by David Grant
By implication, the current plight of Cleopatra was being highlighted if she was now under ‘house arrest’ in an Antigonus-controlled Sardis. Carney might be correct in surmising that Cleopatra had come to an understanding with Antigonus: she would enter no foreign marriage negotiations if he and his son Demetrius did not themselves forcefully wed her.123 Her attempt to unite with Perdiccas suggests that it was certainly within Eumenes’ power to broker a new marriage between her and Ptolemy using his influence with Olympias, and it might have been a Ptolemaic-Argead-Aeacid line that Augustus saw terminated in Alexandria some three centuries later.124
If Olympias’ vested interest in the Pamphlet is evident through its hostility to Antipater – though clearly both she and Eumenes shared that – the hieros gamos, the holy union suggested by the Will’s opening claim that she sired Alexander with the god, if this is not later embellishment, points more firmly to her involvement. That in turn posed Alexander as a true reincarnation of Heracles, Theseus and Dionysus, each born of gods through mortal mothers; Alexander appears to have returned the favour in the hope for a ‘consecration to immortality’ for his mother.125 Callisthenes had apparently claimed Olympias was already spreading ‘lies’ about Alexander’s semi-divine status when he was compiling his book on campaign.126 Her rejection of Philip was no doubt energised by her son’s visit to the oracle of Ammon at Siwa (if not vice versa), where the propaganda for his own divinity was born. The search for that status was, in fact, inevitable and overdue: Lesbos had erected altars to his father, now Philippic Zeus, some years before.127
Furthermore, Plutarch recorded the tradition that Philip had been warned by the Delphic oracle to hold Zeus-Ammon (the god’s Hellenised form) in special reverence, and he claimed that Philip had lost his eye as punishment for spying upon Olympias’ Orphic rituals. This story was bound up with Philip’s dream in which he put a seal upon Olympias’ womb with a lion device, where she herself dreamed a thunderbolt fell upon her as Alexander was conceived. That was no doubt inspired by Euripides’ Bacchae written at the Pellan court some eighty years before, which claimed the same occurred at the birth of Dionysus; Philip’s fate further recalls the punishment of the maenads on Pentheus for banning the worship of Dionysus.128 But Ammon’s attachment to the Pamphlet Will was really something of a fait accompli. Of course, the well-documented commemoratives to Alexander’s mortal father, rejected as part of the ‘last plans’ at Babylon, could not be fully dispensed with if a reissued Will was to appear genuine.
Could Olympias have authored the Pamphlet independently? Its structure certainly did require her support to fully realise the plans it was ushering in, and she would have added her designs to its more malevolent intent; she surely became an aggressive distributor of copies. In fact, the proposal that it was a Pella-sanctioned document was part of its expected efficacy, and because of that its origins would have been fairly obvious at the time. But the Pamphlet needed a military focus and an execution of martial policy that only Eumenes could provide. In that respect, some calls for help were obvious steps to take, but the complex web of military intrigues needed the experience only the campaigning Cardian and his satrapal intimacy could provide. The Pamphlet’s failure to feature the once ‘Antipater-sponsored’ Polyperchon, already bettered in Pella by Eurydice, reminds us that the new regent was neither the architect nor party to its design.129
Also on the ‘innocent’s’ list is Asander, and the Will confirmed his inheritance of Caria. Named satrap of the region at Babylon, he received the Antipater-Craterus-Antigonus alliance that returned to Asia in 321/320 BCE ‘as a friend’, though resistance was probably futile in the face of such a dominant force.130 Asander’s confrontation with Alcetas and Attalus, in which he came off worse, suggests he might have been a reluctant Antigonid ally from the outset; this is supported by his defection to Ptolemy in 315 BCE.131 Eumenes sensed Asander could be turned, and he was right, though his defection came too late. But we know little about his activity in the five or six years after Triparadeisus; he may well have withdrawn active support for Antigonus long before the final battle at Gabiene, as the war with Eumenes in the final two years was conducted far to the east of his own satrapy. The testament-provided gifts of 150 talents of silver to Cnidus and Miletus ought to be mentioned, as both cities resided in Caria; this looks like a promissory war chest with which Asander would conduct naval operations and incursions into Phrygia, or a bribe for neutrality, at least.132
