DIADOCHI – MACEDONIAN GAME OF THRONES (PART 11): THE SECOND WAR BEGINS

Long before George R.R. Martin penned his tale of war, intrigue and treachery the ancient world was scene to its own version of Game of Thrones.

(This is the eleventh in a series concerning the Wars of the Diadochi. Part 1 can be read here, and includes comprehensive biographies of the players in this drama. It is strongly advised that you start there before reading on. The previous installment, Part 10, can be found here. Stay tuned to this blog for future installments. Special thanks to Michael Park for his indispensable help in filling in the gaps in the sources and putting-up with my incessant questions!)

It is the summer of 319 BC. Antipater the Regent has taken the two kings and the court back to Pella in Macedon; leaving the war against Eumenes and  Alcetas, the last supporters of the late regent Perdiccas, to his General (strategos) in Asia, Antigonus Monophthalmus (“One-Eyed”). As discussed in the previous installment, Antigonus defeated Eumenes at the Battle of the  Orcynian Fields, and after incorporating most of the survivors of the defeated army into his own invested Eumenes and his few remaining followers in the fortress of Nola, in Cappadocia.

Then, just months after returning home, “The Old Rope”^[1] died, and the playing board was reset.

THE BOARD IS SHAKEN

Antipater died at 80 years old. He had served four kings^[2], and was the only leading Diodachi seemingly devoid of royal ambitions. His loyalty to the Argead dynasty was unquestioned, and though his battles with Olympias strained his relationship with her son, even in death he carried out Alexander’s wishes: he left the regency and guardianship of the two kings to another old general, Polyperchon son of Simmias. He was a scion of the old royal house of Tymphaia in what was called Upper (highland) Macedon^[3], and had commanded that region’s taxis (brigade) of the phalanx for nine years after the  Battle of Issus. He had been on the return march to Macedon with Craterus when news of Alexander’s death reached them in Cilicia. It had been the dead monarch’s wishes that Craterus replace Antipater as regent in Macedonia, and as his deputy Polyperchon would have replaced Craterus had that general died in office. As it were, Craterus and Antipater had come to an accord and the old regent retained his position.

From Oliver Stone’s film, Alexander (2004)

When Craterus and Antipater departed for Asia and their campaign against Perdiccas ^[4], the Regent had entrusted Polysperchon with the defense of Macedon and Hellas. Faced with a revolt (again) by the Aetolians and Thessalians, the old phalanx commander had decisively defeated the Thessalians in battle in which their veteran leader Menon of Pharsalus was killed^[5].

Now, on his death bed, Antipater honored Alexander’s wishes as best he could by naming Polyperchon as his replacement. An elevation approved by the Macedonian troops in the homeland at that time.

But with Antipater’s passing went all legitimately constituted authority. “The kings – an infant and an idiot – were powerless of themselves; the Macedonian army could never again be united  for the elections of a legitimate regent… The moment he (Antipater) was dead the forces of disruption burst their barriers.”^[6]

His first and ultimately greatest opponent was none other than Antipater’s own son, Cassander. It is at this point in history that this villain takes the main-stage in the drama unfolding. Long his father’s right-hand, Cassander refused to be passed over and spent weeks intriguing against Polyperchon. Unlike his father, he had scant respect for dead Alexander’s wishes. The man who had hated the conqueror since their childhood together, who was left behind when Alexander marched east, and who may have had a hand in Alexander’s death^[; undertook now to overturn both Alexander’s and his father’s plans for the regency and the first steps toward overthrowing the royal family entire. To this end he fled to Asia in the autumn of 319, where he made amends with Antigonus and denounced the new regent’s appointment as illegitimate. For his part Antigonus welcomed this opportunity and used it as excuse to throw out of their offices the satraps in Asia Minor Antipater had appointed as a check on his ambitions.

