Before and After Alexander

by Richard A. Billows

  15. Coin of Alexander depicting the king holding a thunderbolt

  (Wikimedia Commons public domain image from PHGCOM)

  In other words, the legend of Alexander as a superhuman hero was assiduously cultivated by Alexander himself from early on in his reign, and was spread by his court historian Callisthenes and by other eyewitness historians after Alexander’s death, as well as by poets employed to write about Alexander in a deliberately heroizing vein. One can add his cultivation of his physical image. Only one painter, Apelles, the greatest painter of Alexander’s time, was permitted to produce official portraits of Alexander. Apelles painted Alexander wielding Zeus’ thunderbolt, and Alexander authorized coins depicting himself with the thunderbolt (ill. 15). It is hard to think of another ruler who was as assiduous as Alexander at cultivating his own image and making that image superhuman: perhaps the Sun King Louis XIV of France comes closest. It is understandable, given the exaggerated respect shown in pre-modern sources for the act of military conquest, that Alexander’s self-aggrandizing propaganda should have had its effect and been copied and further exaggerated in subsequent writings, almost down to the present day. But there is no need for us, in the twenty-first century, to go along with it. Alexander was an impressive general and an influential conqueror, but no more than that. The legend of Alexander has had its day.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Wars of the Successors

  WHEN ALEXANDER DIED HIS UNTIMELY DEATH IN JUNE 323, HE LEFT A massive void behind him. This was not so much because he himself was so great and indispensable, though he had been a remarkable and successful general and ruler. It was the fact that there was no heir capable of taking over his role and ruling the Macedonians and their empire that created an extremely intractable problem for the Macedonian elite. From the moment Alexander took power in 336, Antipater and Parmenio had urged him to marry and start producing children. Had he done so at once, there might have been a ten- or twelve-year-old boy who could be installed as king and groomed, perhaps by a regency council, to take the reins of power within six or eight years. Instead Alexander resisted this advice for ten years, only finally marrying in 327. At the time of his death, his first wife Roxane was six months pregnant with Alexander’s first child; but no one could know whether that pregnancy would be successfully brought to term, and if so whether the baby would be a boy who could potentially become king. Even if both of those outcomes came true, the baby boy could not be expected to take power for about eighteen years. What was to happen in the interim? Thanks to the successful purging of the Argead royal family by Philip and Alexander, to prevent disunity in Macedonia, there were no surviving males of the Argead family other than Alexander’s mentally deficient half-brother Arrhidaeus, who survived only because he was incapable of ruling. Alexander had a sister and two half-sisters—Cleopatra, Cynnane, and Thessalonice—and Cynnane had an adolescent daughter by Alexander’s cousin Amyntas. That was the sum total of the surviving members of the Argead family; and Macedonia, patriarchal to the core, had no tradition of women being able to assume the rulership. It was, consequently, a very worried group of Macedonian leaders who met together in the palace at Babylon after Alexander’s death to discuss the future rule of the empire.

  1. THE SETTLEMENT AT BABYLON AND ITS UNRAVELING

  One of the problems facing the elite Macedonian officers gathered in conference at Babylon was that not all of the most important Macedonian leaders and power-players were present. Since the death of Parmenio, the two most senior high-level Macedonian commanders were Antipater and Antigonus the One-Eyed, neither of whom was there. Antipater, in his late seventies but still physically strong and active, had been one of Philip’s two most trusted officers throughout his reign, as we have seen, and had served as regent of Macedonia throughout Alexander’s reign. The Macedonian home army, thanks to its thirteen-year service under Antipater, was essentially his army; and he had led it to independent victories, first over Memnon, the rebellious governor of Thrace, but much more importantly over the southern Greek alliance led by Sparta in 330. With the home army behind him, he was not only by far the most respected Macedonian leader, but also the strongest. Antigonus, an almost exact co-eval of Philip, was about sixty years old at the time of Alexander’s death, and had for twelve years been effectively the overseer of Asia Minor west of Cappadocia (that is, the Macedonian-held part of Asia Minor). Formally his satrapy was Phrygia, but he also governed western Pisidia, Lycia, and Pamphylia; he had personally—in defeating the Persian counter-attack in Asia Minor in 331—added Lycaonia by conquest; and the governors of Hellespontine Phrygia, Lydia, and Caria were greatly inferior both in terms of the territory they governed and in status and seniority. As the long-time governor of a huge and strategically important region, with a local security force he had raised himself and led to independent and important victories, he was a leader to be reckoned with.

