In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great
Page 90
Teutamus soon opened covert negotiations with Antigonus.201 Promises were exchanged, Eumenes was seized and handed over, and Plutarch recorded a scathing speech in which Eumenes upbraided the traitors. He and Justin, possibly drawing from Duris of Samos if he did display any hostility towards the Cardian (that would be consistent with his apparent iconoclastic treatment of the reputations of other ‘great men’, especially those working on behalf of the Macedonian regime), presented the allegation that Eumenes attempted to flee.202 So guarded as if he was ‘a furious lion or a savage elephant’, Eumenes was eventually executed when a synedrion of Macedonians voted for his death despite the reported pleas from Demetrius and Nearchus for his life to be spared.203 He was aged forty-five.204
Antigonus slew Eudamus; Antigenes, the long-time career soldier honoured by Alexander in a military contest some fifteen years before and more recently rewarded for slaying Perdiccas in Egypt, was reportedly thrown into a pit and burned alive. Teutamus’ earlier intrigues might have saved his life, though his fate is unattested. Amphimachus the governor of Mesopotamia, and Stasander, a supporting satrap from Areia-Drangiana, were most likely executed too. A further 1,000 of the Argyraspides were sent off to Arachosia, broadly modern Afghanistan; Diodorus claimed the region’s satrap, the previously humiliated Sibyrtius who subsequently enjoyed a long tenure there, was given orders to send them on dangerous missions to annihilate the unit. The rest were forced into garrison duty ‘… that not a man of them might ever return to Macedonia or behold the Grecian sea.’205 The Silver Shields brigade was never heard of again, though Seleucus might have later managed to recruit survivors into his ranks.206
Meanwhile, in Macedonia the fate of Olympias, Roxane, Alexander IV, his fiancée Deidameia the Epirote princess and Thessalonice with them, was in the balance, as they were besieged by Cassander at Pydna.207 Although Aristonus still held Amphipolis and Monimus controlled Pella, neither they nor Olympias’ nephew, Aeacides of the Molossian royal house, nor Polyperchon who was himself under siege in Azorus in northern Thessaly, were able to come to her aid by land or sea. After holding out for months by eating the rotting flesh from the corpses, and while watching her followers (and elephants) die of starvation, Olympias’ soldiers asked her to release them from her service. Following her own failed escape by ship she sued for terms with Cassander who agreed to nothing but her personal safety; she ordered Aristonus to submit and hand over Amphipolis on similar pledges of safety.
Cassander had Aristonus, Alexander’s former Bodyguard, murdered immediately, and he called for a similar end to Olympias who was condemned in absentia by a hastily convened Assembly, as any wider forum might have voted more sympathetically. After failing to lure her into a further sham escape attempt, some 200 of Cassander’s best soldiers were sent in for the kill, but they were ‘overawed by her exulted rank’. It was left to relatives of Olympias’ victims to finally slay her. She was either run through with a blade or summarily stoned to death, though she ‘uttered no ignoble or womanish plea’ so that ‘you might have perceived the soul of Alexander in his dying mother’. Clearly recalling her treatment of the grave of his brother Iolaos, Olympias’ body was left unburied by Cassander, though her clan, the Aeacids, possibly under Pyrrhus (who named his daughter Olympias), may have interred her nearby with honours some years later.208 The ‘royal alliance’ perpetuated by Olympias and Eumenes, which saw them both under siege, had finally been wiped out.
Eumenes’ portfolio of subterfuges had ensured his survival for a time, but there remains an inevitability to the fate of ‘the pest from the Chersonese’ as the Macedonians lately called him.209 His credentials, though impressive, were ultimately non-Macedonian in origin. Despite his intimacy with the dead king and his last acting chiliarch who both sheltered him from the full force of prejudice, he remained an ineligible candidate for either the throne at Pella, or as strategos of the Asian Empire; we recall that Eumenes had himself refrained from voting at the Common Assembly at Babylon (an enfranchisement only possible if he had been nationalised as a citizen by Philip or Alexander). He was ultimately impotent with anyone but his own Asian levies, a handicap he himself is said to have openly voiced.210 It is a testament to Eumenes’ charisma and powers of persuasion that he managed to hold the Macedonian core of his coalition together to fight three major pitched battles when veteran home-grown generals of repute lay across the plain.