After shutting Eumenes up in Nola (see Part 10), Antigonus had taken the bulk of his forces (40,000 foot, 7,000 horse, and 65 elephants) against the remnants of the Perdiccan forces under Alcetas and Attalus in Pisidia. In a brilliant feat of generalship, Antigonus’ forced marched 300 miles in seven days through the rugged terrain, to surprise Alcetas’ force of 16,000 foot and 1,000 horse (and perhaps as many as 4,000 Pisidian light infantry skirmishers) encamped at a pass near Cretopolis. His arrival achieved near complete surprise: the first hint the Perdiccan forces had of his coming was when they heard the trumpeting of his elephants:

Antigonus … hoped to surprise their camp in the straights of Pisidia: but the elephants cried out, and informed the Macedonians of his approach; for he was the only general who used those beasts. Alcetas with the heavy-armed troops immediately attempted to gain the summit of the steep and craggy mountains. Instead of following him, Antigonus wheeled round the mountain. He marched with all possible speed to the place where the army was encamped. He surprised and surrounded them, before they had time to form up. The enemy were forced to surrender themselves as prisoners of war, and thus he obtained a victory without slaughter.^[7]

This bloodless victory was won by stratagem and maneuver, and in mountainous terrain. Antigonus, who was 58 when Alexander dies in 323, was a man of 61-62. Yet he showed the energy of a man half that age, in a campaign that bears comparison to Caesar’s masterpiece of maneuver following Ilerda. In so doing Antigonus served notice to his rivals that a lion had now strode forth, center stage. 

Antigonus had some 65 Indian elephants in his army in 319 B.C.

Antigonus joined Alcetas’ forces to his own, giving him by far the strongest army in the empire. As for Alcetas, he tried to find refuge in the strongly fortified town of Termessus. But the city elders refused him sanctuary, and were prepared to turn him over to Antigonus. The proud brother of Perdiccas, who had scorned alliance with Eumenes and who was alone to blame for his own demise, now took his own life rather than be at the scant mercy of his enemy. Antigonus refused his body burial, leaving his corpse to feed the crows. But the Termessians, once the army had withdrawn, buried him with honors.

Thus ended the war against Perdiccas, the final conflict of the First War of the Diadochi. The second was to follow very quickly on its heels.

THE SECOND WAR OF THE DIADOCHI BEGINS

That war would break out again so close on the heels of the first can be attributed to the ambition of one man, and the manipulations of another.

Antigonus had the bit firmly in his teeth. After years of sitting on the sidelines, watching younger players gain glory, riches, and power in the wars of Alexander and the more recent struggles since the conqueror’s death, he was now at last center-stage and in the leading-man’s role. He had the most powerful army in the empire, and his recent successes had assured their loyalty. He was growing used to absolute authority, and while he might have taken orders from Antipater, an officer even more senior than himself; he was not about to subordinate himself to a second-rate player like Polysperchon. The kings who the regent represented were a boy (and only half Macedonian at that) and an idiot. Why should he take orders from either?

His burgeoning ambition rendered him receptive to  the son of Antipater’s sly blandishments.

Cassander now takes his place in the game in a major way, and this is a good place to stop and take a hard look at the new player.

He is the seducer and master manipulator. A man devoid of scruples, Cassander played his hand well throughout, besting stronger forces and beating players holding better cards at every turn. It bears remembering that Cassander was ever the outsider, welcome only in his father’s company and had risen only because of their kinship. Alexander had neither trusted nor liked him. As mentioned above, their mutual enmity likely dated back to their childhood, where boys of high station joined the royal heir (Alexander) in the classroom at the temple of the Nymphs at Mieza, with  Aristotle their tutor. Throughout his reign as king Alexander favored those men who had shared this classroom with him. They accompanied him into Asia on his long anabasis to India and back; and most attained high rank in the process.

All but Cassander.

As a son of Antipater, who Alexander left behind as regent of Macedon in his absence, it would be expected that Cassander would accompany his contemporaries on the grand adventure. If for no other reason than as surety for his father’s loyalty, one would have expected Alexander to have found a place for Cassander. That he conspicuously did not is testament to the deepest dislike the young king had for his company. (Cassander had also been “sickly”, both as a boy and as a young man. It was an old custom among the Macedonians that a young man couldn’t take his place among the men, reclining at supper, till he had killed a wild boar at hunt, without the help of nets. Throughout his life Cassander attended his father and others sitting upright, while they reclined; a sign he was never able to fulfill this symbolic right of passage.)

