Pharnabazus

Family: Persians · Role: satrap · First appears: Book 1, section 1, part 2/2

Pharnabazus first gave Hermocrates money to gather friends and triremes for his hoped-for return to Syracuse. At Chalcedon, he agreed to pay Athens twenty talents and to uphold the town’s customary tribute and debts; he and Alcibiades then exchanged oaths and personal pledges through representatives. At Cyrus’s request, Pharnabazus detained Athenian ambassadors, but after three years allowed them to leave under safe conduct.

In Book 3, Dercylidas marched against his territory after making terms with Tissaphernes. Pharnabazus appointed Mania satrap in place of her deceased husband, then chose peace—and later a winter truce—when Dercylidas offered war as the alternative. He proposed common cause with Tissaphernes against the Hellenes; their peace terms clashed with Dercylidas’s demand for independence for the Hellenic cities. At Dascylium, Persian cavalry drove back the Hellenic advance guard but withdrew when Agesilaus arrived with infantry.

In Book 4, Agesilaus agreed to leave Pharnabazus’s territory and avoid fighting him while other enemies remained, and in B.C. 394 kept his word. At Cnidus, Pharnabazus was present with the Phoenician fleet when the Lacedaemonians were defeated and Peisander killed. Afterward he and Conon toured the islands and maritime states, expelling Spartan governors. He gave Conon forty ships at Ephesus, ravaged Abydenian territory and Pherae, and repaired a fortress in Cythera, leaving a garrison under Nicophemus. At the Isthmus of Corinth, he urged the allies to continue the war and left them his available funds; he later sent Conon to Athens and funded the rebuilding of its walls.