The brightest celestial bodies in this new, sunless cosmos were Alexander’s top military officers, who were also in some cases his closest friends. Modern historians often refer to them as “the Successors” (or “Diadochs,” a Greek word meaning virtually the same thing). But that term is anachronistic for the first seven years after Alexander’s death, when none of these men tried to succeed the king; they vied for his power but not his throne. During the entire span I cover in this book, there were living Argeads (members of the Macedonian royal family) who alone had the right to occupy that throne. Hence I refer to those often termed Successors simply as Alexander’s generals; they were contestants for military rather than royal supremacy. Many of them would eventually occupy thrones, but only after 308 B.C., when it became clear that the Argead era was well and truly over.

The conflicts of these generals took place across a huge swath of Alexander’s empire, often with clashes occurring simultaneously on two or even three continents. I have used snapshot-like frames, starting in the third chapter, to organize disparate but interconnected events, each headed by a rubric to remind readers of the place, time, and principal characters involved. It should be noted that the dates I have used in the rubrics are contested and may differ by a year from those found elsewhere. Historians are divided over two rival schemes, the so-called high and low chronologies; the dates I have given here belong to the high chronology, endorsed most recently by Brian Bosworth in his masterful study The Legacy of Alexander.It is Bosworth’s authority that has decided this matter for me, since I think both schemes have sound arguments and valid evidence behind them, as does a recently proposed hybrid that blends elements of the two.

The ancient record of this era is frustratingly incomplete, even though two talented Greek historians wrote studies of it, and one of them was a witness to its major events. Hieronymus of Cardia was a Greek soldier of fortune who found himself at the center of the post-Alexander power struggle. His firsthand account, sometimes known by the title History of the Successors, was probably one of the great historical narratives written in antiquity, but it became extinct in the Darwinian process whereby widely copied school texts survived the end of the ancient world while other works did not. Before its disappearance, however, it was mined for information by Arrian of Nicomedia, an intelligent Greek writer of the second century A.D., as he prepared his own detailed chronicle of the years between 323 and 319. This work too has been lost, but one reader, Photius, the patriarch of Constantinople, took notes on its contents in the ninth century A.D. Photius’ sparse outline of Arrian, made for personal use and without regard for the needs of posterity, survives today under the title Events After Alexander, in essence a dim reflection, at two removes, of Hieronymus’ account.

There is, however, one Greek narrative of the post-Alexander period that brings us closer to the lost primary sources, and it survives intact. In the first century B.C., Diodorus Siculus compiled a universal Greek history usually known as the Library.Diodorus, who was a middling good writer but no historian, gave artistic shape to the material he found but muddled its chronology, reduced its detail, and omitted events that did not fit his plan. His shortcomings are many, but in treating the struggle for control of Alexander’s empire, in books 18 through 20 of the Library, he produced his best work, largely because he relied heavily on Hieronymus.

Around the same time as Diodorus, a Roman writer, Pompeius Trogus, compiled a general survey of the Macedonian empire titled Philippic History, but this work has utterly perished. Like Arrian’s Events After Alexander, it is known through a thin and reductive summary, compiled probably in the third century A.D. by another Roman, Justin.

The most colorful but least straightforward accounts of this period come from the Livesof Plutarch, the great Greek essayist and biographer of the late first and early second centuries A.D. Plutarch too mined the historical treatise of Hieronymus, along with other primary texts, but did so mostly in search of insights into character rather than a record of events; his interests were ethical more than historical. Nonetheless, I have cited him frequently in this book, along with other unconventional sources: Polyaenus, compiler of military stratagems; Athenaeus, collector of gossip and anecdotes; and the anonymous author of The Lives of the Ten Orators.These writers give insights, however unverifiable, into the personalities that dominate this age, and I have used them to convey those personalities, for I believe, as Plutarch did, that historical action cannot be understood outside the context of character.

But judgment of character is a subjective affair. One has only to read the modern biographies of the players in the power struggle—in English alone there are recent lives of Lysimachus, Ptolemy, Eumenes, Phocion, Olympias, Seleucus, and Antigonus—to see how many questions of intention and motivation are open to dispute. It is a Rashomon-like experience, a witnessing of one set of events through many pairs of eyes. The perspective varies not only with changes of historical focus but with changes of author, for some interpreters are inclined to see the worst impulses in the figures they deal with, others, the best.

One figure in this group has proved especially controversial. Surviving accounts of the Greek general Eumenes are strongly positive, but they are also clearly influenced by the favoritism of Hieronymus, who was Eumenes’ friend and countryman, perhaps even his kinsman. Eumenes is shown not just as a brilliant tactician, full of tricks, inventions, and ruses, but as a man with a noble purpose—the protection of the Macedonian royal family, in particular Alexander’s imperiled young son. Modern historians have rejected this gallant portrait and painted Eumenes as a mere opportunist. I have in what follows taken the view of the ancient sources more seriously. I believe that Eumenes wasthe last defender of the Argeads, if only because they were his own best hope for political survival.

Where ancient authors are in agreement about the events described in the narrative, or where there is no reason to doubt the testimony of Diodorus (the fullest source), I have not troubled to explain in the Notes how each historical fact has been recovered. Those who want to carefully trace the evidence can best consult Waldemar Heckel’s Who’s Who in the Age of Alexander the Great, a book that combines a biographical scheme of organization with a clear and comprehensive system of citation. I do, however, provide references in the Notes for information derived from more obscure sources and for statements about the private lives and inner thoughts of historical figures. Such statements cannot be vouched for as true to the same degree as public events, so I have tried to assure readers that they were not simply made up, or at least not by me.

The names of people and places mentioned in this book are spelled in a Latinate form and hence will often appear differently in texts that transliterate directly from Greek. Craterus here is elsewhere Krateros, Aegae is elsewhere Aigai. Where there is dispute over the form or spelling of a name, I have followed Heckel in Who’s Who, for the convenience of those using that invaluable book as a reference. In cases where a person is known by more than one name, I have used the more distinctive one, to minimize confusion; Adea, who became Eurydice after her marriage, remains Adea here since there is another Eurydice in the story. In the case of Alexander’s half brother Arrhidaeus, who as king became Philip, it was impossible to avoid overlap, and I have simply called him Arrhidaeus before his accession, Philip afterward.