Sparta's First Attic War by Paul Anthony Rahe;

Author:Paul Anthony Rahe; [Rahe;, Paul Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300249262
Publisher: YaleUP
Published: 2019-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

Back to Square One

A republic that is wise should hazard nothing which exposes it to good or to bad fortune: the only good to which it ought to aspire is the perpetuation of its condition.

CHARLES LOUIS DE SECONDAT, BARON DE LA BRÈDE ET DE MONTESQUIEU

MEGABYZUS’ victory in Egypt in 454 was as decisive as it was dramatic. It threatened to change the entire course of events, and for a time within the eastern Mediterranean it fostered new expectations and a new mood and atmosphere to which, all suspected, they might eventually have to conform. Most prominent among those who had to adjust their presumptions, reconsider their options, and rethink the geopolitical imperatives that they faced were the Persians, the Athenians, and the Lacedaemonians.

In the immediate aftermath, Megabyzus was no doubt too busy eliminating pockets of resistance and consolidating Persia’s control over Egypt to contemplate any other task. Inaros he captured, but we know that a rebel prince named Amyrtaeus managed to maintain his independence for years in the marshlands of the western Delta. Moreover, Herodotus reports that the Persians allowed Thannyras son of Inaros and Pausiris son of Amyrtaeus to succeed their fathers as dynasts in that region, and there is no reason to suppose these men the sole holdouts. Egypt was immense. It was complex; and given its importance and its propensity for rebellion, for a time at least, it must have required close attention.

For the task facing Megabyzus, however, the Achaemenid fleet was of limited use. What he needed to do was to establish firm control over the main channels of the Nile. There was no shortage of river boats in Egypt and no shortage of men skilled in their management, and by this time both were for the most part under Persian control. The marshlands as such were of little interest.1

At sea, however, in the eastern Mediterranean, the fleet of triremes supplied chiefly by the Phoenicians was now for the first time in a quarter-century unopposed. It cannot have taken Artaxerxes and his minions long to realize that Persia was now well-situated for going on the offensive.

We have reason to believe that in and after the late 460s the Athenians had begun encroaching on cities, at least partially Greek in population, hitherto relegated to Persia’s domain—such as Aspendus, which lay in Pamphylia along the southern shore of Asia Minor to the east of Phaselis; Celenderis further east in Cilicia; and perhaps even Dorus, a harbor town situated on the Palestinian coast in the shadow of Mount Carmel—and they may have made similar progress in Cyprus prior to being lured by Inaros to the banks of the Nile.2 These gains Artaxerxes will surely have set out to reverse. Whether he was also intent on recovering the Aegean we do not know, but it is hard to believe that he had abandoned the quest for world domination dictated by the species of Zoroastrianism that had animated his father and grandfather. This ambition was a central feature of the

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