page_title: Pharnabazus II
section_title: Conflict with Spartan King Agesilaos in Asia Minor
hierarchical_section_title: Pharnabazus II / Satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia / War with Athens against Sparta (395–387 BC) / Conflict with Spartan King Agesilaos in Asia Minor
caption_attribution_description: English: Agesilaus and Pharnabazus.
context_page_description: Pharnabazus II was a Persian soldier and statesman, and Satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia. He was the son of Pharnaces II of Phrygia and grandson of Pharnabazus I, and great-grandson of Artabazus I. He and his male ancestors, forming the Pharnacid dynasty, had governed the satrapy of Hellespontine Phrygia from its headquarters at Dascylium since 478 BC. He married Apama, daughter of Artaxerxes II of Persia, and their son Artabazus was likewise a satrap of Phrygia. His grand-daughter Barsine married Alexander the Great.
  According to research by Theodor Nöldeke, he was descended from Otanes, one of the associates of Darius in the murder of Smerdis.
context_section_description: Hellespontine Phrygia was attacked and ravaged by the Spartan king Agesilaos in 396-395 BCE, who particularly laid waste to the area around Daskyleion, the capital of Hellenistic Phrygia. Pharnabazus had several military encounters against the invading Spartans on this occasion. Pharnabazus finally met in person with Agesilaos, and Agesilaos agreed to remove himself from Hellespontine Phrygia proper and retreated to the plain of Thebe in the Troad. 
  In 394, while encamped on the plain of Thebe, Agesilaus was still planning a campaign in the interior of Asia Minor, or even an attack on Artaxerxes II himself, when he was recalled to Greece to fight in the Corinthian War between Sparta and the combined forces of Athens, Thebes, Corinth, Argos and several minor states. 
  The outbreak of the conflict in Greece had been encouraged by Persian payments to Sparta's Greek rivals, and had for effect to remove the Spartan threat in Asia Minor. Pharnabazus sent Timocrates of Rhodes as an envoy to Greece, and tens of thousands of Darics, the main currency in Achaemenid coinage, were used to bribe the Greek states to start a war against Sparta. According to Plutarch, Agesilaus said upon leaving Asia Minor "I have been driven out by 10,000 Persian archers", a reference to "Archers" (Toxotai) the Greek nickname for the Darics from their obverse design, because that much money had been paid to politicians in Athens and Thebes in order to start a war against Sparta.
caption: Meeting between Spartan King Agesilaus (left) and Pharnabazus (right) in 395 BC, after which Agesilaus left Hellespontine Phrygia proper.[13][14]
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