Text on the Wars of the Diadochi, the whole shebang
From Record Of Fantasy Adventure Venture
requested that his body be thrown into the river, to thwart, it is supposed, those who would seek to possess it. When Perdiccas (age 30 at the time of Alexander's death) asked him to whom he left his empire, for there was as yet no heir, Alexander said, "To the strongest." But to Perdiccas he gave his signet ring. His rasping last words were, "All my friends will hold great funeral games for me," and history would prove him right, for the funeral games went on for decades, and the prize was to be the greatest of all empires.
His death was long and slow and quite painful.
Such was the achievement of Alexander of Macedon, called the Great. Many have seen overweening ambition as his greatest vice, but as we have seen his failure was really due to the twin horns of incontinence: impatience and lust.
The question of a successor was now no longer academic. Hephastion had but recently died, and Alexander's finest general and chiliarch Craterus (age 47 at the time of Alexander's death) was heading with Polyperchon (age 7l at the time of Alexander's death) to Pella, to take over the stewardship there, so Perdiccas was ranking commander; furthermore, he held the ring.
Nearchus the Cretan (age 42 at the time of Alexander's death), Alexander's admiral and indisputably a liar, proposed as heir Heracles (age 4 at the time of Alexander's death), Alexander's bastard son, and surely already an excellent choice, for he had proved to be a strong and quick-witted child. Perdiccas, however, spoke more persuasively (as was his wont) and pointed out that Alexander's lawful wife Roxane (age 24 at the time of Alexander's death) was pregnant, and may yet produce a legitimate heir. A long regency would offer power to the regents, and their friends, and in the end the nobles and the cavalry decided, at the suggestion of Alcestas (age 28 at the time of Alexander's death) that said regents should be Perdiccas, Craterus, Leonnatus, Alexander's boyhood friend (age 34 at the time of Alexander's death, and 35 at the time of his own), and Antipater (age 74 at the time of Alexander's death), who had backed Alexander's bid for the Macedonian throne many years ago and who had been steward in Macedonia during the king's long absence. Of these, only Leonnatus and Perdiccas were present for the decision. Alcestas was Perdiccas' brother.
Also not present, although very nearby, was the infantry, who had their own candidate in Arrhidaios, Alexander's idiot half-brother, the bastard son of Philip and a harmless madman prone to divine fits and strange delusions (age 36 at the time of Alexander's death). They feared a long regency would undermine the legitimacy of the dynasty, and perhaps they respected Arrhidaios, for he was touched by the god; certainly they loved him; also, he longed for distant Macedon, just as the infantry did. And so they took up arms against the cavalry, which, being unmounted at the time, fled before them, and the foot soldiers, chanting the name of their unwitting king, "Philip Arrhidaios! Philip Arrhidaios!" when they found they had separated Perdiccas from the rest, surrounded him, seeking to slay him.
But by chance Perdiccas was armed, and, swinging his great sword, he held them off long enough that they might hear his honeyed words. And he spoke prettily to them until they set aside their weapons, and together they proclaimed an idiot and a hypothetical son co-rulers of the empire. Eumenes the Greek (age 39 at the time of Alexander's death), Alexander's personal secretary and the cleverest man in the empire after Harpalus, drafted a proclamation declaring Arrhidaios King Philip III and the unborn child King Alexander IV. Perdiccas was to be their "guardian."
Nearchus, Barsine, and Heracles boarded a boat and sailed away.
Perdiccas then called a council in Babylon, where so many fearful events had taken place, to assign command of the various satrapies. Antipater retained stewardship of Macedon, instead of Craterus, perhaps as recompense for the suffering of Antipater's son, Cassander the Black. Instead Craterus, a good-natured warrior beloved by his men above any other general, was given a symbolic position as special protector of the kings (one of them newly born). Alexander's boyhood friend Ptolemy the Savior (age 44 at the time of Alexander's death) received at his request the satrapy of Egypt, the wisest request of any of the Diadochi, for Ptolemy alone of them bed peacefully in bed. Lysimachus (age 37 at the time of Alexander's death), former bodyguard of both Philip and Alexander, became satrap of Thrace, and Leonnatus satrap of Lesser Phrygia, just across the Hellespont, while Laomedon (age 31 at the time of Alexander's death) received Syria. Antigonus Monophthalmos (age 59 at the time of Alexandeis death), a burly and jovial man who had been left by Alexander in Anatolia to safeguard his supply route, and who alone of Alexanders generals had never lost an encounter with the enemy, gained the satrapies that he had been ruling already for years: Pamphylia, Lycia, and Greater Phrygia. He and Perdiccas hated each other passionately, and Antigonus did not even deign to attend the conference. The heartland of Persia was divided between Peithon (age 32 at the time of Alexander's death), with the enormous satrapy of Media, and Peucestas (age 27 at the time of Alexander's death), who became satrap of Persis, for he was the only Diadochus who had learned to speak and read Persian. Eumenes, finally, whom everyone except Perdiccas hated, was given Cappadocia and Paphlagonia, two Asian regions that were not even part of the empire; the council all laughed, and told Eumenes to claim them if he could; for it was known that Eumenes was no warrior. And Perdiccas stayed in Babylon with his two kings.
Perdiccas, Ptolemy, Peithon, Peucestas, Leonnatus, and Lysimachus were, with Hephastion, the Seven Bodyguards of Alexander.
Peithon, Peucestas, and Seleucus Nicator (age 35 at the time of Alexander's death) were the three who consulted the oracle of Sarapis in the week before Alexander's death.
Peucestas and Leonnatus were the two who saved Alexander's life when he stood alone against an army of Malians inside the walls of the city of Multan, standing over him as he bled out, and guarding his unconscious form, despite many wounds, with the magical shield of Achilles. Leonnatus had known Alexander since his youth, when he had loved his sister Cleopatra, but Peucestas was a nobody whose fortune was made at that moment.
Ptolemy, Nedus, Harpalus, Erigyius, who defeated Satibarzanes in single combat, and his brother Laomedon were the friends of Alexander exiled by Philip when they tried to intercede for him in the marriage of Pixodarus' daughter. Erigyius had already died of a fever, and Harpalus had slipped away by the time Alexander died. But we can see the favor in which Alexander held those who suffered for him once.
It will be noted that reconfirming Antipater as steward of Macedon went against Alexander's specific wish that Craterus take the appointment. Many of Alexander's other wishes were similarly flouted. He had intended to subjugate Arabia; to build an enormous fleet of quadriremes and, subduing Carthage and Rome along the way, conquer Europe and sail out past the Pillars of Heracles, where sea monsters dwell; to build a tomb for his father larger than the pyramids; and to construct a series of fabulous temples, the largest at Troy, and cities, one of which was to be hewn from Mount Athos into a statue of Alexander himself, holding in one hand a city large enough to hold 10,000 men, in the other a lake in a bowl, tipping out into a waterfall. Also abandoned was his plan to have his body thrown into a river. The body miraculously did not decay, even in the summer heat of Persia, and those priests sent to embalm it were too afraid even to touch it. Perdiccas sent it back to Aegae in Macedonia, pulled in a golden casket with a marvelous parade of attendants and wild asses bedecked in obsidian shards. But Ptolemy the Savior sent his general Cilles and brother Menelaus, who intercepted the casket and brought the body to Egypt, for Ptolemy claimed that Alexander had wanted to be interred here, in the land of the river. Some said that Ptolemy did this from ambition, for by custom a Macedonian king's first duty is to bury his predecessor, and Ptolemy could claim therefore that he alone of the Diadochi had done what was right and regal but Ptolemy later proved that his ambitions did not extend far beyond Syria. Some say Ptolemy wanted certain things that were hidden in the casket. And others simply that Alexander had been his life-long friend, for whom he had suffered exile and ignominy in his youth and the hardships of campaigning in his majority, and he did not wish to be parted from him. The casket was set up on display in Alexandria; and Perdiccas never forgave Ptolemy.
Then it was that Greece, with Athens as ever at her forefront, rose up in revolt against the empire, and Antipater, with Leonnatus and the able Craterus, went to put the troublemaker down once and for all. Leonnatus had vowed to marry the sweetheart of his childhood, Alexander's beautiful sister Cleopatra (recently widowed), after the war, an act that may have given him some dynastic claim to the empire, but he was killed leading a cavalry charge against the Thessalians. Antipater, too, suffered some setbacks, and was put to flight, taking refuge in the mountain fortress of Lamia, where his son Cassander the Black, exploring in the boredom of the besieged the ancient dungeons within, released the ancient evil of Irithizon, from which some say he barely escaped with his life and from whom some say he learned much. But Craterus' fleet destroyed the Athenians1, their pride and best hope, and Athens surrendered. Demosthenes, prince of orators, who had spoken against Macedon for the thousandth, and last, time, killed himself, while other ringleaders were put to death. Athens had not been truly important politically since the Peloponnesian War, but it had removed Leonnatus from the board.