The final guest salvaged from guilt alongside Perdiccas, Asander, Ptolemy and Lysimachus, was Holcias, whose fate must have been linked in some strategic way to the author’s. His prominence in the Pamphlet reads:
Over all the Illyrians, I appoint Holcias as governor and I award him a detachment of 500 requisitioned horses and 3,000 talents of silver coin, which he is to use for the making of statues of Alexander, Ammon, Athena, Heracles, Olympias and my father Philip. These he is to set up in the shrine of Olympia.133
Holcias commanded 3,000 ‘heavy’ Macedonian infantry (Polyaenus termed them ‘hoplites’, so possibly hypaspists), and having defected from the ranks of Antigonus, he set about ravaging the Taurus Mountains bordering Lycaonia and Phrygia. That action in autumn 319 BCE coincided with Eumenes’ incarceration at Nora, which, recalling Plutarch’s geographical description, must once again have been located nearby.134
Holcias’ brigade of renegades was potentially among the captives rounded up by Antigonus after battle at Orcynia, and who pledged their loyalty to their captor in the absence of immediate options. In which case their ‘opportunistic defection’ becomes more readily explainable. Alternatively, they may have been with the Macedonian ‘friends’ and soldiers Eumenes disbanded before entering the fortress, which does not discount their capture immediately after; as Plutarch described the start of the siege: ‘As he wandered about and sought to elude his enemies, Eumenes persuaded most of his soldiers to leave him.’135
Now at large, and defying Antigonus’ calls for their surrender, Holcias and his men may have been lingering in the vicinity waiting for either an opportune moment to storm the Nora palisade (in spring), or for Eumenes to negotiate his own freedom meantime. Other allies had remained in the region, as Diodorus’ coverage of Eumenes’ release some months on confirmed: ‘Thus unexpectedly saved after a considerable time, he stayed for the present in Cappadocia, where he gathered together his former friends and those who had once served under him and were now wandering about the country.’136 Holcias may even have attempted to get word to the Perdiccan faction under Alcetas, who was himself under siege at Cretopolis, or meeting a bloody end at Termessus where his tomb has now been identified.137
Antigonus hesitated to kill Holcias and his brigade when they were eventually lured out of the mountains and captured through a deception. He, along with two other ‘leaders of the revolt’, agreed to forced repatriation to Macedonia and to being chaperoned home by Leonidas who, curiously, had been the commander of the 3,000 ataktoi, the ‘disciplinary unit’ Alexander had formed after Parmenio’s death. Yet this seems a rather quixotic amnesty from Antigonus and more so when we consider the eventual fate of the Silver Shields and their commanders who were executed at Gabiene.138 Either Antigonus had his own plans for the brigade back in Macedonia, or they were freed as part of the bargaining between Eumenes and him at Nora, suggesting machinations yet to unfold.139 It is not inconceivable that Antigonus envisaged Holcias and his men operating under Eumenes, who would then become his advocate with the royals at Pella.
From the perspective of the pamphleteers, however, once Holcias was back in Macedonia, he could give Olympias the personal army she had begged Eumenes to provide. The actual fate of he and his men is unknown; she may even have employed them well against the family of Cassander in her well-attested pogrom. The Will grant to Holcias included control of Illyria, and an additional 500 horses and 3,000 talents of silver, which was ostensibly a donation for the construction of statues, but presumably a campaign fund fo
r waging war.
