What was left of that dream was written on the complexion and features of Alexander’s son, who, if he could survive another ten years or so, would become the first Asian-born monarch to rule on European soil. But given the whirlwind of events in his first four years, that was likely to be a long and dangerous decade indeed.

10. ANTIGONUS AND EUMENES (

ANATOLIA, SPRING 319 B.C.)

With Antipater off the scene and winter ending, Antigonus One-eye and Eumenes prepared to decide the contest for Asia. It was a duel between two intelligent and honorable men, former friends from their days at Philip’s court, but driven by political accident onto opposing sides. Both claimed to fight under the Argead banner, and both headed largely Macedonian armies; they had never harmed each other, and there was no ideological gulf between them. Yet Eumenes had been declared an enemy of the state, and Antigonus, commander in chief of Asia, had been assigned the task of destroying him.

Eumenes, however, was not going to be easy to destroy. His Cappadocian cavalry outnumbered Antigonus’ horsemen and outclassed them in skill and experience. Antigonus was not about to make the same mistake as Craterus and face a charge by that cavalry, at least not without softening them up first. Fortunately, he had plenty of money to accomplish that softening. His bribes turned the loyalties of one of Eumenes’ cavalry officers, a man named Apollonides. Through covert messages, Apollonides promised Antigonus he would desert Eumenes and draw away an entire unit of horse.

Unaware of this looming betrayal, Eumenes confidently sought battle with Antigonus near a place called Orcynia. He camped on open ground in full view of One-eye’s position, a signal he was willing to join combat. Heralds passed freely between the two armies, bearing messages from one general to the other, as they prepared for the death struggle that awaited them.

Antigonus used this interlude to play a demoralizing trick on his former friend. While Eumenes’ heralds were in his camp, One-eye instructed a soldier to run up to him breathlessly and call out, “Our allies have arrived!” The heralds who witnessed this scene duly reported to Eumenes that Antigonus had been reinforced. The next day Antigonus marched his phalanx forward in double-wide formation, as though he had indeed received fresh recruits. This sight eroded the confidence of Eumenes’ infantry, who, not perceiving from their vantage that the formation was also half-deep, thought they had lost superiority of numbers.

Two devious ploys, neutralizing both his cavalry and his infantry strength, proved too much for Eumenes. The battle of Orcynia—from which no detailed account has survived—turned quickly into a rout. Antigonus butchered some eight thousand of Eumenes’ forces and also captured his baggage train, the booty and belongings of his army. Since booty had made Eumenes a hero to his troops, this was a huge psychological blow.

But Eumenes was not done for yet. He escaped the battle with a portion of his army that had neither deserted nor surrendered, including much of his swift-moving cavalry. After somehow catching and killing the traitor Apollonides, Eumenes doubled back to Orcynia, eluding Antigonus, who was still tracking him in the direction he had fled. He was determined to give his slain soldiers burial, a privilege normally obtained by formal concession of defeat. Since Orcynia was barren of trees, Eumenes ordered wood collected from the doors of nearby houses and had two vast pyres built, one for officers, the other for enlisted men; then he raised a mound of earth over their ashes. When Antigonus finally arrived, the grave was complete and Eumenes was gone. Though he had lost the battle, Eumenes had recovered his dignity, denying Antigonus the right of the victor to set terms for return of the dead.

Eumenes hoped to make a dash for Armenia and there recruit a fresh army. But Antigonus was closing in on him quickly. Eumenes had no choice but to make use of a preplanned, last-ditch escape. On the border of Cappadocia lay a fortress called Nora, a set of buildings atop an impregnable crag only four hundred yards around. Stocked with enough food, salt, and firewood to last a small force for years, it could hold out against any attacker. Eumenes released from his service all but six hundred followers and with these shut himself inside the fort, a tiny island of security in a sea of enemies. Here he could wait for the political winds to shift, or for his would-be allies, Alcetas and the others, to come to his rescue. The prospect of long isolation in a mountaintop prison was dismal, but better than defeat.

Antigonus One-eye arrived at Nora to find Eumenes safely barred within. He prepared to surround the fort with double walls, ditches, and guard posts, positions he might need to maintain for years. Before committing to that expensive alternative, however, he decided to try negotiation. He sent his own nephew into the fort as a hostage guaranteeing Eumenes’ safety and persuaded Eumenes to come out and talk.

The two men had not seen each other in fifteen years, not since the early days of Alexander’s campaign. But they found it easy to put their conflict aside and recover old bonds of friendship. They embraced each other and spoke kind words of greeting, while Antigonus’ troops, recruits of a younger generation, strove to get a glimpse of a famous man—the victor over Craterus, the bookkeeper who had become a general, the general who had become an outlaw. They pressed in so close that Antigonus feared for Eumenes’ safety and threw his arms around his old friend to protect him from the overeager—and perhaps hostile—crowd.

The parley between the two leaders revealed the artificiality of their dispute. Far from acknowledging his crimes against the state, Eumenes asked for full restoration as satrap of Cappadocia, even though this would mean joining the regime officially committed to killing him. He did not even mention the death sentence passed in Egypt, as though this had been an obvious mistake. Antigonus, for his part, did not reject Eumenes’ proposal, showing that he too was dubious about the grounds for the current hostilities. He offered to refer the request to Antipater for adjudication and sent a messenger to Macedonia for this purpose. Eumenes sent his own envoy as well, a close friend and countryman, to plead his side of the case. This was none other than Hieronymus of Cardia—the man who, with his inside view of the post-Alexander power struggle, would one day write the now-lost memoir on which most surviving accounts are based.

As these envoys headed for Europe, Eumenes and Antigonus parted as friends and resumed their appointed roles as enemies. Antigonus finished walling off Nora to prevent outbreaks from within or rescue attempts from without. Then, certain that his hold over Eumenes was secure, he took his army west in pursuit of the remaining Perdiccans. These were still gathered in Pisidia, and Antigonus prepared to lead his young recruits there by a grueling forced march, hoping to reach his foes before they suspected he was coming.

Eumenes, beaten but unbowed, climbed back into his fortress and barred its gates. After marching some twenty thousand miles with Alexander and helping him rule three continents, after being consigliere to Perdiccas with sovereignty over the whole known world, he now had a scant four acres of rocky crag as his dominion. But his enclave was secure from attack and well stocked with food and fuel. Despite abandonment by his former allies, demonization by the royal army, and a crushing defeat at Orcynia, Eumenes had managed to survive. He settled in for a long stay with his six hundred loyalists and awaited the next throw of Fortune’s dice.

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