well (see below pp 686ndash688) The intended royal invasion of Eastern Anatolia (see above p 678) would have been another exception but never materialized Otherwise on a larger and longer scale the situation resembles that which allegedly subsisted between Cyrus and Tissaphernes in 403ndash401 (Xenophon Anabasis 118)

Response to external attack before the Macedonian era

Some of the rebellions just discussed are episodes in which the (continued) occupation of strongholds is a significant feature of the situation This also arises in some instances of external attackmdashand the absence of specific reference to (retreat to) strongholds in other cases may not preclude their being part of the strategic picture whether they are highlighted depends on how far the Persians are being represented as on the back foot if the tactical narrative is of the right sort strong-holds will not feature

Model 1 occupy strongholds fight field-battles mount sorties

Cyrus v Astyages42

Model 2 occupy strongholds and deploy locally based fleet

Cyprus 45043

Model 3 occupy stronghold and mount successful sortie

Egypt 33344

might have brought some external forces with him But one could still legitimately distinguish between this phase of response and the phase represented by Megabazusrsquo army 42 Ctesias 688 F8d (33‒46) a complex but relatively highly imaginative narrative In the at least equally imaginative narrative of Xenophonrsquos Cyropaedia the defence of Media against Assyrian attack consists entirely in pre-emptive attack on Assyria and its assets 43 Thuc 1112 Diod 123 Plut Cimon 18 44 Diod 1748 Curt 4128‒30 Arr 2133 Diodorus and Arrian actually represent the freebooting invader Amyntas as confronted only by enkhōrioi (natives) but Curtius envisages successful resistance by Mazaces and ldquoPersiansrdquo When Alexander arrived of course no defence was mounted


Model 4 deploy local forces (fortress being mentioned)

Vivana in Arachosia v Vahyazdatarsquos invasion force45

Model 5 deploy in situ forces then retreat to strongholds and await external rescue

Asia Minor Thrace and Cyprus 470s46 Tachosrsquo invasion of Levant 36047

Model 6 deploy in situ forces while awaiting external rescue

Spartan War 399ndash386 (see below)

Model 7 confrontation by local forces with problematic elements of external inter-vention

Ionian War 412ndash404 (see below)

Model 8 confrontation at border by local forces with varying consequences48 OrontasArtuchas v the Ten Thousand at the River Centrites 401 (Xenophon

Anabasis 433 20ndash21) Tiribazus v Ten Thousand in Western Armenia 401 (Xenophon Anabasis

444ndash22)

The Ionian and Spartan wars are the best documented items here and as successive stages in the twenty-five year story leading to Persian recovery of Asia Minor through the Kingrsquos Peace they display both parallels and differences

In terms of Persian military asserts the Ionian War was handled by local forces though financial resources were externally boosted Tissaphernes had infantry and cavalry at his disposal (some infantry were mercenary some undefined)49 but al-though the title stratēgos tōn katō (Thucydides 854) might suggest that they exceeded those of an ordinary satrap it is hard to see any plain sign that this was actually so When Cyrus effectively superseded him he would in principle have had larger military resources (since he controlled multiple satrapies50) but he concen-trated entirely on spending money and one does not find him personally engaged in

45 DB sectsect45‒47 Two of the three engagements are located at ldquofortressesrdquo (the third is just in a ldquolandrdquo) 46 After Mycale Greek-Persian conflict focuses on strongholds in Thrace (Sestos Byzantium Doriscus Eion Hdt 7105‒7113 9117‒118 Thuc 189 98 Diod 1144 60 PlutCim 14) unidentified places in Anatolia and elsewhere (anonymous places Thuc 196 Ar Vesp 1099 Diod 1160) and Cyprus (Thuc 195 Diod 1144) until the Eurymedon campaign where the Persian armament is from one perspective a very belated ldquorescuerdquo mission 47 See Ruzicka 2012 134‒150 So little information survives about this episode that we cannot preclude local attempts at resistance but given the scale of the Egyptian operation it was unlikely to make much impression The Syrian cities under Egyptian attack (Diod 15923‒4) might theoretically have been strongholds to which defenders of Persian rule had withdrawn 48 In the first case there is actual if ineffective fighting at the border In the second Tiribazus negotiates but is then suspected of planning an ambush The Greeks mount a pre-emptive strike Subsequently some are harried by the enemy until they are frightened off by a noisy counter-attack 49 Thuc 820 25 28 Xen Hell 128 50 Xen An 197 Plut Artox 2 Diod 14125 192 26 4 Just 551


any military actions until the post-war siege of Miletus (Xenophon Anabasis 117) Tissaphernesrsquo forces fight at Miletus and Iasus in 412 (Thucydides 825 28) and Ephesus in 409 (Xenophon Hellenica 128) and Stagesrsquo defence of Lydian territory in 409 (see above p 676) also belongs under his aegis Otherwise there is nothing Further north we have more action from Pharnabazus (using cavalry and infantry sometimes explicitly mercenary)mdashthough it tends not to be very successful and he was unable to stop the Athenians looting royal land in winter 40940851 On the external front the Phoenician fleet remains a contentious issue Deployment of such a thing was in principle expected and Thucydides affirms that it actually came as far as Aspendus (88187ndash88) On the other hand one could say that the whole point of the strategy of co-operation with Sparta was to supply an external force without the complication and cost of doing it oneself so the failure of the Phoenicians to materialize is not entirely surprising And in general the Ionian War situation is a rather odd one The element of response to aggression (in the shape of Athenian support for the rebel Amorges52mdashin the circumstances not one suspects a parti-cularly high-end threat to the status quo) is buried under or at the very least entwined with the kingrsquos own aggressive agenda (Thucydides 85) it was Darius as much as the Athenians who had decided to change the status quomdashand he decided this because he thought the Athenians were vulnerable not because he thought they were dangerous Both the conferral of a special title on Tissaphernes and (espe-cially) the deployment of the kingrsquos son probably reflect this aggressive strand That the upshot of involving the kingrsquos son was a major rebellion is of course a nice example of the law of unintended consequences no one had predicted that the young prince would enhance his flexible military asserts to such a degree by hiring Greek mercenaries

