Finally, to avoid the strains he feared would tear his senior staff apart, Eumenes hit upon an invention—the cleverest yet of his many inventions and ruses.

Eumenes had been present the day after Alexander’s death, when Perdiccas called a meeting before the king’s empty throne. He had heard Ptolemy propose that the leaders form a governing board and convene in front of that throne. Both men had recognized that Alexander, with his colossal force of personality, had knit together a fractious group of determined rivals. If that force could be channeled through the empty throne, the union of those rivals could be preserved.

Inspired by two great models, Eumenes told his officers about a vivid dream that had twice appeared to him. Alexander had returned to life and was sitting in his royal tent, wielding his scepter and administering his empire. The king gave an order to his generals to meet only in thattent, which they were to call Alexander’s tent. Eumenes then interpreted his own dream. “I think we should construct a golden throne from out of the royal treasury,” he told Antigenes and Teutamus, “and place on it the diadem, the scepter, and the crown; then at dawn all the commanders will burn incense to him, and convene a council meeting before the throne, and take their orders under the king’s name, just as if he were alive and in charge of his own realm.” As long as they stayed before this throne, Eumenes assured them, Alexander would be present and would guide their decisions.

This vision of restored authority seized the men’s imaginations. They cast a golden throne as Eumenes had suggested and erected it under a magnificent tent. On it they placed Alexander’s diadem, scepter, and armor. Beside the throne they stood a set of weapons, and in front of it they erected an altar for burning incense. Every morning they went to this tent, Eumenes and the others together, and took precious incense out of a small golden box, and burned it on the altar, and bowed down before the throne as before a god. Then they sat on silver benches they had placed within the tent and discussed the questions they faced that day.

Dissension among the high command immediately disappeared. Whether or not they believed they were in Alexander’s spiritual presence, the daily ritual in “Alexander’s tent” restored their sense of a center. They now received willingly orders issued by Eumenes, which seemed, under the penumbra of the tent, to have come from Alexander himself.

With astute psychological insight, Eumenes had given his new subcommanders, the knotty veterans of Alexander’s wars, exactly what they needed. They needed their king to come back from the dead.

8.

POLYPERCHON, PHOCION, HAGNONIDES, AND KING PHILIP (PHOCIS, SPRING 318 B.C.)

While Phocion was en route northward, the anger unleashed in Athens by the democratic counterrevolution continued to build. Hagnonides, the new leading speaker in the Assembly, fed on this anger and helped stoke it. The Athenians now wanted more than just the exile of the oligarchs; they wanted revenge. Following a long-established pattern, they grew more bitter against absent scapegoats than against those still in their midst. They voted, some days after the departure of Phocion, to send a delegation, headed by Hagnonides, to convince Polyperchon not to give clemency to their fallen statesman.

Polyperchon and his army were on the march in northern Greece, preparing to sweep southward and re-democratize the cities of Hellas. Phocion, exiled from Athens, had not far to go to reach them, but got delayed when a member of his entourage, Deinarchus of Corinth, fell ill. Though Hagnonides had left Athens a few days later, he and Phocion arrived in Polyperchon’s camp, near the village of Pharygae, at the same time. The two old enemies were brought before Polyperchon as if for an impromptu debating match.

Polyperchon solemnized the proceedings by installing his ward, King Philip, as presiding judge, seating the half-witted monarch on a throne beneath a golden canopy. Whatever decision was taken could be passed off as the judgment of the king. Polyperchon was discomfited by the problem of Phocion, a man who had faithfully served Macedonian interests for years but who now stood on the wrong side of the freedom decree.

The hearing started on a grim note. Deinarchus came forward to speak on Phocion’s behalf, thinking himself a friend of Macedon’s; he had managed the Peloponnese well for old man Antipater. But he had not reckoned the depth of the fissures that had opened after Antipater’s death. Fidelity to the old man implied loyalty only to his rebel son. No sooner had Deinarchus begun his address than Polyperchon ordered him arrested and led away for torture and execution. The great orator, who had prosecuted Demades in the show trial that got him condemned to death, now found himself in the maw of the beast he had once helped feed.

An uproar erupted as both Athenian delegations, Phocion’s party and that of Hagnonides, tried simultaneously to get heard but ended up shouting accusations at each other. Hagnonides sneered that the whole crew should be thrown into a galeagra, a cage for trapping wild animals, and shipped back to Athens to sort out their differences. From his irrelevant throne, King Philip suddenly laughed. Did he understand the joke, or was he merely amused by the tumult?

The rest of the hearing played out in a chaotic, even ludicrous, fashion. Order was restored so that Phocion could speak, but Polyperchon, unaccustomed to Athenian wordiness, kept interrupting impatiently. Finally he grew fed up and slammed his scepter on the ground and walked away, fuming in silence. Hegemon, one of Phocion’s party, tried to mollify the regent by recalling Phocion’s many benefactions, but this only enraged Polyperchon further. “Stop lying to me in the presence of the king!” he shouted, whereupon King Philip, dimly sensing some insult, rose from his throne and tried to stab Hegemon with a spear. Polyperchon ran over and threw his arms around Philip to restrain him, then hastily adjourned the council session.

Before Phocion could leave, an armed guard stepped forward and put him under arrest. The others in the oligarchic party made haste to flee, realizing their cause was lost at the Macedonian court. Polyperchon had committed to the democrats in order to isolate partisans of the rebel Cassander. Phocion, notwithstanding his honorable service, would be thrown to the wolves.

9. THE FALL OF PHOCION (ATHENS, SPRING 318 B.C.)

Phocion and four of his partisans were conveyed back to Athens by Cleitus the White, the Macedonian admiral who had defeated the Athenian fleet in the Hellenic War. They were placed on an open cart for exhibition to the mob and driven through the city to the Theater of Dionysus. There they were kept in seclusion until the Assembly could be summoned. The open-air theater was usually used for tragic dramas but sometimes also for political proceedings. The trial soon to take place there would have elements of both.

In wanton violation of the constitution, the Assembly was opened to all comers, citizens and aliens, men and women, free and slaves. The democratic regime did not want procedural niceties to thwart the will of the people. One brave citizen rose in protest and urged that foreigners and slaves be ushered out but was shouted down with cries of “Stone the oligarchs!” The proceeding was then begun by Cleitus, who read aloud a letter from Polyperchon. The regent proclaimed that in his view, Phocion and his party were traitors, but, in the spirit of the new Greek freedom, he would leave their fate to the Athenians. In other words, he washed his hands of the matter.

Phocion and the four members of his party were led into the theater. Some of Phocion’s admirers were moved to tears, covering their faces with their hands to hide their emotions from their neighbors.