Rhodes as well expelled its Macedonian garrison and for years walked a dangerous diplomatic tightrope, offering nominal fealty to any overlord of the moment but refusing him all concessions.
In the East, meantime, the Macedonian veterans garrisoned there, who long had desired to return home, began to march west. Peithon was sent to subdue them and return them to their posts. Against Perdiccas' orders, Peithon, victorious, made a liberal settlement with the veterans; however, his men, flouting his command and believing the veterans had sewn gold into their clothing, began a massacre, and many died before Peithon could stop it. In this way, Peithon got the reputation of being both overly kind and overly cruel, and now Perdiccas felt he could not trust him for two reasons.
The only man trusted by everyone at this point was Philip Arrhidaios, the genial idiot. The troops especially loved him, treating him as a sort of mascot and good luck charm, and used to line up to rub his belly before battle. But the woman warrior Cynna, Alexander's half- sister and widow of Philip II's nephew, saw Arrhidaios as a way to gain power for he daughter, Adea, herself known to be the best sword in the empire. Cynna and Adea slipped into Sardis unseen and began to court Philip Arrhidaios in secret. Cynna, caught by the guard outside Arrhidaios' chamber door while Adea was within, died, in the resulting altercation, stabbed by Alcestas, Perdiccas' brother. When news of this skirmish reached the troops, they immediately fomented rebellion, for, they said, their mascot should never be thwarted in love. Adea, now taking the royal name of Eurydice, married Philip Arrhidaios, and now the only trustworthy man in the empire had a wife that no one trusted.
Meanwhile, Perdiccas had girl trouble of his own. Alexander's mother, Olympias Myrtale (age 53 at the time of Alexander's death), had long nursed plots against Antipater, just as she had once plotted against Philip. She suspected him of seeking the succession, which she wanted for her grandson, and so, to help secure the power of Perdiccas, whose voice alone championed Alexander IV, she convinced her daughter Cleopatra, still grieving over Leonnatus, to seek the hand of Perdiccas. Perdiccas, like Gaterus and Ptolemy, was already married to one of the innumerable daughters of Antipater, and, if he should throw her over to marry Cleopatra, Olympias would not lose any sleep over the humiliation.
The line of communication between Cleopatra and Perdiccas, however, passed through the territory of Antigonus Monophthalmos. Perdiccas feared the fat man would learn of the plan, currently under discussion He therefore ordered Antigonus to go off and help Eumenes conquer Cappadocia and Paphlagonia. Antigonus smelled a trap, perhaps thanks to the council of his wife Stratonike, and he fled to Macedonia with his beautiful and brilliant young son Demetrius the Besieger (age 15 at the time of Alexanders death). Perhaps it was through Antigonus that Antipater learned Perdiccas' new marriage plans. In any event, Antipater, offended for his daughter, quickly convinced some of the other Diadochi that Perdiccas was making his move for the empire by marrying into the family of the kings. Both sides made ready for war. On one side stood Antipater (with Antigonus), Gaterus, Ptolemy, and Lysimachus. On the other were Perdiccas with the two kings, Peithon, Eumenes (now possessor of a subdued Cappadocia and Paphlagonia, conquered for him, everyone assumed, by Perdiccas), Neoptolemus the satrap of Armenia, Laomedon, and a reluctant Peucestas, who would have preferred to remain neutral. But Peucestas was ever being thrust into the center of things without his consent, ever since he made the fateful decision to leap down behind the walls to save his king at Multan.
Ptolemy struck first, capturing Syria and its satrap Laomedon before retreating, ahead of Perdiccas' forces, into a more defensible position in Egypt. Perdiccas' strategy was threefold: Neoptolemus was to prevent Antipater and crew from crossing the Hellespont, while Eumenes made a secret trip to smuggle Cleopatra into Asia, to hasten the marriage, which was, after all the cause of the war. Perdiccas, meanwhile, led an expedition into Egypt to bring the war to Ptolemy and reclaim Alexander's body. Neoptolemus, however, defected to Antipater immediately, as did the soldiery of Asia Minor, and Eumenes, who managed to bring Cleopatra into Sardis in Lydia, was left to take over the defense of Asia. The eastern satrapies had not yet mobilized, so Eumenes had only a small rag-tag force with which to stop the advance of Craterus, Alexander's greatest general, whose force was now combined with Neoptolemus'. In Egypt, Perdiccas was making little headway, for every time he tried to cross the Nile it would rise up and wash his troops away, and meantime those on the banks were constantly being eaten by armies of crocodiles; for Ptolemy had already made himself ally of the lords of Abyssinia, who control the Nile, and the priests of Suchos. Perdiccas' men decided that they would all die in a futile endeavor, for the treason of Neoptolemus and the inevitable doom of the weak and untried Eumenes were well known, unless Perdiccas was stopped. They therefore plotted to slay Perdiccas in his tent, but before they went in to him they stuffed their ears with wax, so that he could not persuade them to desist, as he had once before. So fell Perdiccas, guardian of the empire. (But some say he was slain not by his own men but rather by sons of Proteus, whom Ptolemy had already enslaved.) The next day news arrived in Egypt that Eumenes had somehow accomplished a crushing defeat of Craterus' and Neoptolemus' forces, slaying the traitor Neoptolemus with his own hand. Craterus, too, fell in the battle. Had the news arrived a day earlier, none would have despaired and slain Perdiccas.
Alcestas fled from Egypt; he met up with Laomedon, who had miraculously managed to escape Ptolemy's clutches and the two fled into Asia. But when Antigonus Monophthalmos began pursuit, he quickly came across the dead body of Alcestas, with Laomedon nowhere to be found.
Ptolemy smiled knowingly at the news; surely here he had used the sons of Proteus wisely. Alcestas' death was chalked up to suicide.
A peace was called. Ptolemy was selected to take Perdiccas' place as guardian but he, alone of the Diadochi, was of such a mind that he turned it down, offering it instead to Peithon. Soon a second council, however, stripped Peithon of the guardianship and, despite the vehement and nearly violent protests of Adea Eurydice, gave it to Antipater, who quickly restored order to the empire. All of Perdiccas' allies were pardoned except Eumenes, who was sentenced to death in absentia. Antipater set up Seleucus Nicator, who had once been a young page in Philip's service before becoming Alexander's commander of the cavalry, as the new satrap of Babylon, and more importantly set Antigonus Monophthalmos as the head of the armies of Asia, and charged him to seek out and slay Eumenes. Although many small satrapies remained, the main foci of power now were Antipater and Lysimachus in Europe, Antigonus and Seleucus in Asia, and Ptolemy in Egypt. Everyone was eying each other warily. Antipater sent Cassander the Black along with Antigonus on his mission, to keep an eye on him; he also married his daughter Phila, Craterus' widow, to Demetrius the Besieger, Antigonus' young son; for he feared above all else Antigonus and his ambitious wife. Phila was twenty- two years Demetrius' senior, and he objected to the match, but Antigonus persuaded his son to marry with quotations from Euripides; Phila was already in love with the young man, known to be the handsomest in the empire. Antipater also took the two kings, Philip Arrhidaios and Alexander IV back to Pella, where later they would be murdered. With Arrhidaios went his fuming wife Adea Eurydice, who alone in the empire hated Antipater above all men.
With his crafty tricks, Eumenes led Antigonus on a merry chase through Asia, but what forces he had kept deserting him, for they hated being led by a Greek, especially a cultured Greek intellectual whose refinement only highlighted what the Macedonians lacked. Antigonus despised the dog Eumenes as much as he had despised the master Perdiccas, and said the Greek campaigned with a writing tablet. Eventually Eumenes, abandoned by all but a few hundred men, barricaded himself in the fortress of Nora, to which Antigonus laid siege. Antigonus' forces had proved so successful, and had so swelled with deserters from the armies Eumenes managed to assemble, that he was now far and away the most powerful man in Asia. He believed in an empire that would unify mankind, and vowed that, although he himself lacked ambition, it was sadly the case that only he had the power to preserve the empire's unity. Like Antigone before him, he would do his unpleasant duty. But he did not yet share these thoughts with anyone except perhaps Stratonike and Demetrius, not even Nearchus the Cretan, who had returned with Heracles to tutor Demetrius in the arts of war and water, and had become Antigonus' most trusted advisor.