The Spartan War involved a series of evasive confrontations using local forces while awaiting external reinforcement both terrestrial and naval After (and perhaps before) the arrival of a fleet there was also bribery of third-parties More precisely Tissaphernes had Carian and Persian infantry Greek mercenaries and cavalry (3215 3412 21) while Pharnabazus had cavalry (visible in various incidents53) and Greek mercenaries (3215) By 395 Tissaphernesrsquo forces seem to include extra elements sent in from outsidemdashI stress ldquoseemrdquo the army ldquocoming down from the kingrdquo (Xenophon Hellenica 3411) is a somewhat obscure entitymdashbut even then he behaves as though they are insufficient to guard more than one locality at once Meanwhile Pharnabazusrsquo forces are not sufficient even to do that since he takes to a nomadic lifestyle (Xenophon Hellenica 4125) This is all rather surprising Tissa-phernes as successor to Cyrus (Xenophon Hellenica 313) controlled the inner Anatolian satrapies but he makes no more use of them than Cyrus had fight the Greek invader There is an interesting contrast here with the Ionian Revolt (Herodotus 5102) and with the gathering of Anatolian cavalry to fight at Granicus (below p 686) After the earliest phases when Tissaphernes did attack Greek territorymdashat least Ephorus said he attacked Cyme (Diodorus 1435) Xenophon is more vague in Hellenica 315mdashand Dercylidas affected to believe Pharnabazusrsquo cavalry might spend the winter damaging Greek cities willingness to fight on land

51 Xen Hell 116 14 126 135 Diod 1345 46 49‒51 52 Thuc 85 Andoc 329 53 Xen Hell 3214 3413 4117‒19


seems to vary with the directness of the threat to imperial territory east of the now contested Greek coastal strip this applies to Tissaphernes (who is minded to defend Caria in 397 396 and 395 and whose army fights unsuccessfully for the Sardis region in 39554) Struthas (who fights Thibron when the latter starts looting the kingrsquos land and is evidently on the defensive against Thibronrsquos successor Diphri-das55) andmdashin some ways most extremelymdashPharnabazus56 He had no resource to deal with Meidiasrsquo effective rebellion (it looks as though Meidias was trying to create an autonomous fiefdom beholden neither to Persia nor to Sparta) or the Spartan ldquoliberationrdquo of Greek Aeolis (Xenophon Hellenica 3110ndash28) which leaves him feeling that he is the victim of epiteikhismos (321) and by 394 he has adopted a nomadic response to Spartan incursion into his home territory of Dascylium (4125) One of the things that lies behind all this evasion is of course the deployment of external force Tissaphernes looked for the arrival of an ldquoarmy co-ming down from the Kingrdquo (3411) while Pharnabazus famously encouraged the deployment of an East Mediterranean fleet57 that was a predictable strategy and even the involvement of a Greek as one of the fleetrsquos commanders is a little less surprising than it might once have been given the fighting of a campaign with proxy Greek fleets in the Ionian Warmdashindeed it supplies a nice element of continuity with the past in an era when it was no longer possible to get other Greeks to supply the required fleet (The subsequentmdashalbeit temporarymdashre-empowering of Athens was another example of the law of unintended consequences)

In the case of external attack (by contrast with internal rebellion) there is more acknowledgement in surviving narratives of the role of local forces in defence But where the attackers are not weak or uninterested in anything but an exit strategy external force is likely to be required and the value of the locally available forces may seem rather limited The value of garrisonsmdashat least away from heavily fortified centres like Sardis or Memphismdashalso looks rather limited To a significant degree that is an argument from silence Still if one goes through all references to garrisons or forts in Greek narrative sources (cf Tuplin 1987) one does note that stories about failure to resist attack constitute the largest group the data-bank may be skewed (Persian defeat is no doubt a more pleasing topic in Greek narratives) but the fact remains

Alexander

It is time at last to come to Alexander The major components of the Persian response to Alexander were (i) three major battlefield forces (for Granicus Issus and Gaugamela) (ii) a fleet and (iii) the concentration of forces in Miletus and Halicar-nassus after the catastrophic failure of the first battlefield force Those phenomena aside there is negligible sign of resistance Once Granicus had happened Alexander was able to move around Anatolia pretty much at will during 334ndash333 It is possible that there was local fighting between Parmenion and the Phrygian satrap in 334 but

54 Xen Hell 3215 3412 21‒24 HellOxy 11 (Bartoletti) = 14 (Chambers) Diod1480 55 Xen Hell 4817‒19 21 Diod 1499 56 It is also true of Tithraustes (Xen Hell 3425‒26)mdashthough straight after the defeat at Sardis he was in a particularly difficult situation 57 Diod 1439 Nep Con 2


hardly certain58 and in the event the non-Persian garrison in Celaenae was left high and dry59 In fact none of the satrapal capitals west of the Euphrates (or for that matter east of it) offered any serious resistancemdashand indeed none of the satrapies Consider the case of Egypt Arrian 312 explicitly says Mazaces had no Persikē dunamis In 343 Nectanebo tried to thwart invasion by putting garrisons in various East Delta sites and having a field-army ready to deploy to places under threat The Persian authorities in Egypt in 3332 had no such option In the period down to Gaugamela Alexander did sometimes encounter resistance but it mostly came from people whose actions need not primarily be construed as an expression of loyalty to the Achaemenid state This was not the case we are told with Gaza whose (non-Persian) eunuch governor is specifically credited with loyalty to the King (Curtius 467) though his defence involved Arab mercenaries60 as well as Persians61 and the force available to him was inadequate to the size of the site (Curtius 467) Nor was it the case when a cavalry group under Satropates sought to contest Alexanderrsquos crossing of the Tigrismdashsomething Mazaeus had failed to do at the Euphrates62 But it seems to be so at Tyre (whose inhabitants were hedging their bets and perhaps hoped to avoid simply passing from the control of one empire to that of another)63 and in various other less militarily challenging contexts in East Lycia Pamphylia Pisidia Lebanon and Samaria64

What then of the three big battles I am not primarily interested in how they were fought and why the outcome was at it was ndash which are not easy questions even with Granicus prima facie the simplest there are differences between the sources that affect our ability to understand why the Persian side lost the battle Rather I am interested in what the armies consisted ofmdashwhat was mobilised for resistance

