Cyrus the Younger

Cyrus was born to Darius II and Parysatis, a younger son in the Achaemenid line. From 408 BC he ruled as satrap of Lydia and Ionia, the empire's western edge. When his father died and his elder brother Artaxerxes II took the Persian throne, Cyrus raised an army — including 10,000 Greek hirelings — and marched inland to take it for himself. He died in battle in 401 BC, the coup collapsed, and the Greeks were left deep in hostile ground. Their long retreat became the subject of Xenophon's Anabasis, and that text, along with fragments from Ctesias and Plutarch, is the only reason anyone remembers…