Artabazos I of Phrygia

Artabazus ( altpers. Rtuvazdah; Greek Αρτάβαζος; † after 460 BC ), son of Pharnakes from the family of Pharnakiden, was an army commander under the Persian Great King Xerxes I..

During the Persian campaign (480 BC) against the alliance of free Greek poleis ( Hellenenbund ) he commanded the troops provided by the Parthians and Chorasmiern.

After the Persians in 480 BC lost battle of Salamis, he accompanied the departing Xerxes I of Thessaly from the Hellespont. On the way back from there to the winter camp of the Persian army in Thessaly and Macedonia, he tried in vain 480/79 BC to conquer the rebellious city Potidaia, but lost it a large part of the troops who were on secondment to the escort of the Great King. However, the neighboring and also insurgent Olynthus he could while into his hands, the local Thracian population was killed, and gave the place friendly Chalcidian Greeks.

In the conviction that the Persians could not beat the allied Greeks militarily, he advised 479 BC, the commander of the Persian troops Mardonius immediately before the battle of Plataea, to gain mastery over Greece through diplomatic channels. Artabazus could with his ideas do not prevail and fled to Herodotus deliberately during the battle, in which the Persians were decisively defeated, with his troops towards the Hellespont.

In the year 478 BC, took over as satrap Artabazus the province Phrygia on the Hellespont with the residence Daskyleion, where he replaced Megabates. In the same year he acted as an intermediary in the secret negotiations of Pausanias with the Great King who were unsuccessful, however, as the Greeks learned of it. The last time Artabazus is called in the late single 460 years BC, as a commander against rebellious Cypriots, and Egyptians. Presumably he had handed his governorship by this time to his son Pharnabazos.