In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great

by David Grant

  Diodorus’ description of the battle that ensued at Paraetacene was remarkably detailed; it obviously tapped into an ore-laden seam from Hieronymus that captured a formative day of war.166 He described the intricate battle lines, the manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres, oblique fronts, wheeling tactics and flanking movements that pitted Antigonus’ 28,000 infantry (including new reinforcements under Seleucus and Peithon), 8,500 cavalry and sixty-five elephants, against Eumenes’ allied total of 35,000 foot soldiers, 6,100 horsemen and 114 elephants. These beasts, the ‘tanks’ of the ancient battleground, had been delivered by Eudamus for a reward of 200 talents from the Indian kingdom of Porus who had been ‘treacherously murdered’ in the process,167 and whose lands now extended over ‘… all the Indian territory he had by then conquered – seven tribal nations and over 2,000 towns.’168

  Alexander’s example of delivering a pre-battle epipolesis, a troop review incorporating a morale-raising speech in which commanders had been called out by name, was now impossible, though Eumenes may himself at this stage have been multi-lingual and speaking the Aramaic that bound the officialdom of the Achaemenid Empire together. These were diverse coalition armies; only 6,000 of the infantry that fought under Eumenes were specifically referred to as Macedonians, and the 8,000 provided to Antigonus by Antipater were probably a generation younger than the veteran campaigners.169

  The exotic line-ups within the ranks of each general included specialist troops from across the Graeco-Persian world: mounted lancers (sarissophoroi) and lighter mounted skirmishers (hippakontistai), heavy shock cavalry under their ilarches, swift light mounts (hippeis prodromoi), possibly double-mounts (amphippoi), sarissa bearers (pezhetairoi), mobile hoplite infantry (hypaspistai), bowmen (toxotai), javelin-throwers (lonchophoroi and akontistai), slingers (sphendonetes) with their favoured long-range elliptical lead pellets, scouts (skopoi), skirmishers (pezakontistes or hamippoi who linked up with the cavalry), mercenary units (archaioi xenoi), ambushers and even armed slaves, all variously positioned under Greek, Macedonian and Asiatic commanders.170 And doubtless there were hardened officers at their backs watching for signs of reluctance, cowardice and desertion, for many men on both sides were captives from previous encounters, now being ordered to attack their former comrades-in-arms.

  A further 8,000 of Antigonus’ numbers consisted of pantodapoi, the Asiatics equipped in Macedonian style. They appear to be a legacy of Alexander’s Susa epigonoi and no doubt a corps of paides basilikai, ‘royal’ pages, existed, though they may now have included sons of Asiatic nobles as good behaviour hostages.171 In front of the armies and at the wings stood armoured elephants ridden by their mahouts, with each general praying to the gods that once feathered with arrows and spears they did not turn and stampede through their own lines.

  Both Eumenes and Antigonus would probably have employed ektaktoi, supernumeraries including messengers, to distribute their orders through the ranks.172 Dispatch riders would have been galloping behind the lines with tactical revisions as the opening gambits developed and as formations advanced and collapsed, revealing opportunistic or vulnerable gaps in the line. Flags would have been waved to signal the orders and units were given instruction through the chiliarches, taxiarches, hyparchoi and the mercenary xenagoi; some would have been understood and others potentially confused as Greek, rural Macedonian, Aramaic, and the languages of the Asian satrapies were passed through the ranks. Above the dust and the clamour, the stench of horses, elephants, leather, and sweat beneath leather would have drifted across the battlefield, along with the smell of fear from those terrified by the reputation of the Macedonian killing machine they had not yet participated in themselves.

  Strategically placed throughout each army were buglers (salpinktes) who heralded the polemikon, the order to join battle, and the set-piece moves of the ektaxis, the intricate battle order, on the bronze and reeded salpinx.173 The sheer numbers amassed for battle were a challenge to communication so that besides buglers, a herald (stratokerux), a signalman (semeiophoros), an aide (hyperetes) and a file closer (ouragos) had been added to each sixteen-by-sixteen-man phalanx formation (syntagma) by Alexander.174 Whether, in the Spartan model, each man placed a small wooden stick (skytalis) carved with his name in a bowl to be retrieved after battle (thus an early form of ‘dogtag’) to signify his survival, is unknown, as is the use of a katalogos, a pre-engagement muster roll.175 But the stage was now set for what could be the decisive battle for an empire, for few regional satraps had managed to remain out of the confrontation; even the absent Ptolemy in Egypt and Lysimachus in Thrace, notionally aligned with Antigonus, must each have been wondering when the eventual victor would head their way.