In the meantime, Peithon took advantage of the chaos in Asia caused by the adventures of Eumenes and Antigonus and tried to expand the satrapy of Media by conquest. The other eastern satrapies united against him under his old friend Peucestas and managed to drive him back. Wary now, however, the united satrapies kept their standing army, which, being comprised of several satrapies' worth of men, was enormous. During the fighting, the Indian Sandrokoptos the Peacock Tamer (probably aged about 40 at the time of Alexander's death), who had some years before seized control of a large part of India, including the semiautonomous Alexandrine India, in the name of some religious sect, marched into the chaos and claimed the satrap of Taxila. Seleucus Nicator later tried to recapture the satrapy, but met with limited success. Sandrokoptos paid Seleucus a tribute in elephants, and thereafter Sandrokoptos and Seleucus were fast friends.
Antipater died soon after, of old age, and on his death bed he left the stewardship of Macedon and guardianship of the kings, now openly recognized as the position of regent, and therefore de facto the throne of the empire, not to his son Cassander, whose dabbling in the black arts he had come to distrust since the Hellenic war, but to Craterus' old second in command, Polyperchon, an uninspired old warhorse. Cassander, unwilling to settle for the secondary role of chiliarch and seeking the throne for himself, immediately formed a coalition against Polyperchon, to wage the second war of the Diadochi.
Cassander called Antigonus away from Nora to help him, thereby saving Eumenes; Ptolemy and Lysimachus joined Cassander in the hopes of getting more land, for Ptolemy, like every Pharaoh from Menes to Nectanebos, believed Syria a lawful part of Egypt, while Lysimachus wanted control of both sides of the Hellespont. But perhaps Lysimachus habitually overestimated his own power and judgment; after all, he had been bodyguard to two kings who had been assassinated. Against these four, Polyperchon easily managed to recruit Eumenes, who had nothing after all to lose, and who came up with a clever plan. He got Philip Arrhidaios, who naturally sided with the lawful regent and viewed Cassander as a dangerous usurper, to draft a letter placing Eumenes in charge of the armies of Asia and ordering Antigonus' troops to desert to him, their rightful leader. He then had copies of this letter spread by agents far and wide, while he himself managed by craft to raid a secret treasury that Alexander had hidden in the wilds. The foot soldiers loved Philip Arrhidaios irrationally, and bowed to his will, and many deserted the army of Antigonus. Now at last Eumenes the Greek had troops and vast cache of money. Brimming with plans, he immediately drove Ptolemy back across Sinai by force of arms and began constructing a navy.
Polyperchon tried to win the backing of the cities of Greece by promising them concessions, but his promises were so parsimonious that many Greek cities sided with Cassander instead, on the assumption that he could hardly be less generous. Polyperchon’s campaigning in the Peloponnese did not go very well, and his fleet was destroyed by Antigonus'. Eumenes' fleet washed away in a freak storm before he even had a chance to launch it, and his men, whispering that the Greek was cursed, began to desert again. But perhaps the greatest setback was that Philip Arrhidaios' vengeful wife Adea Eurydice, probably simply because Antipater had wanted Polyperchon for the regency, convinced her husband to switch sides and throw in for Cassander.
Earlier Polyperchon had sent Roxane and Alexander IV to Epirus, to take refuge with Olympias, under the protection of the Epirot King Aeacidas, her cousin. Polyperchon and Cassander were away, so Olympias, who would do anything to keep young Alexander on the throne, started a campaign of her own, marching on Pella with an Epirot army. She was met by an army led Philip Arrhidaios, riding his horse backwards, and Adea Eurydice, clad magnificently in magical bronze plate armor, charging at the head of her men. But despite Eurydice's gallant display, the capers a grinning Philip Arrhidaios cut on his horse that day were so foul and impious that the offended troops pulled up short, and Eurydice charged alone into the phalanx, where, surrounded by a mound of Epirot corpses, she eventually was beaten unconscious and taken prisoner. Philip Arrhidaios' men then deserted to Olympias, who, entwined with snakes and clad only in the mantle of her motherhood, marched triumphantly into Pella. Arrhidaios and Adea were imprisoned in a cell too small to sit in, and kept without sufficient food or water, until finally Olympias sent Adea Eurydice a dagger, a rope, and some hemlock, telling her to choose. "I leave the blade and poison for you," Adea said, and hanged herself. It would be pleasant to relate that Philip Arrhidaios, like Brutus, had only been feigning idiocy, as part of a clever plan of survival, but, tragically, it seems he had no such plan, and, as he sang to himself a song Nectanebos had taught him as a child, "And so I sing, any food, any feeding, feeding, drink, or clothing," Olympias murdered him. Her six-year-old grandchild was now the sole ruler of the greatest empire in the world. She celebrated by ordering the massacre of Cassander's followers.
She then plundered his ancestors' graves in Aegae and scattered the remains, slandering them as assassins.
This was the worst thing that could have happened to Polyperchon. His cause appeared now to be bathed in blood and predicated on savagery; what Greek allies he had left him, and his own men, who after all had loved the simple king Polyperchon was supposed to be protecting, began to wonder if they had chosen the right side. All was disaster, and, as Antigonus approached Syria, Eumenes abandoned the half-rebuilt navy and fled east for a desperate gamble.
Cassander hastened back to Pella, and Olympias fled before him, to Pydna Harbor, at the base of Mount Olympus. King Aeacidas from the west and Polyperchon from the east each tried to extricate her, but Cassander held them off and starved out Olympias, who had hoped for Eumenes' never completed navy to save her. Cassander had promised to spare her life, but in Pella he had her stoned to death, himself standing among the throng, hurling the largest stones and shouting, mysteriously, "Thus do I avenge myself on your son, just as she did." Olympias' body he threw in a swamp.
He had already decided that Alexander IV would never reach puberty.
While Polyperchon fled, Eumenes headed east. Seleucus Nicator, deciding at the last minute to throw in his Phrygian cap with Cassander - or rather, in Asia, Antigonus Monophthalmos - sent an army to intercept him, but Eumenes proved as slippery as ever. He made it to the eastern satrapies, which had been avoiding the conflict altogether under the advice of Peucestas, and living in relative peace since the defeat of Peithon. There he presented Philip Arrhidaios' letter again. The letter was hardly germane, since Philip Arrhidaios was first of all on Cassander's side and second of all dead. But it is unclear how fast the recent news traveled; and certainly Eumenes had acquired the trait of traveling faster than almost anyone. In any event, he doubtless passed off all rumors as false as he appealed for the immense eastern army. Peucestas again preached neutrality, for he, too, dreamed of an empire united and in his heart desired for the success of Antigonus, the only man capable of ruling it now that Antipater and Perdiccas, and perhaps Leonnatus, were gone; for Ptolemy was too complacent, Cassander too wicked, and Lysimachus too rash, while the regent Polyperchon was a mediocrity, and the two kings were a child and a dead idiot. Eumenes had never sought rulership for himself, but only fought for Alexander's heir. So had Antigonus asked for the army, Peucestas may have assented, but he would not have it for Eumenes. But Peucestas was just one of many satraps, and, anyway, the foot soldiers did not see it his way, and, out of love for Philip Arrhidaios, they obeyed the letter. Eumenes returned west at the head of a giant army, and this time Seleunts wisely let him through.
Now began the long and bloody campaign for Asia. Both Eumenes and Antigonus called themselves the Lord of All Asia now, but of course neither claim was true. While Eumenes drew Antigonus to the mountainous north, where he could employ his tricks with most efficiency, many said that Antigonus had been blessed by his witch-woman mother-in-law such that he could never lose a battle as long as he lived. The best Eumenes could get from their encounters was a draw. Asia seemed to be in a stalemate, for Antigonus could not lose, and the Greek fox was too crafty to. Only the soldiers kept dying in droves. It is said that Eumenes fretted that their armies would be whittled down until there on the battlefield stood only Eumenes and Antigonus left to fight; in which case Eumenes would lose, for, though he had proved himself capable of defeating Neoptolemus in single combat, Antigonus was a giant of a man in every direction, and the best fighter in the empire now that Adea Eurydice was dead. Eumenes had learned everything about every Macedonian leader in his days as Alexander's secretary, and knew what Antigonus was capable of.
In Greece, meanwhile, Cassander had consolidated his power such that Lysimachus gained nothing from the war. Polyperchon was cowering in the hinterlands. Cassander appointed rulers to the Greek city-states that appealed to his morbid sense of humor. On Athens he afflicted the philosopher Demetrius of Phaleron, a student of Aristotle's and a self-styled philosopher king after the fashion of The Republic. His philosophical reign did not prove popular.
Finally, Antigonus and Eumenes met in decisive battle at Gabiene. Eumenes appeared on the cusp of victory when Peucestas withdrew his troops from the flank, permitting Antigonus' men, under command of Demetrius the Besieger, to encircle his foe. Eumenes' Silver Shields unit, Alexander's old elite, perceiving that the battle was lost and escape impossible, took Eumenes captive and handed him over to Antigonus, demanding twenty talents in return for the service. Demetrius requested that the prisoner be treated with respect due a valiant enemy, but Eumenes' own troops, knowing well that the Greek was too crafty to be held long, and tiring of constant warfare that his escape would only reignite, insisted that he must be put to death; and, although he begged for his life, he was. Now Antigonus really was the Lord of All Asia, and he set his sights on the rest of the empire.
