Artaxerxes I was the sixth king of kings of the Achaemenid Empire from 465 BCE to 424 BCE. He was the son of Xerxes I of Persia and Amestris, daughter of Otanes.
He may have been the "Artasyrus" mentioned by Herodotus as being a Satrap of the royal satrapy of Bactria.
In Greek sources he is also surnamed μακρόχειρ Macrocheir (Latin: 'Longimanus'), allegedly because his right hand was longer than his left.[3]
After Persia had been defeated at Eurymedon, military action between Greece and Persia was at a standstill. When Artaxerxes I took power, he introduced a new Persian strategy of weakening the Athenians by funding their enemies in Greece. This indirectly caused the Athenians to move the treasury of the Delian League from the island of Delos to the Athenian acropolis. This funding practice inevitably prompted renewed fighting in 450 BCE, where the Greeks attacked at the Battle of Cyprus. After Cimon's failure to attain much in this expedition, the Peace of Callias was agreed between Athens, Argos and Persia in 449 BCE.
Artaxerxes I offered asylum to Themistocles, who was the winner of the Battle of Salamis, after Themistocles was ostracized from Athens and Artaxerxes I gave him Magnesia, Myus and Lampsacus to maintain him in bread, meat and wine, Palaescepsis to provide him with clothes and he gave him Percote with bedding for his house.[4]
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Artaxerxes (Hebrew: אַרְתַּחְשַׁסְתְּא, pronounced [artaχʃast]) commissioned Ezra, a Jewish priest (kohen) and scribe, by means of a letter of decree (see Cyrus's edict), to take charge of the ecclesiastical and civil affairs of the Jewish nation. A copy of this decree may be found in Ezra 7:13-28.
Ezra thereby left Babylon in the first month of the seventh year (~ 457 BCE) of Artaxerxes' reign, at the head of a company of Jews that included priests and Levites. They arrived in Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month of the seventh year (Hebrew Calendar).
The rebuilding of the Jewish community in Jerusalem had begun under Cyrus the Great, who had permitted Jews held captive in Babylon, to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple of Solomon. Consequently, a number of Jews returned to Jerusalem in 538 B.C., and the foundation of this "Second Temple" was laid the following year.
In Artaxerxes' 20th year (444 BCE),[5] Nehemiah, the king's cupbearer, apparently was also a friend of the king as in that year Artaxerxes inquired after Nehemiah's sadness. Nehemiah related to him the plight of the Jewish people and that the city of Jerusalem was undefended. The king sent Nehemiah to Jerusalem with letters of safe passage to the governors in Trans-Euphrates, and to Asaph, keeper of the royal forests, to make beams for the citadel by the Temple and to rebuild the city walls.[6]
Roger Williams, a seventeenth-century Christian minister and founder of Rhode Island, interpreted several passages in the Old and New Testament to support limiting government interference in religious matters. Williams published The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, describing his analysis of why a civil government should be separate from religion according to the Bible. Williams believed that Israel was a unique covenant kingdom and not an appropriate model for New Testament Christians who believed that the Old Testament covenant had been fulfilled. Therefore, the more informative Old Testament examples of civil government were "good" non-covenant kings such as Artaxerxes, who tolerated the Jews and did not insist that they follow his state religion.[7]
By queen Damaspia
By Alogyne of Babylon
By Cosmartidene of Babylon
By Andia of Babylon
By another(?) unknown wife
By various wives eleven other children
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Artaxerxes I of Persia
Born: ?? Died: 424 BCE |
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| Preceded by Xerxes I |
Great King (Shah) of Persia 465 BCE – 424 BCE |
Succeeded by Xerxes II |
| Pharaoh of Egypt 465 BCE – 424 BCE |
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