  This was highly developed high-stakes warfare of logismos (calculation) and spearheading Eumenes’ attack were the inimitable 3,000 Silver Shields, whose campaign empeiria, their artful battle experience, saw them smash through the opposing phalanx with few casualties; the result suggests their hypaspist training saw them either hit the opposing rigid sarissa phalanx in the vulnerable flanks, or they targeted other lighter troops; the crack brigade may have even rolled up the younger and inexperienced Macedonians provided by Antipater. It was a spectacular penetration that nevertheless left the units on their own left flanks exposed.

  The light manoeuvrable cavalry under Peithon which faced Eumenes’ right wing was pushed back to nearby foothills by a reinforcement of horsemen; they were backed up by the elephants Peithon had attempted to intimidate with spears and arrows. To counter the setback on his left, Antigonus’ own cavalry unit charged through the gap in the phalanx, threatening Eumenes’ left wing where Eudamus’ mounted men were stationed. Both generals tried to rally their men and reorganise their ranks, and by lamp-lighting time the armies were still arrayed on the field for a new confrontation in what now appeared an eerie stalemate silhouetted by a full moon. By midnight, the armies retired to their camps bloodied, exhausted and no doubt dehydrated and famished. The result was inconclusive and once again the defence of their respective baggage trains played a significant role in that outcome.

  Antigonus reportedly lost 3,700 foot soldiers and fifty-four horsemen with a further 4,000 men wounded, where Eumenes lost 540 infantry and ‘very few cavalry’, with some 900 injured.176 The losses were to some extent irrelevant, for Antigonus managed to occupy the ground of the fallen and thus had first rights to the burial – a key component in claiming victory – when Eumenes’ men refused to abandon their waggons.177 There is no mention, however, of the penetrating lament of the aulos, the reed pipe played at death, or of a tropaion, the symbolic victory ‘tree’ on which the panoply of the fallen was hung with shields about the base and erected at the spot at which the tide of the battle was turned.178 This might suggest Antigonus knew his claim to the ground was dubious considering his far greater losses; according to Polyaenus, Antigonus detained the herald Eumenes sent to agree the terms of cremation and burial until all his own dead had been burned on a pyre.179

  Eumenes countered with his own ‘magnificent funeral’ once the enemy had departed; he had erected a tropaion previously after battle with Craterus. The aftermath of Paraetacene was also the occasion that saw the fallen Indian general, Ceteus, burned on a pyre, as his two wives vied for the honour of being torched alive beside him in the tradition of sati, as the Macedonians watched on with a morbid fascination.180

  It was Eumenes’ army that, nevertheless, managed to gain entry into the environs of Gabiene, while Antigonus, smarting from his deeper wounds, retired again to Gamarga in Peithon’s home satrapy of the still-unplundered Media to re-provision as winter closed in. The armies were separated by a nine-day march through a bitterly cold and waterless desert ‘… that contained nothing but sulphur mines, and stinking bogs, barren and uninhabited.’ The alternative route involved a twenty-five-day march through a more hospitable landscape.181

  It was close to the winter solstice and Antigonus had his men prepare ten days’ food that did not require cook
ing, and fearing he had spies in his camp, he let it be known that he was marching to Armenia. He struck out across the desert instead and issued orders that no fires were to be lit at night, a plan that was soon challenged by winds and bitter cold, forcing his men to heat themselves after five days on the march. The flames alerted local inhabitants to his presence; fast camels were sent to Peucestas, who, noting the abundance of the enemy lights, prepared to make off with his eastern command. Fearing a wholesale rhipsaspia, a dropping of shields in flight, Eumenes ‘calmed their fears’ by promising a delaying action, and he quickly roused his troops from their scattered billeting. Riding to a position clearly visible to Antigonus’ forces, he likewise ordered a string of fires to be lit as if a consolidated battlefront faced his advancing army. Antigonus abandoned his frontal assault and headed to provision.182

