There is a fine line between regency and full kingship, as Philip II had found to his advantage. And Cassander very soon began to act like a king, above all by founding three cities within a single year, 316, the first full year of his reign. The two cities that were founded within Macedon—Cassandreia and Thessalonica—were Macedon’s first major urban centers. Apart from Pella, the country was still almost entirely rural; Cassander’s foundations represented a major step forward in Macedonian history.

Cassandreia was founded on the site of Potidaea, and incorporated other nearby villages, including the remnants of the once important town of Olynthus. Thessalonica, named to flatter his Argead wife, was founded by the amalgamation and incorporation of twenty-six small towns and villages at the head of the Thermaic Gulf; as the glorious future history of the city shows—it became joint capital with Constantinople of the Byzantine empire—the site was well chosen. ¹³These two ports hugely helped Cassander to develop a navy. He also refounded the Boeotian city of Thebes; he needed a bulwark of loyalty in central Greece against the unremitting hostility of the Aetolians.

As well as serving practical purposes, all three of these foundations or refoundations were symbolic. Philip II and Alexander the Great had been the first to found cities in their own names and those of their family members. Cassander was implying that he was at least their equal—and even their superior: Philip had reduced Potidaea and destroyed Olynthus, and Alexander had razed Thebes to the ground. Cassander now dared to undo these acts of his Argead predecessors. Whether or not Alexander the Great had been right to judge that Antipater had regal pretensions, Antipater’s son certainly did.

Hunting Eumenes in Iran

IN THE SUMMER of 318, Antigonus, poised to invade Europe across the Hellespont, had chosen to leave Polyperchon to Cassander, while he set out instead to tackle Eumenes in Cilicia. Without a fleet after Byzantium, Polyperchon and Eumenes were isolated from each other and could be dealt with separately. The strategy turned out to be sound. Only a little over a year later, in the winter of 317/316, Cassander had Olympias under siege in Pydna, and Polyperchon had abandoned Macedon. Meanwhile, three thousand kilometers (1,800 miles) farther east, in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, Antigonus and Eumenes were poised for the third and final battle in one of the great forgotten campaigns of world history. ¹

In Cilicia, Eumenes had spent the kings’ money well, to bring his forces up to strength. The word went out and mercenaries poured into the eastern Mediterranean ports, where his recruiters collected them. But Eumenes was still plagued by challenges to his leadership and felt he had to take steps to prove to Antigenes and the other Macedonian officers that he did not feel that he was their superior, despite the fact that Polyperchon had named him General of Asia. It was worth his while to appease them—he badly needed their Macedonian troops.

He came up with an extraordinary ruse. He claimed that in a dream he had seen Alexander the Great, dressed in his regal robes, giving orders to a council of senior commanders. Eumenes suggested, then, that he and the Macedonian officers should simulate this scene, and should meet, as such a council, before one of Alexander’s thrones, on which would be placed the dead king’s regalia. There was nothing very original about the dream; Perdiccas had used the regalia to similar effect at the first Babylon conference, and on the same occasion Ptolemy had proposed just such a council of peers. But the implicit message of such a dream at this juncture was that Alexander—that is, right—was still on their side.

In any case, from then on, that is what they did. They set up a tent, adorned with a throne and the regalia (all borrowed from the Cyinda treasury), and after sacrificing to Alexander as a god, they conducted their meetings as equals before the empty throne. At the same time, Eumenes endeared himself to the Macedonian veterans themselves by flattering them and making it clear that he had no designs on the throne, but wanted only to build on their extraordinary achievements and defend Alexander’s kingdom. It worked well enough for him to be immune when both Ptolemy, in his sole intervention in the war, and then Antigonus went to work on the Macedonians. Ptolemy offered cash if they refused to cooperate with Eumenes, while Antigonus ordered them to arrest Eumenes and put him to death or be treated as his enemies. Eumenes heard of Antigonus’s ploy before things got out of hand, and quieted the men down by reminding them that he, not Antigonus, represented legitimate authority. But it was a close call.

In the late summer of 318, at Antigonus’s approach from Asia Minor, Eumenes broke camp and moved south to Phoenicia with his army, now numbering fifteen thousand. Ptolemy’s fleet and garrisons withdrew at his approach. Knowing how vital control of the Aegean was to Polyperchon—without it, he would be less of a threat to Cassander and no threat at all to Asia Minor—Eumenes used some of the money he had been given at Cyinda to commandeer as many ships as he could and send them on their way. But they got no further than Rhosus, a port on the border between Syria and Cilicia. After the bloody victory at Byzantium, of which Eumenes was unaware, Antigonus had ordered the remnants of his fleet south. At the first encounter, the Phoenician officers hired by Eumenes changed sides. Antigonus could safely set out in pursuit of Eumenes.

TURMOIL IN THE EASTERN SATRAPIES

Eumenes was still outnumbered by Antigonus, but circumstances had conspired to make it likely that he could acquire more troops, if he was prepared to travel for them. There was a major power struggle going on in the east, pitting Peithon, satrap of Media, against an alliance of most of the other eastern satraps. The ever-ambitious Peithon was trying to create an independent empire out of the eastern satrapies. He had already occupied Parthia, and now he began to threaten Peucestas in Persis. Once they had been colleagues, as members of Alexander’s Bodyguard. Under the circumstances, it was not difficult for Peucestas to garner support; the local satraps united behind him and drove Peithon out of Parthia. At the time of Eumenes’ approach, Peithon was in Babylon, soliciting Seleucus’s help. He cannot have offered any justification other than self-interest for such a blatantly aggressive venture.

So when Eumenes left Phoenicia (promptly reoccupied by Ptolemy) and headed east at Antigonus’s approach in the autumn of 318, he wanted to supplement his army either with Peithon’s and Seleucus’s troops or with those of Peucestas and his allies. The rights and wrongs of the eastern squabble did not concern him; he just wanted troops. Perhaps, at the present moment, Peucestas’s forces looked more attractive. The satrapal alliance had an army of more than eighteen thousand foot and over four thousand horse. Although all the Successors’ armies included a few war elephants—Polyperchon even had them in Greece—the satraps were blessed with no fewer than 114 of the beasts, a gift from an Indian king to one of Peucestas’s allies.

Eumenes spent the winter of 318/317 aggressively on the borders of Babylonia and entered into negotiations with Seleucus and Peithon, but to little avail. As the official Royal General of Asia, he appealed to their loyalty to the kings, but they remained unmoved. Seleucus attacked Eumenes’ command as illegitimate; the sentence passed against him at Triparadeisus still held, as far as he was concerned. But his thinking was probably influenced by the knowledge that Antigonus was due to arrive and that the army of Peucestas and his fellow satraps currently had control of the eastern satrapies. If Seleucus agreed to help Eumenes, he would immediately find himself surrounded by powerful enemies. So far from aiding Eumenes, then, Seleucus and Peithon tried once more to detach the Macedonians from their Greek commander. Once again, Eumenes survived the attempt.