Eumenes set about building ships and hiring Phoenicians to sail them. He still had an experienced admiral at his side from the days of the Perdiccas regime, a Rhodian named Sosigenes. There was no time to lose. Control of the Aegean was already being contested by fleets of the European combatants, Polyperchon and Cassander, with Antigonus’ few ships trying to aid the latter. Cassander, hunkered down in Piraeus, needed to get supplies by sea and preserve his link to Antigonus. Polyperchon sought to break that link and secure access to money, for most of it remained in Asia and had to be sent westward by ship. Antigonus had already seized one such shipment, leaving the government in Macedon starved for cash.
At last Eumenes’ fleet was ready, and chests of coin were loaded on board. Sosigenes left the Phoenician crews riding at anchor and climbed a hill to get a better view of currents in the bay. While he was gone, a squadron of warships sailed into view, prows and masts splendidly adorned with trophies of victory. It was the fleet of Antigonus One-eye, fresh from a triumph at the Hellespont, proclaiming to the whole coast, as instructed by Antigonus, its mastery of the seas. Phoenicians had always been quick to back winners, and on this occasion they did just as Antigonus had anticipated: they drew alongside the incoming ships and climbed on board to desert, bringing their cargo of precious metals with them. Sosigenes returned to find his ships empty and all hope lost of control of the sea.
Eumenes’ plans in the West had been dashed. He could no longer offer assistance to Polyperchon and the kings, nor they to him. He had no choice but to turn to the East, to Bactria and Sogdiana, where he might raise enough troops and horses to confront the massive army of Antigonus. If he could somehow prevail in that fight, he could return to the West and help his European allies. It was a slender hope, but it was all he had left. In any case, he could not stay where he was, for Antigonus would soon be upon him in Phoenicia. He mustered the Silver Shields, folded up the Alexander tent, and headed for the region that had for centuries been the refuge of the desperate, the upper satrapies.
4. POLYPERCHON, CASSANDER, AND THE ROYAL FAMILY (GREECE, EPIRUS, AND MACEDONIA, SUMMER 318 B.C.)
Eumenes could not yet have known the story behind this triumphant arrival of Antigonus’ ships. Polyperchon had been dealt a crushing setback at the Hellespont, in another episode, like the one at Megalopolis, where near victory turned suddenly to defeat.
Cleitus the White, Polyperchon’s admiral, had easily prevailed in an initial engagement at the Hellespont, routing ships captained by Cassander’s officer Nicanor. Confident that Nicanor was beaten, Cleitus pulled up his ships onto the beach, on the European side, and disembarked his crews for the night. But he did not reckon with Antigonus One-eye, whose army seemed safely removed across the straits.
Ever alert to the complacency of his foes, Antigonus hired vessels from nearby Byzantium and conveyed his best archers, slingers, and javelin men across the straits in the dark. Before dawn this force arrived at Cleitus’ camp. The royalists were still asleep, under light guard; they awoke in a hail of projectiles. Cleitus’ panicked crews threw gear and booty aboard their ships and launched in disorder. That made them easy prey for Nicanor, who, forewarned of the plan, hurried back to the scene with his surviving vessels. Antigonus sent his fleet as well to take part in the slaughter, his first direct clash with the government of the kings. Unsure whether his men would attack the royalists, he placed a trusted confederate aboard each ship to observe crew members and threaten them with death if they did not row well.
The rout of Cleitus’ navy was total. Only one ship escaped, that of Cleitus himself, but it was later seized in Thrace, where Cleitus was put to death. Polyperchon had lost his navy, only a few weeks after losing his elephant herd, and his support in the European theater of war began to crumble. Military failures could be pardoned in a king, who had the sanctity of Argead lineage to protect him. But for a mere general they were fatal, as Perdiccas had proved. Greek and Macedonian leaders alike left Polyperchon’s side and went over to Cassander. The democracies installed by the freedom decree began to topple as exiled oligarchs returned.
The democracy at Athens was, as it had often been, a lone holdout. Hagnonides and his followers were loath to give up the counterrevolution that had cost so much effort and that had killed Phocion in its exuberant strength. But the army of Polyperchon’s son Alexander, the crucial military prop of the democratic regime, had left. Cassander was no longer penned up in Piraeus; he sallied forth into Attica and took control of Athens’ already meager food supply. In the Athenian Assembly, a single brave pragmatist—his name has gone unrecorded—proposed that the city come to terms with Cassander and return to oligarchic government. Shouted down at first by democratic ideologues, he soon found his proposal gaining support and, finally, grudging approval.
The Athenians opened talks with Cassander, though they had little to bargain with. Cassander insisted on restoring the oligarchy imposed by his father, again disenfranchising the poor. Hagnonides and his followers, now out of power, were tried and put to death. A new leader, one of Phocion’s partisans who had managed to escape when the oligarchy fell, was brought back and given plenipotentiary power over the city. Athens underwent its third change of government in as many years, and its chain of metamorphoses was not nearly at an end. In decades to come, each fresh attempt to dominate Europe would start with yet another purge of weary, battered Athens.
Nicanor, victorious at the Hellespont and in higher repute than ever, sailed back into Piraeus to resume his former command there. But his very success made him suspect to Cassander, who knew the strength of the fortified harbor Nicanor would soon control. He resolved to get rid of a threat before it emerged, and to do so quietly, without commotion. Cassander made ships ready as though to sail for Macedonia and instructed a messenger to bring him forged letters while he was walking with Nicanor. The letters invited him to assume the Macedonian throne. Cassander read these missives aloud and excitedly embraced Nicanor, promising to make his faithful lieutenant a sharer in his new power. Then, at this moment of ebullience and feigned partnership, he conducted Nicanor into a nearby house under pretense of holding a parley. Picked troops were waiting there; Nicanor was arrested and sentenced to death.
Though Cassander’s letters were forged, their message contained a certain truth. Antipater’s old allies in Macedon were indeed urging Cassander to return there, while Polyperchon was bogged down in the Peloponnese. Cassander gratified them by staging a brief, defiant visit to his homeland, a demonstration of political strength. New adherents flocked to his side, including, above all, King Philip and his grasping queen, Adea. This royal pair now openly proclaimed themselves Cassander’s partisans. Adea made so bold as to write to Polyperchon in Greece and strip him of all administrative powers. Though her words had no effect, she ordered him to stand down and hand over his army to Cassander, whom she had appointed the new custodian of King Philip.
Cassander now had half the monarchy in his camp, while, with fatal symmetry, the other half declared firmly for Polyperchon. Olympias, the dowager queen, at last gave up her neutrality. She agreed to become Polyperchon’s partner and steward of the young Alexander, her grandson. The fissuring of the royal family was complete. Two monarchs, each with his own queen as surrogate and his own general as champion, had ended up on opposite sides of the civil war. There was no alternative now to a direct clash between them. Polyperchon, who seems at this point to have gone to Epirus to join Olympias, began preparing to lead a march eastward to Macedonia, to unseat Philip and install the young Alexander in his place.