The criers cried, the horses raced, and the beacons flared, bringing news of Alexander’s death across the two million square miles of the empire. The report eventually reached all the king’s men—satraps, garrison chiefs, and finance ministers who governed the realm’s two dozen provinces. Alexander had appointed these men, reshuffled them, and purged their ranks of those he considered disloyal. Now the loyalty of those who remained in power would be put to the ultimate test. Everything depended on their willingness to take orders from an uninspiring triumvirate: a regent, Perdiccas, who was only a man, not a myth like his dead commander, and two kings who were considerably less than that.

1. ANTIGONUS (PHRYGIA, SUMMER 323 B.C.)

The reports from Babylon quickly reached a man dwelling in Phrygia (now southwestern Turkey) who no one yet imagined would be a key player in the contest for Alexander’s empire—not even the man himself. Antigonus One-eye had spent the past ten years as satrap of Phrygia, governing this big, unruly province in Alexander’s name. But now Alexander was dead, and Antigonus was serving other masters. He soon received word from Perdiccas, the head of the new government in Babylon, that a division of satrapies had been held and that he had been reappointed to command of Phrygia.

No doubt Antigonus was glad to receive this news but less pleased by his first assignment. He was to help Eumenes gain control of his new province, Cappadocia. Antigonus had always liked Eumenes during their years together at Philip’s court, but in his eyes the man was a mere bookkeeper, and a foreigner to boot. Was Antigonus, a Macedonian of long service and high standing, really expected to aid such a man? Was the new regime really giving satrapies to Greeks?

Antigonus was about sixty, a generation older than the generals in Babylon, a giant of a man with a booming voice and a gruff, boastful temperament. He had lost an eye while helping Philip, Alexander’s father, conduct a siege; a bolt fired from the walls of the besieged city had lodged in his eye socket, but with characteristic resolve he refused to have it extracted until the day’s fighting was over. To see this enormous figure charging the walls, blood streaming down one cheek and a piece of metal where his eye should have been, must have been terrifying indeed. After his wound healed, his mangled visage continued to inspire fear. Once a Greek orator who had displeased Antigonus, summoned to appear before him, defiantly told the guards who came to fetch him: “Go ahead, feed me to your Cyclops!”

While overseeing Phrygia, Antigonus had raised his only surviving son, Demetrius. Now, in early adolescence, the boy was turning out to be almost as big as his father, and far more dissolute. Antigonus doted on this staggeringly handsome boy and teased him about his appetites for wine and women, both of which were soon to become legendary. On one occasion he had gone to visit Demetrius in his quarters, where the boy had shut himself in, claiming a fever. As he approached his son’s bedroom, he spied a beautiful courtesan slipping away from it. Antigonus went in, sat down beside the boy, and pretended to take his temperature. “The fever has left me now,” Demetrius lied, to which Antigonus winkingly replied, “I know, I met it just now on its way out.”

On another occasion described by Plutarch, Demetrius one day came into the palace staterooms, fresh from a hunt, without bothering to first store his javelin. Antigonus was meeting with some foreign envoys, and Demetrius blithely seated himself next to his father, weapon still in hand. Antigonus proudly pointed out to his visitors that he trusted Demetrius to bear arms in his presence. The episode prompts Plutarch to offer a pointed comment: one can measure the perils of power, the great moralist remarks, by the fact that Antigonus could make a boast of not fearing his own son.

Service in Phrygia had not been Antigonus’ choice, for any general with his talent and temperament would have preferred to go east with Alexander. He had been sidelined here, the first high-ranking officer of the invasion to be left behind in a rear-guard post. Perhaps Alexander thought Antigonus too old for the rigors of the campaign; if so, the years to come would prove him badly mistaken. Perhaps, as one source reports, he mistrusted Antigonus’ love of power, a judgment far closer to the mark. Satrapal appointments were a tactful way for Alexander to neutralize ambitious men before they could become threats. Alexander later shucked off Cleitus, another senior officer, by making him satrap of Bactria, just before starting on the Indian leg of his journey of conquest. Cleitus took this as a slight and began grumbling bitterly during his departure banquet, finally becoming so strident that Alexander killed him with his own hands.

Whatever the reason for his stranding in Phrygia, Antigonus had been a good steward of his province. His small Macedonian army had won several battles against determined Persian resistance. He had maintained peace and stability, so much so that his wife, Stratonice, had left her wealthy Macedonian home to join him in the Phrygian capital, Celaenae. This courageous lady became one of the first European colonial wives in Asia, the forerunner of many later memsahibs.

For ten years Antigonus held sway in Phrygia as Alexander receded ever farther toward the horizon. Few orders came to him from the East, and he had gotten used to running his province his own way, with his own troops. But now, that autonomy was being compromised. He had received commands from Babylon, from a new government installed without his consent. The task Perdiccas had set him—helping little Eumenes win his way into power—was a humiliating one, in effect a demand for total submission.

For a man like Antigonus, the choice of how to respond was an easy one. Saying nothing about his intentions or his reasons, he simply declined to show up for the invasion of Cappadocia. It was a passive rebellion but unmistakable in its significance. Antigonus, the first man outside Babylon called upon to support the new regime, had become the first to defy it. One of the last of his generation, the older men thrust aside, left behind, or killed by Alexander, he was not ready to give up his prerogatives and make way for the triumph of the young.

2. THE REVOLT IN BACTRIA (NORTHERN AFGHANISTAN, UZBEKISTAN, TAJIKISTAN, SUMMER 323 B.C.)

More than two thousand miles east of Antigonus’ palace, in an opposite corner of Alexander’s realm, a different challenge to the new government was taking shape. In the dusty fortress towns of Bactria, the outposts set up by Alexander to secure his northeast frontier, squads of Greek garrison troops received the news from Babylon with keen anticipation. For a long time they had sought a way to leave their posts, landlocked, alien places they found cheerless and barren. Now, with word of Alexander’s death, that opportunity was at hand.

Similar news had arrived two years earlier, when the king’s lung wound in India was rumored to be fatal. The false report had spurred a mass exodus of the Greeks in Bactria. Longing for home and thinking themselves free of a harsh master, many threw off the chains of garrison duty and organized a march to the West. Three thousand Greeks had crossed most of Macedonian-controlled Asia—a journey fraught with perils, from which no account has survived—and returned to their European homes. News of their escape must have made its way back to Bactria, inspiring new discontent and homesickness among their former comrades. Now these men had a miraculous second chance.

There were more than twenty thousand Greek soldiers scattered across Bactria and its northerly neighbor, Sogdiana (the “upper satrapies,” as the Persians called them). Most were infantrymen of the hoplite class, armed with large shields, eight-foot thrusting spears, and metal breastplates and helmets. Some were draftees, forced into service by standing treaties; others were mercenaries, soldiers of fortune hoping to get rich under an invincible leader. Still others had been fighting for the Persians when Alexander launched his invasion, but had been allowed to save their lives by switching sides. Few considered Alexander their king or believed in his cause. To the mercenaries he was merely an employer, if a very well-paying one; to the recruits, brought along largely as hostages ensuring the loyalty of their home cities, he represented the war machine that had robbed Greece of its freedom.