The battle of Kounaxa (Cunaxa), fought near Babylon in 401 BC, was the decisive engagement (and indeed the only engagement) of Kyros the Younger's rebellion against his brother, King Artaxerxes II. Kyros, assigned command over the satrapies of Asia Minor, had marched a large army of levies and mercenaries into the heart of the Persian Empire to wrest the throne from Artaxerxes. However, on the battlefield at Kounaxa, he was killed, and his cause died with him.

We have a few sources for the battle, but all of them are Greek. The main one is the account written by Xenophon, who was actually there, fighting among the Greek mercenaries of Kyros.

In theory, this eyewitness account should be more reliable than the usual summaries given by people who lived in later times and, at best, interviewed some people who were there. But Xenophon's account is a beautiful demonstration of the fact that no one who fights in the front ranks has the oversight to give a comprehensive account of a battle after it's over. The Greeks were stationed on Kyros' right wing, which rested on the Euphrates, and so, with the exception of an account of the charge of Kyros in the centre, all we hear is what happened to the right wing and along the Euphrates; the only Persian troops who are described in detail are the ones on the Persian left (commanded by Tissaphernes). The course of events is difficult to follow and doesn't always make tactical sense.

Most importantly, though, the fact that our source is Greek means that it gives us a particularly warped idea of the outcome. The Greek mercenaries were engaged only by scythed chariots, suffering a single man wounded; everyone else they attacked, including the infantry stationed over against them, immediately fled. At the end of the day, when they heard that Kyros was dead, their formation was still intact. From the Greek perspective, they had not been defeated, and they were ready to fight again. Boasting that none of the Persians had the nads to stand against them, they refused to yield to Artaxerxes, and refused to be treated like beaten men. Regardless of the death of their employer, "the Greeks, in their own estimation, won the battle" (Anderson 1970, 111).

The lack of a Persian counter-narrative makes it tempting to adopt the mercenaries' point of view. To the casual reader of Xenophon, Kounaxa sounds nothing like a lost battle. The effective performance of the Ten Thousand on their retreat from Kounaxa back to the Greek world shows that this army had suffered neither losses nor a breakdown in morale. Why would we spoil this great story of Greek (and Thracian) defiance and tenacity by chipping away at the version of Kounaxa given to us by such a trustworthy, detailed source?

The answer to that rhetorical question is that the Greeks survived the battle suspiciously easily. They faced some of the heaviest infantry available to the Persians, the Egyptian pikemen - yet when they charged, these pikemen fled before the Greeks even got within arrow range. The only men on Kyros' right who saw combat were the Thracian peltasts covering the right flank. These were charged by Tissaphernes' cavalry - but the horsemen passed clean through the peltasts, and did nothing to exploit their position in the Greek rear. When Kyros was killed, the Persian part of his army fled entirely, leaving Artaxerxes free to deal with the Greeks; he had overwhelming numbers, missile troops, and thousands of horsemen at his disposal. The Greeks themselves feared they would be surrounded, and tried to manoeuvre so that their back would be on the Euphrates. But the attack did not come. When the Greeks charged the infantry in front of them, they fled even sooner than the original battle line. The Persian cavalry briefly regrouped on a hill, but when the Greeks made a third charge, these also fled without striking a blow.

It's easy to understand how the Greeks got the impression that the Persians had no courage for the fight. We have no Persian source to deny this assumption. But is cowardice really the most plausible explanation for the way the Persians dealt with the Greeks at Kounaxa?

To figure this out, we need to try our best to look at the battle from the Persian side. By all counts, the only thing that mattered to Artaxerxes was reaffirming his legitimacy as king by killing his brother and the high-ranking Persians who had chosen his side. There's proof of this in the lengths to which he allegedly went to make people believe that he had killed Kyros with his own hands, as reported in Plutarch's Life of Artaxerxes. In addition, the Great King knew that Kyros had no way of winning the battle with his smaller army except by attacking him personally and paralysing the royal host. He therefore assembled a cavalry bodyguard in the centre of his line which (according to Xenophon) was ten times as large as that of Kyros; this force would absorb Kyros' inevitable attack and destroy him. The actions of all the others on the field were ultimately irrelevant to this central clash.

However, irrelevant as they were, some of Kyros' forces were capable troops, who had a reputation for inflicting terrible casualties on Persian armies in close combat: the 11,000 Greek hoplites stationed on his right flank. Artaxerxes was confident enough that his men, whose vast numbers allowed them to encircle Kyros' left wing, could handle the levies on that side of the enemy army - but the men on the right were more of a challenge. The Persians of course had troops that could deal with hoplites, like their Egyptian pike levy. But it would surely be far better for all concerned if these Greeks could be merely entertained - say, drawn away from the main engagement in pursuit of an enemy fleeing before them - rather than engaged in the sort of battle in which they specialised. How many they routed or how far they marched didn't matter, as long as they were kept busy long enough for Artaxerxes' cavalry to kill Kyros.

As soon as Artaxerxes began to wheel in his right wing to encircle Kyros' left wing, the rebellious prince did exactly as predicted, charging his 600 horsemen into Artaxerxes' 6,000. Fiercely loyal as Kyros' followers were, this wasn't a fight they were likely to win. The predictable result was that Kyros was killed and that his rebellion, by extension, lost its leader and its purpose. While all this was going on, the Greek mercenaries gleefully allowed themselves to be distracted chasing after the infantry that had been stationed against them, which had a comfortable head start due to its immediate flight. If the Achaemenids had known the Benny Hill theme, they would presumably have played it at full volume. All the while, Persian cavalry was ransacking the Greek camp.

The result was a resounding, unqualified victory for Artaxerxes, won with minimal casualties. Kyros was dead; his inner circle was annihilated; his possessions were captured; the royal army was intact. The Greeks, regardless of what they thought they had achieved, had not in fact won the battle, but merely survived it. Was this survival due to their superior tactics and the cowardice of their enemies? Or is it safe to assume that this outcome was exactly according to Artaxerxes' plan?

I would hardly be the first to suggest that the Persians deliberately avoided fighting Kyros' Greek mercenaries. The Greeks were militarily effective but politically irrelevant; there was nothing to be gained in fighting them, but much to be lost. It made sense to keep all the king's valuable troops out of their way. That these were indeed the orders of either Artaxerxes or Tissaphernes was suggested by Delbrück (1908) 143-144 and Kromayer and Veith (1931) 242; it was stated forcefully by Wylie (1992) 129-130, and their actual role is compared to the one they perceived themselves to have played by Whitby (2004) 225-228. To put it bluntly, the Greeks got played. They were effectively sidelined in the initial engagement by troops ordered to retreat well ahead of the Greek charge; they were tactically isolated while the Persians mopped up the last of Kyros' army and looted his camp. Then the "victorious" mercenaries were left in the cold desert night to starve.

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References

• H. Delbrück, Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der politischen Geschichte (2nd ed. 1908)

• J. Kromayer/G. Veith, Antike Schlachtfelder: Bausteine zu einer antiken Kriegsgeschichte IV (1931)

• J.K. Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon (1970)

• G. Wylie, 'Cunaxa and Xenophon', L'Antiquité Classique 61 (1992) 119-134

• M. Whitby, 'Xenophon's Ten Thousand as a fighting force', in R. Lane Fox (ed.), The Long March (2004), 215-242