He deposed and then quietly executed Peithon, on the legitimate but almost-forgotten charge that he had once risen up against the other eastern satrapies; he then appointed a native satrap, Orontobates, in his place, the first Persian given a position of power since Alexander's death; but Antigonus had begun to see that Persians were more trustworthy than the ambitious Macedonians. The Silver Shields Antigonus were particularly suspect, and he dispersed them to the far reaches of empire, with secret instructions that they be sent on suicide missions. Since there was no one to stop him, he raided the empire's treasuries, commandeering what vast wealth of the Archaemenids Alexander and his successors had not squandered. He summoned Seleucus, demanding to know why he had let Eumenes pass, and Seleucus, perceiving the fate of Peithon, fled and took refuge with Ptolemy. He similarly reconsolidated and reordered the rest of Asia, for the only man he trusted there, his family and Nearchus aside, was Peucestas, who betrayed Eumenes for ideology and not for gold, and who was popular with the Persian subjects, for he spoke Persian fluently and had learned all their lore and customs. Antigonus set him up as steward in his absence; then he marched west.
Seleucus Nicator warned the other Diadochi of Antigonus' approach, and immediately another coalition formed of Antigonus' former allies Cassander, Lysimachus, and Ptolemy. Antigonus sent money to Polyperchon, encouraging him to restart his campaign against Cassander; he also issued a proclamation declaring all Greek cities free, autonomous, and ungarrisoned. Cassander immediately issued an identical counterproclamation, but, as Antigonus had long since freed all the Greek cities of Asia Minor while Cassander consorted with demons, the Greeks adjudged Antigonus as the more sincere (correctly, it turns out), and sided with him almost unanimously, Aegean and Peloponnesian alike. Antigonus now had more men, more land, and more money than all his opponents combined, although far fewer ships. He marched into Syria, easily defeating Ptolemy's men there, took Joppa and Gaza, set up shipyards to construct a fleet, and conquered all Phoenicia except Tyre, which remained loyal to Ptolemy. Antigonus settled in for a siege. In the meantime, Cassander and Lysimachus found themselves harried by the free Greeks. Only Seleucus, who had nothing to lose, met with success. He borrowed ships from Ptolemy and managed to conquer Cyprus, which had allied itself with Antigonus. Then he went to the Branchidaean Oracle at Didyma, and learned in prophecy that he would become king. This was the first time anyone had mentioned kingship as a goal for anyone but the heirs of Alexander; hitherto everyone had been fighting merely for the regency. Seleucus was so excited by the oracle's words that he vomited. But after that he kept his mouth closed, and told no one of his prophetic destiny.
Tyre held out for over a year, longer than it had against Alexander, a significant setback for Antigonus. It gave time for Ptolemy to levy an army he led himself, which Demetrius and Nearchus were sent to stop. They met Ptolemy in Gaza, and were defeated after a hard fight, only escaping through a withdrawal deep into the desert. Ptolemy seized Demetrius' tent with all his possessions, and chivalrously had it returned to him. Demetrius gnashed his teeth and swore that he would not rest until he could repay Ptolemy with as great a kindness. Antigonus said, "Ptolemy has defeated boys; now let us see how he fares against men." But Demetrius begged him to let him make a second attempt himself.
And indeed soon Demetrius contrived to fall on Ptolemy's army as it advanced into Syria under General Cilles, winning a stunning victory against him and taking the general and 7,000 soldiers prisoner, along with all his baggage, which included the gem Alexander had brought back from India, which stood at the head of his coffin, which was made from the fingernail of the barbaric god Vala, and which, they said, would permit the bearer to see through the mother of Hermes, whose name has strange meaning in their language. It was a garnet, but not red as other garnets are, but bled free of all color, and Cilles was taking it to the mountains to seek the Hunbarbaridae. Demetrius immediately sent back all the prisoners and possessions with a brave flourish; but his mother had stolen the fingernail of Vala and replaced it with a copy. So Ptolemy never found the Hunbarbaridae, and it was well for him that he had already tamed the sons of Proteus. But Demetrius considered his debt paid. He had invented a way of using a series of signal beacons to send messages, and he proudly sent by beacon the news of his success to his father.
For among the Antigonids existed a family loyalty unknown in any other Diadochian dynasty; in fact, they alone never committed the crimes of parricide or filicide. A story is told that once, when ambassadors from Cassander were speaking with Antigonus Monophthalmos, Demetrius happened to come back from hunting and, still carrying his javelins, entered the meeting, kissed his father and sat by his side. This event made a large impression on the ambassadors, who had never before seen a man let his son enter his presence armed. Only in the context of the Diadochi can failure to murder relatives be seen as a remarkable virtue; but Demetrius had learned true loyalty from both his parents, who had each taken remarkable risks from familial duty. Demetrius was not as tall as his father, for no man in the empire was, but he was tall, and exceedingly handsome. He and Lysimachus bore a great hatred for each other and each had vowed to slay the other even if it meant his own doom.
Seleucus Nicator, meanwhile, took advantage of the Ptolemy's initial victory to slip into Asia, where he returned to Babylon and retook it by swimming in through a culvert from the Euphrates, and rallying his followers on the inside. Demetrius, flush form his victory over Cilles, hastened inland and conquered Babylon again; but Seleucus was not there, he was off in the east with Sandrokoptos the Peacock Tamer. Returning with 500 elephants, buoyed by the prophecy, Seleucus began a guerrilla campaign in the wilds around Babylon, harrying Demetrius' garrisons and then fading away. As the Branchidaean Oracle spoke for Apollo Didymaios, father of Branchus, Seleucus Nicator now took Apollo as his patron god.
Cassander, pressed by the free Greeks, finally murdered Alexander IV and Roxane, lest they fall into their hands, by the unique expedient of forcing them to eat each other piecemeal, and then finishing off the leftovers himself. Antigonus then sent Nearchus with Heracles by ship to Polyperchon with the suggestion that he declare Heracles, who was, after all, the only surviving heir, king, and Polyperchon his guardian. Polyperchon achieved some success with this gambit, but Cassander had faced off against the old general enough to have taken his measure. He offered him command of Greece in exchange for Heracles' head. Nearchus got wind of the plan and sailed away with the young heir, taking him east beyond the borders of the empire, where he would be safe. Polyperchon sent another's head to Cassander, who pretended to be taken in, but he nevertheless sent to all his generals and allies messages with the simple inscription: "Find Heracles." For he had married Alexander's illegitimate half-sister Thessalonike (age 19 at the time of Alexander's death) and intended his heirs to be the only survivors of the Philipid dynasty, to which Heracles had a better claim. "Find Heracles." But they never did.
Cassander further usurped the traditional privilege of Macedonian kings by founding two cities, Cassandreia and Thessalonica, named for him and his wife.
Demetrius, with his lieutenant Alcimus the Epirot, the strongest man in Greece, who wore for armor such a massive combination of iron and bronze that no other man could stand under it, made some other bold forays, the greatest of which was liberating Halicarnassus from Ptolemaic control. But Antigonus could not gain the upper hand in Greece any more than Cassander or Ptolemy could in Asia, and soon an armistice was called. Then, as Cassander and Polyperchon were now allies, and the murders and marriage and the city planning had brought Cassander's dynastic claim into the open, Ptolemy, who cared nothing for a united empire but wanted to prevent anyone from growing strong enough that they might threaten Egypt, forged a brief and strange alliance with Antigonus, and Demetrius, never one to stand on the niceties of monogamy, was even betrothed to his daughter Ptolemais (he married five women, including the sister and also the ex-wife of Pyrrhus). But the alliance could not last, for Ptolemy and Antigonus had opposite goals; indeed, it ended before the marriage could take place (Demetrius finally married Ptolemais for real a decade later). Nor could the armistice.
Soon, persuaded, some say, by the grateful citizens of Halicarnassus, Antigonus vowed to free Greece, which had been freed by proclamation already but languished under Cassander regardless. With his new fleet, Demetrius sailed to Greece and liberated Athens from his namesake, the terrible philosopher king Demetrius of Phaleron, who fled to Ptolemaic Egypt. "Fortune does not confirm to the laws of the world, and often demonstrates her power by frustrating our expectations," he wrote, there, in his treatise On Tyche. The Athenians were so thankful that they accorded both Antigonus and Demetrius divine honors, built temples to them and erected statues which they set up next to the Olympians'. Also, far more radical and startling, they proclaimed the pair kings. For the first time, and four long years after Cassander had eaten the flesh of young Alexander, someone not of Alexander's family was called king. Once hearts had been broken, so to speak, though, everyone became a king, and Seleucus proved the oracle right by crowning himself in Babylon, retaken again. Ptolemy the Savior was now pharaoh of Egypt (and began to claim that he was secretly Philip's bastard son), Lysimachus king of Thrace, Seleucus king of Babylon, and Cassander, after some initial self-righteous refusals, king of Macedonia and all Greece. But the last two, at least, desired a larger kingdom. Even Ptolemy, through stratagems and diplomacy, had managed some time before to add Cyprus and a few ports on the Greek mainland to his little empire, and these were very precious to him, for Egypt had but few harbors, and Ptolemy commanded a large fleet.