The first and third are relatively straightforward Granicus represents the defence forces of Anatolia which turn out to consist exclusively of Iranian and Paphlagonian cavalry and Greek mercenaries while Gaugamela represents the military assets of what was left of the empire by 331 assembled in the tradition of multi-sourced royal armies The complete absence of Iranian infantrymen in the former and their slight marginalisation in the narratives of the latter (which tend to highlight cavalry manoeuvres) are notable features and at Granicus there are not even any non-Iranian non-Greek infantry the Hyrcanian cavalrymen of Xenophon Anabasis 7815 have their formal counterparts at Granicus (Diodorus 17194) but the so-called Assyrian hoplites apparently do not

58 Arr 1243 253‒4 9 293 59 Arr 129 Curt 316‒8 60 Arr2254 cf the Arab soldier of Curt 4615 61 Curt 4630 Diod 1748 62 Curt 4924‒25 contrast Arr 371‒2 Curt 4911 Diod 1755 63 Cf Arr 2167 Curt 422 64 Lycia Diod 17276 Alexander stormed various forts including Marmares (which he only attacked because its inhabitants attacked him) Pamphylia the Aspendians having initially surrendered and promised to give money and horses reneged But they mounted little resistance when Alexander arrived and an evidently had inadequate military resources (126‒27) Their behaviour looks like wayward opportunism Pisidia (127‒28) bellicosity here is normal and there is also inter-Pisidian antipathy Selge sides with Alexander because Termessus did not Samaria Alexander acts in response to the murder of Andromachus (Cur 489) Lebanon action is prompted by Arab attacks on Macedonians collecting wood for siege machines (Arr 220 Curt 4224 431 Chares 125 F7)


These facts about infantry have some resonance with what is problematic about the second of the three armies the one assembled for Issus The problem can be summed up in the word ldquoCardacesrdquo The situation is this Arrianrsquos account (286) represents a significant portion of Dariusrsquo front-line infantry as consisting of so-called Cardaces a category of soldier further characterized as (variously) barbarian and hoplite and numbering 60000 in total (twice the size of the Greek mercenary force alongside whom they are deployed) No other account mentions them at least under this name but they are often associated with the 20000 barbari pedites commanded by the Thessalian Aristomedes who figure in Curtiusrsquo account (393) and the ldquopeltastsrdquo who appeared next to the Greek mercenaries in Callisthenesrsquo account (124 F35 = Polybius 12177) It will be obvious that in one case the numbers do not match and in the other the troop-category (peltasts as distinct from hoplite) so this is one of those cases where the attempt to reconcile disparate sour-cesmdashthough understandable and perhaps appropriatemdashdoes still end up underlining the gulf between them Since there are other respects in which Arrianrsquos version of Dariusrsquo dispositions differs frommdashor seems incomplete by comparison withmdashthat in Curtius andor Diodorus onersquos sense of unease about the whole situation remains strong

Nor is it eased by the fact that the Cardaces appear only once elsewhere in an Achaemenid narrative context as a component in the army Autophradates took to confront Datames in Anatolia in the late 370s (Nepos Datames 8) Here they are found alongside 20000 horsemen and a string of ethnos-defined contingents representing almost all of Anatolia (excluding Caria-Lycia) This passage may help slightly by revealing that Autophradatesrsquo Cardaces include not only 100000 (undefined) infantry but also 3000 slingers ldquoCardacesrdquo do not have to be ldquohopli-tesrdquo and this perhaps authorizes us to conclude that the hoplitepeltast discrepancy in the Issus sources can be accommodatedmdashand may even allow us to finesse the problem about numbers The question remains though who these people were and why we only encounter them twice at an interval of nearly four decades Strabo (15734) associates the name with young Persians undergoing military training two Hellenistic sources indicate that Cardaces might be found in Seleucid armies more than a century after Issus65 and sundry lexicographical entries gloss them as ldquoguardsrdquo or mercenaries or a category of soldier not defined by ethnos or localitymdashglosses that are plainly potentially mutually consistent66 Parlaying all this into the conclusion that Cardaces are recruited from across ethnic groups into uniformly trained though not entirely uniformly equipped barbarian infantry regiments is easy enough67 Deciding on the significance of such a model its relationship to the ldquonormalrdquo mercenary model of recruitment its date of origin and the incidence of use of the soldiers in question is another matter It is true that the Autophradates army is the fullest listing of the contingents of a Persian army between the Persian Wars and the war with Alexander so the general absence of the name Cardaces from the historical record might be a misleading silence I incline to believe that Auto-phradatesrsquo troops came from an army assembled for but never used in a campaign

65 Polyb 57911 8211 Segre 1938 150 66 Photius sv Hesychius sv Eustathius ad Iliad 2289 (citing Pausanias and Aelius Dionysius) 67 Briant 1997 1063‒4 1999 120‒22 2002 1036‒7 Compare and contrast the view of Charles 2012 (who supplies the most recent full discussion of the whole problem) that they should be assimilated to the cavalry archers slingers and gerrophoroi of Xen Oec 45


against Egypt it may be that with better sources we would know that other fourth century armies in that category included Cardacesmdashperhaps this was even true of the eventually successful one of Artaxerxes III just ten years before Issus Two years after Issus on the other hand Darius mobilised an army at Gaugamela which is described in detail by the Alexander historians and did not (visibly) include any Cardaces Their absence in Arrian is a special problem both because it was he who had known about them at Issus and because he claims his description of the Gaugamela deployment is based on a captured Persian document (3113 = Aristo-bulus 139 F17)

I see two possible ways out of this dilemma (a) The Cardaces regiment was annihilated at Issus and could not be reconstituted in the following two years What eventually happened to the infantry front-line at Issus is not specially clear but there were allegedly heavy infantry casualties (Arrian 2118) and if perchance the ldquofo-reign mercenariesrdquo (xenoi misthophoroi) of Arrian 2111 are actually the Cardacesmdashthe phrase being intended to draw a distinction with the ldquoGreek mistho-phoroirdquo to whom there is reference in the immediately previous bit of narrativemdashwe even have a specific reference to the point at which they were cut to pieces (b) Arrianrsquos account of the Gaugamela infantry army is notable for a proliferation of ethnically defined non-Persian contingents We eventually find Persians in 3117 stationed with Darius alongside the Greek mercenaries On one reading of the evidence these Persians might solely be Royal Kinsmen and elite melophoroi But perhaps we should suppose that by analogy with Issus the Cardaces were there too alongside the Greek mercenaries Indeed this answer to the dilemma need not be inconsistent with the other one if few Cardaces survived they might more easily be lost sight of in a description of the battle-array Of course the implication of this approach is that what Arrian once called Cardaces and (perhaps) non-Greek mercenaries could be seen by others (putatively the Persian authors of the battle-plan document) as ldquoPersiansrdquo I am not entirely happy with that but I think it is just about possible

