“Of the words about to be spoken over this tomb, concerning Leosthenes the general and the men who died with him in this war—words that will show they were good men—time itself will be the proof,” Hyperides began. It was an audacious move to name Leosthenes in his very first sentence, but Hyperides had written an audacious speech. Where other such orations dealt in hazy abstractions, or invoked age-old myths, Hyperides was going to extol a hero who was real flesh and blood. He would give the Athenians a Leosthenes to rival the Macedonians’ Alexander. He would fashion a cult of personality around Leosthenes, in hopes that, with this undemocratic style of rhetoric, he might inspire democratic Athens to win its stalemated war.

“I will start with the general, for that is only right,” Hyperides continued. “It was Leosthenes who saw Greece disgraced and cowering, undermined by those taking bribes from Philip and Alexander … It was he who saw that our city needed a man outstanding in leadership, just as the Greeks needed a leading city; it was he who gave himself to his city and the city to the Greeks, for the cause of freedom!” The cynics in the crowd might have balked at hailing Leosthenes as a champion of freedom—a soldier for hire who had spent his life in arms, who had no ideology but hatred of Alexander and love of victory, who had grown up among the Macedonians and once served under them, who had never even lived in the city for which he fought. But for others, who now thrilled as Hyperides retold the triumphs of the past year, these were overly nice calculations. Under Leosthenes, Athens had won, and where Athens won, so did the cause of Greek liberty.

“But let no one suppose I ignore other citizens and heap praise on Leosthenes alone,” Hyperides continued, aware of the danger of going too far. “For who would not be right to praise those who died in this war, who gave their lives for the freedom of the Greeks?…Through them, fathers have become respected and mothers admired…, sisters have made and will make fitting marriages; children will have, as their admission to the goodwill of the city, the virtue of these men”—he gestured toward the fresh-dug graves below him—“men who have not died, but have only exchanged life for an eternal battle line.” A strange and striking metaphor, well suited to a speech built around a mercenary captain—a picture of the dead as warriors stationed in a ghostly infantry phalanx.

With such words Hyperides sought to comfort Athens’ mourners and strengthen the city for the next phase of the war. Because our sole copy of the speech is incomplete, we do not know whether Hyperides acknowledged the difficulties that phase would bring. His one reference to the recent battle against Leonnatus suggests he regarded this as a victory but not one to celebrate; he did not even name its victorious generals, Menon and Antiphilus. He bent all his energy toward glorifying Leosthenes, which meant casting the new team of leaders as lesser men.

A skilled politician knows how to dodge blame by providing scapegoats, and Hyperides may have foreseen that scapegoats would soon be needed. All would be well, he seems to imply, if only hisman, Leosthenes, were still in charge.

7. THE WAR AT SEA (

HELLESPONT REGION, SPRING–SUMMER 322 B.C.)

The hopes of the antagonists in the Hellenic War now rested on a narrow body of water, in places less than a mile wide. Across these straits, the Hellespont, the primary crossing point between Europe and Asia, reinforcements would need to come if the strategic balance was to be changed. Old man Antipater, now back in Macedonia preparing for a second assault on the rebel Greeks, could not win without more cavalry, and more cavalry could come only from the forces in Asia under Craterus. Antipater had to get control of the straits so Craterus could cross them, and Athens, if it hoped to beat Antipater again, had to prevent such a crossing. The theater of war now moved to the sea.

The Hellespont had always been a vital strategic asset for Athens or for its enemies. In 480 B.C., King Xerxes of Persis, en route to attacking Athens, had bridged the straits with a chain of more than three hundred warships and brought his army into Europe on a road laid across their decks. Rumor had it that when a storm broke apart his bridge, Xerxes flogged the Hellespont and flung shackles into its waters as though to make them his slave. In the end it was Athens, not Xerxes, that mastered the straits, using its formidable navy to patrol them; a large part of Athens’ food supply was shipped through them from the grain-rich lands of the Black Sea, and if those shipments were ever choked off, the Athenians would starve. Only once since the defeat of Xerxes had an enemy of Athens gained control of the straits, and on that occasion—after the capture of an Athenian fleet by the Spartans, in 404 B.C.—Athens had quickly been forced to surrender.

Maintaining mastery over the Hellespont was an expensive proposition. The Athenians kept up a large fleet of warships, over four hundred at times, paid for by boards of wealthy citizens. The burden was a heavy one, and many shirked it. Even more expensive than the ships were the crews needed to row them. Four hundred ships required eighty thousand crewmen, each drawing a daily wage. Athens could neither afford so many nor even find them, for the rapid maneuvers of a warship required not just strength from its rowers but skill and experience. In Europe at the time of the Hellenic War, men who possessed these were hard to come by.

Not so in Asia, however. The seafarers who had once served the Persian empire, in particular the Phoenicians, now served the Macedonians, and where money was needed to pay them, their masters could draw on a bottomless treasury. Persian gold had beaten the Athenians once before: funneled to Sparta during the Peloponnesian War, it had built the navy that denied them use of the straits. Now, in the hands of its new owners, Persian gold might beat them again.

Alexander, just before his death, had started spending that gold to build up his navy. Anticipating war in the West, he had sent a fleet of 110 warships to old man Antipater, along with a supply of cash. These ships had already given the Athenian navy a hard time while Antipater was at Lamia, but they were soon joined by a second fleet commanded by Cleitus the White, an officer who had accompanied Craterus out of Babylon. Sailing to the Hellespont in the spring of 322, Cleitus encountered the Athenians at Abydus, the best landing point for troops crossing into Europe, and soundly defeated them. Then he won a second victory at Amorgus in the Cyclades, intercepting an Athenian fleet sent to retake the straits. Though details of these battles are scant, their result is clear: control of the sea passed from Athenian hands into those of the Macedonians. For Cleitus—who took to standing in the prow of his vessel posed as Poseidon, with a trident in one hand—this was a triumph of heroic proportions.

The Amorgus battle had a peculiar denouement at Athens. A prankster named Stratocles, getting wind while abroad of the Athenian defeat, hastened back to Athens before other messengers could arrive there. He falsely reported that Athens had won the engagement and gadded about wearing a garland and proposing grateful offerings to the gods. The people celebrated his news, then turned on him angrily after the truth finally emerged. Stratocles was unrepentant. “What harm have I done if for two days you have been happy?” he asked his fellow Athenians. Thanks to him the city had enjoyed one last, brief illusion that its 150-year-old naval supremacy was intact.

Remarkably, a huge number of Athens’ warships sat idle in the Piraeus docks during the pitched struggle at sea. The city had managed to build a vast fleet but lacked rowers and steersmen to man it. The financial windfall it had gotten from Harpalus had been spent on Leosthenes and his mercenaries. Athens had not been able to afford a land and sea war at the same time.