Sye'nnesis
3. Contemporary with Artaxerxes II. (Mnemon). When Cyrus the younger, marching against Artaxerxes, in B. C. 401, arrived at the borders of Cilicia, he found the passes guarded by Syennesis, who, however, withdrew his troops, on receiving intelligence that the force sent forward by Cyrus under Menon had already entered Cilicia, and that the combined fleet of the Lacedaemonians and the prince, under Samius and Tamos, was sailing round from Ionia. When Cyrus reached Tarsus, the Cilician capital, he found that Menon's soldiers had sacked the city, and that Syennesis had fled for refuge to a stronghold among the mountains.
He was induced, however, by his wife Epyaxa to obey the summons of Cyrus, and to present himself before him at Tarsus. Here he received gifts of honour from the young prince, whom he supplied in his turn with a large sum of money and a considerable body of troops under the command of one of his sons.
At the same time, however, he took care to send his other son to Artaxerxes, to represent this step as having been taken on compulsion, while his heart all the time was with the king. From the narrative of Xenophon it appears that Syennesis at this time, though really a vassal of Persia, affected the tone of an independent sovereign. (
Xen. Hell. 3.1.1,
Anab. 1.2. ยงยง 12, 21-27, 4.4, 7.8.25;
Diod. 14.20; Wess.
ad loc.)
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