But why place him in Illyria? Well, the location was strategically opportune; the region did not encroach upon Lysimachus’ satrapal grant or upon Macedonia itself, and yet it provided a ‘local’ staging point for operations against Pella. Holcias’ authority may have been specifically aimed at suppressing any trouble in the region that could be stirred up by Eurydice with her Illyrian roots and claims that stretched back to King Bardylis.140 If Eumenes and Olympias planned to remove Philip III and his queen in favour of Alexander IV, they might have expected the Illyrian regime to mount a new challenge to the throne, as they had done for generations when Macedonia was divided. This could now be mitigated and Illyrian support even harnessed; Holcias’ own standing and legitimacy was being boosted by the Will’s pairing of his sister, Cleodice, to the now-dead but useful Leonnatus, the prominent Somatophylax linked to the Lycestian royal house.141
Completing the rundown of those favourably dealt with by the Pamphlet, we have Craterus, the ‘overseer of the whole Kingdom of Macedonia’, for the Will granted him a wife of royal blood, suggesting posthumous respect. Eumenes may have genuinely offered to reconcile Perdiccas and Craterus before settling affairs in battle, and he certainly knew how important Craterus was to the veterans; as Plutarch put it, the death of ‘… Craterus… of all the successors of Alexander, was most regretted by the Macedonians.’142 He had after all rivalled the first chiliarch in importance to Alexander: ‘most affection for Hephaestion, most respect for Craterus.’ His son of the same name went on to support his half-brother, Antigonus II Gonatas, and somewhat ironically he may have later befriended Hieronymus at Gonatas’ court.143 But it was not posthumous respect that was being displayed in the Pamphlet, and neither was Eumenes’ post-battle contrition at Craterus’ death anything more than contrived sumpentheo, a ‘suffering togetherness’, to defray immediate Macedonian anger. Eumenes cast the blame on Neoptolemus, who precipitated the clash, and he ensured Craterus’ body was cremated and his bones returned to his widow, Phila, Antipater’s influential daughter.144
Alexander’s original Will most likely would have paired Craterus, the new regent-to-be, with an Argead woman, though it’s questionable whether it was the choice proposed in the Pamphlet: Cynnane. But this was now a safe pairing to broadcast without repercussions since both of them were dead.145 The match cast a shadow on both Antipater’s extended regency and his offering Phila to Craterus, as it implied Cynnane had been displaced by the regent and rejected by Craterus too. The match would, nevertheless, provide an explanation for Cynnane’s crossing to Asia with her daughter, for Craterus was then still based in Cilicia; if she had already been rejected, better prospects for their survival lay in Asia too in the form of the newly crowned King Philip III.146 The Pamphlet’s promotion of Cynnane additionally damned her killer, Alcetas, for he had all but abandoned Eumenes when refusing to work under him at Celaenae.147
Craterus’ own inheritance of the regency was clearly too well attested to doctor in the new Will, but Eumenes may have found a subtler way to cast suspicion on the popular general. For the Pamphlet claimed that the central plotters against Alexander’s life, Cassander and his brother Iolaos, had planned to meet up in Cilicia once the king was dead, and this was exactly where Craterus was still encamped with his 10,000 veterans. That smacked of complicity and it even called into question support Antipater had enjoyed from Polyperchon, for he too was in Cilicia with Craterus, as were the prominent commanders Polydamas (possibly a Thessalian noble and hence a close acquaintance of the ‘guilty’ Medius of Larissa), Gorgias and Antigenes who might be openly accused if they failed to unite with Eumenes.148
The Pamphlet testament allocated Cilicia to a Nicanor whom Eumenes must have been attempting to seduce into the coalition; he was plausibly the officer who was allocated Cappadocia at Triparadeisus. Sensing he too could be turned (he was obviously not at Medius’ banquet or he would have named ‘innocent’), Eumenes respectfully shunted him sideways to make way for his own reinstatement in the previously unconquered satrapy. The flattery didn’t work; Nicanor appears to have served Antigonus well, possibly receiving Eumenes’ final surrender at Gabiene, though a mutual respect does seem to have been in place: he is said to have allowed Eumenes his request to speak to his men before incarceration.149 Nicanor may even have been subsequently elevated to strategos of Media and the upper satrapies after Peithon’s execution in 315 BCE, though a dozen Nicanors are identified with Alexander’s campaign.150 Another credible alternative, in the context of the Pamphlet’s courting of useful allies, is Nicanor the philos of Ptolemy who captured Coele-Syria from Laomedon and then garrisoned Phoenicia; an allied presence in Cilicia would give the coalition powerful naval bases and wider shipbuilding capability.151
Before we dissect the guilty list, Eumenes’ release from Nora raises another fundamental question: could Antigonus Monophthalmos, who ‘had in mind to go through Asia, remove the existing satraps, and reorganise the positions of command in favour of his friends’, have been involved in the Pamphlet’s birth, for much of its directed malice matched his aims?152 Antigonus did go on to remove Peithon and Peucestas before targeting Seleucus, and he may well have agreed to wipe out the house of Antipater had events taken a different path; in fact he did try, through Polyperchon, in a post-315 BCE realignment. Ptolemy and Lysimachus were initially in league with Antigonus. So the answer to involvement is ‘yes’, but not to the Pamphlet in the final format we see it, for too many of his friends (Nearchus, Medius and Menander, for example) were implicated in the treason. If it had been drafted independently, then Eumenes and Perdiccas would have fallen on the wrong side of conspiracy. But an ‘early model’ of the Pamphlet (like an early model of the oath) may well have been discussed as part of Eumenes’ release mechanism at Nora, and had he chosen to join Antigonus then, the Pamphlet’s overall aims may well have become more fully realised.