Alexander’s hetairoi appear to have discarded their Asiatic wives at, or soon after, his death, with the notable exception of Seleucus who remained married to Apame the daughter of Spitamenes, and possibly with the exception of Eumenes too.211 For Plutarch and Nepos reported that at his death Eumenes’ bones were conveyed to his mother, wife, and children in Cappadocia in a silver urn following a ‘magnificent funeral’.212 We have no evidence that Eumenes was married to anyone other than a daughter (or granddaughter) of Artabazus, which explains the presence in his ranks of Artabazus’ son, Pharnabazus.213 This suggests that far from abandoning his wife, Eumenes saw the value in maintaining his marriage with Persian nobility.
‘Children have to be deceived with knucklebones, men with oaths.’ The aphorism has been variously attributed to Philip II and the Spartan, Lysander.214 Oaths, Wills, royal mandates, faked letters, dream visions, guile and brilliant deceits, and we suggest the Pamphlet too, had become part of Eumenes’ repertoire. If he had departed Babylon with any notion that he might enjoy a quiet governorship once installed in Cappadocia, he miscalculated badly. For one man above any other harboured a very different design.
‘ALEXANDER REAPED ASIA, AND I BUT GLEAN AFTER HIM.’215
Eumenes went down to meet him [Antigonus] and they embraced one another with greetings of friendship and affection, since they had formerly been close associates and intimate companions.216
The relationship between Eumenes and Antigonus is truly intriguing. The poignant moment highlighted here, which took place early in the siege at Nora, implied Antigonus felt some kind of ‘guardianship’ as well as affection for the gifted young former court secretary, a bond that must have been established during Eumenes’ years under Philip at Pella.217
Eumenes had a worthy adversary in Antigonus son of Philip from Elimea in Upper Macedonia, who was some twenty years his senior. Already honoured as a benefactor to the Ionian League city of Priene (Caria) in 334 BCE – the very first year of Alexander’s Asian campaign – little is heard about Antigonus’ offstage services in the decade that followed his mopping-up duties after the battle at Issus, from which as many as 8,000 Greeks, besides Asiatic soldiers, had managed to escape. It was a significant mandate fulfilled with extremely limited troops, and in the face of the Persian successes of Pharnabazus who was retaking the coastal cities of Asia Minor, for this clearly constituted a threat to the entire Macedonian rear.218
Throughout Alexander’s anabasis into the Persian interior, Antigonus operated as his regional strategos in central Asia Minor. He may have even struck an accord that kept Ariarathes, king of the still-unconquered Cappadocia, from causing trouble, a stable relationship that could explain the reason, or the excuse, for Antigonus’ refusal to assist Eumenes’ in taking control of the region. Justifiably then, he had more cause to resent Eumenes’ inheritance than anyone. But we sense Antigonus’ responsibility was wider still, maintaining communications and safe passage from the Mediterranean coast through Asia Minor into Mesopotamia, whence Parmenio’s own regional command protected Alexander’s back when he was in the further eastern provinces.219
The years 320 BCE to the close of 316 BCE, in which he battled with Eumenes, are studded with military intrigues that appealed to Polyaenus (who claimed to be of Macedonian descent) and many were attributed to Antigonus Monopthalmos.220 From the Battle of Paraetacene to Eumenes’ death at the beginning of 315 BCE, through the Third Diadokhoi War (which lasted to the Peace of the Dynasts in 311 BCE) and on down to the battle at Ipsus in 301 BCE, Antigonus dominated the literary sources. He reportedly summed
up his fate (and his own harsh money-raising tactics) with: ‘Alexander reaped Asia, and I but glean after him.’221
When Antipater promoted him at Triparadeisus to his strategos in Asia, Antigonus had two ambitious and capable sons fast maturing, with a brother, a half-brother and two talented nephews entering his ranks; it was a dynasty evolving to match any that might make a challenge for power.222 The charismatic general, with his intimidating physique and booming voice, must have been a mighty personality to overshadow Alexander’s strategoi and former Somatophylakes as he did in the intervening years; he stopped Ptolemy from (permanently) expanding north from Egypt, he kept Lysimachus west of the Hellespont and Seleucus east of the Euphrates until the year before his death.223 Moreover, his politicking in Greece through his capable son, Demetrius, ensured Cassander never quite dominated the peninsula with the result that no hostile coalition could attack his interests from there.
