The Battle of Cunaxa was fought in the late summer of 401 BC between the Persian king Artaxerxes II and his brother Cyrus the Younger for control of the Achaemenid throne. The great battle of the revolt of Cyrus took place 70 km north of Babylon, at Cunaxa (), on the left bank of the Euphrates. The main source is Xenophon, a Greek soldier who participated in the fighting.

Preparations
Cyrus gathered an army of Greek mercenaries, consisting of 10,400 hoplites and 2,500 light infantry and peltasts, under the Spartan general Clearchus, and met Artaxerxes at Cunaxa. He also had a large force of levied troops under his second-in-command Ariaeus. The strength of the Achaemenid army was 40,000 men.

 

When Cyrus learned that his elder brother, the Great King, was approaching with his army, he drew up his army in battle array. He placed the Greek mercenaries on the right, near the river. In addition to this they were supported on their right by some cavalry, 1,000 strong, as was the tradition of battle order in that day. To the Greeks, this was the place of honor. Cyrus himself with 600 body guards was in the center, to the left of the Greek mercenaries—the place where Persian monarchs traditionally placed themselves in the order of battle. Cyrus' Asiatic troops were on the left flank.

Inversely, Artaxerxes II placed his left on the river, with a unit of cavalry supporting it also. Artaxerxes was in the center of his line, with 6,000 units of Persian cavalry (which were some of the finest in the world) which was to the left of Cyrus, his line being so much the longer. Artaxerxes line overlapped Cyrus' line quite significantly, since he was able to field many more troops.

Cyrus then approached Clearchus, the leader of the Greeks, who was commanding the phalanx stationed on the right, and ordered him to move into the center so as to go after Artaxerxes. However, Clearchus, not desiring to do this—for fear of his right flank—refused, and promised Cyrus, according to Xenophon, that he would "take care that all would be well". Cyrus wanted to place him in the center as the Greeks were his most capable unit, and were thereby most able to defeat the elite Persian cavalry and in the process kill the Great King, thereby gaining the Persian throne for Cyrus. Clearchus refused this owing to the insecurity that the Greeks had for their right flank, which tended to drift and was undefended, as the shields were held in the left hand. That Clearchus did not obey this order is a sign of the lack of control that Cyrus had over his army, as a couple of other occasions throughout this campaign prior to the battle reveal also.

Before the final attack began, Xenophon, the main relater of the events at Cunaxa, who was probably at the time some kind of mid-level officer, approached Cyrus to ensure that all the proper orders and dispositions had been made. Cyrus told him that they had, and that the sacrifices that traditionally took place before a battle promised success.

Battle

The Greeks, deployed on Cyrus's right and outnumbered, charged the left flank of Artaxerxes' army, which broke ranks and fled before they came within arrowshot. However, on the Persian right the fight between Artaxerxes' army and Cyrus was far more difficult and protracted. Cyrus personally charged his brother's bodyguard and was killed by a javelin, which sent the rebels into retreat. (The man who threw the javelin was known as Mithridates and he would later be executed by scaphism because he took the kill from Artaxerxes).  Only the Greek mercenaries, who had not heard of Cyrus's death and were heavily armed, stood firm. Clearchus advanced against the much larger right wing of Artaxerxes' army and sent it into retreat. Meanwhile, Artaxerxes' troops took the Greek encampment and destroyed their food supplies.

Aftermath

According to the Greek soldier and writer Xenophon, the Greek heavy troops scattered their opposition twice; only one Greek was even wounded. Only after the battle did they hear that Cyrus himself had been killed, making their victory irrelevant and the expedition a failure. They were in the middle of a very large empire with no food, no employer, and no reliable friends. They offered to make their Persian ally Ariaeus king, but he refused on the grounds that he was not of royal blood and so would not find enough support among the Persians to succeed. They offered their services to Tissaphernes, a leading satrap of Artaxerxes, but he refused them, and they refused to surrender to him. Tissaphernes was left with a problem; a large army of heavy troops, which he could not defeat by frontal assault. He supplied them with food and, after a long wait, led them northwards for home, meanwhile detaching Ariaeus and his light troops from their cause.

