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Draft:Saka campaigns of Cyrus the Great

Saka campaigns of Cyrus the Great
Part of Wars of Cyrus the Great
Date552–530 BCE
Location
Central Asia
Result Saka victory
Belligerents

Achaemenid Empire

Sakas

Commanders and leaders
Cyrus the Great †
Amytis
Parmises
Parmises' 3 sons
Amorges
 Amorges (defected)
Sparethra
Tomyris
Spargapises †
Casualties and losses
Most of the Persian army destroyed by Tomyris in a battle Cyrus the Great destroyed a third of the Massagetaean army under commander Spargapises

Saka campaigns of Cyrus the Great consists of campaigns against the Sakas. Initially he attacked and defeated the Amyrgian but was after defeated by Amorges's Queen. Then King Amorges allied with Cyrus the Great. Later on, Cyrus the Great launched a campaign against the Massagetaens. He was successful in defeating and killing Spargapises. In retaliation, Tomyris with her army and allies, avenged her son's death by defeating and killing Cyrus in a battle.

Cyrus' Sakā haumavargā (Amyrgian) campaign edit

According to the Greek historian Ctesias, once the Persian Achaemenid Empire's founder, Cyrus, had overthrown the Median king Astyages, the Bactrians accepted him as the heir of Astyages and submitted to him, after which he founded the city of Cyropolis on the Iaxartes river as well as seven fortresses to protect the northern frontier of his empire against the Saka. Cyrus then attacked the Sakā haumavargā, initially defeated them and captured their king, Amorges. After this, Amorges's queen, Sparethra, defeated Cyrus with a large army of both men and women warriors and captured Parmises, the brother-in-law of Cyrus and the brother of his wife Amytis, as well as Parmises's three sons, whom Sparethra exchanged in return for her husband, after which Cyrus and Amorges became allies, and Amorges helped Cyrus conquer Lydia.[1][2][3][4][5][6][excessive citations]

Cyrus' Massagetae campaign edit

Tomyris was the widowed wife of the king of the Massagetae, whom she succeeded as the queen of the tribe after he died.[7] When the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, Cyrus, asked for the hand of Tomyris with the intent of acquiring her kingdom through the marriage, she understood Cyrus's aims and rejected his proposal. On the advice of the Lydian Croesus, Cyrus responded to Tomyris's rejection by deciding to invade the Massagetae.[8][9][7]

During the 6th century BCE, the Massagetae had to face the successor of the Median Empire, the newly formed Persian Achaemenid Empire, whose founder, Cyrus II, carried out a campaign against them in 530 BCE.[10]

Cyrus' first assault edit

When Cyrus started building a bridge on the Araxes river with the intent of attacking the Massagetae, Tomyris advised him to remain satisfied with ruling his own kingdom and to allow her to rule her kingdom. Cyrus's initial assault was routed by the Massagetae, after which he set up a fancy banquet with large amounts of wine in the tents of his camp as an ambush and withdrew.[11][12][7]

Death of Spargapises edit

The Massagetae, led by Tomyris's son and the commander of their army, Spargapises, who primarily used fermented mare's milk and cannabis as intoxicants like all Iron Age steppe nomads, and therefore were not used to drinking wine, became drunk and were easily defeated and slaughtered by Cyrus, thus destroying a third of the Massagetaean army. Spargapises had been captured by Cyrus, and, once he had become sober and understood his situation, he asked Cyrus to free him, and after Cyrus acquiesced to his pleas, he killed himself.[11][12][7]

 
Queen Tomyris learns that her son Spargapises has been taken alive by Cyrus, by Jan Moy (1535–1550).

After Tomyris found out about the death of Spargapises, she sent Cyrus an angry message in which she called the wine, which had caused the destruction of her army and her son, a drug which made those who consumed it so mad that they spoke evil words, and demanded him to leave his land or else she would, swearing upon the Sun, "give him more blood than he could drink."[11][7]

Death of Cyrus edit

 
Tomyris Plunges the Head of the Dead Cyrus into a Vessel of Blood by Rubens

Tomyris herself led the Massagetaean army into war, and, during the next battle opposing the Massagetae to the forces of Cyrus, Tomyris defeated the Persians and destroyed most of their army. Cyrus himself was killed in the battle, and Tomyris found his corpse, severed his head and put it in a bag filled with blood while telling Cyrus, "Drink your fill of blood!"[8][11][9][13][excessive citations]

