There was one other clause in the peace of 311. Kassander was given the title
‘ strategos over Europe’, a non-existent offi ce, in imitation of that which Antigonos had held in Asia. Polyperchon was thus demoted even further and subordinated
to Kassander; there is no sign that he had been consulted. Kassander’s new title meant little, but was an apparent acknowledgement of Antigonos’ claim to the
regency, and that all these campaigning satraps were only really doing it on behalf of their king, Alexander IV. The boy was now 12 years old, and would reach his majority in at most six years. At that time he could claim power. Kassander’s offi ce of ‘ strategos over Europe’ would therefore expire by 305.
Antigonos’ career had been one of seizing opportunities: fi rst his capacity
for government and command had been shown in the aftermath of Issos, then
his capacity for intrigue brought him to the usefully vague position as ‘ strategos over Asia’. He exploited this to campaign against Eumenes, gaining Asia as
a result. But his acquisition of great military and fi nancial power scared his con tempo raries into a coalition. The defeat of Gaza began the slow destruction of his power, though he controlled huge territories still. This did not dent his control of the Persian treasure and of Alexander’s empire from Babylonia to the Aegean, nor did his enemies make much progress against him, but it did suggest that the restoration of Alexander’s empire by one man’s efforts was going to be impossible.
9
The new king, 311–306 bc
The peace of 311 did not last. It is likely none of them expected it to, and Seleukos was excluded from the start, so fi ghting never stopped. The war in the east
continued for several years, ending in a formal peace in 308. Had Antigonos won, he could have turned with all the more power on his western enemies, and they
certainly understood this, so that the truce in the west broke down fairly soon.
Antigonos was unable to concentrate for long on his eastern war, and his central position became converted into over-extension, where his enemies were able to
attack unexpectedly wherever he was weak.
His nephew Polemaios had been promoted by Antigonos in the past, and was
successful in Karia and in Greece during the last war, but now he saw Antigonos’
own sons, especially Demetrios, overtaking him, and aimed to create an
independent realm of his own in Greece. He contacted Kassander, who naturally
encouraged and helped him, and subverted Antigonos’ governor in Hellespontine
Phrygia. 1 For Antigonos, this took precedence over the war with Seleukos, and he took the opportunity to move against Ptolemy’s outposts in Kilikia. The war in the west was on again, after only a year, but little effort went into the fi ghting at fi rst.
Antigonos’ son Philippos speedily dealt with Hellespontine Phrygia. 2 Antigonos contacted Polyperchon, who was still in Greece with an army and had control
of Corinth and Sikyon, in an attempt to distract and possibly remove Kassander.
Herakles, Alexander’s son by Barsine, now about 17, was delivered to Polyperchon, along with money, some troops and an alliance with the Aitolians. He used the
boy as a fi gurehead in an attempt to take Macedon away from Kassander. After a tense armed confrontation, Kassander persuaded Polyperchon to kill his protégé and set himself up as a local tyrant as Kassander’s man in the Peloponnese. This marked the end of Polyperchon’s importance. 3
Ptolemy meanwhile reacted to the attacks on his Kilikian posts by a wide-
ranging naval expedition. First he fastened his control on Cyprus by eliminating the last of the local city kings, and placed his brother Menelaos there as viceroy.4
He cruised along the coast of southern Asia Minor seizing control of a string
of towns and forts and cities – Korakesion, Phaselis, Xanthos, Patara, Kaunos, Myndos – which established his full control over the eastern Mediterranean
from Cyrenaica round to the Aegean, apart from Phoenicia. Large numbers of
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soldiers were to come from Pamphylia and Pisidia in Ptolemaic service, funnelled through these towns. 5 Korakesion was strongly fortifi ed and became the seat of his power in the area.
In the Aegean, Ptolemy based himself on Kos, and contacted Polemaios who
rather trustingly visited him; Ptolemy decided he would not be a useful tool, and killed him. 6 He seized a strategic post at Itanos at the eastern end of Crete, which he fortifi ed, and then moved across to the Peloponnese. He had issued a rival
‘freedom’ proclamation to counter that of Antigonos many years before, but the Greek cities were suspicious of him. He seized control of Corinth and Sikyon,
and then asked for contributions to his expenses. This confi rmed all those Greek suspicions; they made polite noises and his local support faded away.7
The Macedonian royal family had provided the main casualties in this confl ict.
The peace of 311 was in fact a disguised invitation to the jailers to eliminate any members of the family they held. None of them, having been independent rulers
for a decade, was prepared to submit again. Kassander’s appointment as ‘ strategos over Europe’ was to last only until Alexander IV reached his majority; within a year he had arranged for both Alexander and his mother to be murdered. (The
exact date is not clear, for he could scarcely announce it right away, but 310 or 309
seem most likely.) Only Polyperchon had taken Herakles seriously as a candidate.