The Greek senior officers foolishly accepted the invitation of Tissaphernes to a feast. There they were made prisoner, taken up to the king and there decapitated. The Greeks elected new officers and set out to march northwards to the Black Sea through Corduene and Armenia, to reach the Greek colonies on the shore. Their eventual success, the march of the Ten Thousand, was recorded by Xenophon in his Anabasis.

Ctesias
Another famous writer of Antiquity, besides Xenophon, was present at the Battle of Cunaxa. Ctesias, a native of Caria, which belonged to the Achaemenid Empire at the time, was part of the entourage of King Artaxerxes at the Battle of Cunaxa, and brought medical assistance to the king by treating his flesh wound. He reportedly was involved in negotiations with the Greeks after the battle, and also helped their Spartan general Clearchus before his execution. Ctesias was the author of treatises on rivers, and on the Persian revenues, of an account of India entitled Indica (Ἰνδικά), and of a history of Assyria and Persia in 23 books, called Persica (Περσικά), written in opposition to Herodotus in the Ionic dialect, and professedly founded on the Persian Royal Archives.

In popular culture
 The battle is referenced at the start of The Warriors (1979).
 The battle features predominantly in the novel The Lost Army (2007) by Valerio Massimo Manfredi.
 The battle forms the basis of the novel The Falcon of Sparta (2018) by Conn Iggulden.

References

Full text of Xenophon's Anabasis online:
 Freely downloadable, at Project Gutenberg 
 Directly readable, at The University of Adelaide Library, Australia

Further reading
 
 Xenophon, The Persian Expedition, trans. by Rex Warner, Penguin, 1949.
 Montagu, John D. Battles of the Greek and Roman Worlds, Greenhill Books, 2000.
 Prevas, John. Xenophon's March: Into the Lair of the Persian Lion, Da Capo, 2002.
 Waterfield, Robin. Xenophon's Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age, Belknap Press, 2006.

401 BC
400s BC conflicts
5th century BC in Greece
5th century BC in Iran
Battles involving the Achaemenid Empire
Battles involving ancient Greece
Anabasis (Xenophon)
Ten Thousand-ancient mercenaries
5th century BC
Artaxerxes II
Iranian civil wars
쿠나크사 전투는 기원전 401년 소(小)키루스와 그의 형이자 페르시아의 왕위를 물려받아 기원전 404년 아르타크세르크세스 2세로 즉위한 아르사세스(Arsaces)간에 벌어진 전투이다. 키루스 반란의 결정적인 전투는 바빌론에서 70km 북쪽으로 떨어지고 유프라테스 강의 좌측 강변에 위치한 쿠나크사에서 벌어졌다. 이 전투에 관한 주된 기록의 출처는 그리스인 현장 증인이자 군인인 크세노폰의 저작이다.

준비 
키루스는 스파르타인 장군 클레아르코스(Clearchus)휘하의 10,400명의 호플리테스(Hoplite;그리스의 중장보병)와 2,500명의 페르타시스(Peltast;그리스의 경장보병)로 이루어진 그리스 용병대를 모집하여 쿠낙사에서 아르타크세르크세스와 대치했다. 그는 또 그의 부사령관 아리아에우스(Ariaeus) 휘하에 많은 숫자의 아시아 부대를 편성하였다. 크세노폰은 자루가 긴 낫을 지닌 전차를 포함한 120만이라는 불가능한 숫자를 페르시아 군의 숫자로 설정하였다. 그러나 근대의 어떤 사람들도 이러한 규모가 가능하다고 생각하지 않으며, 오직 교육받은 상태에서 어림짐작하는 것만이 우리의 지식의 간극을 채우는 유일한 방법이 될 것이다. 아무튼 아르타크세르크세스는 확실히 그의 기병대의 우월함이 가져우는 우위를 누리고 있었다.