Does all this matter except for those with a geekish interest in Achaemenid military organisation If we can persuade ourselves that Cardaces were actually a standard and important category of Persian-style front-line infantry throughout much of the fourth century then what Darius mobilised for Issus was exactly what he should have mobilised the best and most ldquoPersianrdquo version of a Persian army that was available to him By the same token the Gaugamela army was a less perfect onemdashnot just one whose ethnic components only included more easterly represent-atives If on the other hand the Cardaces are an eccentricity (and if their appearance in Autophradatesrsquo army was a similar oddity) then the Issus mobilisation seems odd and questions may arise about the timing of its inception and the nature or quality of the planning that lay behind this element in the response to Alexanderrsquos attack If for example one were to stress Straborsquos association of the word with young or trainee Persian soldiers one might wonder whether their mass mobilisation was a sign of poor or hasty planning One could make a similar model apply to Autophradatesrsquo Cardaces The army for Egypt from which they came was being formed in the aftermath of the failure of the PharnabazusIphicrates invasion of 373 Was its mobilisation non-standard Were the normally so many Anatolians in such an army On this sort of reading Gaugamela would represent reversion to a more normal royal army


Problems about army-constituents resonate rather little with most of the record of response to rebellion or attack surveyed earlier given how poor the sources generally are at delineating the composition of forces fighting to defend the Achae-menid statemdashthough Artaxerxes II is represented as assembling a multi-ethnic army to confront Cyrus in 401 Diodorus 11714 has Artaxerxes I send one ldquofrom all the satrapiesrdquo against Egypt in c460 and Herodotus 3151 155 implies that Darius I confronted the Babylonian revolt with an army of Persians and others (Neither of these latter items it has to be said represents specially cogent evidence) So let us now turn to questions of overall strategy

In essence the overall strategy resembles the models we have seen earlier in which initial resistance with local forces (sometimes leading to a retreat to strong-holds sometimes to abandonment of contested territory) precedes the deployment of more substantial assets from an external source But there are various features that make it a distinctive version

The initial local resistance near the point of invasion was catastrophically defe-ated Moreover the defeat was arguably particularly catastrophic because there had been a particularly large mobilisation of assets There seems to be no real parallel for the Granicus army (unless it be the 20000 troops mostly cavalry who fought unsuccessfully against Artabazus and Chares in c355 at what the latter hailed as ldquoSecond Marathonrdquo68)mdashand this is particularly striking when one considers that Cyrus in 407 onwards and Tissaphernes in 399ndash396 had direct authority over a large proportion of Anatolia But Alexanderrsquos invasion army whatever its precise size (figures vary from 30000 infantry and 4000 horse to 43000 infantry and 5000 horse) was certainly the largest to attack the empire from the west Agesilausrsquo force barely reached 20000 and there is no evidence that Thibron in 392 or Chares and Artabazus in the 350s exceeded that level69 So one cannot fault the Persians for the scale of response whatever one makes of Memnonrsquos view that the Greek mercenary infantry was qualitatively inadequate (it was certainly kept aside from the main battle) and that Dariusrsquo personal absence put the Persians at a serious disadvantage in terms of morale (Arrian 1129)

There was a separate second strand of local resistance in the shape of land operations in Anatolia in the period after Issus (333ndash332) Commanders and troops who escaped from Issus attempted to reconquer Lydia and it took three battles to defeat them (Curtius 4134ndash5) Miletus was evidently recaptured because Balacrus had to recover it by defeating Idernes (4513) Whether the operations of Calas and Antigonus in Paphlagonia and Lycaonia respectively (Curtius 4513) belong in a similar category is less clear Of course the possibility of a counter-attack of this sort was predicated on an attacker who had moved far inland and prospered This was unprecedented Cyrus had moved even further but when it counted he failed

A fleet appeared on the scene rather quickly In the Ionian Revolt and the Spartan War of 400ndash386 some years passed before a fleet showed up In 334 it was there at Miletus relatively soon after Granicus It is of course true that it was still too late to have a decisively favourable impact Unable to secure a base of operations at the mouth of the Maeander it withdrew and was then greatly and

68 Schol Dem 419 FGrH 105(4) Diod 1622 69 Thibron Xen Hell 4817 Diod 1499 (giving him 8000 plus locally gathered troops) CharesArtabazus schol Dem 419 Diod 1622 34


irreversibly reduced in size to transport mercenaries east for the army that eventually fought at Issus70 Nonetheless some orderly resistance was undertaken until it all petered out in 332 Is it fair to complain (as Brunt 1976 456 does) about the failure to use the fleet immediately or at any stage to attack Macedonia directly Memnon had proposed this at the outset along with a scorched earth strategy in Anatolia but the package was rejected as inconsistent with Persian megalopsykhiamdashand perhaps also as a strategy likely (in the event of success) to redound far too much to Memnonrsquos credit71 The 3943 analogy would have favoured an approach to mainland Greece but things were simpler then because (a) the fleet had won a major victory at Cnidus and (b) there was already a war against Sparta going on in Greece so there were established combatants to be supported One may wonder whether it was ever feasible to transport sufficient infantry forces to Macedonia to have a decisive effect All the same it was allegedly believed that Memnon planned to attack Euboea andor Macedonia between Granicus and mid-333 (Diodorus 1729 31) and that he was spending money on bribing Greeks ahead of the execution of such a plan His death and the fact that Pharnabazus and Autophradates had to yield many of their mercenaries and ships for the Issus army put such ideas on holdmdashand ensured that anything done would be on a smaller scale But there was an advance in force to Siphnus and a meeting with the Spartan Agis in autumn 333mdashinterrupted by the news of Issus Had Issus gone the other way there would perhaps have been an invasion of mainland Greece but had Issus gone the other way everything would have been different anyway and it begs questions to assume that naval strategy would have been anything but secondary in Dariusrsquo view

