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Idrieus, or Hidrieos; died 344)
was a ruler of Caria under the Achaemenid Empire, nominally a Satrap, who
enjoyed the status of king or dynast by virtue of the powerful position his
predecessors of the House of Hecatomnus (the Hecatomnids) created when they
succeeded the assassinated Persian Satrap
Tissaphernes in the
Carian satrapy.
Biography:
He was the second son of Hecatomnus, and succeeded to the throne on the death
of his sister Artemisia II of Caria in 351. Shortly after his accession he was
required by the Persian king, Artaxerxes III Ochus, to provide arms and troops
for the capture of Cyprus, a request with which he readily complied. He
equipped a fleet of 40 triremes and assembled an army of 8000 mercenary troops.
These were despatched for use against Cyprus under the command of Evagoras and
the Athenian general Phocion. This is the only
recorded event preserved from his reign. However; it can be inferred from
Isocrates that by 346 the friendly relations between Idrieus and the Persian
king had not continued and there appears to have been open hostility between
the two. But the hostility of Persia did not interfere with Caria's prosperity,
for in the same passage by Isocrates, Idrieus is described as one of the most
wealthy and powerful of the princes of Asia and Demosthenes advises that
Idrieus had added the important islands of Chios, Cos, and Rhodes to his
hereditary dominions. That Idrieus was an active builder is attested in
Halicarnassus, as it is he who must have finished the Mausoleum, the tomb of
his brother Mausolus, begun by their sister, Mausolus' wife, and his own
immediate predecessor, Artemisia II, which had been left unfinished at her
death; and at Labraunda (alternatively Labranda), where, continuing the
enrichment in the Hellenistic style undertaken there earlier by Mausolus, he
restored the temple of Zeus, added the southern and eastern entrances, and
built the 'Doric house'.
Idrieus died of a disease in 344, after a reign of seven years, leaving in his
will the sovereign power over Caria to his sister Ada, to whom he had been
married.
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