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In B.C. 401 he accepted the invitation of his friend Proxenus of Boeotia, a general of Greek mercenaries, to take service under Cyrus the Younger, brother of Artaxerxes Mnemon, king of Persia. Cyrus had considered himself as deeply wronged by his elder brother, who had thrown him into prison on the death of their father, Darius.
End of the Peloponnesian war. The ascendancy of Sparta complete throughout Greece. Thrasybulus, aided by the Thebans and with the connivance of one of the Spartan kings, liberates Athens from the Thirty Tyrants, and restores the democracy. Cyrus the Younger commences his expedition into Upper Asia to dethrone his brother Artaxerxes Mnemon.
At first idolatry, in the literal sense, was avoided; but Artaxerxes Mnemon, the conqueror of Cunaxa, an ardent devotee of the goddess, not content with the mutilated worship which he found established, resolved to show his zeal by introducing into all the chief cities of the Empire the image of his patroness.
By such lavish corruption, by buying the soldiers and the politicians of the enemy, a better face was put for a while on the fortunes of the dynasty and the Empire. Before the death of the aged Artaxerxes Mnemon in 358, the revolt of the Western satraps had collapsed.
Temples were not perhaps unknown in Persia, though much of the worship may always have been in the open air; but temples, at least until the time of Artaxerxes Mnemon, were insignificant, and neither attracted the attention of contemporaries, nor were of such a character as to leave traces of themselves to after times.
In 404 Cyrus was summoned from Sardis, the capital of Lydia, to Babylon, and shortly after, his father died, leaving his crown to Artaxerxês, who, from his remarkable memory which appears to have been his chief characteristic, got the title of Artaxerxês Mnemon.
This fortunate individual had a "stud of sixteen thousand mares, with a proportionate number of horses." Another evidence of the fertility of the region may be traced in the fear of Artaxerxes Mnemon, after the battle of Cunaxa, lest the Ten Thousand should determine to settle permanently in the vicinity of Sittace upon the Tigris.
With the idolatry thus introduced, another came soon to be joined. Mithra, so long an object of reverence, if not of actual worship, to the Zoroastrians, was in the reign of Artaxerxes Mnemon, honored, like Anaitis, with a statue, and advanced into the foremost rank of deities.
Sometimes the phrase is varied, and the petition is for the special protection of a certain class of Deities the Dii familiares or "deities who guard the house." The worship of Mithra, or the Sun, does not appear in the inscriptions until the reign of Artaxerxes Mnemon, the victor of Cunaxa.
After this, his mother, brothers, and sisters were apprehended by the order of Parysatis, the queen, who caused Roxana to be hewn in pieces, and the other unfortunates to be buried alive. It was with great difficulty that Arsaces, the heir-apparent, afterwards Artaxerxes Mnemon, preserved his own wife, Statira, from the massacre.
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