During his naval campaign, Ptolemy contacted Kleopatra (under Antigonos’
control in Sardis), with a proposal of marriage. She escaped briefl y, but was captured and murdered at Antigonos’ orders. By 308, there were no members of
the old Argead royal family left alive,8 but Alexander IV was assumed to be king still by the general public. 9
The war between Antigonos and Seleukos ended in 308. Seleukos secured
control of Susiana before Demetrios attacked Babylon in 311, and afterwards
he was able to make a quick campaign into Media, where Nikanor, Antigonos’
governor, was quickly eliminated. 10 Seleukos made contact with the eastern satraps, the men who had opposed the ambition of Peithon to control them,
and had felt the same about Nikanor. Seleukos, unlike Antigonos, had been with Alexander all through the eastern campaigns, and was able to reassure them. One source implies that Seleukos travelled as far east as the Paropamisadai, but this seems unlikely, for Seleukos was under attack in the west, when Antigonos freed himself of his enemies there. 11
The course of the fi ghting between the two in 310–308 is largely unknown,
except that it took place in Babylonia and Mesopotamia. By his quick eastern
expedition Seleukos had eliminated the possibility of being attacked from the
Iranian side, and was also able to draw on Iranian manpower. The fi nal battle, the only one recorded in any detail, was a two-day affair: the fi rst day was a draw, after which the two armies withdrew for a night’s rest. Antigonos’ army settled down, but Seleukos kept his men armed, and attacked before the other army
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was ready.12 Seleukos was able to drive Antigonos’ forces out of Babylonia and from much of Mesopotamia, and Antigonos was persuaded to agree to a peace
agreement. The terms are not known, but some can be deduced.
Mesopotamia was divided between the two men, who fortifi ed their holdings.
Antigonos developed a line of towns – Edessa, Karrhai, Ichnai – as a forward
defence for the vital Euphrates crossing at Thapsakos, which was now becoming
called simply Zeugma – ‘the Bridge’. Seleukos’ towns were further east, blocking the routes along the Euphra
tes and across the Mesopotamian steppe at Nisibis,
and Dura-Europos. A wide area of no-man’s-land was left between them.13
By the end of 308, Antigonos’ situation had deteriorated, but it was also made clearer. He controlled Asia Minor and Syria, together with part of Mesopotamia.
Seleukos was for the moment fought to a standstill, and turned to the east again.
Ptolemy’s adventure into Greece was only partly successful: he held Corinth and Sikyon, Cyprus, and several places in Asia Minor, but he had been driven out of Syria. Kassander had rebuffed the attempt to remove him from Macedon with
little diffi culty. Polyperchon was fi nished. 14
Seleukos returned to the east in 307, staying in the eastern satrapies and India for the next four years, confi dent that Antigonos would keep the peace. The result of the defeat in the two-day battle, and of the fortifi cations they had both made in Mesopotamia, produced a balance, and Antigonos never really was interested
in that area anyway. Seleukos was successful in establishing his authority over the easterners. One satrap, Sibyrtios of Arachosia, had survived from 324 until Seleukos’ campaign. 15 Stasanor of Baktria-Sogdiana had apparently developed territorial ambitions of his own; 16 Seleukos probably removed him. The new satraps he appointed are unknown. Demodamas, one of Seleukos’ commanders,
is known to have campaigned along the Iaxartes; 17 perhaps he was the Sogdian satrap. Seleukos created none of the resentment roused by Antigonos, presumably handling the situation with tact and fi nesse. He spent three years or so organizing and campaigning in the east, before heading on to India. There was clearly a
lot to do, and the satraps he found in place had been unable to do it. Some
sort of central direction was obviously required, despite the satraps’ wish for independence. The presence of Seleukos’ victorious, and large, army was no
doubt decisive. 18
Ptolemy had installed a long-time governor in Cyrenaica, a Macedonian called
Ophellas. He aspired to independence, and became allied with Agathokles of
Syracuse in a campaign against Carthage. Agathokles was more than a match for
him in intrigue and betrayal, and took over his army, mainly made up of Greek
mercenaries, in particular Athenians. 19 Perhaps Ptolemy was not sorry to see Ophellas go, but it is a sign of his governmental method that both Menelaos in Cyprus and Ophellas in Cyrenaica were left in place for long periods.
Ptolemy’s basic problem was a shortage of Greek and Macedonian soldiers.
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He had fi lched the imperial navy in 315, and captured and recruited 8,000 of
Demetrios’ soldiers after Gaza, and he recruited vigorously in the main recruiting grounds for mercenary soldiers, old Greece and Anatolia. These men were
expensive, but he had control of one of the richest countries in the world; and by importing Greeks to man the local government system of Egypt, he was able
to establish a bureaucratic regime which would allow him to tax the Egyptian
population consistently and heavily. He made gestures towards Egyptian political and religious expectations, honouring the native priests and giving grants for temple building and repair, but his attention was fi xed almost continuously on the threats from outside and on the need to be ready to meet those threats. He always had to balance the need of the country against that for strong defences, the need of Greek civil and military manpower against the Macedonian inheritance
of personal governance he brought with him, and against the wellbeing of the
Egyptian population whose labour upheld the whole structure. It was mainly
Greeks who were available for recruitment, plus men such as Karians and
Pisidians who were Hellenized by their service, but it was the Macedonian city of Alexandria which was his capital. The city was always called Alexandria-by-Egypt, a Macedonian foundation next to, but not part of, Egypt. 20
Ptolemy emerges as a cautious, careful man, moving slowly and deliberately to
fasten his grip fi rmly on Egypt by means of a detailed system of government, and forming a series of forward defensive positions to protect it. This policy made it all but impossible for any man to recover the unity of Alexander’s empire. He was not going to publicize a decision implying the destruction of Alexander’s empire, but his actions forced the conclusion that he aimed for independent rule from
at least 320. He was one of the rocks on which Antigonos’ attempt to revive the united empire was wrecked.
