Inaros II

Libyan soldier, circa 470 BCE. Xerxes I tomb relief.

Diodorus tells us that once the Athenians had arrived, they and the Egyptians accepted battle from the Persians. The rebel army confronted the Persian army of around 400,000 infantry and eighty ships led by the brother of Artaxerxes, the satrap Achaemenes. At first the Persians' superior numbers gave them the advantage, but eventually the Athenians broke through the Persian line, whereupon the Persian army routed and fled. Some portion of the Persian army found refuge in the citadel of Memphis (called the 'White Castle'), however, and could not be dislodged.[4] Thucydides's rather compressed version of these events is: "and making themselves masters of the river and two-thirds of Memphis, addressed themselves to the attack of the remaining third, which is called White Castle".[5] The satrap Achaemenes, together with 100,000 of his 400,000 men was defeated and killed at Papremis and the Persians retreated to Memphis. The commanders of the Athenian fleet, Charitimides and Cimon fought a naval battle with the Persians, in which forty Greek ships engaged fifty Persians ships, of which twenty were captured with their crews, and the remaining thirty sunk. To show that their victory was complete, the rebels sent the dead body of satrap Achaemenes to the Persian king.

Egyptian soldier, circa 470 BCE. Xerxes I tomb relief.

The Athenians and Egyptians thus settled down to besiege the White Castle. The siege evidently did not progress well, and probably lasted for at least four years, since Thucydides says that their whole expedition lasted 6 years,[6] and of this time the final 18 months was occupied with the Siege of Prosoptis.[7]

According to Thucydides, at first Artaxerxes sent Megabazus to try and bribe the Spartans into invading Attica, to draw off the Athenian forces from Egypt. When this failed, he instead assembled a large army under (confusingly) Megabyzus, and dispatched it to Egypt.[7] Diodorus has more or less the same story, with more detail; after the attempt at bribery failed, Artaxerxes put Megabyzus and Artabazus in charge of 300,000 men, with instructions to quell the revolt. They went first from Persia to Cilicia and gathered a fleet of 300 triremes from the Cilicians, Phoenicians and Cypriots, and spent a year training their men. Then they finally headed to Egypt.[8] Modern estimates, however, place the number of Persian troops at the considerably lower figure of 25,000 men given that it would have been highly impractical to deprive the already strained satrapies of any more man power than that.[9] Thucydides does not mention Artabazus, who is reported by Herodotus to have taken part in the second Persian invasion; Diodorus may be mistaken about his presence in this campaign.[10] It is clearly possible that the Persian forces did spend some prolonged time in training, since it took four years for them to respond to the Egyptian victory at Papremis. Although neither author gives many details, it is clear that when Megabyzus finally arrived in Egypt, he was able to quickly lift the Siege of Memphis, defeating the Egyptians in battle, and driving the Athenians from Memphis.[7][11]

Portrait of Inarus with his Pharaoh crown (detail).

The Athenians now fell back to the island of Prosopitis in the Nile delta, where their ships were moored.[7][11] There, Megabyzus laid siege to them for 18 months, until finally he was able to drain the river from around the island by digging canals, thus "joining the island to the mainland".[7] In Thucydides's account the Persians then crossed over to the former island, and captured it.[7] Only a few of the Athenian force, marching through Libya to Cyrene survived to return to Athens.[6] In Diodorus's version, however, the draining of the river prompted the Egyptians (whom Thucydides does not mention) to defect and surrender to the Persians. The Persians, not wanting to sustain heavy casualties in attacking the Athenians, instead allowed them to depart freely to Cyrene, whence they returned to Athens.[11] Since the defeat of the Egyptian expedition caused a genuine panic in Athens, including the relocation of the Delian treasury to Athens, Thucydides's version is probably more likely to be correct.[12]

As a final disastrous coda to the expedition, Thucydides mentions the fate of a squadron of fifty triremes sent to relieve the Siege of Prosopitis. Unaware that the Athenians had finally succumbed, the fleet put in at the Mendesian mouth of the Nile, where it was promptly attacked from the land, and from the sea by the Phoenician navy. Most of the ships were destroyed, with only a handful managing to escape and return to Athens.[6] Total Athenian casualties of the expedition totaled some 50,000 men and 250 ships.[13][14]

Inarus and possible Greek generals as prisoners, seized by Artaxerxes I.[15]

Charitimides was killed in battle and Inarus was wounded in the thigh by the Persian force and retreated to Byblos, his stronghold and the only Egyptian city that did not submit to Megabyzus.[16] After fighting for a year and a half in the marshes, Inaros was defeated by Megabyzus. Together with the remaining Greeks, he was taken captive away to Susa.