Famous Satraps of the Persian Empire

Satraps were the governors of the provinces of the Persian Empire, and the best known of them were powerful men in their own right: Oroetes and Artaphernes at Sardis, Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus in the age of the Peloponnesian War, Mausolus in Caria and Datames in Cappadocia. Their careers, mostly known from Greek writers, show how the empire really worked on its western frontier: loyalty to the king, rivalry between neighbours, and a constant temptation to act alone.

What made a satrap

The word comes from Old Persian xšaçapāvan, “protector of the realm”, which Greeks turned into satrapēs. How Darius I organised the provinces, collected tribute and gave satraps their duties is covered on Darius’s reforms. This page is about the people. Most satraps came from the Persian high nobility, many were related to the king by blood or marriage, and in some provinces the office passed from father to son for generations. They ran their own courts, kept armies and parks, and by the 4th century often minted coins with their own portraits.

The king had ways to keep them in check: royal secretaries who reported to the court, garrison commanders appointed directly by the king, and, according to Greek writers, officials called the “King’s Eyes” who travelled the provinces. Historians debate how formal that last office was.

The first generation: Oroetes, Aryandes and Artaphernes

Oroetes of Sardis

Herodotus tells how Oroetes, satrap at Sardis under Cambyses, lured the tyrant Polycrates of Samos to the mainland with promises of gold and had him killed, around 522 BCE. During the civil war that brought Darius to power, Oroetes acted as if he were independent and murdered a royal messenger. Darius could not spare an army, so he sent a noble called Bagaeus with sealed letters. Read aloud to Oroetes’ Persian guards one by one, the letters first tested their obedience and finally ordered them to kill the satrap, which they did.

Aryandes of Egypt

Cambyses left Aryandes as governor of Egypt. Herodotus says Darius later had him executed for striking silver coins of unusual purity, as though competing with the king. The real reason was probably wider disloyalty, but the story shows how closely the king watched any sign of a satrap acting like a ruler.

Artaphernes, the king’s brother

Artaphernes, Darius’s brother, held Sardis during the Ionian Revolt, saw the lower city burned in 498 BCE and directed the reconquest. Afterwards he had the Ionian lands surveyed and set their tribute on that basis, an assessment that Herodotus says was still in force in his own day. His son, also called Artaphernes, commanded at Marathon.

Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus: rivals on the Aegean

At the end of the 5th century two satraps decided much of Greek politics. Tissaphernes held Sardis from around 413 BCE, and Pharnabazus II ruled Hellespontine Phrygia from Dascylium, as his father and grandfather had done. Both were ordered by Darius II to collect the tribute owed by the Greek cities and to help Sparta against Athens, and each tried to win the credit at the other’s expense. The story of their dealings with Sparta and Alcibiades is told on Darius II and the Peloponnesian War.

Tissaphernes is the classic Greek picture of a cunning Persian. He remained loyal to Artaxerxes II when the king’s brother Cyrus the Younger rebelled, warned the king and fought at Cunaxa in 401 BCE. Afterwards he invited the Greek mercenary generals to a meeting under a truce and had them seized and executed. War with Sparta followed, and after the Spartan king Agesilaus defeated Persian forces near Sardis in 395 BCE, Artaxerxes sent Tithraustes to replace him. Tissaphernes was beheaded. Greek writers say the queen mother Parysatis pressed for it, because she blamed him for the death of her favourite son Cyrus.

Pharnabazus comes off better in Greek sources. Xenophon describes his meeting with Agesilaus, the Persian in splendid clothes sitting down on the grass beside the plainly dressed Spartan and complaining that he had been a faithful ally only to see his parks and palaces burned. In 394 BCE he and the Athenian admiral Conon destroyed the Spartan fleet at Cnidus, and he paid for the rebuilding of the walls of Athens. He married Apame, a daughter of Artaxerxes II, and later led a long-planned but failed attempt to reconquer Egypt.

Mausolus: a local dynasty inside the empire

Caria in south-west Asia Minor was given in the 4th century to a local family, the Hecatomnids, rather than to Persians. Mausolus, satrap from 377 to 353 BCE, moved his capital to Halicarnassus, built it up as a Greek-style city and extended his power over neighbouring islands. He joined some of the revolts against the king but always returned to obedience. His tomb, finished by his sister and wife Artemisia, was so famous that every great tomb since has been called a mausoleum.

Datames and the age of revolts

Datames, the son of a Carian father and, according to Nepos, a Scythian mother, was a soldier who rose through royal service to govern Cappadocia. Cornelius Nepos wrote a Latin life of him that reads like an adventure story. In the 360s BCE he turned against Artaxerxes II and was murdered around 362 by a man pretending to join him. His revolt and those of his contemporaries are covered on the Great Satraps’ Revolt.

The last satraps: Artabazus and Mazaeus

Artabazus, of the same family as Pharnabazus, rebelled in the 350s, fled to the court of Philip II of Macedon, was pardoned and then stayed with Darius III until the king’s death. Alexander made him satrap of Bactria. Mazaeus governed Cilicia and Syria, commanded the Persian right wing at Gaugamela and then surrendered Babylon in 331 BCE. Alexander rewarded him with the governorship of the city, one of the first Persians he appointed to govern a province. Both careers show that for many noble families service to whoever ruled Asia mattered more than loyalty to one dynasty.