  Just as important as these two, though significantly younger, was Craterus, who after Parmenio’s death had been Alexander’s most trusted general and—along with Hephaestion—in effect his second-in-command. At the time of Alexander’s death, Craterus was in Cilicia in southern Asia Minor in command of a veteran army of ten thousand Macedonian pikemen and fifteen hundred cavalry. He had been instructed in 324 to lead these veterans home to Macedonia, where they were to become the new Macedonian home army and Craterus himself the new regent of Macedonia; Antipater meanwhile was to lead the existing Macedonian home army to Babylon, to join Alexander. Craterus had lingered in Cilicia for some time, for unexplained reasons. He may have been busy in part establishing a royal treasury there for Alexander, at Cyinda. But Antipater had no desire to leave Macedonia and join Alexander: he had in mind the fate of Parmenio, and distrusted Alexander’s intentions. He had sent his son Cassander to Babylon to protest against Alexander’s orders. We may guess that Craterus had little appetite for a confrontation with the great and revered Antipater and his home army, and lingered in Cilicia hoping for further (and different?) orders from Alexander. Had Craterus been at Babylon, he would undoubtedly have taken the lead in the debates among the senior officers there. But even in Cilicia, he was a powerful and widely admired leader—reputedly his popularity among the soldiery was second only to Alexander’s own—and commanded a substantial and highly experienced army. He was the Macedonians’ Macedonian: he stuck to the old Macedonian ways, even to going into battle wearing the distinctive Macedonian kausia on his head. The soldiers adored him, and the sight of his kausia inspired them. He too had to be reckoned with.

  The group of officers that met together at Babylon thus did not fully represent the Macedonian high command. The senior officer present was Perdiccas, who had since Craterus’ departure and Hephaestion’s death been acting as Alexander’s second-in-command. After him there was a mix of younger, rising officers, such as Ptolemy, Leonnatus, Seleucus, Peithon son of Crateuas, and Lysimachus; older officers who had never progressed past mid-level commands, such as Aristonous and the phalanx battalion commanders Polyperchon, Attalus, and Meleager; and non-Macedonian Greeks such as Eumenes of Cardia (head of the military secretariat), Nearchus the admiral, and Medeius of Larissa. In the next few weeks and months, it became clear that though Perdiccas saw himself as the future leader of the Macedonian Empire, he was nevertheless rather unsure of himself and his position: he could neither take firm control of events, nor accept a true sharing of power. That was a recipe for conflict. Besides his position as Alexander’s acting chiliarch (second-in-command) during the last year of the young king’s reign, Perdiccas was also strengthened by the fact that one of Alexander’s last actions had been to hand his formal seal of state to Perdiccas, which could be seen as ceding power to him. Yet at the council of leading officers, Perdiccas, instead of using the seal of state as a prop to put forward his claim to power, laid it on the table in a way that seemed to symbolize that power was up for grabs.

  There was an immediate split in opinion. Some, notably Aristonous, argue
d that Perdiccas should hold power as Alexander’s designated successor. Others argued instead for a regency council: Ptolemy was one of the leaders of this group. Both suggestions left open the question of the kingship: traditionally only an Argead descendant of Alexander I could be king. Perdiccas proposed that the question be postponed until Roxane gave birth to her child: if she produced a son, there would be an heir to the throne. Some of the less prominent infantry officers felt themselves overlooked in this discussion. One of them, the phalanx battalion commander Meleager, remembered Alexander’s half-brother Arrhidaeus, and left the council to look for him. Arrhidaeus was about thirty-four or thirty-five years old at this time, and clearly looked like a normal, indeed fairly robust and handsome adult man. That he suffered from some mental deficiency, however, is not in doubt: thrust into prominence by his brother’s death, in the next seven years until his own tragic death he was always controlled by one leading officer or another, never able to act independently and take control of events. Meleager quickly coached Arrhidaeus as to the role he must play, then led him out and introduced him to the Macedonian soldiers who were assembled outside the palace, eagerly awaiting news of the succession, as Philip’s son who deserved to be the new king. Arrhidaeus evidently resembled his great father and looked the part. The soldiers, wanting nothing more than a strong new king to lead them, hailed Arrhidaeus as their ruler, and to symbolize his claim to the throne his name was changed to Philip, like his father. Meleager’s hope clearly was to rule the Macedonian Empire through the good-looking but incapable and pliant Philip Arrhidaeus.

  News of this event outside immediately changed the tone of the council meeting. The opposed factions at once united in the face of Meleager’s power grab, and civil strife threatened to break out between the council of high officers, led by Perdiccas and backed by the cavalry and most Macedonian officers, and Meleager, backed by most of the infantry. In the event, cooler heads prevailed. The non-Macedonian Greek Eumenes of Cardia, who had been chief military secretary to Philip and Alexander, and had also functioned as a cavalry commander under the latter, mediated. The outcome was a compromise that recognized everyone’s claims while satisfying no one. Arrhidaeus was recognized as king with the name Philip—Philip III as he is usually known—but Roxane’s child, if it proved to be a boy, as it did, was to be co-king and take over rule of the empire once he achieved adulthood, with the name Alexander like his father—Alexander IV, that is. In the meantime Perdiccas was to actually run the empire on behalf of the kings with the title chiliarch, and Meleager was to be his chief lieutenant. Antipater was continued as viceroy over Macedonia and the European lands of the empire: there was no possibility, as everyone recognized, of deposing him from that position. Craterus was given a vague but honorific title as “protector” (prostates) of the kings, specific powers to be worked out as and when became necessary. Most of the other leading officers were granted governorships of important provinces: Antigonus was confirmed as governor of his super-satrapy in Asia Minor; Ptolemy was granted Egypt; Leonnatus got Hellespontine Phrygia (along the Hellespont and Bosporus); Lysimachus was given Thrace which, thanks to a recent successful rebellion, he would need to conquer himself in order to govern it; and other provinces were similarly parceled out. Eumenes of Cardia, in thanks for his successful mediation, was promised the governorship of Cappadocia, though it was not actually under Macedonian rule as yet. Antigonus and Leonnatus were instructed to oust the surviving Persian governor there, Ariarathes, and install Eumenes as governor. That would be quite a task, as Ariarathes had built up a very strong army over the years, reputedly numbering as much as twenty thousand men.