Ptolemy also took Cyprus for revenge: King Nicocreon of Cyprus, who had been an ally of Alexander, had been insulted by the philosopher Anaxarchus, a friend of Ptolemy's who ridiculed Nicocreon's claim to divine origin (as he had similarly ridiculed Alexander's), and later, capturing Anaxarchus, had ordered him pounded to death in a huge mortar. Later, when most Cypriots had allied themselves with Antigonus Monophthalmos, Nicocreon sided with Seleucus, operating from the fortress of Salamis, which had not fallen to siege since the Persian days of Artaxerxes. But Ptolemy, feigning friendship and promising Nicocreon rulership over the whole island, had captured him and forced him to commit suicide; as he bled to death, Ptolemy said, "That is blood, and not divine ichor," echoing the famous witticism of Anaxarchus. Thus did a former student of Aristotle's avenge a philosopher.
In Athens, however, Demetrius also showed the negative side of his character, and succumbed to a life of debauchery. He had taken as a mistress Irithizon, known as the Lamia for the city she hailed from, and she seemed to sap from him something, many said, which made him behave more foolishly than before. He installed her in the Parthenon, and so scandalized the Athenians that some whispered that they longed for the priggish days of Demetrius of Phaleron. Wine and women and splendor marked his time in Athens, and, as they had already hailed him as a god, who could preach moderation to Demetrius the Besieger? While his son Antigonus studied philosophy in the Painted Colonnade under Zeno the Stoic, Demetrius set up an Oriental court and wallowed in lust, flattery, pomp, dissolution, and crapulence.
But even the decadence of Athens could not hold him long. Now Demetrius and Antigonus rampaged around Greece, hailed everywhere as liberators, and Cassander and Lysimachus melted away before them. Demetrius wanted to raid Thrace, and kill Lysimachus, but Antigonus, who despised this vendetta and was a practical man, sent Demetrius to Cyprus, which was held by Ptolemy's brother, Menelaus. Demetrius landed and won a great battle, but Menelaus escaped and took refuge in the impregnable fortress of Salamis. Demetrius immediately began to construct siege engines of many and wondrous kind, most of his own invention, and pounded the walls of Salamis day and night, such that people said the pestle of Anaxarchus did not pound harder. It is thus he got the name "the Besieger." Still the fortress did not fall, despite all his inventions, and Ptolemy, meanwhile was coming by ship, leading his vast armada and an army twice the size of Demetrius'. But as Ptolemy approached the harbor of Salamis, Demetrius suddenly ordered his siege engines turned on Ptolemy's ships, and in the subsequent bombardment they sank almost to a man, Ptolemy only escaping in a rowboat. In this way Ptolemy lost his marvelous fingernail of Vala, which he never learned was fake, to the waves, although the box he kept it in miraculously washed ashore, and Demetrius duly returned it to Ptolemy, who later gave it as a gift to Cassander the Black-fascinated as he was with all things of magic or blood. Menelaus, in any event surrendered, and Demetrius sent him back with honor and all his possessions to Egypt, which he thereafter refused to leave. Cyprus belonged to Demetrius.
Demetrius wanted then to invade Egypt, but his mother convinced him it would be foolhardy without the fingernail of Vala, which she had passed on to her mother, and which would have to be brought back from Thessalonica. And so, while his father settled affairs and won skirmishes in Asia Minor, he satisfied himself for the moment in harassing the Egyptian coast, before moving on, at Antigonus' command, to Rhodes. For Rhodes had been independent since the death of Alexander, and, trading with all sides and becoming immensely rich in the process, had proved too willing to accommodate Antigonus' enemies. If Antigonus was going to control the sea lanes, as his strategy required, he would need to subdue Rhodes. He sent them a series of demands, to all save one of which they agreed: they would not give him one hundred finest hostages from among their nobility. Without the hostages, all chance for peaceful settlement vanished, and Demetrius went to Rhodes with a large army and his famous siege engines, including his masterpiece, the hundred-foot-high Helepolis. Once again he found himself quickly master of the island except the fortress of Rhodes. Once again his marvelous siege engines, which hurled flaming rocks and glass orbs filled with acid, worked slowly against the walls. Ptolemy, who relied on Rhodes for trade, all the more now that Cyprus had fallen, kept the Rhodians provisioned, and lent them military aid and crocodiles. He had learned from the fiasco at Salamis, and brought these in by small boats, under cover of darkness. For this service, the grateful Rhodians gave Ptolemy the name savior, which he proudly used from then on. Alcimus the Epirot, despite his massive armor, was eaten by a crocodile. Nevertheless, after a year, the walls were crumbling and the Rhodians were looking for a deal. Demetrius, although he desperately wanted to see the siege through to the end, had gotten desperate pleas for help from Athens, retaken by Cassander. And so they struck a bargain: Rhodes provided the hundred hostages and the promise to help Antigonus in any future wars, except against Ptolemy, and Demetrius lifted the siege and left, hostages in tow, for Athens. The Rhodians, who had been convinced they were doomed, saw their deliverance as a miracle, and, selling what siege machines Demetrius had left behind in his haste to fund the project, built a 112-foot high statue of Helios, the sun, traditional god of Egypt, straddling their harbor, the famous Colossus of Rhodes. Later the statue came to life and walked away into the sea.
Demetrius moved up through Greece, once again liberating the cities in a stroke that Cassander had laboriously subdued over the last year. He had taken under his wing the brilliant young king of Epirus, Pyrrhus (who had not yet been born when Alexander died), and the lad, who had been king since age twelve, accompanied him in his battles, first as aide and later as a commander. Then Demetrius, reinforced now by Antigonus, moved north into Macedonia, to finish off Cassander the Black. Cassander offered to be their loyal subject, but they, full of righteous fury, demanded unconditional surrender, and Cassander instead called on Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Seleucus to help him. Although the four had nominally been allied against Antigonus all along, they had mainly busied themselves staying out of his way; now, finally, they decided to cooperate in full. Abandoning Greece, Lysimachus and Seleucus now invaded Asia Minor, while Ptolemy advanced through Syria, to draw Antigonus into one decisive battle. They did this not without trepidation, for Antigonus had never been defeated; but the fat man was almost eighty, and the coalition desperately wanted an end to this war.
Antigonus Monophthalmos and Demetrius the Besieger met Lysimachus and Seleucus Nicator, with his 500 elephants, in Phrygia, on the plain of Ipsus, and here the final battle was joined. Demetrius led the most spectacularly successful action of the battle, a cavalry charge against his mortal enemy Lysimachus that broke his ranks and put the King of Thrace himself to flight. But, in his desire to pursue and strike down his foe, Demetrius did not perceive how hard pressed his father was by Seleucus' elephants. Antigonus, meanwhile, held his ground instead of falling back, because he believed Demetrius would return at any moment. "Fear not, Demetrius will come," were his last words, before the elephants fell on him. Demetrius, returning too late, was prevented by the elephants from even reclaiming his father's body, and eventually had to flee. Lysimachus, now crowing about his brilliant tactic, and Seleucus utterly annihilated Antigonus' panicking, leaderless army. It was the only battle Antigonus ever lost.
Lysimachus and Seleucus split Asia Minor, east and west, between them, while Ptolemy kept Syria. One of the prisoners from the battle, Pyrrhus, who had refused to retreat, was sent to Egypt as a hostage. He was seventeen years old. Ptolemy was soon charmed by the young man, and taught him the secrets of Egypt and of warfare, and showed him the pride of Alexandria: the Museum and the Great Library. Pyrrhus returned to Epirus to reclaim the kingship after marrying one of Ptolemy's daughters who was not insane with ambition. Lysimachus, in contrast, married Ptolemy's daughter Arsinoe, later called Arsinoe Philadelphos.
With Antigonus died the dreams of a united empire. Stratonike despaired, as her mother had despaired after Alexander's death. Mankind would never be unified. Ikulu, tolerated, to no one's surprise, by Cassander, had commissioned a tomb for Stratonike to be built in Thessalonica by the Frozen Beards, a race of pygmies who live in the mountains of the west, among the Helvetii, near the lake of the Argo. Once these Frozen Beards were numerous, but soon afterwards a rotting disease infected them, destroying their bones, and their numbers soon dwindled. Some say that Stratonike was walled up alive in the tomb; others say that the tomb merely points to another tomb's location, and this one the true tomb. In any event, within a few years, Demetrius' mother disappears from history.