At the end of his journey Alexander returned to Babylon, where Cassander attended him as his father’s representative. His audience with the king went spectacularly wrong. His boorish arrogance towards the Persians and those Macedonians who wore Persian robes at court so enraged Alexander that the king leapt from the throne in the midst of the audience, and threw Cassander to the ground.

After this humiliation, Cassander had slunk back to Pella, and was thus absent for Alexander’s last days. But his brother, Iollas, remained behind in Babylon as Alexander’s cup-bearer. A theory developed afterwards, during the early struggles of the Diadochi, likely originating from the orbit of the dead king’s mother, Olympias; that following Cassander’s departure from Babylon his brother had poisoned the king.

This theory has been, for the most part, rejected by modern scholars. But it was widely believed by many at the time and since. It speaks, if nothing else, to the known enmity Cassander bore the dead king. He feared and hated Alexander, and it was said that in later years when he passed a bust of the king, he shuddered.

But now the discarded and long detested Cassander was taking his place in the sun. He had a weak hand, the only card he had to play being the loyalty to his father’s memory borne by the various oligarchs placed in their positions of power in the cities of Greece during Antipater’s regency. This would prove a powerful trump.

Antigonus received Cassander as refugee in the autumn of 319 BC, and after some correspondence and exchange of envoys, a coalition was cobbled together to oppose the regency of Polyperchon. This alliance of convenience included Lysimachus, satrap of Thrace, and Ptolemy of Egypt.

Little has been heard of Lysimachus up till this point. By nature a cautious man, he had avoided the earlier turmoil that had devoured a host of more prominent actors who’d (however briefly) taken center stage. Busy with the affairs of his backwoods satrapy, he watched and waited, and will in the future play a much more prominent role in this “game of thrones”. For now he was tacitly allied against Polyperchon; but he would do little to aid his partners in coming struggles, betting little and losing nothing.

Ptolemy had been the chief agent of Perdiccas’ downfall, for practical purposes his nemesis. His reward had been confirmation of his control of Egypt. His contribution to this new war would also be meager, as his chief concern was in reinforcing his power base rather than expansion.

It would be Cassander and Antigonus who would prosecute the  struggle against the regent Polysperchon. The two had little trust in each other, and both likely knew this marriage of convenience made them uneasy bedfellows. So it was agreed to separate and divide their efforts: Cassander would prosecute the war against Polysperchon in Europe, while Antigonus would remain in Asia Minor, consolidating his control of the the satrapies loyal to the regent and containing Eumenes in Nora.

Their open declaration of war against Polysperchon came in the form of Antigonus, who had seized the city of Ephesus, taking possession of a shipment of six hundred talents of silver bullion  (worth six-and-a-half million dollars today) from the royal treasury at Cyinda in Cilicia, which Aeschylus of Rhodes had been escorting to Polysperchon in Pella. Such defiance of the regent’s authority (and legitimacy) was a gauntlet thrown in his face.

In the process of  taking Ephesus and other cities in Lydia and Ionia, Antigonus had expelled the satrap, Cleitus the White, victor in the naval battles of the Lamian War against the Athenians^[8]. Cleitus departed with his fleet intact, sailing to Macedon where he alerted the regent of Antigonus’ moves against him and enlisted himself to Polysperchon’s cause.

Antigonus next sent an army against Arrhidaeus, the satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia. This was the same general who had diverted Alexander’s funeral carriage to Egypt in defiance of Perdiccas’ orders; and by doing so precipitated the First War of the Diadochi. Now, on the eve of the Second War, he had at the death of Antipater attempted to enlarge his power by seizing the free city of Cyzicus; strongly located on a peninsula jutting into the Sea of Marmara.