  Perdiccas kept his closest supporters, his brother Alcetas, his brother-in-law Attalus, and Aristonous, around his own person to support him as ruler of the empire. Another key younger leader, Seleucus, was made commander of the Macedonian cavalry, a role that traditionally conferred great authority. One of Perdiccas’ first acts as official chiliarch was to hold a ceremonial rite of purification for the army, after its brief outbreak of strife. At the height of the ceremony, Meleager and a few of his chief supporters were suddenly arrested and brutally put to death, trampled by elephants. Hereby Perdiccas made it clear that despite his initial hesitation, he meant to be ruler of the empire in more than name. None of the other Macedonian leaders seems to have regretted Meleager’s passing: he had made a play for power above his station or abilities. But his fate must surely have made them ponder their own potential vulnerability. Ptolemy hurried to Egypt, and from the moment he took over rule there showed no sign of being ready to accept or obey instructions from the central administration, instead working to make Egypt his own. Antigonus ignored Perdiccas’ orders concerning Cappadocia, clearly displeased that a man so much junior to himself was now in a position to give him orders. Craterus can hardly have been delighted with his vague and undefined role. And Leonnatus harbored ambitions well beyond mere governorship of a relatively minor province. The “settlement” of Babylon, that is to say, in truth settled nothing.

  News of Alexander’s death spread quickly and widely, and created two major problems for the Macedonian rulers. Though the subject peoples of Asia, used to submission through two centuries of Persian rule, stayed quiet, and the Persians themselves had been too recently and thoroughly defeated to think of rebelling, the non-Macedonian Greeks in Alexander’s empire did not stay quiet. In southern Greece, the Athenians saw a chance to reassert their independence. Thanks to the disloyalty of Alexander’s treasurer Harpalus, the Athenians possessed a fighting fund of some five thousand talents of Alexander’s money; and thanks to Alexander’s distrust of his regional governors, which had led him to order the disbandment of the mercenary security forces they had recruited to police their provinces, thousands of unemployed mercenaries had gathered to seek employment at the great mercenary fair on Cape Taenarum in the southern Peloponnese. The Athenians mobilized their citizen army and fleet, sent out a call for allies to join them in a war of liberation against the Macedonian oppressor, and despatched their general Leosthenes to Cape Taenarum, amply supplied with funds, to recruit mercenaries. Leosthenes had served as a mercenary commander before and knew these men: he had no difficulty in gathering a large and well-trained army to join the Athenians and greatly strengthen their forces. A number of Greek states responded to their call for allies, most importantly the Aetolians and the Thessalians: Aetolia provided thousands of highly motivated and disciplined light infantry, and the Thessalian cavalry was of as good quality as the Macedonian. Antipater in Macedonia found himself with a formidable war on his hands.

  Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the empire in what is today Afghanistan, trouble was brewing too. Alexander had established a dozen or more garrison colonies there, as we have seen, many (most?) of whose inhabitants were Greek mercenary soldiers. However willingly or unwillingly Alexander had settled them in their colonies, at news of Alexander’s death they began sending messages to and fro and before long many thousands of them left their settlements and gathered into a large army, some twenty-five thousand strong. Life in inner Asia did not suit them; their desire was to return home to the Mediterranean and Greece, and they elected leaders and began to march west. This presented a major problem to Perdiccas. If large groups of soldiers were permitted simply to decide for themselves what they would do and where they would go, the authority in the empire of the Macedonian officer elite would be lost. And if the eastern garrisons were permitted to be abandoned, the eastern part of the empire would be lost too. Perdiccas appointed a senior officer named Peithon son of Crateuas to deal with this situation. Peithon was given a large force and instructions to oblige the settlers to return to their garrison colonies. The two armies met in central Iran, and Peithon was victorious. Our sources allege that Peithon had the “rebellious” settlers massacred, but that cannot be true. In fact they were forced back to their colonies. We know this because they and their descendants established a flourishing Greek civilization t
here that lasted about two hundred years. Though only a handful of references to it survive in our literary sources, it is known to us from the coinages struck by the local rulers there, some of the most beautiful Greek coins ever minted (see ill. 1 for an example); and from the French excavation, in the 1970s, of one of their cities at a place in Afghanistan called Ai Khanum.