4. EUMENES (CAPPADOCIA, SPRING 320 B.C.)

Eumenes had become the loneliest man in the empire. Word reached him from Egypt that Perdiccas was murdered and that the royal army had condemned him to death; then more reports from Triparadeisus, that Antigonus One-eye had been given a powerful army and a commission to hunt him down. His supposed allies, Perdiccas’ former lieutenants, had already proved unwilling to work with him; chief among them was Alcetas, Perdiccas’ brother, who had refused to offer him aid even when ordered by Perdiccas himself. Branded a traitor by the royal army, yet despised by those who shared his outlaw status, Eumenes could not expect help from any quarter. He and his troops, the fine Cappadocian cavalry he had trained and the Macedonian infantry he had won in battle, were on their own.

A twisting path had brought Eumenes, a Greek from Cardia in the Chersonese (modern Gallipoli), to this isolated stand in western Asia. Plucked from obscurity by Alexander’s father and placed in charge of the royal paperwork, Eumenes did not seem destined for leadership. Alexander had promoted him to a cavalry command only late in the Asian campaign, in India, and even then had used him sparingly. Changing times had forced Eumenes to adapt, to learn the ways of the battlefield rather than archive and chancery. And he had learned them well. Eumenes had won his battles on behalf of Perdiccas, even while Perdiccas was losing his war against Ptolemy. The opposite outcomes of their campaigns had made Eumenes a consigliere without a capo, the right arm of a regime that had got its head cut off.

It was comical to think that only two years earlier, Eumenes had tried to mediate the strife in Babylon, claiming he could be trusted by all because he had no interest in politics. Politics had drawn him in and forced him to choose sides. He had aligned himself with the Argeads, his mentors and benefactors since childhood. Their cause had become his, and he had backed Perdiccas as champion of that cause. He had come within a hair of transforming Perdiccas into an Argead, but the regent’s decision to marry Cleopatra had come only just too late.

Eumenes still considered Cleopatra and her mother, Olympias, his patrons, and himself their champion. But the question of who had the right to fly the Argead banner had become tortured and complex. Now the joint kings were in the hands of Eumenes’ foes, who likewise portrayed themselves as defenders of the royal house. To them, he was a pretender who had used the kings to advance a bid for power; to him, they were kidnappers who had abducted the kings from their rightful keepers.

Even had he wanted to, Eumenes could not now withdraw from the struggle. The chances of war had fallen out such that he had killed Craterus, a crime that would follow him everywhere. He had no choice but to fight and to hope that the showdown with Antigonus, whenever it came, would be on flat ground favorable to his cavalry corps. But what could Eumenes expect from a victory? Barred from the throne by his Greek birth, without any capo in view to whom he could be consigliere, Eumenes knew his long-term outlook was dim. If young Alexander could survive long enough to rule in his own right, Eumenes might serve as his closest adviser, the post for which he was best suited. But that prospect was still more than ten years off. Could anyone hold out for so long, even with a superior army, if he had no constitutional office and was a declared enemy of the state?

Such was the strange position Eumenes found himself in amid the turmoil of the civil war. He alone of all the leaders in that war had gained a major battlefield victory. Yet he had ended up without a country, cause, or commander to fight for. His cavalry was good enough to win against any challenger—but just whathe could win was beyond anyone’s surmise.

Fearing his soldiers would be panicked by the perils ahead, Eumenes called them together to report Perdiccas’ death and their own outlaw status. He did not know how his men would respond and freely offered them the chance to leave his service. Perhaps he also mentioned some pointed details of the mutiny at Triparadeisus and the impoverished state of Antipater’s finances. In any case, no one took up his offer. His troops urged him to lead them with all speed against the royal army, vowing to shred its decrees with the points of their spears.

That was all Eumenes needed to hear. He struck camp and moved westward to await the arrival of his foes. If he could fight for nothing else, he would fight for his own survival, for the moment he surrendered, or ran, he was sure to die.

5. THE PROPAGANDA WAR (EMPIRE-WIDE)

Now that old man Antipater and his son Cassander had thrown themselves into the power struggle, questions about Alexander’s death began to resurface. Had Alexander been poisoned? If so, had Antipater and his sons been involved, perhaps with help from Antipater’s Greek crony Aristotle? The rumors that had circulated in the Greek world cast a dark pall over the new de facto leader of the empire. Antipater’s enemies moved to exploit these rumors, and Antipater himself tried to fend them off, in an exchange of forged and leaked documents designed to win the hearts and minds of the Greek-reading public.

Already by this time the Hellenic world had read the memoir of Onesicritus, a Greek sea captain who had served in Alexander’s fleet. This memoir claimed that Alexander was poisoned by the guests at a dinner he attended the night he fell ill, but it refused to name the guilty parties for fear of reprisals. Onesicritus’ implication was that the assassins were still at large and able to wreak revenge, an indirect way of accusing the generals then in power—which in the Greek world meant, above all, Antipater.

Shortly thereafter—the exact date is a matter of dispute—an anonymous Greek treatise appeared that named the names Onesicritus had kept hushed. The original version of the treatise, sometimes called The Last Days and Testament of Alexander, is lost, but a later Latin translation survives, the Liber de Morte.It claims that Antipater, summoned by Alexander to Babylon and certain that his execution was near, sent his son Cassander with poison contained in a hollowed-out mule’s hoof; that Cassander met with his brother Iolaus in Babylon; that together they administered the poison at a dinner party given by Iolaus’ male lover, Medius. With sober fanfare, the treatise then lists the guests present at the fateful dinner and exonerates seven, including Perdiccas, Eumenes, and Ptolemy. It leaves more than a dozen named guests accused as conspirators. The treatise describes how Alexander drank the poisoned wine he received from Iolaus, felt a stabbing pain, cried out, and retired to his room while the fearful plotters dispersed. In a final act of treachery, Iolaus, asked by Alexander for a feather to help him vomit, gave him one dipped in poison.

This document was almost certainly a propaganda weapon deployed by one of the generals vying for power, but which one? Since Antipater stands accused of Alexander’s murder while Perdiccas and Eumenes are cleared, it seems at first glance to be the work of Perdiccas or his allies. But Ptolemy was as much Perdiccas’ enemy as Antipater, and Ptolemy is exonerated by the treatise. Perhaps there are different strata of material here, as successive forgers added new elements. Whatever its purposes, The Last Days and Testament of Alexandershows that charges of regicide came increasingly into play in the Macedonian power struggle, principally to undermine old man Antipater.

Probably in response to these poisoning charges, someone published the final segment of the Royal Journals, a sober, day-by-day eyewitness account of Alexander’s illness and death. The original is lost but existed in the second century A.D., when it was read (in differing versions) and paraphrased by both Arrian and Plutarch. The Royal Journalsdepicted Alexander’s illness as a gradual descent into fever and coma and made clear that it had not begun with a sudden, stabbing pain as the Last Daysclaimed. Perhaps Antipater himself had the Journalspublished, or fabricated, as a way to dispel the rumors that shadowed his family. No certainty is possible in this hall-of-mirrors world of forged, composite, and anonymous documents.