  The one-eyed veteran general was initially ‘filled with rage and mortification, imagining that the enemy must long ago have known his plans’. Realising ‘that he had been out-manoeuvred’ by a ruse straight from Xenophon’s Hipparchikos, Antigonus nevertheless determined to settle their disputes by an immediate pitched battle.183 He was informed that Eumenes’ forces were still strung out, with some detachments stationed a six-day march from others; Plutarch claimed Eumenes’ unruly Macedonians had distributed themselves where they liked.184 Keen to exploit the opportunity, Antigonus marched on Gabiene. Eumenes gathered his dispersed forces into a palisaded fort but the elephant contingent was slow to arrive; a cavalry clash ensued that saw Eumenes narrowly avert the capture of the entire corps of Indian beasts.185

  That would have been a decisive loss; as well as being deployed to trample infantry ranks, elephants were used to deflect cavalry charges, for horses detested their smell and were reduced to wheeling around them. Elephants were notoriously difficult to bring down, though they needed careful managing even in front of friendly ranks; at the battle at Gaza some four years on a total of fifty archers, javelineers and peltasts would be positioned between each of them. Directing them was even more precarious when they clashed head on when they would attempt to gore one another in the flanks; moreover, ‘leading’ elephants are repeatedly mentioned, suggesting the hierarchy behaviour of the fighting herd hinged on the alpha males, the largest bulls, which were even less predictable and more aggressive when mature bulls were in musth.186

  The logistics involved in provisioning these armies were intricate and daunting, and the quantity of food needed to support them was enormous. Asian elephants could consume up to five per cent of their 11,000-plus-lb (5,000-kilogram) bodyweight per day, and they regularly consumed 330 lb (150 kilograms) of plant material while drinking 70 pints (40 litres) of water. This made them a hindrance to both sides in siege warfare, as Polyperchon found out when enveloping Athens, and as Olympias would witness when bottled up at Pydna.187 And yet a daily elephant march might only cover 10 miles where the rest of the army could average 15.188 The 6,000-8,000 warhorses required high-starch fodder and the 30,000 men needed victualing with at least 3,600 calories and food containing 2.5 ounces (70 grams) of protein; the traditional daily ration in Persia had been 1 choenix of grain per day.189 Packhorses and mules, able to carry some 200 lb (camels could porter 300 lb) also needed 10 lb of grain and 8 gallons of water per day, though they (camels in particular) could be eaten on the march once their loads were expended.190 Hundreds of transport animals were needed to carry just a few days’ rations for armies of this size.

  According to Polyaenus, 10,000 water casks had to be readied for Antigonus’ ten-day march to confront Eumenes through the desert that provided ‘neither water, nor grass, nor wood, nor plant’.191 As Briant has pointed out, the Achaemenid administration did have a system of well-stocked official storehouses that would have been raided when possible, but we have no idea whether the Macedonians replenished them. So the strategic value and the scarcity of well-provisioned quarters, especially in winter on the Iranian Plateau, was illustrated by the dispersed nature of Eumenes’ men (ill discipline was probably not the sole reason) in even the well-provisioned region of Gabiene.

  The path of the Macedonian war machine, both campaigning with Alexander and now when total numbers were hardly diminished, must have been one of devastation from aggressive foraging and forced requisitioning. Engels calculated that passing armies of the broad sizes recorded would have devoured a 25-square-mile wheat crop and drained 100,000 gallons of water. Foragers could collect supplies from a 60- to 80-mile radius or a four-day journey from a stationary camp; this was reduced to 15 to 17 miles when on the move.192

  Besides troop numbers, many non-combatant camp followers were retained in some capacity: the interpreters, metalsmiths, cooks, herders, tanners, porters, waggon-drivers, hunters, slave traders, clerks, doctors, paymasters, guides, map-makers and engineers; most of a soldier’s pay would in fact have been ‘reinvested’ in the camp economy as evidenced by the debts run up by the army under Alexander in the East.193 This extravagant early Hellenistic warfare was heavy on cost and consequences, and it was only made possible by depleting the treasuries accumulated by the Achaemenid kings under a complex network of tax levies they had established over centuries. Such expenditure could not be sustained for long in the absence of the administrative stability needed to replenish those coffers.

