When Antigonus reached Susa, he appointed a permanent satrap there as well. Seleucus, who had already returned to Babylon, was no longer needed; the garrison commander of the citadel of Susa had surrendered as soon as news arrived of Eumenes’ defeat. And so the treasury of Susa fell into Antigonus’s hands. With Eumenes’ death, none of the treasurers of Asia would refuse to open their doors to their new master. Antigonus helped himself to the resources stored at Ecbatana, Susa, and Persepolis, to the tune of twenty-five thousand talents (about fifteen billion dollars), and the territories he controlled, at their largest extent, brought in an annual income of a further eleven thousand talents.

Antigonus’s wealth fueled his ambition and his ambition fed his wealth. Apart from anything else, he was able to maintain a huge standing army of forty thousand foot and five thousand horse, at a cost in the region of 2,500 talents a year. He brought west with him on his return from the eastern satrapies all the bullion he had taken from the east, and stored it in his key treasuries in Cilicia and Asia Minor. He was not intending to return that far east, and needed the money to retain control of his core realm, Asia west of the Euphrates. For the next dozen or so years, this heartland of his was remarkably free of warfare (though he was often at war beyond its borders), and he used this time of peace to develop and administer it, while still keeping an eye open, as did all the Successors, for occasions for expansion. ¹¹

But even though Antigonus ruled the entirety of the former Persian empire, apart from Egypt, he was not yet ready to call himself king, not while Alexander IV was still alive. That would have invited trouble—certainly from his rivals, who would pounce on the chance to use it against him, and probably from his troops, many of whom were still fiercely loyal to the Argead line. He allowed himself to be recognized by his native subjects as the successor to the Achaemenid kings and Alexander (who had also used the title “Lord of Asia”), ¹²but in public he maintained the fiction that he was just some kind of super-satrap, the Royal General of Asia, holding the former Persian empire for the kings.

Antigonus was now living up to his alternative nickname—not just “the One-Eyed,” but “Cyclops,” after the famous one-eyed giants of myth. Both he and his son Demetrius were exceptionally tall and strongly built, but now Antigonus had become a metaphorical colossus too. Would the others tolerate it? Could a balance of power emerge, so soon after Alexander’s death? It did not take Antigonus long to show that he was not interested in balance—he wanted the totality of Alexander’s empire.

Antigonus, Lord of Asia

FROM SUSA, ANTIGONUS journeyed west to Babylonia, with all his bullion and booty carefully guarded in the caravan, the moving equivalent of the strongholds that made up the empire’s treasuries. The size and strength of the army, and its voraciousness, were plain tokens of Antigonus’s naked ambition. Woe betide anyone who stood in his way, or who might even have the potential to stand in his way. Seleucus was the next to find this out.

When Antigonus reached Babylon, Seleucus honored him as a king, but it was not enough to appease the great man. The relationship deteriorated until Antigonus demanded from Seleucus, as though he were king and Seleucus a mere satrap, an account of his administration of the satrapy, and an audit of his finances. With considerable courage, Seleucus resisted Antigonus’s bullying. He said he had been awarded Babylonia legitimately at Triparadeisus (subtly reminding Antigonus that the Triparadeisus conference was also where hehad received his commission), in recognition of his services to Alexander, and that Antigonus did not have the right to interfere. In effect, he claimed a kind of seniority to Antigonus, who had scarcely been involved in Alexander’s campaigns, since he had been posted in Asia Minor throughout. At the same time, Seleucus sensibly made plans to escape, and before long he fled for safety to Egypt with his family and a small escort.

In Egypt, Ptolemy welcomed Seleucus as a friend, but was no doubt also aware of the propaganda value of sheltering someone who could be portrayed as a victim of tyranny. When Seleucus reached Egypt, he told Ptolemy that Antigonus now wanted “the entire kingdom of the Macedonians”—sole rule of Alexander’s empire. ¹It was the truth, and it meant that no one could feel safe from Antigonus. Ptolemy wrote to Cassander and Lysimachus, enlisting their support in the attempt to restore Seleucus, and at the same time Antigonus wrote to all his opponents, reminding them that they had all been allies for the war against the Perdiccans, and insisting that they honor that agreement. He was asking, in effect, that they connive at the deposing of Seleucus, but this act had already come to symbolize the insatiable scope of his ambitions. As he must have expected, his pleas fell on deaf ears.

From Babylonia, Antigonus marched to winter quarters in Cilicia. All the parties spent the winter preparing for the renewal of war; it was a good time to be a mercenary. In the spring of 315 Antigonus set out for Syria; on the way he was met by a delegation of representatives of Lysimachus, Ptolemy, and Cassander. They presented Antigonus with an ultimatum, which was a strange mixture of undisguised ambition and justified indignation. The justifiable part was that they demanded the return of Babylonia to Seleucus. The rest was no more than a demand that he share the spoils of his victory over Eumenes with them, on the grounds that it had been a joint war, triggered by agreement at Triparadeisus. Specifically, they wanted some of the fortune in bullion that Antigonus had brought back from the east. Lysimachus also wanted Hellespontine Phrygia (a big gain for him, since it would give him territory on both sides of the Propontis); Antigonus had seized it in 318, but none of them had any right to dispose of it as if it were private property. Ptolemy wanted official recognition of his annexation of Palestine and Phoenicia; and, for reasons that are obscure, Cassander wanted Cappadocia and Lycia.

Antigonus would have been left with severely reduced territories west of the Euphrates, but with mastery of the eastern satrapies. Communication would have been difficult between the two halves of his empire, and his hold on Asia Minor tenuous. The subtext of the allies’ demands was the suggestion that he take himself off east. But Antigonus had gone too far to do anything other than reject the ultimatum and accept the inevitability of war with his former friends and allies. He saw himself as Alexander’s heir, which made the others rebel satraps. And so began the so-called Third War of the Successors (315–311), pitting Antigonus and his son Demetrius against Lysimachus, Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Cassander.

SECURITY MEASURES

Antigonus was surrounded by enemies, but he had the resources to mobilize sufficient means of violence to keep them at bay. His first priority was to dissuade Cassander from leaving Greece. He went about this both defensively and aggressively. For defense, he sent his nephew Polemaeus to Asia Minor, where Cappadocia had declared for Cassander. Polemaeus extinguished such thoughts of independence, and then continued northwest to the Black Sea coast. Having intimidated Zipoetes, the ruler of Bithynia, into neutrality and ensured that the Greek cities in the region would not cause trouble, he established himself on the Hellespont to guard against a possible invasion from Europe.

Meanwhile, Antigonus’s fleet succeeded in securing some of the Aegean islands. The first outcome of this was the formation, over the next few years, of many of the Cycladic islands into a league, allied to Antigonus. The sacred—and increasingly mercantile—island of Delos became the center of the league, and was therefore lost to Athens, which had controlled it for much of the fourth century; it remained free for almost 150 years, until the Romans restored it to Athens. The formation of the league was good for the islands, since it gave them self-government and greater bargaining power, and good for Antigonus too, since it simplified his dealings with them. In due course of time, Antigonus would form other groups of cities within his empire into leagues as well.