Antigonus arranged for Hieronymus, Eumenes’ close friend and countryman, to go to Nora and bring a message into the fortress there. Little Eumenes was offered full restoration of Cappadocia, and all his lost wealth, plus additional gifts and honors. He had only to swear loyalty to Antigonus and agree to become his chief adviser. Together the two men could chart their own course and claim any sovereignty they wanted. The empire would be theirs for the taking.

4. POLYPERCHON AND OLYMPIAS (MACEDONIA AND EPIRUS, AUTUMN 319 B.C.)

With his dying breaths, Antipater had reportedly spoken one last, stern injunction to his followers: Don’t let Macedonia be ruled by a woman.Undoubtedly, the woman he feared was his old nemesis, the Molossian queen who had constantly wrangled with him for power before giving up and going home, Alexander the Great’s mother, Olympias.

Now in her mid-fifties, Olympias had been outside Macedonian politics for years, but no one thought she would remain there forever. Her bids to marry her daughter, Cleopatra, to one of Alexander’s top generals had shown she was still a player in the great dynastic game. Her two hoped-for sons-in-law were now dead and there was no third in sight, but Olympias’ shrewd mind might find other routes back into power in Macedon.

Polyperchon, the newly appointed regent, had known Olympias only distantly, if at all, before he left for Asia with Alexander. He did not belong to one of the great Macedonian houses, whose sons became page boys and mingled freely with the royal family. He doubtless knew of reasons to steer clear of the dowager queen: her stormy temper and uncompromising nature, her unwillingness to accept second place. But Polyperchon needed help. In Europe, his rival Cassander had gone into rebellion, recruiting allies among powerful friends; in Asia, Antigonus One-eye had also revealed himself as a threat, arrogantly seizing a treasure fleet bound for Macedonia. Polyperchon could see that a showdown with one of these men was looming—or with both, if, as he had to anticipate, they joined forces.

With no natural allies, no cadre of kin and highborn cronies, Polyperchon reached out to the enemy of his enemies. He defied the last wishes of Antipater and sent a messenger to Olympias, inviting her to return to Macedonia and share his rule. She could become guardian of her four-year-old grandchild, Alexander, he wrote—she had yet to meet the boy, or his mother, Rhoxane—and thus a kind of co-regent with Polyperchon, who would retain guardianship of the other king, the half-witted Philip.

Olympias received this offer with deeply conflicted feelings. Her fondest wishes, both as grandmother and as queen, seemed granted as if by magic. But the realm to which she had been invited was fraught with danger. Stalking its countryside was Cassander, son of her former rival Antipater and potentially an even more vicious foe. Olympias regarded Cassander as the principal murderer of her son, the man who had brought poison out of Europe and delivered it to Babylon; perhaps she had also heard reports of his cruel killing of the Athenian politician Demades. Then, too, Adea, wife to King Philip, posed a different kind of threat, for Adea’s branch of the Argead house could not remain allied forever to that of Olympias, linked by the dual kingship of the two male heirs. One branch would someday eliminate the other. Olympias knew that Adea, a woman forty years her junior, reared in the warlike traditions of her Illyrian ancestors, was a formidable opponent.

Unsure what to do or whom to trust, fearing to cast her lot with Polyperchon yet longing to meet her grandson, Olympias sought the advice of a loyal supporter—Eumenes the Greek. Olympias had never lost touch with him despite the vast gulfs between them—not just the physical divide between Europe and Asia but the political rift that made Eumenes a wanted man. Olympias cared little for that rift, which she saw as one more ploy by Antipater and Cassander to trample on her family’s rights. She wrote now to Eumenes as a trusted friend, asking whether she should return to Macedon, where she might protect her grandson’s life but also endanger her own. She even offered, either in this letter or in a later one, to entrust to Eumenes the protection of her grandson, the young Alexander, the toddler king.

While this letter made its way to Eumenes, a piece of long-dreaded news came to Polyperchon. Cassander had slipped across the Hellespont and was making common cause with Antigonus One-eye. The prospects for the coming war suddenly became grave. Polyperchon would face an enemy that could draw on the vast resources of Asia, its wealth above all but also the dreaded new weapon, the elephant, which inevitably struck terror into European troops. Polyperchon was not strong enough to confront his foes in Asia, but if he could at least hold on to Europe, he might raise more forces and someday take them across the straits.

Reaching again into his political bag of tricks, Polyperchon found a way to shore up his home base, in particular the Greek states to his south. It was something he had seen Alexander do, when the king first entered Asia and needed support from the Greek cities there. These cities had long been ruled by Persian-backed strongmen, but Alexander had proclaimed they could become democracies and enjoy self-rule as of old. Jubilant over their restored freedom, the Greeks welcomed Alexander with open arms, scarcely registering that the absolute power by which he had freed them ultimately meant their enslavement.

Mimicking Alexander’s cynical, but successful, manipulation of Greek sentiment, Polyperchon issued a proclamation—or arranged for King Philip to issue one—that the Greek states, as of a certain date some months away, would be free. Their oligarchic puppet governments would be disbanded; exiled opposition leaders would return; the clock would be reset as if the Greek defeats in recent wars had never occurred. Athens was to have its democracy back. It was also to have Samos back, the colonial possession it had lost after a long diplomatic struggle. In return the Greeks were to pass a decree never to make war or foment revolt against the Macedonians—for Polyperchon’s grant of autonomy surely did notextend to foreign policy. Nor did it include the withdrawal of Macedonian garrisons, which were not even mentioned in the decree.

Accompanying this proclamation were directives Polyperchon sent to certain Greek cities ordering the execution of their leaders. These men had been installed by Antipater and thus, Polyperchon feared, would naturally incline toward his son Cassander. Now that the new regime had cast its lot with Greek democrats, it sought to thin the ranks of the oligarchs Antipater had put in power. Where this would leave Phocion, leader of the oligarchy at Athens, was still an open question.

While news of the freedom decree swept through Greece, Polyperchon turned his thoughts to Asia, where the blows against him were sure to be launched. He had but one card to play to counter those blows, but he played it with a vengeance. Perhaps he had gotten wind of Antigonus One-eye’s attempt to recruit Eumenes to his cause, or else he foresaw that possibility. The thought of an alliance between two shrewd generals, each with a string of battlefield victories, was deeply unsettling. But if these two could be kept at enmity, Polyperchon might forestall an invasion from the East. He had to somehow revive the civil war in Asia, which Antigonus had all but won, by rehabilitating the one surviving member of the old Perdiccan faction, Eumenes.

So, under the authority of his ward King Philip, Polyperchon wrote to Eumenes, proposing an alliance on astonishing terms. Eumenes would receive his old command back; he would get five hundred talents of silver from the royal treasury at Cyinda, as recompense for his sufferings; the Silver Shields guarding that treasure, and their commander, Antigenes, would become Eumenes’ personal infantry corps. This was already an extravagant bribe, but there was a kicker. Eumenes himself would share custodianship of the joint kings, should he cross over to Europe; or, if he remained in Asia, Polyperchon would cross over himself, with the joint kings and the royal army, and come to his aid whenever he asked. As he had done with Olympias, Polyperchon offered to give away half his power in order to recruit a partner who could save him from ruin.