Arrhidaeus had been, briefly, co-regent for the kings and one of their custodians; this after the death of Perdiccas, as the army marched to Triparadeisos^[9]. He seems to have harbored ambitions to challenge Antigonus in Asia, for he had amassed a large force: aside from the 1,000 “Macedonians” likely assigned to him as his satrapal garrison/guard, he had hired 10,000 mercenary infantry (likely Greek hoplites and/or peltasts), 500 “Persian” archers and slingers, and 800 cavalry, and “all kinds of missiles, catapults both for bolts and for stones, and all the other equipment proper for storming a city”.^[10]

Arriving unexpectedly with his forces before Cyzicus, he demanded the city accept a garrison with their walls. But the citizens resisted, even arming slaves to help man their walls, and appealled to nearby Byzantium for aid. Rebuffed, Arrhidaeus withdrew to Cius, while garrisoning those towns and cities under his control, and sent a force to give aid to Eumenes.

His activities and hostility drew the attention of Antigonus, who used this action against a free city, taken without his sanction as the strategos (General) in charge of Asia, as excuse to attack and remove him. Antigonus marched north, and Arrhidaeus was bottled up in Cius, under blockade if not siege.

Meanwhile, for his part Cassander began to lay the ground work for a return to Europe. Antigonus lent him the forces to help in his endeavor, some 4,000 troops and 35 ships.  The first step was to suborn the support of the oligarchic rulers his father Antipater had installed in nearly every city in Greece. He wrote letters to all, declaring his intent to return as his father’s true successor. In Athens the Macedonian garrison in the harbor of Piraeus, placed their following the Lamian War, declared for Cassander and placed his friend Nicanor ^[11] in command.

To counter the expected defection of the  oligarch leaders to the son of their late patron, Polysperchon now took a bold diplomatic stroke. In the name of King Philip, he declared the Greek cities “free” of their oligarchs, and urged them to throw off their shackles. To further this, he granted amnesty to all Greeks exiled after their defeat in the Lamian War. He warned the oligarchs to step aside, and the cities to implement the King’s decree or face his wrath. To sweeten the deal for Athens, the jewel in the crown of Greek cities and now threatened directly by Cassander’s men in the Piraeus, he granted the return of the island of Samos; once a colony of Athens but freed by Alexander’s famous “Exiles Decree” in 324 B.C.

The situation in Greece was now one in which the poorer elements in every polis, by-and-large, were with Polysperchon and “democracy”. The richer citizens, who benefited under the oligarchical regimes established by Antipater, sided (for the most part) with Cassander.

In an effort to cut off Antigonas and Cassander from recruiting Greek mercenaries (who, other than native Macedonians, were the only reliable heavy infantry to be had, and the lifeblood of every Diadochi army^[12]) the regent also issued an edict aimed at the Greek cities under his rival’s control, in the name of the kings, that “no one must serve as a soldier or in any other capacity against us on penalty of exile, for himself and his family, and the forfeiture of their property”. However, with control of Hellas shifting back-and-forth over the coming months between Polysperchon and his enemies, this decree had negligible effect on the flow of manpower to his opponents. The demand was unlimited, and mercenary captains would continue to recruit men in Taenarum, and fill their companies with a ready supply of men. 

Meanwhile, Antigonus made one last attempt to conciliate Eumenes and bring him over to his service. He sent Eumenes’ kinsman, Hieronymus of Cardia, to Nora where the Cardian was blockaded. The Macedonians besieging the place allowed Hieronymus to enter with their master’s message in hand. Eumenes read the terms, which bound him personally by oath to serve Antigonus in return for his freedom. The ever-wily Greek cleverly amended the oath, to one where his allegiance was given Antigonus only as general in service to the kings. Meaning, only so long as Antigonus was loyal to the kings, which practically meant loyal to the regent. Consulting with Antigonus’ captains commanding the besieging forces, these saw no harm in the current form of the oath, and allowed it. After all, loyalty “to the kings” was what they were all about, right?

Thus Eumenes gained his freedom from confinement in Nora. Antigonus was furious when he learned of the amended oath. But Eumenes was again at large, and it was too late to put the bird back into the cage. Leaving the fortress with a mere 500 followers, Eumenes quickly gathered to his banner several thousand survivors from his former army, who had since been roaming the countryside as little better than bandits. He soon received a welcome overture from Polysperchon the regent.