If one of the central aims of the Pamphlet was to bring down Antigonus, why didn’t the author(s) implicate him in conspiratorial guilt? Simply put, it would not have been credible; Antigonus had not been at Babylon and neither had he been associated with the other accused hetairoi in many years. Moreover, Antipater and Cassander maintained what appears to be a well-documented distrust towards Antigonus who was a hardly viable partner in their plot to murder the king.153 Perhaps Eumenes was using the Pamphlet – potentially threatening to Antigonus through his associations but with no outright accusations yet made – to bring him to the bargaining table, and this time not as his ‘better’, but as an ‘equal’.
THE FRIENDS OF THE ENEMIES OF THE PAMPHLETEERS
Now, so not to appear evasive, I shall name those who were there, unlike Onesicritus who, in his desire to avoid controversy, refrained from telling. There was Perdiccas, Medius, Leonnatus, erat teon (sic), Meleager, theoclus (sic), Asander, Philip, Nearchus, Stasanor, Heracleides the Thracian, polydorus (sic), Holcias, Menander… (Peithon, Peucestas, Ptolemy, Lysimachus… Europius, Ariston of Pharsalus, Philip the engineer, Philotas).154
We should first address the oft-cited reference to Onesicritus and his reported fear of retribution in the Metz Epitome version of the Liber de Morte (T1), which has obviously suffered through time. Once again, we cannot be sure that the reference to Onesicritus is original content, though the same sentiment can be found in the Vulgate texts and so is potentially traceable back to Cleitarchus; that does suggest it could be Pamphlet-originating for the Vulgate absorbed its conspiracy detail.155 It is widely held that Onesicritus published a book covering major aspects of the campaign before the other eyewitness sources, and earlier than Nearchus, who, it seems, found fault with Onesicritus’ claims. Not associated with the military strife of the early Successor Wars, Onesicritus could have published an account – which touched upon Alexander’s death (he may, or may not, have mentioned nameless rumours of foul play) – before the Pamphlet was released, a necessary conclusion if this extract is to be taken at face value.
The op
ening lines of this Metz Epitome allegation were written by someone who could only have been renowned as an eyewitness to events at Babylon. Here Eumenes may well have usefully contrived, and then attached, a fearful silence to the already famous court philosopher, in order to authenticate the Pamphlet allegations with a truly cynical and brilliant twist. This brings us to the men Onesicritus supposedly declined to name, and who were rather creatively represented (in what was most likely later embellishment) as the living parts of the gruesome creature brought to Alexander.156
The first of those named as guilty was Medius who became a central cog in the Pamphlet’s wheel of misfortune when he was cited as the complicit organiser of Alexander’s final banquet. He and Aristonus had initially operated under Perdiccas when tasked with the invasion of Cyprus.157 Their quick defeat by Antigonus may perhaps have been ‘easy capitulation’ for they came to immediate terms; Aristonus retired to Macedonia (though his allegiance remained intact) and Medius joined Antigonus, on the spot or sometime soon after.158 Arrian believed that Iolaos, the bearer of the poisoned cup, was Medius’ eromenos, his younger lover; if there was any truth in the claim, then Medius’ role in the treason was easily fabricated and probably an inevitable association for the pamphleteers to make.159
The prominent Leonnatus was next heaped on the guilty pyre and it is not difficult to imagine why. Something resolved him to a course of action that was painted by Plutarch as underhanded: the abandoning of Eumenes in Asia Minor in a covert bid to claim Cleopatra’s hand in an attempt to take the throne of Macedonia. Olympias was no doubt proffering her daughter to powerful men to ‘spike Antipater’s dynastic guns’, and in Plutarch’s version the offer did originate with Cleopatra who may then have enrolled Eumenes in the cause.160
