Plutarch's life of the mild, indecisive Persian Great King Artaxerxes II, whose reign was consumed by his brother Cyrus's revolt, the murderous rivalry of his wife and mother, and the slow ruin of his own sons.
Artaxerxes tells the story of the second Persian king of that name, called Mnemon, who inherited the throne over his younger brother Cyrus by right of primogeniture rather than by force of character. Plutarch opens by distinguishing him from the earlier Artaxerxes "Longhand" and sketching the contrast at the heart of the whole Life: Cyrus is intense, vehement, and openly ambitious, while Artaxerxes is gentle, soft-natured, and reluctant to act decisively even when his own survival is at stake. That contrast drives the first half of the biography, which culminates in Cyrus's famous march up-country with Greek mercenaries (the campaign narrated from the other side in Xenophon's Anabasis) and his death at the battle of Cunaxa, where the king himself may have struck the fatal blow.
The second half of the Life turns inward, to the court itself, and becomes one of Plutarch's most vivid studies of a royal household eaten alive by its own women. Parysatis, the king's mother, never forgives Artaxerxes for the death of her favorite son Cyrus and wages a long, patient campaign of revenge against Stateira, the king's wife, eventually poisoning her at a banquet with a doctored piece of meat cut so that only one half carried the poison. Plutarch tracks the court's factions, its Greek mercenary captains and ambassadors (Conon, Tissaphernes, Teribazus, the Spartan and Athenian embassies), and the king's later years, in which the succession among his many sons by concubines dissolves into plots, blindings, and executions, including the grim end of his son Darius and the eunuch-driven murder of Ochus's rivals. Artaxerxes himself dies broken by grief over his last favored son, having reigned sixty-two years.
Historically the Life matters because it is one of the fullest surviving portraits of the Achaemenid Persian court from a Greco-Roman writer, drawing heavily on Ctesias's Persica and Xenophon's Anabasis and Hellenica, and it doubles as source material for the Cyrus-the-Younger episode central to Greek mercenary history and to the later reception of the Ten Thousand. It also gives Plutarch one of his clearest opportunities to illustrate his moralizing method: a king whose personal gentleness could not save him, or his family, from a household ruled by ambition, jealousy, and poison.
“The first Artaxerxes, who surpassed all the kings of Persia in gentleness and greatness of soul, was called Longhand (Makrocheir), because his right hand was longer than the other; Xerxes was his father.”
— Artaxerxes
“Now Cyrus had, from his earliest age, something intense and vehement about him, while the other seemed gentler in every way and by nature softer in his impulses.”
— Artaxerxes
“according to some, struck by the king himself; according to others, by a Carian man, to whom the king gave, as the prize for this deed, the honor of always carrying a golden rooster on a spear before the ranks on campaigns”
— Artaxerxes
“Parysatis, then, with hatred toward Stateira lying beneath the surface from the start, and with jealousy, seeing that her own power rested on the King's respect and honor for her, while Stateira's rested on his love and was firm and strong through his trust, plotted concerning the greatest matters, as she thought, staking everything.”
— Artaxerxes
“By this point, then, Artaxerxes's hold on life hung by the merest thread owing to his advanced years; so when the disaster involving Arsames struck him, he had no strength left to endure it, and grief and despair snuffed him out almost immediately. He had lived ninety-four years, ruled for sixty-two of them, and earned a reputation for gentleness and goodwill toward his subjects”
— Artaxerxes
He was the second Persian king named Artaxerxes, nicknamed Mnemon, who succeeded his father Darius II over his more forceful younger brother Cyrus. Plutarch presents him as gentle and soft-natured by temperament, a trait that shapes the whole narrative of his troubled reign, including his long, mostly unwilled entanglement in the plots of his mother and wife.
The Life's first half narrates Cyrus the Younger's revolt and his march upcountry with roughly thirteen thousand native troops and Greek mercenaries, the same campaign Xenophon marched on and later chronicled from the soldiers' point of view. Plutarch narrates it from the Persian court's side, including the battle of Cunaxa where Cyrus is killed.
Plutarch reports conflicting accounts: some said Artaxerxes himself struck the fatal blow, others credited a Carian soldier, who was rewarded with the honor of carrying a golden rooster on a spear before the ranks on campaigns. Plutarch does not adjudicate between the versions, simply laying out the sources as he found them.
Parysatis, the king's mother, favored her son Cyrus and never forgave Artaxerxes or his wife Stateira for Cyrus's death. She spends much of the Life's second half plotting Stateira's destruction out of jealousy over royal favor, eventually poisoning her at a banquet using a knife doctored so only one side carried poison.
In his final years the succession among his sons by various mothers collapsed into plots and executions, including the killing of his son Darius and a eunuch-engineered murder tied to his favored son Arsames. Artaxerxes, already weakened by old age, died of grief shortly after learning of Arsames's death, having reigned sixty-two years and lived to ninety-four.
It opens with warfare -- Cyrus's revolt and the battle of Cunaxa -- but the majority of the text is devoted to court politics: the rivalry between Parysatis and Stateira, Greek and Spartan embassies to the Persian court, and the plots among Artaxerxes's sons in his old age.
Plutarch names Ctesias and Deinon explicitly as sources for Persian court details, while the Cyrus campaign material overlaps with Xenophon's Anabasis and Hellenica. He is candid within the text about disagreements between his sources, particularly over minor facts like the king's original name.
Plutarch distinguishes Artaxerxes's personal disposition -- described repeatedly as soft, mild, and reluctant to inflict harm directly -- from the violence that swirled around him through his mother's schemes and his sons' rivalries, treating the king as someone whose good nature could not master the court that surrounded him.
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