The other main obstacle to a restoration of imperial unity was Kassander.
Like Ptolemy, he put his own ambition before the imperial heritage of Alexander and his own father, Antipater. His father’s rule had predisposed Macedonians
to accept Kassander, though what they really wanted was the old royal family.
Kassander kept Alexander IV alive for years, and eventually had him and his
mother killed secretly. The elimination of the royal family left the Macedonians with Kassander, if unenthusiastically; he was at least married to the last member of the old family, Philip’s daughter Thessalonike, and the Argeads would therefore continue through their children.
Kassander ruled as a traditional Macedonian king, moving about the kingdom,
dispensing justice, and in war personally leading the Macedonian levy. His
policies were necessarily defensive, for the Macedonian home forces were
seriously reduced by Alexander’s levies, and Kassander did not have access to
the military recruitment areas available to his enemy, nor did he have the money for a bigger army. His policy in Greece was like his father’s; more markedly
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military than either Philip or Alexander had felt necessary. There is no sign of any serious expansion of the Macedonian state, nor was there any elaboration of the administration. Thessaly and the old inland kingdoms were integrated with
core Macedon. 21
Ptolemy and Kassander were therefore both building on their inheritances
from the past in organizing and ruling their lands. Ptolemy had a country with an age-old tradition of rule by royal control, exercised through a bureaucratic system designed to extract tax revenues. This was adopted by Ptolemy and
adapted to his requirements, staffed by imported Greeks, and the whole defended by an expensive Greco-Macedonian army. Ptolemy – it seems characteristic of his careful, pragmatic ways – took over the system he found in existence, improved its effi ciency, and staffed it with men he felt he could rely on. For all his apparent conciliation of the native Egyptian population, he clearly did not feel he could rely on them or trust them. 22 Similarly Kassander, probably without having consciously to decide it, accepted the old Macedonian system. There was, after all, no real point in changing it, it must have seemed, for the old system had obviously worked.
It was Antigonos who had to develop a new governing system. He was the one
man of the three who ruled a geographically extensive territory with no settled traditional or unifi ed governing system, except insofar as they had been part of the loosely governed Persian Empire. Antigonos aimed to expand his territory
and at the same time had to be constantly on guard against attacks, so he had
to rule in a much more detailed, perhaps oppressive, manner. Such a huge area
could not be ruled by methods of the Macedonian kingship. His lands were
widely spread, and widely various in geography and society, so the bureaucratic methods appropriate in Egypt did not apply either.
In legal terms Antigonos was the regent for the king. In practice he exercised royal powers, controlling the royal lands, appointing the offi cials, commanding armies. His lands had been conquered, or as Alexander insisted from the
fi rst crossing of the Hel
lespont, were ‘spear-won’, implying that the king had unrestricted power over all the lands and all the peoples. He could impose any administrative system he chose, in theory. Probably few of his subjects concerned themselves with Antigonos’ theoretical legal and constitutional position: he had the power, and that was what counted.
The sources of the administration he developed were thus partly Macedonian
and partly Persian. There was fi rst the theory and practice of kingship as he had seen it in Macedon. Antigonos was almost 50 when Alexander put him in
control of Phrygia, the fi rst time he administered anything bigger than a rural estate. The administrative system he knew was Philip’s: a group of men who were given a variety of tasks – diplomatic, military, judicial and administrative – as and when needed. This was also the essence of Antigonos’ central administrative
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system. The group were his philoi, ‘friends’, which became a formal rank under later kings.
The second source was the Akhaimenid Empire, which had ruled his lands for
two centuries. When he took over Phrygia some men remained in offi ce in the
satrapal administration, and all he had to do was get them working again. As his area of authority grew, he appointed satraps to his conquests. It seems probable that the old satrapies continued, but it also seems that the satraps became
called strategoi, a title suggesting purely military responsibilities. Alexander had appointed men to separate military and fi nancial duties in each satrapy, and this may be what Antigonos did, with the exception that the satrap and the strategos became a single military and administrative offi cial. A separate fi nancial offi cial, no doubt appointed by, and answering directly to, Antigonos himself, was also
put in place. Antigonos was in power long enough to fi x a fi rm administrative system in place, but it seems that the fl exibility of Philip’s informal system prevailed; the Akhaimenid system was also fairly informal, at the level of the ordinary farmer and townsman, so a fusion was not diffi cult.
In addition to the conquered Persian lands, Antigonos had also under his
Alexander the Great Failure Page 20
