Cassander was aghast. In his thinking he had been disinherited: custody of the kings was equivalent to royalty itself and so, like kingship, ought to pass from father to son. As Antipater’s life ebbed away, Cassander resolved not to accept the subordinate role to which his father had once again consigned him. He would strike out on his own and claim the patrimony he had worked for so hard and waited for so long.
Even before his father died, Cassander began laying his plans. He dispatched a trusted aide, a certain Nicanor—probably not Aristotle’s adopted son, though long assumed to be—to Athens, with instructions to quietly replace Menyllus as garrison commander. Many Athenians, he knew, were unreconciled to the new oligarchy; news of Antipater’s death might prompt them to overthrow it. An Athenian revolt would deprive him of a valuable asset, for the fortified harbor of Piraeus was the most important naval base in the region. Cassander would not let it fall into the hands either of Athens’ democratic hooligans or of his future adversary, Polyperchon.
At last the day of his father’s death, and Polyperchon’s accession, arrived. Cassander masked his true feelings as he joined in the rites of burial and transfer of power. But shortly thereafter, making a pretense of going on a hunting trip, Cassander went to the countryside to enlist support for revolt. He sent an envoy to Ptolemy, still lingering in newly won Syria and Palestine, to arrange an alliance. And he secured access to the Hellespont so that, when the time was right, he could make his way into Asia and seek out Antigonus One-eye, now master there. A new partnership could be formed by those who stood to gain by Polyperchon’s fall. Cassander could play the grand game of two continents against one, this time uniting Asia and Africa for an assault on Europe.
Civil war, already raging in Alexander’s overseas conquests, was about to find its way to the Macedonian homeland. The pattern of mitosis that had beset the empire since Alexander’s death seemed to be recurring without end. First the royal army had split into two factions and designated two kings to take Alexander’s place; then the designs of Perdiccas had become split between two wives; finally all of Asia had been split by the falling-out of Perdiccas and Antipater, and by the war those two had handed down to their surrogates, Eumenes and Antigonus. Now Macedonia was splitting as well, between Cassander and Polyperchon, and with that split would come a division of the Greek world over which Macedon held sway. At the center of that world, about to become its principal battleground, stood Athens, the violet-crowned city, with the aging Phocion at its helm.
3. ANTIGONUS ONE-EYE (
PISIDIA, IN SOUTHERN ANATOLIA, SUMMER 319 B.C.)
News of Antipater’s death reached Antigonus One-eye in Pisidia, where he had just won a resounding victory over the Perdiccan coalition. It was an opportune moment for such news to arrive. One-eye’s reputation had never been brighter or his army more powerful, augmented now by forces that had belonged to Perdiccas’ brother Alcetas and other leaders of the fallen regime.
Antigonus had reached Pisidia by round-the-clock marches after leaving Nora, where Eumenes was safely penned in his craggy fortress. He had kept up the bone-cracking pace of forty miles a day over a grueling week of travel. The leading Perdiccans, Alcetas and his allies, held a strong position in the center of a pass, and Antigonus’ best hope was to arrive before they could expect him. At this he succeeded brilliantly. The first warning his foes had of his approach was the trumpeting of elephants from atop a nearby hill—a sound that sent them into panic, for they knew that only Antigonus, the general appointed to destroy them, possessed a stable of war elephants.
Alcetas gamely mounted a counterattack, charging uphill with his cavalry to dislodge the forces on the high ground. He might have succeeded, except Antigonus made a lightning advance and launched a charge of his own at the infantry in the pass. Alcetas, about to be cut off from his phalanx, abandoned the hilltop and dashed back to the pass, only just getting there in time. The elephants and cavalry of Antigonus now descended from the hill and fell on Alcetas’ infantry, still struggling to get into formation. It was the first time elephants had been used by one European general against another, and the results were devastating: most of the Perdiccan forces surrendered without a fight. Antigonus made prisoners of three leaders—Attalus, Docimus, and Polemon—and sent them under guard to a fort he controlled. Their troops he attached to his own army, building an aggregate of sixty thousand infantry and ten thousand cavalry, the largest force yet commanded by any European.
Alcetas made it out unharmed and put a predesigned escape plan into effect. A nearby city, Termessus, occupied an impregnable position. Its inhabitants were deeply attached to Alcetas, thanks to his gifts over the years and the invitations he had extended to share his banquet table. They happily took Alcetas in and vowed to protect him. But when Antigonus arrived in the valley below, threatening to feed his massive army there while waiting for Alcetas’ surrender, a generational dispute broke out among the Termessians. The older men dreaded the loss of their harvest, while their sons, filled with youthful defiance, vowed to defend Alcetas at any cost.
When the older men saw they could not prevail, they made a secret plan with Antigonus, directing him to feign retreat so as to draw the youths away. Antigonus did as instructed; the young men, as anticipated, set off after him. The elders quickly descended on Alcetas. Alcetas saw he had been betrayed and took his own life. The old men carried his body out of the city, hiding it under a cloth lest their returning sons catch sight of it, and brought it to Antigonus.
One-eye was not normally a cruel man, but he could be cruel on occasion. He subjected Alcetas’ corpse to abuse for the next three days, until it showed signs of decay. Perhaps he wanted to send a message to the youths of Termessus, who were simmering with rage at the betrayal of their hero and vowing a guerrilla war. Perhaps he sought to avenge Alcetas’ infamous murder of Cynnane, daughter of the great Philip. Whatever his motives, he ended by throwing the mutilated body onto the ground to rot and marching away. The young men of Termessus recovered the corpse and buried it with full rites of honor. A rock-cut tomb, seen today in southern Turkey, its walls adorned with a bas-relief of a charging cavalryman, is almost certainly Alcetas’ final resting place.
It was just at this point, while Antigonus was departing from Termessus with his vastly enlarged army, that the news arrived from Europe: Antipater was dead.
The old man’s passing left Antigonus with many unanswered questions. What was he to do next, now that the Perdiccan forces were vanquished? What role would he play, with Antipater, who had treated him almost as a partner in rule, off the scene for good? Antigonus might well have hoped to become guardian of the kings in Antipater’s place, but that post, he now learned, had mysteriously gone to Polyperchon, a man with no great commands or victories. And what was to be done with Eumenes, penned up at Nora and hoping for restoration to his former rank? Antigonus had sent an envoy to consult Antipater about this request, but that envoy had arrived in Pella too late. Antigonus would have to decide on his own how to handle his former Greek friend.
A rock carving found outside a tomb in southern Turkey, almost certainly depicting Alcetas charging into battle (Illustration credit 8.1)
At some point these two problems, the fate of Eumenes and his own political future, came together in Antigonus’ mind and suggested a common solution. With the world’s largest army at his back, he need not obey a second-rater like Polyperchon, but could rule Asia as though it were his own. He could interdict the naval convoys leaving its shores and deprive Polyperchon of much-needed cash. But he might then have to fight Polyperchon, in which case he would need a good consigliere, and Eumenes, as he knew, was the best he could find. Antigonus had never borne any animus against the clever Greek, despite having accepted the task of killing him. Now it seemed better to utilize, rather than destroy, the man’s intelligence and talent.