전투 
그리스인들은 키루스의 우익에 배치되어 수적으로 불리했으나, 아르타크세르크세스의 좌익에 대해 돌격하였고, 그들은 그리스군이 화살 사정거리에 도달하기 전까지 도망쳤다.(아니면 계획된 유인작전을 수행한 것일 수도 있다.) 그러나 아르타크세르크세스와 키루스 사이에 벌어진 페르시아군 우익에서의 싸움은 어렵고 더 까다롭게 시간을 끄는 싸움이 되고 있었다. 키루스는 그의 형의 경호부대에 직접 돌격을 감행했다가 투창에 맞아 사망하였고, 이는 그의 부대를 퇴각으로 몰아넣었다. 오직 키루스가 죽었다는 소식을 듣지 못하고, 그 자리를 지킨 중무장한 그리스 용병대만이 견고하게 견디고 있을 뿐이었다. 클레아르코스는 많은 수의 아르타크세르크세스군 우익과 싸우면서 진군하였고, 그들을 물러나게 하였다. 그러는 동안 아르타크세르크세스의 군대는 그리스군 진영을 점령하고 그들의 식량 보급을 차단하였다.

영향 
그리스의 군인이자 작가 크세노폰에 따르면, 그리스의 중무장 부대가 그들의 적들을 두번이나 궤주시켰다고 한다. 이 와중에 오직 한명의 그리스인이 부상당했다고 한다. 바로 전투가 끝난 후에애 그리스군은 키루스가 죽었다는 것을 알게 되고 그들의 승리가 무의미해 졌으며, 원정은 실패했다는 것을 알게 되었다. 그들은 식량도, 고용자도, 믿을 만한 친구도 없이 광대한 제국의 중심부에 버려졌다. 그들은 페르시아의 동맹자 아리아에우스(Ariaeus)를 왕으로 만들어주겠다고 제안하였으나, 그는 자신이 고귀한 혈통이 아니기 때문에 페르시아 인들로부터 성공을 위한 충분한 지지를 받지 못하는 것을 근거로 그리스인들의 제안을 거절하였다. 그리스 용병단은 페르시아의 태수인 티사페르네스에게 자신들을 고용할 것을 제안했으나, 그는 그들을 거절하였고, 그리스 용병대 역시 그에게 항복하는 것을 거절하였다. 티사페르네스는 커다란 문제를 남겨 놓았다. 그것은 바로 처음의 돌격으로 패하지 않은 많은 중무장 군대를 남겨놓은 것이다. 그는 그리스 인들에게 식량을 지원하였고, 어느 정도 기다린 후에 그리스 용병대를 그들의 고향이 있는 북쪽으로 이끌었다. 그러는 동안 티사페르네스는 아리아에우스와 그의 우익 경무장 부대를 그들 나름의 이유로 그리스 용병대와 떼어놓았다.

그리스의 사령관들은 어리석게도 축연을 위한 티사페르네스의 초대를 수락하였다. 그들은 포로가 되어 왕에게 보내졌고, 그곳에서 목이 베어졌다. 그리스인들은 새로운 사령관들을 뽑고 쿠르디스탄과 아르메니아를 통해 흑해를 향해 진군하기 시작했다. 그들, 1만인의 행군의 최종적인 승리는 크세노폰의 저작 《아나바시스》에 기록되어 있다. 이 이야기는 그리스 세계에 페르시아가 나약하다는 생각을 빠르게 알렸으며, 결과적으로 알렉산드로스 대왕의 페르시아 정복에 부분적으로 영감을 주었을 것이다.

참조문헌 
크세노폰의 저작 아나바시스의 전문(全文)을 온라인으로 볼 수 있는 곳:
 Freely downloadable, at Project Gutenberg 
 Directly readable, at The University of Adelaide Library, Australia

더 읽어보기 
 Xenophon, The Persian Expedition, trans. by Rex Warner, Penguin, 1949.
 Montagu, John D. Battles of the Greek and Roman Worlds, Greenhill Books, 2000.
 Prevas, John. Xenophon's March: Into the Lair of the Persian Lion, Da Capo, 2002.
 Waterfield, Robin. Xenophon's Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age, Belknap Press, 2006.

외부 링크 
 Battles of Artaxerxes II, in Mark Drury's Achaemenid Persian Page, 아나바시스를 페르시아 측 시점으로 재해석한 것이다. For example:« Unfortunately the stubbornness of the Greeks to accept defeat, and the inability of both sides to overcome ethnic and cultural biases,led to the unneccessary loss of many lives in the Greek's courageous, but wasted retreat » (sic).

고대 그리스가 참가한 전투
아케메네스 왕조의 전투
아르타크세르크세스 2세
기원전 401년
기원전 5세기 분쟁
기원전 5세기 그리스