But Demetrius did not. Turned away now even by Athens and the other Greek city-states that had not lately hailed him, he had no land save the island of Cyprus, but he still had his fleet, and the title of king. He became a pirate king; Cyprus was not his kingdom, the whole Aegean was. He still insisted that he, and he alone, now that his father was dead, was the rightful ruler of Alexander's empire. Cyprus was a fitting base of operations; Salamis had been founded by Teucer, brother of Ajax, a king with no kingdom.
Indeed, Demetrius did rather splendidly as a pirate king. For six years he delighted in raiding Thrace, much to Lysimachus' consternation, and became so respected and even feared that Seleucus married his daughter, named Stratonike after her cruel but beloved grandmother. He even contrived several bases on the coast of Asia Minor. Then he turned his sights on Athens, currently under Cassander's control, which had so recently betrayed him, and implemented a blockade, forbidding any food from entering the city. The famine there was so great that, it is written, a father and son beat each other senseless over the corpse of a mouse. Epicurus, who came to Athens after Perdiccas had expelled his family from Samos twenty years earlier, had managed to hoard a great supply of beans, and these he doled out in minute portions to his students every day. Ptolemy's immense fleet of relief ships were routed by Demetrius' pirate navy in an embarrassing turn, and finally Athens, which had previously imposed the death penalty on anyone even suggesting compromise with Demetrius, capitulated. Demetrius immediately, upon entering the city, decreed that all the citizenry assemble in the vast theater of Dionysus. This they did, somewhat fearfully, for the inevitable purges could fall on anyone. But Demetrius who entered the amphitheater through the actors' passages, reprimanded the Athenians gently for their fickleness and gifted them a hundred thousand bushels of wheat. He then garrisoned Athens, to the acclaim of its people once more, and marched on Sparta, a city never before taken by force of arms. He defeated the Spartans twice, and, as he marched on the city, its slaves threw open the gated in panic and despair. But before he could enter, Demetius received news that Lysimachus had conquered his bases in Asia Minor and Ptolemy had taken all of Cyprus save Salamis, in which Demetrius' family was besieged. By this miracle, Sparta was saved.
Never has fortune toyed so capriciously with a man. For, just as he was plummeting from the height of glory, her wheel brought him upwards again. It happened that Cassander had finally succumbed to his wickedness, and a demon had dragged him down to Tartarus along with his eldest son, Philip. Antipater and Alexander, Cassander's two younger sons immediately began to squabble over the succession. Thessalonike suggested that they share the kingdom, and was naturally supported in this proposition by the younger brother, Alexander; whereupon the elder, Antipater, now King Antipater I of Macedon, murdered his mother and set his brother to flight. Alexander then called for help from the two strongest men around, Pyrrhus, now comfortable in his kingdom Epirus, and Demetrius. Epirus arrived first; he sent Antipater fleeing to Lysimachus, whose daughter he married, set Alexander V up on the throne, and, with a canniness he had learned from Demetrius and Ptolemy, immediately annexed several provinces of Macedon as payment. When Demetrius arrived, late, Alexander V, fearful of losing more land to any other "helpers," made plans to kill him. But Demetrius, staying on in Pella, caught wind of the plot one night, and, contriving to leave the banquet with Alexander V trailing after him, he whispered to one of his guards as he passed, "Kill the man who follows me." Alexander V's last words, as he was struck down, were, "You have been one day too quick for me." The Macedonians, tired of the fiend Cassander and his murderous descendents, proclaimed Demetrius king of Macedon. After all, his first wife Phila was Antipater's daughter, his son Antigonus Gonatus Antipater's grandson. She arrived in Macedon, sent by Ptolemy by arrangement with the new king of Macedon in return for Salamis. Demetrius held most of Greece already.
In Babylon, meanwhile, Seleucus' son Antiochus found he had fallen in love with his stepmother. He attempted to kill himself, in shame, by starvation, feigning illness; but the attending physician, Erasistratus, had read Sappho and, recognizing the symptoms of love from her descriptions, deduced that it was Stratonike, Demetrius' daughter, that he loved. Erasistratus went to Seleucus and told him that his son would die because he loved another man's wife. Seleucus immediately issued a proclamation ordering that whomever Antiochus loved must forthwith divorce her husband and marry Antiochus. When he found out it was his own wife he divorced her and she married Antiochus. Seleucus then proclaimed Antiochus and Stratonike King and Queen of Babylon; he and Antiochus were co-rulers.
Ptolemy had also been beset by the problems of wanton Eros. He had fallen in love with his second wife Berenice, never a smart move, and decided that the pharaonic succession should pass to his younger son, by Berenice, known to history for shameful reasons as Ptolemy Philadelphos, and not his elder, by Eurydice the daughter of Antipater, another Ptolemy, this one surnamed Keraunos, the Thunderbolt. Philadelphos was tutored by Strato, third head of Aristotle's Lyceum, and groomed to be Ptolemy II of the double crown; the Thunderbolt, rightful heir by the laws of primogeniture, went untutored. The former philosopher king Demetrius of Phaleron, sober but imprudent as ever, championed the Thunderbolt's cause to Ptolemy the Savior, and was rebuffed; perhaps Ptolemy had perceived the streak of madness and violence that would give Ptolemy the Thunderbolt his name. Having perfunctorily done his duty to uphold tradition, the philosopher forgot all about it. But Ptolemy Philadelphos did not forget.
Lysimachus had had three children by Arsinoe, the daughter of Ptolemy and Berenice, and his trouble was coming.
Now the Macedonians learned to their chagrin that while Demetrius at war was a man of chivalric virtue, Demetrius at peace was a dissolute sybarite. Once again the king brought to his court a parody of Oriental splendor, with naked sex parades and blasphemy in the temples of the gods. The Macedonians had hoped, after the Cassander years, for a return to the austerity of Antipater; what they got was something less dangerous than Cassander, but much more offensive.
Pyrrhus, meantime, chafed at the proximity of his one-time mentor. Demetrius and Pyrrhus were too ambitious to be good neighbors, and soon they were not even good friends, falling out over border squabbles. Demetrius then married Pyrrhus' ex-wife Lanassa, Queen of Corcyra, and island to the west of Epirus. Demetrius' kingdom now flanked his protégé’s. Pyrrhus, who held Delphi, heard the oracle prophesy that the Antigonid dynasty would long rule in Macedon until the country was destroyed by Trojans who had turned Pyrrhus himself back; in anger, Pyrrhus banned Demetrius and all his allies from the Pythian Games. Demetrius instituted rival games in Athens, which he presided over dressed as Zeus, with Lanassa as Demeter, each in a golden chariot. An ithyphallic Athenian chorus sang a hymn to Demetrius the sole true god:
You alone of the gods are real, The other gods are all asleep, Or journeying, or non-existent, Or merely made of wood or stone, While you alone are here before us, Beautiful, benevolent, To save us from the coming sphinx.
The sphinx was Pyrrhus. Everyone knew war was inevitable.
But Demetrius, perhaps deep in an alcoholic fog, did not see it coming. Pyrrhus had made a treaty with Lysimachus to fall on Macedon simultaneously from both sides, taking Demetrius completely by surprise. The Macedonians, weary of Demetrius' antics and angry that he had taken yet another wife in disrespect of Queen Phila, hardly resisted. Demetrius threw off his royal finery, donned one of Cassander's black cloaks, and disappeared into the night. His long-suffering wife Phila, who loved him desperately, and had suffered through so many vicissitudes with him, finally despaired and committed suicide. Surely, everyone thought, Demetrius would follow suit, for surely his fortunes were at an end.
But Demetrius never despaired. As Lysimachus and Pyrrhus divided Macedon, Lysimachus murdering Antipater I when he asked for a share, Demetrius, with nothing to offer but his own charisma, collected an army and liberated Thebes from Macedonian control. Depicting himself once again as a liberator, with some plausibility for even as king he had insisted on the freedom and autonomy of the Greek cities that paid him taxes and only garrisoned the ones that rebelled against this slight yoke, he moved south through Greece to Corinth. He still had men more loyal to him than to Pella in many cities, but others saw a chance to free themselves from Macedonian hegemony once and for all, and declared against both sides. In Athens, the fickle mob turned against the Demetrius partisans, who sent to Demetrius to aid them. Demetrius once again found himself besieging the city that had called him the one true god. Ptolemy, always willing to help anyone who fought against his rivals, sent another fleet, and this time Demetrius had too few men to stop it. The philosopher Crates the Cynic, Zeno's teacher, left the walls of Athens and demonstrated with syllogism that it would be in everyone's best interest to reach a settlement before Ptolemy arrived. After a quick compromise that left Demetrius in charge of Piraeus, Athens' sister city, Demetrius moved on. Ptolemy was the big winner here, as he was once again hailed as savior, and most cities of southern Greece bound themselves to his empire voluntarily.