Though blind in one eye, Antigonus never lost sight of opportunity. He appreciated the value of Asiatic cavalry, neutralising the effect of Eumenes’ own locally recruited mounted troops so that the manoeuvres at Orcynia, Paraetacene and Gabiene were matched by a dexterity that rendered total victory impossible.224 Although at times stubborn and failing to heed the advice of subordinates, Antigonus was also an innovator who adopted field fortifications such as the palisade and ditch castrametation developed by Chabrias and Iphicrates a century before.225 Both he and Eumenes were clearly masters of psychological warfare; Antigonus’ attempts to lure the Silver Shields to his cause with barbed accusatory letters, requiring Eumenes to deliver counter-speeches to stifle the defections, was part of a game being waged both ways.226 But after the capture and execution of White Cleitus in 318 BCE, it was the one-eyed general who ‘gained a great reputation for military genius’.227
Tarn noted that Antigonus (and surely Eumenes too) often took himself out of the battle to direct the developing set pieces from a withdrawn or elevated position, so complex had the formations, gambits and counter-moves become.228 Understanding and studying the enemy was essential, for both were duping the other into believing their ranks were swelled by arriving allies or ready for battle when in fact they were not.229 The description of Antigonus’ analysis of the opposing troops’ disposition at Paraetacenae bears out Tarn’s observation:
As Antigonus looked down from a high position, he saw the battle lines of his enemy and disposed his own army accordingly. Seeing that the right wing of the enemy had been strengthened with the elephants and the strongest of the cavalry, he arrayed against it the lightest of his horsemen, who, drawn up in open order, were to avoid a frontal action but maintain a battle of wheeling tactics and in this way thwart that part of the enemies’ forces in which they had the greatest confidence.230
The battle at Gabiene just a few months later would have developed in just as intricate a fashion had not the plain been completely shrouded in dust.231 With the Silver Shields encircled and Eumenes in chains, Antigonus had strengthened his position in Asia to the point where he was unassailable, with a multi-province income of 11,000 talents per annum via his network of dioiketai, the revenue-collecting financial officials; he was on his way to becoming ‘the mightiest king of his day’.232 And by 315 BCE any power balances that Alexander’s testament had attempted to put in place were truly being tested; the tectonic plates were shifting and tremors were afoot.
Emboldened by his defeat of Eumenes, Antigonus soon deepened the groans of a fracturing empire to a full earthquake. He removed Peucestas from his Persian domains after winning over Xenophilus, the phrourarchos of the citadel at Susa who capitulated soon after Gabiene.233 Antigonus availed himself of its 15,000 talents with Seleucus’ blessing, having extended his authority over Susiane, for together they now planned to rule the East, or so Seleucus initially believed.234 The haul included the Persian king’s golden jewel-encrusted climbing vine (possibly symbolising fecundity and strength) mentioned by Herodotus a century before.235
Antigonus had already stripped Ecbatana of 5,000 talents in uncoined silver, and following his execution of Peithon, whom he suspected of plotting against him (the charges may well have been fabricated), he raided ‘Persia’, collecting further gifts and spoils, some 25,000 talents in all.236 It took twenty-two days for the pack camels and waggon train loaded with treasure to reach Babylon, a westward transfer of wealth that might suggest Antigonus’ lack of faith in his ability to control the eastern satrapies indefinitely. Much of the gold and silver would have ended up in the treasury at Cyinda and the other easily defended citadels of Pergamum and at Sardis on the steep rocky spur that extends out from Mount Tmolus.237
Upon his arrival in Babylon in late 315 BCE, Seleucus honoured Antigonus with gifts ‘suitable for a king’. Whilst the generosity proved somewhat prophetic, Seleucus had miscalculated Antigonus’ intent; for in the self-appointed guise of chiliarchos to the kings – effectively Perdiccas’ previous role as the empire overseer – Antigonus demanded accounts for the provincial revenues. Seleucus repudiated what amounted to a challenge to his authority and upheld his claim to the region that had been ‘given him in recognition of his services rendered while Alexander was alive’, whereafter he fled to Egypt with nothing more than fifty horsemen fearing he would be ‘seized’ and ‘destroyed’ as Peithon had been before him. But ‘by condemning himself to exile’, he had surrendered his own satrapy, even if he emerged as a successful fleet commander working in league with Ptolemy, who now saw the writing on the wall.238
