reign of Artaxerxes If this is accurate then it was Arta xerxes for whom Nehemiah was cup bearer (Nehemiah 2:1), a position that gave him close access to the king, and it was to him that Nehemiah asked for permission to go to Jerusalem to oversee the rebuilding of the city walls A T Olmstead in A History of the Persian Empire states the opinion that it was also Artaxerxes to whom Ezra went in 458 to ask permission to take a group of Jewish exiles back to Judaea in order to reestablish proper worship (Ezra 7:1, 8:1) During his reign Artaxerxes generally followed the administrative practices of his father Xerxes However, it was increasingly clear was that the empire, having reached its maximum extent under Darius I, Artaxerxes’ grandfather, was weakening Undoubtedly, a key cause was the high levels of taxation, which was stripping the satrapies, the regions of the empire, of gold and silver, enriching Persia’s vaults, but fostering discontent among the king’s subjects In 460 ancient Egypt rebelled, drove out the Persian tax collectors, and requested aid from Athens The Athenians, who were looking for a fight with Persia, sent a fleet; and by 459 nearly all of Egypt was in the hands of the rebel alliance It was probably in this turbulent period that Ezra made his application to Artaxerxes to allow a contingent of Jews to organize the worship of the returned exiles in Judaea The Jews of Babylonia were probably some of the more loyal citizens, and since Persian policy supported organized religion, Ezra’s appeal met with sympathetic ears In the meantime Artaxerxes sent money to the Athenians’ Greek rival, Sparta, in order to counter their support of the Egyptian rebellion Consequently, Athens was defeated at Tanagra (457), and with Judaea quieted, Artaxerxes sent his general Megabyzus at the head of a huge army down through the Levant to Egypt, taking back the country after one and a half years of siege The resultant defeat left Athens severely weakened and demoralized In 449 the Callian treaty was agreed between Athens and Persia in Susa, in which the parties accepted the maintenance of the status quo in Asia Minor, namely that those Greek citystates that were in either party’s control at the time of the treaty stayed under that party’s control A few years later the general Megabyzus resigned from the army and retired to the satrapy he governed, “The land beyond the River,” namely modern-day Israel, Lebanon, and Syria—and there led a revolt Possibly it was the rebellious courage stirred up by Megabyzus’s actions that led local authorities to pull down the Jerusalem walls lest there be another uprising In 431 hos- Artaxerxes 31 tilities broke out between Athens and Sparta, thereby beginning the long Peloponnesian War Artaxerxes decided to take a position of noninterference and made no effort to slow the course of events, ignoring the entreaties for support from both sides Artaxerxes I died of natural causes toward the end of 424 b.c.e ARTAXERXES II Artaxerxes II, the grandson of Artaxerxes I, acceded to the throne in March 404 b.c.e on the death of his father, Darius II However, the following year his younger brother Cyrus began plotting his overthrow Cyrus gathered an army, significantly including 10,000 Greek mercenaries, and marched east Finally battle was drawn in 401 against his brother’s army at Cunaxa in central Mesopotamia, but despite initial success on Cyrus’s part, his rashness led to a crucial mistake that resulted in his death, and Artaxerxes won the day This notwithstanding, the Greek mercenaries were allowed to march the thousand miles home, Artaxerxes not wanting to tackle them This “March of the Ten Thousand” from the heart of the Persian territory became a symbol of the internal weakness of the Persian Empire at that time In 396 Sparta began a new war to take back control of the Greek cities of Asia Minor While the Spartans played off one Persian satrap against another, Arta xerxes, aware of the empire’s military weakness, used its vast wealth to buy an alliance with Athens, Sparta’s local rival The Athenians aided the strengthened Persian navy, successfully countering the Spartan threat, with the result that in 387–386 a peace was struck, which once again required Sparta to give up any claims to sovereignty over the Greek cities in Asia Minor In 405 Egypt had revolted and remained independent from Persia throughout most of Artaxerxes’ reign In 374 Artaxerxes sent a force to retake Egypt The attempt failed, reinforcing the impression that the central authority was weakening With rebellion rife the situation seemed to be slipping out of control and auguring the end of the empire However, the rebels’ Egyptian ally, Pharaoh Nekhtenebef, died unexpectedly in 360, leaving Egypt in chaos and the satraps of Asia Minor to face the wrath of the emperor alone Rather than risk losing to the central authority, the rebels made peace with Artaxerxes, and many were in fact returned to their satrapies ARTAXERXES III In 358 b.c.e., after a long and moderately successful tenure, though rife with revolts, Artaxerxes II died His son Ochus acceded to the throne taking the name