The rebels thus gained an enormous bridgehead in western Asia Minor. If they could not make the easier crossing from Thrace, they could land an army there. At the same time, Antipater continued a very successful campaign of subornation among Perdiccas’s senior officers. Eumenes stayed loyal, but Cleitus changed sides immediately, and Neoptolemus was drawn into secret negotiations. Moreover, Alcetas declared that he would not support Eumenes—that he would not lead his men into battle against Craterus. This was due not so much to any affection Alcetas might have had for Craterus as to his fears that, given Craterus’s popularity among the Macedonian troops, his men would simply refuse to fight. Alcetas stayed in Pisidia and waited to see what would happen. The loyalist defense of Asia Minor was falling apart before it had started. A lot would depend on the relatively untried Eumenes.

With western Asia Minor lying open, Eumenes fell back toward the borders of Cappadocia. Meanwhile, Perdiccas had marched south, taking the whole court with him, because there was no entirely trustworthy place to leave the kings and their presence legitimated his venture. He made Cilicia his first stop, where he deposed the satrap, who was known to be a friend of Craterus. Meanwhile, one of his senior officers was sent to do the same in Babylonia. The satrap there was close to Ptolemy and was suspected of collusion in the hijacking of Alexander’s corpse; in any case, Perdiccas did not want him on his left flank as he marched south toward Egypt.

Perdiccas assembled a fleet in Cilicia, and divided it into two. One section, commanded by Attalus, was to accompany the land army to Egypt; the other, under Aristonous, was sent to Cyprus. The island was important for its strategic location (its fortified ports made excellent bases), its naval expertise, and its natural resources (minerals and timber, especially), but it was ruled by princelings who, if they owed allegiance to anyone, had treaties in place with Ptolemy.

Meanwhile, thanks to Cleitus’s defection, Antipater and Craterus crossed the Hellespont unopposed. They divided their forces: Antipater headed for Cilicia, while Craterus marched to face Eumenes. The plan was for Craterus to annihilate Eumenes, while Antipater occupied Cilicia with all its resources of money and men. Then Craterus would link up again with Antipater, and together they would march south. Perdiccas would be trapped between their forces and those of Ptolemy. Antigonus was dispatched to deal with Aristonous in Cyprus.

As Craterus advanced, Neoptolemus set out to meet him—not as a foe but as a friend. He too had finally decided to change sides. But Eumenes found out what was going on and confronted him. This battle between the armies of supposed friends, late in May 320, was the first action in the civil wars that were to continue for the next forty years. Neoptolemus lost and fled to the enemy with a small cavalry force. Eumenes captured Neoptolemus’s baggage train and used this as a bargaining counter to persuade the rest of Neoptolemus’s men to join his camp. He had sufficient men to face Craterus, but their mood was uncertain.

The precise location of the battle on the borders of Cappadocia is unknown, but its outcome was a brilliant victory for Eumenes. As he advanced toward Craterus, he took pains to conceal from his men, especially the Macedonian troops, just whom they were going to face. He made out that Neoptolemus, a Molossian, was the enemy commander—and added that Alexander had appeared to him in a dream and promised him victory.

He was doing his best to raise his men’s morale, because he knew that he was at a disadvantage. The chances were that, if it came to a battle between the two infantry phalanxes, his Macedonians, most of whom had been on his side only since his defeat of Neoptolemus, would desert. But Eumenes had considerable cavalry superiority. He sent his Cappadocian horsemen into the attack before the phalanxes were fully deployed for battle, and they swept the enemy cavalry off the field. In the mêlée, Craterus’s horse stumbled and the would-be ruler of Asia was trampled to death. On the other wing, Neoptolemus was killed in hand-to-hand combat by Eumenes himself. Plutarch tells a story of mutual loathing, in which the two grappled on horseback before tumbling to the ground, where Eumenes dispatched his adversary. Even while he was stripping the supposed corpse of its armor, however, Neoptolemus managed one more feeble strike before expiring. ²

The death of the two enemy commanders gave Eumenes the opportunity to wrap up the battle. He sent one of his staff officers to address Craterus’s phalangites. The message was “We won’t fight if you don’t,” and the enemy infantry surrendered and agreed to swell Eumenes’ ranks. But they slipped away by night a short time later and went to join Antipater. Despite his success, Eumenes was still a long way from securing Asia Minor. Now that Craterus was dead, however, Alcetas had little reason to withhold his support, and Eumenes probably planned, with Alcetas’s help, to contain the trouble spots until Perdiccas had defeated Ptolemy in Egypt. After that, he could expect his remaining opponents to surrender, or he could bring massive forces against them by land and sea.

LAND BATTLE

In the early Hellenistic period, land armies consisted of two arms, cavalry and infantry, both of which came in heavy and light forms. Elephants were extra. The heart of the army was the heavy infantry phalanx, which would expect to bear the brunt of the fighting in any pitched battle. And at the heart of the phalanx were the Macedonian troops (either genuine Macedonians or soldiers trained and armed in the Macedonian fashion), as reformed by Philip II. ³Piled many ranks deep, and with its front a bristling line of sturdy pikes, each five meters long (over sixteen feet), it was, until the advent of the Roman legion, virtually impregnable in defense and terrifying in attack. Butt-spikes on the ends of the pikes fixed them firmly in the ground for defense, and could also be used as an offensive weapon should the need arise. For hand-to-hand fighting, phalangites also carried a short sword and a light shield. Next to the Macedonian phalanx fought an even larger phalanx of Greek hoplite mercenaries, armed with a heavier shield, a stabbing spear, and a sword.

As long as a phalanx remained solid, it was almost invulnerable. A direct assault even by heavy cavalry was rarely effective; the men knew how reluctant horses are to hurl themselves at a mass of men, and stayed firm. Elephants occasionally achieved some success, but they were a risky resource: when wounded they were as likely to run amok among their own lines as they were to trample enemy soldiers. A more consistent tactic was to try to outflank the phalanx, and for battle the cavalry were therefore invariably deployed on the wings.

Typically, then, the cavalry’s work was divided between attempting to outflank the enemy and defending against the enemy cavalry’s attempts to outflank their own phalanx. The phalangites normally faced forward, though in case of encirclement they could rapidly form a square. Given the enormous numbers of men in a phalanx, it consisted of smaller tactical units, each with its own officer, which were capable of independent action in an emergency and of rapid response to emerging situations. The main weakness of the phalanx was that it became very vulnerable if its formation was lost as a result of lax discipline, failure of nerve, or uneven terrain. It was rightly considered a sign of fine generalship to force a confrontation on terrain that gave his men the advantage.

The light infantry, typically mercenaries and native troops, were usually posted (along with the elephants, if the army had them) in front of the entire line of infantry and cavalry at the start of the battle. Their job was to screen the deployment of the main army and do as much damage as possible before slipping back through their lines to take up a position in the rear. If they still had some missiles left, they could act as a reserve in case of an encircling or outflanking movement by the enemy; otherwise, their work was done. They were also useful as marauders, or to run down heavier armed fugitives. Only in rough terrain did they become a strike force. If elephants were involved, it was the job of the mobile troops in the opening stages of the battle to try to cripple the creatures, while protecting their own.