Where earlier defenders were inclined to retreat to uncontested non-maritime royal territory the post-Granicus defence focused on Miletus and Halicarnassus precisely because they were on the sea (The presence of a fleet and the influence of Memnon are apparent here) But one of these bolt-hole sites fell quickly (Miletus)72 and retention of the other (Halicarnassus) was rendered tangential by the attackerrsquos willingness to leave it in his rear73 Alexander had the resourcesmdashand the gambling spiritmdashto leave Halicarnassus behind and march inland Agesilaus for example did not He made it to Gordiummdashbut decent local resistance there (of a sort that Alex-ander did not encounter presumably because of the effect of Granicus) was enough to return him to reality

That aspect of the attackerrsquos strategic personality meant that when more substantial military assets were mobilised from outside the existing theatre of oper-ations (ones additional to the fleet that was there almost from the start) they met the attacker in a quite different theatre viz southern Cilicia No source is explicit about

70 Arr 221 Contrast the ship numbers in Arr 118 and Diod 1729 (300 or 400) with those in Arr 222 (110) 71 Arr 1129 Diod 1718 Strabo 13122 provides what would be a sort of precedent for the ldquoscorched earthrdquo strategy in claiming that Darius burned the cities on the Asiatic side of the Dardanelles and Sea of Marmara so they could not provide ferry-services (porthmeia) to Scythian planning a reprisal attack The story doubtless interconnects with the Scythian items in Hdt 64084 but that does not entirely encourage one to believe it A different perspective is provided by Ctes 688 F13(21) (Darius burns Chalcedon as a reprisal for its disloyalty) and Hdt 526 (Otanes recaptures various places in the Black Sea approaches) 72 Diod 1722 Arr 118‒19 PlutAlex 17 73 Diod 1723‒27 Arr 120‒23 257 Plut Alex 17


when Darius began the process that would produce the Issus army but there was probably never any realistic possibility of such an army seeking out the attacker in Anatolia Nor was there much precedent the reinforcement of Tissaphernes and Struthas in the 390s (in neither case very clear anyway) is not quite the same thing Darius may indeed at some points have been thinking more of Cunaxa than Sardis or Gordium as a possible locus of conflict

Claims were made (by Alexander) that there had been attempts to assassinate him74 That is an unusual twist on the element of indirect response represented more conventionally by the fleetrsquos Aegean operations and the prospect of paying money (whether characterised as bribes or not) to raise the Spartans and others against Macedonia but it can claim a precedent in Artaxerxes IIrsquos resort to treachery to deal with Datames75 But most historians would no doubt regard the claims with scepticism A similar scepticism is often felt about the various alleged attempts on Dariusrsquo part to put an end to attack by doing a deal and conceding territorial losses76 Here too there are parallels of a sort We do encounter Persian kings offering deals in aggressive context andor from (what they think is) a position of strength one might adduce the demands for earth-and-water77 or Mardoniusrsquos offer to the Athenians in 480479 (Herodotus 8136ndash144) or most spectacularly the Kingrsquos Peace But the only more direct parallel would have to be the Peace of Callias78 For those inclined to scepticism about that diplomatic instrument the parallel is not encouraging Of course the situation in 333 was arguably more immediately and pressingly bad than in the early 440s but by the same token there was a much better prospect of containing or entirely resolving the problem by a single real military victory

As I have already noted some of what is distinctive represents a secondary consequence of primary noveltiesmdashthe size of Alexanderrsquos force and his adhesion to a strategy of deep penetration Other aspects take on a different colour when one recalls that 334 is not really the beginning of the story Philip had already launched an invasion in 33679 His forces had not been particularly successful but they were (as far as one can tell) still there and there is a real sense in which the expected initial period of somewhat limited response to attack is actually present in this case but hidden from out view by the sourcesrsquo greater interest in dynastic upheavals at the Macedonian and Persian courts Alexanderrsquos arrival was the reinforcement (admit-tedly a huge reinforcement producing the largest ever invasion of the western em-pire) of an existing campaign and the ldquoearlyrdquo arrival of a fleet and the size of the Granicus army may actually represent a reaction to that longer campaign Unfor-tunately the Persians were still not quite far enough ahead of the game whether

74 Arr 124 25 Curt 3711‒15 (Sisines) Arr 249 Curt 364 Plut Alex 19 Just 1183‒9 (Philip of Acarnania) There were also suggestions that the Persians were responsible for Philiprsquos murder 75 Nep Dat 9‒11 Diod 15917 Polyaen 7291 76 Arr 214 Diod 1739 Curt 417‒14 Just 1112 (after Issus) Curt 451f Just 11123‒4 (after Tyre) Arr 225 Diod 541‒2 Curt 411 Just 11125 PlutAlex 29 (before Gaugamela) 77 Cf Tuplin 2010 259‒262 citing other literature 78 In a more limited strategic context one might also mention the peace negotiations that extricated Artaxerxes II from Cadusia (Plut Artox 25) or the negotiated end to the Evagoras war (Diod 159) 79 Ps-Ar Oec 2229 Diod 1691 172 8‒10 Polyaen 5443‒5


because the comparative lack of success of Philiprsquos forces made them complacent or for other reasons the fleet entered the theatre of operations a little too late (I am not wholly convinced that the Egyptian rebellion of Chababash is an adequate expla-nation)mdashand the massed chivalry of Achaemenid Anatolia had no battlefield answer to the Macedonian berserks who confronted them at Granicus

Conclusion

Where does all this leave us I have four observations 1 Unsuccessful generals are standardly excoriated for fighting past wars Darius

and his generals are not innocent of this charge But failing the sort of radical thinking that the sources attribute to Memnon viz to set North-West Anatolia alight and immediately send an army by sea to attack Macedonia it is hard to see that they could have behaved much differently in principle and the Memnonian strategy though easy to state would have been hard to execute and very high risk Even so the forces deployed for Granicus lack parallels going back further than two decades (see above p 688) Might this be seen as a legacy from Artaxerxes III to his final successor Unfortunately the trust that Artaxerxes and Darius put in Mentor and his brother Memnon does not seem to have been shared by the Anatolian satraps