Almost friendless in Greece, now, Demetrius decided to cross to Asia Minor and fight there.
He left his son, the smart-mouthed stoic Antigonus Gonatus ("Knock-kneed), in charge of his
few remaining Greek holdings, Piraeus, Corinth, Calcis, and of course Demetrius, and set
off to try his fortune.
Raiding Lysimachus' territory was an old profession of his, and immediately he met with success, capturing Sardis and winning over many of Lysimachus' local commanders. But Lysimachus sent a large army across the Hellespont, led by his son Agathocles, that rarest of combinations: a popular and honest man. Demetrius only had a skeleton force, insufficient for pitched battle, and so he sent his fleet to harry Lysimachus' coastline, while he struck inland. He intended to make for the eastern satrapies, which he had not yet alienated. His old friend Peucestas was still out there, living in the Persian manner, and Nearchus had gone somewhere to the east, maybe he was there, too. Surely he could raise a proper army in the east, for he was the son of the Lord of All Asia.
But Seleueus, hardly willing to tolerate such mischief in his eastern territories, set his son, King Antiochus, after Demetrius. Agathocles cut his supply line, and Demetrius' forces, hungry and buffeted by the elements in the mountains, on the run and demoralized by the wild goose chase they were on, began to desert. Demetrius was forced to turn back, and, finally facing Antiochus in the Mountains of Taurus, routed his forces. A new strategy suddenly occurring to him, Demetrius marched towards Babylon. After all, he'd taken it before.
Here Demetrius' fortune spun him downward once more. For, as he approached Babylon, the unhealthy climate of the east laid him low, and Demetrius spent a week delirious with fever. His troops, giving him up for dead and hardly willing to storm Babylon with no leader, left Demetrius on the plains and fled. When Demetrius came to himself he was lying all alone with nothing but a cloak and a sword. Never one to despair, he pressed on eastward, alone, but finally collapsed from hunger. Antiochus found him, and took him to Babylon at last. Seleucus greeted him as a king, and set him up in Apamea, where he stationed his war elephants, near the new Seleucid city of Antioch. Demetrius was a captive, but a pampered one, and he was allowed to set up his traditional court of decadence. Lysimachus offered Seleucus 2000 talents for his nemesis's head, but Seleucus, in a curt letter, declined, calling Lysimachus a filthy savage for good measure. Lysimachus was not one to listen to lectures on morals, and only got filthier. Demetrius, given absolute freedom in indulging his passions if nothing else, soon drank himself to death. Lysimachus felt he had been robbed of vengeance on his greatest enemy, and swore revenge on Seleucus.
Demetrius' pirate fleet, masterless now and hardly willing to turn themselves over to a powerless Antigonus Gonatus, went over to Ptolemy. The Athenians reacted to Demetrius' death by attempting to take Piraeus, but Gonatus proved he had at least some of his father's mettle, and defeated them with a ruse: pretending that the city was being given to the Athenians by a traitor, he raised the gates, and, when the Athenian forces rushed in they found themselves in a stockade the Piraeans had built; the gate was dropped, and the Athenians in the trap were massacred from above. While Pyrrhus, remembering the prophesy of an Antigonid dynasty in Pella, sent a large donation to Delphi, wishing the oracle better luck next time. But he had little chance to be smug Lysimachus was about to strike with a thunderbolt.
For meantime the disenfranchised Ptolemy the Thunderbolt had gone to Seleucus to beg help in reclaiming the throne, but Seleucus had put him off with vague future promises; surely he did not wish to antagonize his old comrade Ptolemy. So the Thunderbolt had left Seleucus for Lysimachus, who was, of course, much rasher. Lysimachus was hardly more encouraging, but the Thunderbolt, touring the kingdom with Lysimachus, began to desire, over the throne of Egypt, the throne of Macedon. The only problem was that the^ were so many people with a better claim to it than the Thunderbolt; he decided to eliminate them one by one.
First he persuaded Lysimachus that he should be sole king of Macedonia. Lysimachus and the Thunderbolt attacked Pyrrhus and drove him back to Epirus. Lysimachus declared himself king of Macedon, Thrace, and Asia Minor. His ambition was obvious. It was also obvious to his wife Arsinoe, who was jealous that her stepson Agathocles would inherit the kingdom over her own children. The Thunderbolt passed his half-sister a copy of Euripides' Hippolytus, and soon Arsinoe, coming to Lysimachus in tears and claiming that Agathocles had tried to rape her; persuaded the king to put his own son to death. Agathocles' widow Lysandra, who had hated her half-sister Arsinoe since childhood, fled to Seleucus, begging him to avenge this heinous crime.
Nor was she the only voice crying out. Lysimachus' subjects had loved the prince, and they were horrified by the deed. In an effort to quell nascent rebellion, Lysimachus executed those who spoke out against him. This only added to the dissatisfaction, and Lysimachus soon found himself in the middle of a large-scale and escalating purge. When Seleucus, heeding Lysandra's call, marched into Lysimachus' domains in Asia Minor, he was greeted everywhere by a people suddenly grown afraid their king.
Lysimachus, an octogenarian now, marched into Asia Minor, the Thunderbolt by his side, hoping to defeat Seleucus Nicator in one decisive battle. He left his wife Arsinoe at Ephesus (briefly renamed Asinoea in her honor), near Belevi, where he had built a magnificent tomb for himself, and began his campaign. The two foxes met at Corupedia, and Lysimachus charged into the thick of battle, seeking Seleucus, whom he vowed to slay with his own hand. But Seleucus merely moved his banner back, so that Lysimachus advanced far ahead of his own men, and the King of Macedon, Thrace, and Asia Minor was struck down and died. The Thunderbolt immediately surrendered, and Lysimachus, as was customary with him by now, treated his captive royally.
Arsinoe suddenly found herself the least popular woman in the Greek world. She knew, as soon as she learned of Lysimachus' death, that the people of Ephesus would try to kill her, so she dressed her handmaid Corde in royal finery and fled herself in the rags of a beggar woman, with her three children. Corde was torn to death by a mob, but Arsinoe was far enough away by that time that she could not hear the screams. She did not stop running until she reached Cassandreia, where she still had some support.
Lysimachus' body, at the request of his own men, was tossed into a mass, unmarked grave, and the magnificent tomb at Belevi on a bluff overlooking Ephesus, hewn from the living rock into chambers eighty feet high, remained empty until Antiochus Theos, Seleucus' grandson and the enemy of Ptolemy Philadelphos, elected to be buried there.
Lysimachus' kingdom now had no heir, and the people unanimously called for Seleucus to be their king. For the first time since Alexander, Greece and Asia, almost as far as India, were unified. Seleucus, with the Thunderbolt by his side, made a triumphal march along the coast of Asia Minor, and crossed the Hellespont. As he set foot on European soil, Ptolemy the Thunderbolt stabbed him dead, and proclaimed himself King of Macedon and Thrace. A confused populace assented. Antiochus, incidentally, was now Lord of All Asia.
With the deaths of Seleucus and Lysimachus, the first generation of Diadochi, the generation that had adventured with Alexander, came to an end. For Ptolemy the Savior had died peacefully in his bed not long before. His son and successor, Ptolemy II Philadelphos, for his first official act, imprisoned the erstwhile philosopher king Demetrius of Phaleron, who had counseled against him for the succession, and who died in prison. After that inauspicious beginning, however, Ptolemy II proved a fairly temperate ruler, a patron of the arts and an amateur scientist. It was a simple, uncontroversial, and uncontested succession.
Contrast with the Thunderbolt's position, which would not be secure until he dealt with the more legitimate heirs. He immediately proposed marriage to his half-sister Arsinoe, promising to make her children his heirs, passing the whole thing off as a bid for legitimacy by marrying the old queen. Arsinoe's eldest son, Ptolemy of Telmesson, warned her that it was a trap, so Arsinoe assented only under the provision that the marriage must take place in an open and public ceremony in Cassandreia, under the watch of the army, which she knew loved the Thunderbolt no more than her. Ptolemy of Telmesson still refused to go, choosing instead exile in Illyria. Their blood relationship notwithstanding, Ptolemy the Thunderbolt and Arsinoe's marriage went off without a hitch, and everyone breathed easier and went home. After a wedding night in Pella that must have been a model of duplicity, the Thunderbolt murdered his two new stepsons, and went for Arsinoe, but she, awoken early by the buzzing of a bee, contrived to escape to Samothrace, where she built as thanks for her delivery, the Tholos, a sanctuary to the gods in the form of a beehive and the largest circular building in all the Greek lands.