Polysperchon’s letter, in the name of the royal family, asked Eumenes to aid them against the ambitions of Antigonus. It offered him either a share in the regency if he returned to Macedon; or to remain in Asia as strategos for the kings in Asia, charged with prosecuting the war against Antigonus. To this purpose the letter authorized him to take charge of the royal treasury in Cyinda in Cilicia, along with the elite troops guarding it: the celebrated Silver Shields.

Eumenes chose the later course, and the history of the Second War of the Diadochi is that of the duel between Eumenes and Antigonus, arguably the two greatest commanders to emerge in the aftermath of Alexander’s death.

Before going further, though, it should be noted that at this juncture Polysperchon made two fatal mistakes. The first was, while elevating Eumenes to commander of the “royal” forces in Asia he had overlooked and failed to reverse the death sentence passed against Eumenes by the Macedonians in the aftermath of Perdiccas’ fall. This would leave Eumenes ever laboring under this cloud, which could in theory be executed at any time by even the Macedonian lieutenants within his own army.

The second great error, one which would undermine his own authority as regent, was to reach out to Olympias, mother of Alexander, whose grandson  Alexander IV was in his care (along with her mother, Roxana). Polysperchon invited her to return from exile in Epiros and take over the guardianship of the toddler king. The spider-queen, on advice from Eumenes, demurred for now. But she began laying plans for a return to Pella and to a power long denied her. When she made her move, Polysperchon would no-doubt regret his invitation.

THE DUEL FOR ASIA

NOTES

1. “The Old Rope” was Olympias’ disparaging nickname for Antipater.
2. Antipater is first recorded in the service of Philip II in 342 BC, when the king appointed him as regent while Philip himself was campaigning for the next 3 years in Thrace. He obviously had been in royal service much longer, serving in more junior capacities. He served Alexander in this same capacity, then both Alexander IV and Philip III till his death.
3. Upper Macedonia is the highland regions to the west and north west of the Axios Valley, the heart of ancient Macedonia. These various highland kingdoms were loosely affiliated with Macedon till the reign of Philip II; when he united the kingdom under a strong central government. Tymphaia, nestled in the foot hills and valleys between the Pindos Mountains and Mount Olympus, was first part of Epirus. But around 350 BC it was annexed to Macedon by Philip.
4. See Part 8
5. For Menon’s role in the Lamian War, see Part 3 and Part 4
6. Tarn, W. W., The Cambridge Ancient History; Vol. Six, Ch. XV, p. 471.
7. Polyainos, Strategemata; IV 6,7
8. See Part 4
9. See Part 7 and Part 9
10. Diodorus Siculus, Book XVIII, 51, 1
11. The identity of this Nicanor is debated. Heckel identifies as many as five possible candidates. He may have been the same who commanded Alexander’s short-lived Aegean squadron, which took part in the siege of Miletus. This is an attractive suggestion, in that it would explain Cassander’s lieutenant’s experience in naval command, which he would be entrusted with again in 318 BC. Alternately, he may have been Nicanor son of Balacrus the Bodyguard of Alexander. If so, his mother may have been Phila, daughter of Antipater and thus he would be Cassander’s nephew. Another Nicanor, from Stageira and the nephew of Aristotle, is still another candidate; and could in fact also be one-in-the-same as the son of Balacrus. See Heckel, Waldemar, Who is Who in the Age of Alexander; p. 176-178.
12. The question of whether or not the ancient Macedonians were “Greek” is one hotly debated today. Though certainly a people on the edge of Hellas, and with a veneer of Hellenization, all ancient sources make a clear distinction between the Macedonians and “the Greeks”. The royal family, the Argeadae, were transplants from Argos and possessed of Heracleidae blood; and thus an exception, true “Hellenes”. But the southern Greeks looked upon the Macedonians as semi-barbarians, and the Macedonians saw their southern neighbors as effete dandies.