2 Repeatedly in examining the record of response to attack in the narrative evidence we have been struck by the fragility of local resources of defencemdashor at least the fragility of the source tradition about them There is something of tension here between what I have called the narrative evidence and some of the material with which I began this chapter That material whether looking microscopically at a single environment or claiming to be looking analytically across the piece invites us to imagine a pattern of systematic military supervision In a case such as homeland Persia the two images come into conflict the Persepolis Fortification archive offers a pattern of ldquofortsrdquo and perhaps even some sight of soldiers associated with them80 but the Alexander historians suggest that once the Persian Gates have been dealt with there is nothing to stop Alexander occupying Persepolis The twomdashvery differentmdashaccounts of subsequent military operations in Persis in Diodorus 1773 and Curtius 5613ndash20 do little to resolve this discrepancy Nor is this only a problem about Persia In 1987 I speculated that the Xenophontic garrison-system even if not demonstrably applicable across the empire might at least be informed by the situation in Lydia (Tuplin 1987 234) But the truth is that there is no real sense of this in any of the relevant narrative sources and the plight of Pharnabazus in the heart of Hellespontine Phrygia in 394 does not bespeak properly defended or defensible landscape One has the same impression in northern Mesopotamia in 401

3 The conclusion is perhaps simple but it deserves articulation there was a whole level of military presence in imperial territories that was not for a moment expected to be of value in the sort of contexts of disorder to which the narrative evidence addresses its attention In the event of such disorder these military assets

80 Forts in addition to the dida of PF 1857 (above p 674) we have a considerable number of references to the fortress of Shiraz three or four to that of Persepolis fourteen documents providing annual commodity-accounts for a dozen (not otherwise prominent) places designated as fortresses and eight documents describing a group of nine men at Persepolis (Turmašbada and his companions) as fortress guards (halmarraš nuškip) or tiddabattišbe (ldquofortress-commandersrdquo OP didapatiš) Troops see above on Ukama (pp 673‒674)


would either stay where they were and do nothing or perhaps in some cases immediately decamp to a central point in order either to sight tight there and do nothing or to be available as part of force that might be large enough to have some useful impactmdashready eg to be part of the sort of the ldquoown forcesrdquo that Armenian satraps deploy against the Ten Thousand (One might even passingly wonder whether the concept of ldquothose who gather at Castolupediumrdquo has some connection with emergency gathering of this sort81) But to recur to another piece of Xeno-phontic information the local troops in the Caicus valley in 399 do seem to be a telling example of the reality of local defence When Xenophon and a select bunch of what are frankly bandits show up causing trouble to a local land-owner the local troops are mobilised But their existence has no discernible influence on the larger politico-military story occasioned by the arrival of Thibronrsquos army of invasion

4 Finally one reason why local soldiery is below the radar in times of major conflicts (though it is a reason not applicable in the Caicus valley) may be that it is just thatmdashlocal The Achaemenid imperial project did not entail the demilitarisation of imperial subjects and wherever we are in a position to see inside a provincial region we can perceive weapons in the hands of native non-Iranian inhabitants of provincial areas82 I suspect that much of the under-the-radar soldiery was native in this sensemdashand it was a type of military presence that though fine for police work and even for aggressive use outside the province was in the event of external attack and (particularly of course) internal rebellion far more likely to be part of the problem than part of the solution The Iranian presence in provinces west of the Zagros was doubtless larger than an over-strict respect for archaeological invisibility might suggest but there are still real questions about how much bigger and what it consisted in Somewhere here lies part of the explanation for the relative ease of transition between the world of the Great King and that of his Hellenistic royal successors But that is another story

Bibliography

ADAB Texts in Naveh ‒ Shaked 2012 TADAE Texts in Porten ‒ Yardeni 19871999 AD Astronomical Diaries in Sachs ‒ Hunger 1988 Hunger ‒ van der Spek

2006 KAI Texts in Donner ‒ Roumlllig 1962ndash1964 PF Texts in Hallock 1969 PFNN Unpublished Persepolis Fortification texts

Ahituv S 1999 ldquoAn Edomite Ostraconrdquo in Y Avishur ‒ R Deutsch Eds Michael

Historical Epigraphic and Biblical Studies in honor of Michael Heltzer Tel Aviv 33ndash36

Ahituv S ‒ Yardeni A 2004 ldquoSeventeen Aramaic texts on ostraca from Idumaeardquo Maarav 11 7ndash23

Bennet W J 1989 Tel es-Hesi the Persian Period Stratum V Winona Lake

81 Xen Hell 143 An 112 197 82 Cf Tuplin forthcoming


Betlyon J W 2005 ldquoA people transformed Palestine in the Persian periodrdquo Near Eastern Archaeology 68 4ndash58

Briant P 1997 Histoire de lrsquoempire perse Paris mdash 1999 ldquoThe Achaemenid Empirerdquo in K Raaflaub ‒ N Rosenstein Eds War and

Society in the Ancient and Mediaeval Worlds Asia the Mediterranean Europe and Mesoamerica Washington 105ndash129

mdash 2002 From Cyrus to Alexander Winona Lake mdash 2009 ldquoThe empire of Darius III in perspectiverdquo in W Heckel ‒ L Tritle Eds

Alexander the Great A New History Chichester 141ndash170 Brunt P A 1976 Arrian History of Alexander and Indica I Cambridge MA ‒ Lon-

don Burstein S M 2000 ldquoPrelude to Alexander The Reign of Khababashrdquo The Ancient

History Bulletin 14 149ndash154 Charles M B 2012 ldquoThe Persian κάρδακεςrdquo Journal of Hellenic Studies 122 7ndash21 Donner H ‒ Roumlllig W 1962‒1964 Kanaanaumlische und Aramaumlische Inschriften