Ptolemy the Thunderbolt then turned to Demetrius' son. Antigonus Gonatus could not have been less like his father: short, ugly, austere, unpopular, and intellectual. With his snub nose and bandy legs, he was said to resemble Pan, and he thereupon took Pan as his patron god, an unusually minor figure for a patron when the Ptolemies had Aphrodite, the Seleucids Apollo, and Athens Athena; and perhaps Pan was already dying. Gonatus went out with a fleet to meet the Thunderbolt's assault and to no one's surprise was put to flight and took refuge in Demetrias. But before he could follow up on this victory, he was called back to Macedon by a strange new threat. Hordes of barbarians from the north called Galatians were spilling into the Greek lands.
The Thunderbolt met them in battle, but for once had found a foe more ruthless than he. They routed his forces, took him prisoner, tortured him to death, cut off his head and carried it with them as a standard. The Galatians who later penetrated deep into Caria brought it with them and taught it to speak.
The Diadochi were no longer fighting for power but rather for the survival of civilization; and the Greek's traditional leader, Macedon, was without a king, although several proclaimed themselves king or regent briefly, before marching against the Galatians and dying. Sosthones, who refused the title of king, was the most successful, holding the Galatians at bay before eventually falling before them. Cassander's nephew Antipater the Etesian Wind was the least, reigning; fort forty-five days before being driven out by common consent. Pyrrhus, at this point, made ready to defend Delphi, the most sacred and richest spot in Greece, but the oracle told him to leave, for Delphi would be defended by an army clad in white. Indeed, when the Galatians made for the oracle's cave in search of booty, a sudden blizzard sprung up and the Galatians, blinded and freezing, were forced to retreat at heavy losses. Pyrrhus, witnessing the power of Delphi, began to wonder about the Antigonids. He worried he would never again sit on the Macedonian throne. This was the first great defeat of the Galatians, but greater were coming.
Meanwhile, Antiochus the Seleucid had declared war on Antigonus Gonatus, hoping to finish off a rival that the Thunderbolt had left him, although he was now too busy fighting Galatians in Asia Minor actually to pursue the war he had declared. Gonatus hoped to take advantage of Antiochus' weakness by crossing the Hellespont and claiming some territory that the Galatians had despoiled, for above all else he needed land. As he marched his men up into Thrace, he came by chance on an army of some 16,000 Galatians, heading for the same goal. Gonatus managed to surround and entrap, and then massacre the invaders to a man. Pan was said to have appeared on the battlefield and driven the Galatians so mad with panic that they dropped their weapons. It was the first significant military victory against the Galatians, and was celebrated with a jubilation not seen in Greece since Marathon. Gonatus somehow found himself a hero. The Macedonians, desperate to have someone fill their throne, summoned Antigonus Gonatus, who was after all the son and grandson of Macedonian rulers, to be their king.
Gonatus' victory proved decisive not just for his career, but for Greece. The Galatians had lost their air of invincibility and the Aetolians invented a method of fighting them that involved using phalanxes in hit-and-run attacks. Antiochus could not drive the Galatians from Asia Minor, but he managed to restrict them to their own semiautonomous kingdom in the central mountains, from which they still made occasional forays. Gonatus, with Pan, it is said, ever accompanying him, at least on the pipes, then went on to defeat the other claimants for his crown, Arsinoe's sole surviving son Ptolemy of Telmesson and Antipater the Etesian Wind, whose name was an ironic comment on the brevity of his reign, for the Etesian winds are steady and constant, and re-conquered rebellious Thessaly and Cassandreia. He invited poets and philosophers including his mentor Zeno, who declined, to live in court, and he finally put Cassander's forbidden tomes to good use.
Arsinoe, her hopes for Ptolemy of Telmesson dashed, turned her sights elsewhere. She returned to Alexandria, where her brother Ptolemy II Philadelphos was reigning married to another Arsinoe, Lysimachus' daughter. Our Arsinoe soon poisoned her brother against his current wife, convincing him that she had plotted his death, whereupon he sent her into exile and, although they were full-blooded siblings, married our Arsinoe, hereafter Arsinoe II; it was thus that both acquired their name Philadelphos. Now, it has long been the way of the pharaohs to marry their siblings, but to the Greeks this was anathema, and many have said that the Ptolemies, who lived in a Greek city and spoke only Greek, could not have gone native in one generation and proposed an alternative explanation. They claim that soon after the elderly Ptolemy disinherited the Thunderbolt, surely in retrospect a wise decision, Ptolemy Philadelphos died, leaving Ptolemy the Savior with no proper heir. But he reached an agreement with the sons of Proteus, and one secretly took the form and place of Ptolemy Philadelphos. His marriage to Arsinoe Philadelphos was therefore not incestuous, but part of Ptolemy I's plan to ensure that the Ptolemaic line would include his blood, albeit through his daughter. If this had been his plan, it did not succeed, for Arsinoe had no more children, remarking, cynically, that children, inevitably, only grew up to poison their parents.
The division of the empire now looked stable, with Asia, Egypt, and Macedon in hegemony over Greece comprising its three sections. The eastern satrapies were slowly, one by one, drifting out of Seleucid control, but that hardly affected the rest of the empire. Yet there was still one wild card in Pyrrhus, who coveted the throne in Pella, and perhaps beyond. Before he could act on his ambition, however, he received, from Tarentum, a Greek city in Italy, a plea to come serve as their general and save them from the conquest of the upstart Romans. Pyrrhus wavered in indecision; the other Diadochi, eager to ditch this loose cannon, encouraged him to go west, offering him men and equipment and, in Antiochus' case, nineteen elephants; the Delphic oracle prophesied that Pyrrhus would vanquish in the west and be vanquished in the east; but even without this pressure he probably would have gone west. For it was a defect of Pyrrhus' character that though he could never turn down a call for help from a Greek, he never saw anything through and was therefore, in the end, never much help at all.
When Pyrrhus arrived in Italy, the Tarentines were wary, for they had only sought a general, not a conqueror with his own army. Pyrrhus fought the Romans, at first successfully, getting to within two miles of Rome, but his enemies refused his offer to partition Italy between him and them, and then he got another call for help, from the Greeks of Sicily, who were fighting the Carthaginians. He immediately left Italy, waged a brilliant campaign in Sicily, refused the Carthaghiam' offers of a settlement, and then, when Sicily was almost his, abruptly returned to Tarentum, where he fought the Romans again until he defeated them at Maleventurn at such heavy loss to his own forces, for the Roman general M. Curius Dentatus had studied Ptolemy's history of Alexander to learn how to fight elephants, that Pyrrhus exclaimed, "One more victory like that and I am finished!" The Romans changed the name of the town to Beneventum in celebration. When Antigonus Gonatus refused his appeal for more funds, Pyrrhus left the job half finished and returned to Epirus, from which he launched an attack on Macedon. After a heroic rear-guard action failed, Gonatus fled, and Pyrrhus had the Macedonian throne again at last. But Gonatus, unlike Pyrrhus, had learned the value of tenacity from Demetrius, and fled to Thessalonica, still claiming the mantle of king. Pyrrhus soon marched south, leaving Macedon in the hands of another son, under whose watch a new wave of Galatians plundered Aegae, a public relations catastrophe hut hardly the tragedy it was made out to he. for Antigonus Gonatus fearing such a contingency, had earlier consolidated most tombs' contents into the impenetrable Great Tumulus, which he disguised as the natural hill Heroön. While Pyrrhus campaigned in Greece by and large successfully but fruitlessly, Gonatus re-conquered Athens from Piraeus and moved to Argos. Heeding yet another plea for help, Pyrrhus also raced to Argos, where, his force and Gonatus' having been let into the city by opposing partisan factions, the battle degenerated into street fighting; in the course of which Pyrrhus was struck in the head by a shingle a woman threw from an upper window. One of Gonatus' men found him lying in the gutter unconscious and dispatched him. He had indeed been vanquished east of Delphi. Antigonus Gonatus returned to Pella as lord of Greece, and never left. Although Antigonus Monophthalmos' dream of an earth united had failed, his descendants remained on the throne of Alexander and Philip until the Romans, Trojans through Aeneas, who had indeed turned Pyrrhus back, conquered and eliminated Macedon.
Magna Graecia, the Greek colonies of the west, never a part of Alexander's empire, was lost altogether to the Greeks when Pyrrhus abandoned them, and the future of these lands belonged to Carthage and then Rome.
With the death of Pyrrhus Alexander's funeral games ended. Although there would be the usual disputed over borders and successions, and Antiochus is already executing his first- born for treason, and the Ptolemies are already marching for Syria again, and the Athenians are already trying to oust their Macedonian garrison, the Diadochi's tripartite division of the Greek world would last until the world became Roman.
