Still, Craterus delayed. Month after month he stayed in Cilicia, despite the urgency of Antipater’s messages. What was keeping him? Probably he felt the pull of the power vacuum in Babylon, where Perdiccas’ regime, as he knew by report, was struggling. Craterus’ standing among the rank and file was highest of all Alexander’s generals; many no doubt whispered that he, not Perdiccas, should be their new commander. The forces Craterus was leading, more than ten thousand seasoned troops, including the matchless Silver Shields, were more than enough to take on Perdiccas and his loyalists. Any move against Perdiccas, who had gone out of his way to give Craterus a high place in the new regime, would of course be a stab in the back, but one that would almost certainly succeed.

Would Craterus turn east or west, toward Babylon or toward Pella? The choice seemed to hinge on which wife he would have. Wed to Amastris as he now was, he could rule Asia and father children who were royal (in Persian eyes at least). But if he renounced Amastris and took Phila instead, the most powerful man in Europe would be his father-in-law. Each woman seemed to bring with her a continent as her dowry. One was well suited to Craterus’ temperament, while the other opened avenues to immense power and wealth, perhaps even an imperial throne.

For the moment, Craterus stayed where he was, in Cilicia. No one who was with him recorded his thoughts or motives, which consequently have remained one of the darkest mysteries of the post-Alexander era. But the competing forces acting on him were enough to paralyze even the most decisive leader. Paths of glory beckoned on either side of him, while right in the middle, only miles away, stood Phila, Antipater’s daughter, from whom he might gain sure success on one of these paths, and happiness to boot.

4. PERDICCAS AND PEITHON (BABYLON, AUTUMN 323 B.C.)

In Babylon, Perdiccas, head of the embattled new regime, was also seeking to become Antipater’s son-in-law. Perhaps he had gotten wind of the old man’s offer of Phila to Craterus and feared being isolated by this new marital bond. Antipater represented legitimacy, stability, and authority; Antipater’s blessing was vital to anyone who sought to take Alexander’s place. Thus, shortly after appointing himself regent for the joint kings, Perdiccas wrote to Antipater seeking the hand of his daughter Nicaea, and the old man wrote back agreeing to the match.

Now, as he awaited the arrival of his bride, Perdiccas contemplated the two rebellions on two extremes of Asia. To his west, Antigonus One-eye had rejected his orders, refusing to lend aid to Eumenes in Cappadocia. To his east, the Greek hoplites stationed in Bactria were on the move after abandoning Alexander’s garrisons. Perdiccas’ authority, reestablished at such high cost after the uprising of Meleager, was under grave challenge in both places. Leaving Antigonus alone for the present, Perdiccas moved to tackle the problem of the Bactrian Greeks. He sent for his onetime fellow Bodyguard and close ally, Peithon.

Peithon had been one of Perdiccas’ chief supporters during the tumultuous week after Alexander’s death. Too low in stature to vie for command, he had been content to second Perdiccas’ proposals for the complex structure of the new government. As a reward he had been appointed satrap of Media, a wealthy and important province. There, Peithon had begun to nourish larger ambitions: dominion over the empire’s cavalry-rich eastern sector, the upper satrapies of Bactria and Sogdiana, an ideal place to start an independent kingdom or build power for a takeover of all Asia. For the moment, however, he kept this longing hidden.

Responding to Perdiccas’ summons, Peithon arrived in Babylon. There he received an expeditionary force of three thousand infantry and eight hundred cavalry, chosen by lottery from Perdiccas’ own forces. Peithon was also given letters allowing him to levy more troops from the other satraps of the East and to serve as strat¯egos, or “commander in chief,” of the whole region. Such letters, sealed with the signet ring Perdiccas carried, were the standard instruments by which the empire was managed. On their directives, troops or funds were moved here and there across its vast expanse. A satrap who received them was obliged to obey or other letters would be sent to the local garrison ordering his arrest, or worse.

The letters given to Peithon were a necessary means of dealing with one rebellion, but Perdiccas worried that they would spawn another. Somehow, Perdiccas had begun to mistrust Peithon, the man he had just appointed to a prestigious command. He feared that the mission to the upper satrapies would place Peithon beyond the reach of central authority. Were Peithon to collaborate with the Greek rebels rather than subduing them, he could easily control the East. Perdiccas decided to take no chances. He gave instructions to Peithon’s army that the Greek rebels were not to be taken prisoner but killed, and he granted the right to plunder their possessions as a reward for compliance. None of over twenty thousand former comrades was to be left alive. It was a desperately cynical strategy—the preemptive destruction of an entire army to prevent its use by a rival. The upper satrapies would be largely stripped of colonists, but at least they would not threaten the empire as a whole. If Perdiccas had to cut off a limb to preserve the rest of the body, that was a price he was willing to pay.

And so he sent Peithon off to the East, while he waited for an envoy to arrive from the West with Antipater’s daughter Nicaea, his bride-to-be.

5. PTOLEMY (EGYPT, AUTUMN 323–SUMMER 322 B.C.)

Meanwhile, in the south of the empire, in Egypt, yet another of Alexander’s generals, Ptolemy, was also about to marry a daughter of Antipater—the old man’s youngest, Eurydice. Ptolemy had sought this woman’s hand as part of a pact with Antipater, whose support he badly needed. For upon his arrival in Egypt he had taken steps that were sure to bring a momentous consequence, war with Perdiccas.

Ptolemy already had two remarkable women by his side. For years he had kept a famous mistress, the beautiful Athenian courtesan Thais. According to one account, it was Thais who, while drinking and carousing with Ptolemy and other generals in the Persian palace at Persepolis, impishly suggested that they all set the place on fire. Alexander, drunk as well, took the dare and threw a torch at the roof timbers of the palace, starting a conflagration that left it a ravaged shell (the ruin still standing today in southern Iran). Perhaps the fire really did start this way, or perhaps, as a different account suggests, it was a deliberate move by a sober Alexander. But even if Thais was the instigator, she had not thereby lost Ptolemy’s affections. The couple had three children born during the Asian campaign, two boys and a girl, now settled with them in their new home in Egypt.

Ptolemy also had a wife, the Greco-Persian noblewoman Artacama, given to him by Alexander at the mass wedding in Susa the previous year. She was the daughter of Artabazus, a great Persian warrior-chief, and sister of Barsine, Alexander’s former mistress and mother of his son Heracles. By marriage to Artacama, Ptolemy had been taken into Alexander’s extended family, and into the hybrid Euro-Asian elite destined to rule the brave new world.

It was an odd combination of consorts, a highborn Persian princess and a high-priced Athenian courtesan, but then Ptolemy was a man for all seasons, versatile and rangy. Alexander had given him a variety of commands, diverse and sensitive missions, and he had always succeeded. Not by nature a military man—at least he played no major role in the Asian invasion during its first five years—he had learned the art of war from those around him. Perhaps he did not have as much boldness as Perdiccas, nor as much authority as Craterus, nor as much cleverness as Eumenes the Greek. But he had a balance of all three qualities that was stronger than any single one by itself.