  The pre-battle manoeuvres and continued chicanery, the double deceits and the realities of the brutal climate in this seasonal campaigning set the scene for the forthcoming final confrontation at Gabiene at the close of 316 BCE. Eumenes had employed his Cappadocian levies effectively, and by now, Antigonus had also harnessed the skills of xenagoi, foreign auxiliaries: Lycian, Pamphylian, Phrygian and Lydian troops were supporting the Macedonian ranks, no doubt supplied by Nearchus and Menander, governors of these regions; Antigonus’ long tenure of Asia Minor was being well exploited.194 They were supported by local Medians, care of Peithon, and alongside them Tarentine cavalry, local conscripts and mercenaries had been gathered from Alexander’s settlements along the way. Apart from harnessing their unique skills, fresh recruits arrived with little or no accumulated baggage, reducing their weighty vulnerability.195

  ‘Not out of goodwill or kindness, but to protect the money they had lent him [Eumenes]’, Phaedimus and Eudamus, who was now master of the elephants and who was possibly strategos of a region of India, brought word of the planned treachery of Teutamus, the Silver Shields commander.196 Eumenes may have already suspected intrigue; Teutamus had almost been turned by Antigonus’ promises before they departed Cilicia. Before the final scene played out, however, Eumenes might have dealt one more effective theatrical card. Facing opponents a generation younger, Antigenes of the Silver Shields sent out a horseman to the opposing phalanx; he proclaimed: ‘Oh wicked men, you are sinning against your fathers, who conquered the world under Philip and Alexander!’ This recalls the vocal threats from Xennias ‘in the Macedonian tongue’ when he attempted to dissuade the opposing Macedonians from fighting Eumenes’ veterans before the battle with Neoptolemus. Here, at Gabiene, it was a masterstroke of mental warfare and more effective than the traditional Macedonian battle cry of ‘Alalalalai’ to Enyalius, an epithet for Ares, the god of war.197

  Antigonus had strengthened his right wing; screened by the strongest elephants, Eumenes took position directly opposite on his own left as they prepared for the final face-off. As trumpets blasted and ranks engaged once more, Antigonus’ infantry ranks again collapsed under the Silver Shields’ charge. But the advancing elephants trampled dust from the uncultivated salt flat into a confusing haze, enabling the Median cavalry under Peithon and the Tarentines to seize Eumenes’ baggage train, while father and son – Antigonus and the young Demetrius – flanked the cavalry wing under Eudamus’ command. Although the Argyraspides killed 5,000 of those facing them without a single casualty (so propaganda claimed), the loss of the baggage train, along with Peucestas’ ‘lax and ignoble’ withdrawal from the battlefield, handed the day to Antigonus.198 It was Peucestas
’ non-performance that the Silver Shields ultimately blamed on their final defeat; perhaps it was a bittersweet on the battlefield revenge coordinated with Monopthalmos for his having been out-generalled by Eumenes off the battlefield at Persepolis. Or Hieronymus may have simply saddled Peucestas with a legacy of betrayal for his earlier attempt to wrest control from Eumenes.

  Eumenes’ repeated cavalry charges had not turned the tide. The now cut-off veteran infantry commanders were forced to form a defensive hollow square, as recommended by Xenophon in his Anabasis, a formation Homer might have termed a purgoi (literally ‘tower’); they retreated to safety by the bank of a river spitting accusations at Peucestas as they went.199 His Asian satraps advised flight; Eumenes proposed fighting as their overall casualties were few.200 But the capture of their baggage, and the loss of ‘2,000 women and a few children’, decided the outcome for the influential hypaspist brigade who now asked themselves why the ‘… best of the soldiers of Philip and Alexander, after all their toils, in their old age be robbed of their rewards.’