Wiesbaden Driver G R 19652 Aramaic Documents of the Fifth Century BC Oxford Edelman D V 2005 The origins of the Second Temple Persian imperial policy

and the rebuilding of Jerusalem London Epharsquoal I ‒ Naveh J 1996 Aramaic Ostraca of the Fourth Century BC from Idu-

maea Jerusalem Fantalkin A ‒ Tal O 2006 ldquoRe-dating Lachish Level I identifying Achaemenid

imperial policy at the southern frontier of the fifth satrapyrdquo in O Lipschits ‒ M Oeming Eds Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period Winona Lake 167ndash197

Grelot P 1972 Documents arameacuteens drsquoEacutegypte Paris Gusmani R 1964 Lydisches Woumlrterbuch mit grammatischer Skizze und Inschriften-

sammlung Heidelberg Hallock R T 1969 Persepolis Fortification Tablets Chicago Henkelman W ‒ Kleber K 2007 ldquoBabylonian workers in the Persian heartland

palace building at Matannan in the reign of Cambysesrdquo in C J Tuplin Ed Persian Responses Swansea 163ndash176

Hoglund K G 1992 Achaemenid Imperial Administration in Syria-Palestine and the Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah Atlanta

Hunger H ‒ van der Spek R 2006 ldquoAn astronomical diary concerning Artaxerxes II (year 42 = 363ndash2 BC)rdquo ARTA 2006002

Joannegraves F 1982 Textes eacuteconomiques de la Babylonie reacutecente Paris Jones C E ‒ Stolper M W 2006 ldquoFortification tablets solds at the auction of the

Erelnmeyer collectionrdquo ARTA 2006001 Kahn C 2008 ldquoInarosrsquo rebellion against Artaxerxes I and the Athenian disaster in

Egyptrdquo The Classical Quarterly (ns) 58 424ndash440 Kleber K 2008 Tempel und Palast die Beziehungen zwischen dem Koumlnig und dem

Eanna-Tempel im spaumltbabylonischen Uruk Muumlnster Lemaire A 1996 Nouvelles inscriptions arameacuteennes drsquoIdumeacutee au Museacutee drsquoIsrael

Paris mdash 1999 ldquoQuatre nouveaux ostraca arameacuteens drsquoIdumeacuteerdquo Transeuphrategravene 18 71ndash74 mdash 2002 Nouvelles inscriptions arameenes II Paris


mdash 2006 ldquoNew Aramaic Ostraca from Idumaea and Their Historical Interpretationrdquo in O Lipschits ‒ M Oeming Eds Judah and Judaeans in the Persian Period Wino-na Lake 413ndash456

mdash 2007 ldquoAdministration in Fourth Century BCE Judah in the Light of Epigraphy and Numismaticsrdquo in O Lipschits ‒ G Knoppers ‒ R Albertz Eds Judah and the Judaeans in the Fourth Century BCE Winona Lake 53ndash74

Lozachmeur H ndash Lemaire A 1996 ldquoNouveaux ostraca arameacuteens drsquoIdumeacutee (Collection Sh Moussaieff)rdquo Semitica 46 123ndash42

MacGinnis J 2012 Arrows of the Sun The Armed Forces of Sippar in the First Millennium BC Dresden

Martin C J 2011 ldquoDemotic textsrdquo in B Porten Ed The Elephantine Papyri in Eng-lish Three Millennia of Cross-Cultural Continuity and Change Second Revised Edition Atlanta

Muraoka T ‒ Porten B 2003 A Grammar of Egyptian Aramaic Leiden Naveh J 1973 ldquoThe Aramaic ostracardquo in Y Aharoni Beer-sheba I Tel Aviv 79ndash82 mdash 1979 ldquoThe Aramaic Ostraca from Tel Beer Shebardquo Tel Aviv 6 182ndash198 mdash 1981 ldquoThe Aramaic ostraca from Tel Aradrdquo in Y Aharoni Arad Inscriptions

Jerusalem 153ndash176 Naveh J ‒ Shaked S 2012 Aramaic Documents from Ancient Bactria London Porten B ‒ Lund J A 2002 Aramaic Documents from Egypt A Key-Word-in-Context

Concordance Winona Lake Porten B ndash Yardeni A 1987‒1999 Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient

Egypt Jerusalem mdash 2003 ldquoIn Preparation of a Corpus of Aramaic Ostraca from the Land of Israel

House of Yehokalrdquo in R Deutsch Ed Shlomo Studies in Epigraphy Iconography History and Archaeology in honor of Shlomo Moussaieff Tel Aviv 207ndash223

mdash 2004 ldquoOn Problems of Identity and Chronology in the Idumaean ostracardquo in M Heltzer Ed Tesurot LaAvishur Studies in the Bible and the Near East Tel Aviv 161ndash83

mdash 2006 ldquoSocial economic and onomastic issues in the Aramaic ostraca of the fourth century BCrdquo in O Lipschits ‒ M Oeming Eds Judah and Judeans in the Persian Period Winona Lake 457ndash488

mdash 2007a ldquoWhy the unprovenanced Idumaean ostraca should be publishedrdquo in M Lubetski Ed New Seals amp Inscriptions Hebrew Idumaean and Cuneiform Sheffield 99ndash147

mdash 2007b ldquoMakkedah and the storehouse in the Idumaean ostracardquo in Y Levin Ed A Time of Change Judah and its Neighbours in the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods London 125ndash170

mdash 2008 ldquoTwo become one a unique memorandum of obligationrdquo in C Cohen Ed Birkat Shalom studies in the Bible Ancient Near Eastern Literature and post-biblical Judaism presented to Shalom M Paul on the occasion of his seventieth birthday Winona Lake 733ndash754

mdash 2009 ldquoDating by grouping in the Idumaean ostraca six commodity dossiers dating to the transition years from Artaxerxes II to Artaxerxes IIIrdquo Eretz-Israel 29 144ndash183

mdash 2012 ldquoDating by grouping in the Idumaean ostraca The intersection of dossiers commodities and personsrdquo in M Gruber ‒ Sh Ahituv ‒ G Lehmann ‒ Z Talshir


Eds All the Wisdom of the East Studies in Near Eastern Archaeology and History in Honor of Eliezer D Oren Fribourg 333ndash360

Rollinger R ‒ Ruffing K 2012 ldquolsquoPanik im Heerrsquo ndash Dareios III die Schlacht von Gaugamela und die Mondfinsternis vom 20 September 331 vChrrdquo Iranica Antiqua 47 101ndash115