 
Silver dish showing Tomryis with Cyrus' corpse, Stourhead

According to Herodotus, Cyrus captured a Massagetaean camp by ruse, after which the Massagetae queen Tomyris led the tribe's main force against the Persians, defeated them, killed Cyrus, and placed his severed head in a sack full of blood.[14] According to Ctesias, it was the Derbices, who were the tribe against whom Cyrus died in battle: according to this version, he was mortally wounded by the Derbices and their Indian allies, after which Cyrus's ally, the king Amorges of the Sakā haumavargā, intervened with his own army and helped the Persian soldiers defeat the Derbices, following which Cyrus endured for three days, during which he organised his Empire and appointed Spitaces son of Sisamas as satrap over the Derbices, before finally dying. The reason why the Derbices, and not the Massagetae, are named as the people against whom Cyrus died fighting is because the Derbices were members or identical with the Massagetae.[15][16][10][17][excessive citations] According to Strabo, Cyrus died fighting against the Saka (of which the Massagetae were a group), and according to Quintus Curtius Rufus he died fighting against the Abiae.[18]

 
Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae receiving the head of Cyrus the Great. (1670–1672 painting).
 
Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae, receiving the head of Cyrus the Great, circa 530 BCE (18th century painting).

The Babylonian scribe Berossus, who lived in 3rd century BCE, instead recorded that Cyrus died in a battle against the Dahae; according to the Iranologist Muhammad Dandamayev, Berossus identified the Dahae rather than the Massagetae as Cyrus's killers because they had replaced the Massagetae as the most famous nomadic tribe of Central Asia long before Berossus's time;[16][19] although some scholars identified the Dahae as being identical with the Massagetae or as one of their sub-groups.[20]

Aftermath edit

See also: Skunkha and Scythian campaign of Darius I

Little is further known about Tomyris after the war with Cyrus. By around 520 BCE and possibly earlier, her tribe was ruled by a king named Skunxa, who rebelled against the Persian Empire until one of the successors of Cyrus, the Achaemenid king Darius I, carried out a campaign against the Sakas from 520 to 518 BCE during which he conquered the Massagetae, captured Skunxa, and replaced him with a ruler who was loyal to Achaemenid power.[21][22]

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ Francfort, Henri-Paul (1988). "Central Asia and Eastern Iran". In Boardman, John; Hammond, N. G. L.; Lewis, D. M.; Ostwald, M. (eds.). The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 4. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. p. 171. ISBN 978-0-521-22804-6.
  2. ^ Dandamayev, M. A. (1994). "Media and Achaemenid Iran". In Dani, Ahmad Hasan; Harmatta, János; Puri, Baij Nath; Etemadi, G. F.; Bosworth, Clifford Edmund (eds.). History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Paris, France: UNESCO. pp. 35–64. ISBN 978-9-231-02846-5.
  3. ^ Gera, Deborah Levine (2018). Warrior Women: The Anonymous Tractatus De Mulieribus. Leiden, Netherlands; New York City, United States: Brill. p. 199-200. ISBN 978-9-004-32988-1.
  4. ^ Mayor, Adrienne (2014). The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World. Princeton, United States: Princeton University Press. p. 382-383. ISBN 978-0-691-17027-5.
  5. ^ Kuhrt, Amélie (2013). The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period. London, England: Routledge. p. 58. ISBN 978-1-136-01694-3.
  6. ^ Schmitt, Rüdiger (1989). "AMORGES". Encyclopædia Iranica. 2022-07-08
  7. ^ a b c d e Gera, Deborah Levine (2018). Warrior Women: The Anonymous Tractatus De Mulieribus. Leiden, Netherlands; New York City, United States: Brill. p. 187-199. ISBN 978-9-004-32988-1.
  8. ^ a b Schmitt 2018.
  9. ^ a b Rollinger 2003.
  10. ^ a b Schmitt 2018a.
  11. ^ a b c d Mayor 2017.
  12. ^ a b Mayor 2014.
  13. ^ Faulkner, Robert (2000). "CYRUS iiia. Cyrus II as Portrayed by Xenophon and Herodotus". Encyclopædia Iranica. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
  14. ^ Herodotus (1975). G.P. Goold (ed.). Herodotus: The Persian Wars. Vol. 1 (Books I–II). Translated by A.D. Godley. Cambridge, Massachusetts; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann Ltd. p. 269 (Book I). ISBN 0-674-99130-3. (ISBN 0-434-99117-1 - British)
  15. ^ Francfort 1988, p. 171.
  16. ^ a b Dandamayev 1994.
  17. ^ Schmitt 1994.
  18. ^ Abetekov & Yusupov 1994.
  19. ^ Dandamayev 1989, p. 67.
  20. ^ Zadneprovskiy 1994: "The middle of the third century b.c. saw the rise to power of a group of tribes consisting of the Parni (Aparni) and the Dahae, descendants of the Massagetae of the Aral Sea region."
  21. ^ Schmitt, Rüdiger (1994). "AMORGES". Encyclopædia Iranica. Retrieved 2022-07-12.
  22. ^ Shahbazi, A. Shapur (1994). "DARIUS iii. Darius I the Great". Encyclopædia Iranica. Retrieved 8 August 2022.


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