The year that spanned late 316-315 BCE, in which Antigonus swung the former regent, Polyperchon, to his cause (though in a toothless role in the Peloponnese), was an extraordinary period for the one-eyed general, and it laid the foundations for an invasion of Phoenicia and Syria. Antigonus’ successes were only overshadowed by Ptolemy’s acquisition of Cyprus and the continued defiance of Tyre which would eventually lead to a siege lasting fifteen months (ending late 314 BCE).239 For not only did Antigonus finally have a navy of some 240 fully equipped warships (construction of which employed 8,000 men) and full control of the treasuries, he gained essential new minting facilities; within his original sphere of influence over Pamphylia, Lycia and Greater Phrygia, only Side on the Pamphylian coast had any history of striking coins.240
But Antigonus’ unwillingness to share the Asian soil and his combat spoils heralded in the Fourth Diadokhoi War (commenced 308 BCE) which resulted in successes in Athens (307 BCE) and Cyprus (306 BCE) but disastrous assaults on Rhodes (305-304 BCE) and Egypt (306 BCE). His bid for outright supremacy finally rallied the new self-proclaimed kings – Lysimachus, Seleucus, Cassander and Ptolemy – into a determined koinonia, a commonality of purpose, that culminated in the confrontation at Ipsus in 301 BCE: ‘Prompted not so much by goodwill towards one another as compelled by the fears each had for himself, they moved readily to make common cause in the supreme struggle.’241
Their motivation was simple: combining numbers prevented Antigonus from dealing with them piecemeal. Cassander was absent from the battle though he sent two contingents of men: a modest force under Prepelaus, and one of 12,500 soldiers under his brother, Pleistarchus (many were lost in the sea crossing), while Ptolemy ventured north only as far as Sidon. The ruse Antigonus used to stop the Egyptian dynast in his tracks looks somewhat familiar: he dispatched men with false reports of his victory over Seleucus and Lysimachus, along with his plan for the invasion of Syria; Ptolemy retired to Egypt fearing the worst.242 The deceit was vintage Eumenes reincarnated, but the rest of the coalition army was regrouping in northern Asia Minor for the eventual clash on the Phrygian plain.
Stumbling out of his tent and apparently falling flat on his face, Antigonus is said to have approached the battlefield at Ipsus without his usual infective bonhomie.243 Perhaps he still had the dark Magi prophecy on his mind which harked back to Seleucus’ escape at Babylon some fourteen years before:
… then, the Chaldean astrologers came to him and foretold that, if ever he let
Seleucus escape from his hands, the consequence would be that all Asia would become subject to Seleucus, and that Antigonus himself would lose his life in a battle against him.244
Or, after decades of indecisive campaigning, a sepulchral father and son may have recalled the words now attributed to Plato: ‘Only the dead have seen the end of war.’245 Antigonus may have simply foreseen the carnage that would result from 150,000 armed men fighting under the lethal command of the Macedonian kings whose pike-bearers were potentially now armed with the longest sarissai ever seen.246 Some 475 war elephants were arrayed alongside scythed chariots, the drepanephoroi, ready to be let loose on the amassed phalanges, for Hellenistic warfare now harnessed the most ruthless devices ever witnessed on the battlefield.247
The picture of the battle itself and the campaign leading up to it is ill-defined because Diodorus’ twenty-first book survives in tatters.248 However, Plutarch’s Life of Demetrius captured something of the tension. Summoning Demetrius from Greece (where he almost fought a major battle with Cassander in Thessaly), and apparently surprised by Lysimachus’ incursion into Asia Minor while he himself was paying more attention to games and festivals in his new Syrian capital, Antigonea, Antigonus predicted his enemies would be ‘scattered asunder with a single stone and a single shout, as if they were a flock of granivorous birds’.249 And yet signs augured otherwise:
At that time, moreover, bad omens also subdued their spirits. For Demetrius dreamed that Alexander, in brilliant array of armour, asked him what watchword they were going to give for the battle: and when he replied ‘Zeus and Victory’, Alexander said: ‘Then, I will go away and join your adversaries: they surely will receive me.’250
If Gaugamela had been a ‘Panhellenic set-piece’, then Ipsus was the Hellenistic equivalent: a multi-national tableau with mercenaries and Asiatic troops featuring prominently on both sides. The battle lines would once again have been arrayed with great empeiria, for the Diadokhoi each by now had thirty years, or more, of campaigning under their belts. But what initially appeared a ‘brilliant’ cavalry action by Demetrius was not so impressive after all, for the ‘flight’ of Antiochus, the son of Seleucus, looks familiar and contrived. Demetrius was isolated behind a wall of elephants and could not ride to the aid of his father who was being overwhelmed; Demetrius barely managed to escape with some 9,000 men.251