Ruzicka S 2012 Trouble in the West Egypt and the Persian Empire 525ndash332 BC Oxford

Sachs A ‒ Hunger H 1988 Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Baby-lonia I Vienna

Segre M 1938 ldquoIscrizioni di Liciardquo Clara Rhodos 9 181ndash208 Tal O 2005 ldquoSome remarks on the coastal plain of Palestine under Achaemenid

rule ndash an archaeological synopsisrdquo in P Briant ‒ R Boucharlat LrsquoArcheacuteologie de lrsquoempire perse Paris 71ndash96

Tavernier J 2007 Iranica in the Achaemenid Period 2007 Tolini G 2011 La Babylonie et lrsquoIran les relations drsquoune province avec le coeur de

lrsquoempire acheacutemeacutenide [Thegravese de doctorat Universiteacute Paris I Pantheacuteon-Sorbonne] Paris

Tuplin C J 1987 ldquoXenophon and the garrisons of the Achaemenid empirerdquo Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 20 167ndash245

mdash 2008 ldquoTaxation and Death Certainties in the Fortification Archiverdquo in P Briant W Henkelman ‒ M W Stolper Eds Lrsquoarchive des fortifications de Perseacutepolis dans le contexte de lrsquoempire acheacutemeacutenide et ses preacutedeacutecesseurs Paris 317ndash386

mdash 2010 ldquoThe Marathon campaign in search of the Persian perspectiverdquo in K Buraselis ‒ K Meidani Eds Marathon Deme and Battle Athens 251ndash274

mdash forthcoming ldquoThe Persian military establishment in western Anatolia a context for Celaenaerdquo in A Ivantchik ‒ L Summerer Eds Proceedings of the 2010 Bordeaux Celaenae-Apamea conference Bordeaux

van der Spek R 1998 ldquoThe chronology of the wars of Artaxerxes II in the Babylonian Astronomical Diariesrdquo in M Brosius ‒ A Kuhrt Eds Studies in Persian History Essays in Memory of David M Lewis Leiden 239ndash256

Vittmann G 1998 Der demotische Papyrus Rylands 9 Wiesbaden mdash 1999 ldquoKursivhieratische und fruumlhdemotische Miszellenrdquo Enchoria 25 111ndash

125 Winnicki J K 1977 ldquoDie Kalasirier der spaumltdynastischen und der ptolemaumlischen

Zeit Zu einem Problem der aumlgyptischen Heeresgeschichterdquo Historia 26 257ndash268

mdash 1986 ldquoZwei Studien uumlber die Kalasirierrdquo Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 17 17ndash32

mdash 1998 ldquoDie Bedeutung der Termini Kalasirier und Ermotybierrdquo in W Clarysse ndash A Schoors ndash H Willems Eds Egyptian Religion the Last Thousand Years Part II Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Jan Quaegebeur Leuven 1503ndash1507

Zawadzki S 1992 ldquoThe date of the death of Darius I and the recognition of Xerxes in Babyloniardquo Nouvelles Assyriologiques Breacuteves et Utilitaires 1992 49

Alter Orient und Altes Testament Veroumlffentlichungen zur Kultur und Geschichte des Alten Orients und des Alten Testaments

begruumlndet von Manfried Dietrich und Oswald Loretzdagger

Band 412

Herausgeber

Manfried Dietrich bull Ingo Kottsieper bull Hans Neumann

Lektoren

Kai A Metzler bull Ellen Rehm

Beratergremium

Rainer Albertz bull Joachim Bretschneider bull Stefan Maul Udo Ruumlterswoumlrden bull Walther Sallaberger bull Gebhard Selz

Michael P Streck bull Wolfgang Zwickel


Worlds and Beyond


June 23 2014



2014 Ugarit-Verlag

Muumlnster





ISBN 978-3-86835-101-9








subdoli amici Ines











----------------------------------------------




The Arshama dossier






























































Cyrus 401






5102 66)34


Tiribazus36












Cyrus v Astyages42


Cyprus 45043


Egypt 33344













444ndash22)











Alexander



































Conclusion









Bibliography





































































Worlds and Beyond


June 23 2014



2014 Ugarit-Verlag

Muumlnster





ISBN 978-3-86835-101-9








subdoli amici Ines











----------------------------------------------




The Arshama dossier






























































Cyrus 401






5102 66)34


Tiribazus36












Cyrus v Astyages42


Cyprus 45043


Egypt 33344













444ndash22)











Alexander



































Conclusion









Bibliography








































































ISBN 978-3-86835-101-9








subdoli amici Ines











----------------------------------------------




The Arshama dossier






























































Cyrus 401






5102 66)34


Tiribazus36












Cyrus v Astyages42


Cyprus 45043


Egypt 33344













444ndash22)











Alexander



































Conclusion









Bibliography










































































subdoli amici Ines











----------------------------------------------




The Arshama dossier






























































Cyrus 401






5102 66)34


Tiribazus36












Cyrus v Astyages42


Cyprus 45043


Egypt 33344













444ndash22)











Alexander



































Conclusion









Bibliography














































































----------------------------------------------




The Arshama dossier






























































Cyrus 401






5102 66)34


Tiribazus36












Cyrus v Astyages42


Cyprus 45043


Egypt 33344













444ndash22)











Alexander



































Conclusion









Bibliography





































































The Arshama dossier






























































Cyrus 401






5102 66)34


Tiribazus36












Cyrus v Astyages42


Cyprus 45043


Egypt 33344













444ndash22)











Alexander



































Conclusion









Bibliography




























































































































Cyrus 401






5102 66)34


Tiribazus36












Cyrus v Astyages42


Cyprus 45043


Egypt 33344













444ndash22)











Alexander



































Conclusion









Bibliography














































































Cyrus v Astyages42


Cyprus 45043


Egypt 33344













444ndash22)











Alexander



































Conclusion









Bibliography















































































444ndash22)











Alexander



































Conclusion









Bibliography











































































Alexander



































Conclusion









Bibliography




































































































Conclusion









Bibliography







































































Bibliography




































































From Arshama to Alexander: reflections on Persian responses to attack

Documents

Transcript of From Arshama to Alexander: reflections on Persian responses to attack