As if throwing a new gauntlet at Adea, Olympias chose a member of the Molossian royal family, her young grandniece Deidameia, as a future bride for her grandson. She aimed at winning the hearts and minds of the Macedonians: Alexander and Deidameia could look forward to children and the preservation of the royal house; Adea and Philip were barren. She also aimed at enlisting her nephew Aeacides, king of the Molossians and Deidameia’s father, in the upcoming struggle.

What could the five-year-old Alexander, united for the first time with Olympias and her family, have made of his new surroundings? He had lived all his life in a military camp, dragged about first through western Asia, then Egypt, then Asia again, then Greece, and now a mountainous wilderness called Epirus, covered in unfamiliar pine trees. The one constant in his life had been the person least able to help him, his mother, Rhoxane. He had had four generals in five years as his keepers and finally had landed with his grandmother, only to find that she too, like the others before her, was girding for battle. Somewhere across the mountains and the seas beyond, a man they called Eumenes—one whose name he had often heard but whose face he had long forgotten—was fighting a man called Antigonus and would, if he won, make everything much better. Everyone seemed to be at war with one another, and somehow it was all over him.

5. EUMENES (BABYLONIA AND POINTS EAST, AUTUMN 318 B.C.)

Eumenes was headed to the East, where he had not set foot since the days of Alexander. He had with him the Silver Shields and a large corps of mercenaries, but he would need to raise more troops, and find cavalry horses and elephants, to have a chance against Antigonus. He would have to win allies from among the satraps in these regions, even though he was holding on to his current subcommanders only by the ritual in Alexander’s tent. The men whose realms he was now entering had their own agendas and rivalries, and little reason to support Eumenes, whom they regarded as an outsider, if not a condemned outlaw.

Peithon, a former Bodyguard, was powerful in the East, indeed all too powerful for the liking of his neighbors. Peithon had first gone to the region as Perdiccas’ agent, to put down the revolt of the Greek settlers; he had held a commission then as commander of the upper satrapies and felt, rightly or wrongly, that his term had never expired. Upon his return Peithon had begun to assert old prerogatives, to the point of executing a fellow satrap and installing his own brother in his place. Peithon’s presumption had aroused the ire of neighboring satraps. They had raised an army and dealt him a serious defeat the previous year, driving him out of the area and into the arms of an old comrade, Seleucus, satrap of Babylon.

As his army approached Babylon, Eumenes sent messages to Seleucus and Peithon, enlisting their support for the fight against Antigonus One-eye. As always, he invoked the power granted him by Polyperchon to defend the government of the kings. The reply of Seleucus was curt. He was quite happy to help the kings, but not to serve under Eumenes, whom the army had condemned to death. It was the same condescension Ptolemy and Antigonus had shown in Phoenicia, and soon Seleucus and Peithon began imitating their tactics as well, sending messages to the Silver Shields urging them to revolt. The captain of that regiment, Antigenes, had been an ally of Peithon and Seleucus in Egypt, where he conspired with them to murder Perdiccas. Their bonds had been forged in blood, but nonetheless Antigenes turned a deaf ear to their demand that he once again kill his senior officer.

Eumenes moved his army to the Tigris River and prepared to cross. He intended to make for Susa, where a large cache of money was stored. But as he readied boats for the crossing, Seleucus and Peithon sailed down the river in person and landed close by. In a tense parley with Antigenes and other officers of the Silver Shields, they pressed their case that Eumenes must be overthrown. Again their appeals went unheard. Rebuffed, and foiled in an attempt to drown Eumenes’ army by flooding the plain where it was camped, Seleucus had little choice but to grant Eumenes safe passage out of the territory. He had too few troops for a battle and badly wanted Eumenes to take his hungry army, and his impending war, far from Babylon.

Antigenes, captain of the Silver Shields, had by now been coerced and threatened by four of his nation’s top generals. Inexplicably, none had shaken his loyalty to Eumenes the Greek. Perhaps Antigenes was simply pursuing his own interests, as he explained to his co-captain, Teutamus, in Phoenicia: since Eumenes, a foreigner, needed allies more urgently than his rivals, he could be counted on to treat them well. Perhaps he mistrusted Antigonus One-eye, as most men did, and doubted his prospects if that man emerged triumphant. Perhaps he felt bound by the orders he had received long ago from Polyperchon, under the seal of the kings. Whatever his reasons, Antigenes had made his choice. He and his Silver Shields would stand by their Greek commander, to see what the showdown with One-eye would bring.

6. THE ROYAL FAMILY (MACEDONIA, AUTUMN 318 B.C.)

Meanwhile, in the hill country between Epirus and Macedonia, two armies advanced toward each other, each led by a queen. Only one description survives of the world’s first known battle between female leaders. According to this no doubt sensationalized report, Olympias, on one side of the field, appeared in the fawn-skin wrap and ivy headdress of a bacchant, as though leading an ecstatic procession for the god Dionysus, and marched to the beat of drums. On the other, Adea came forward in full Macedonian infantry gear. It is an unverifiable but unforgettable image, almost an allegory of the different kinds of power the two women possessed.

Olympias was returning to Macedonia with her grandson Alexander, and Adea was determined to stop her. Olympias was accompanied by her top general, Polyperchon, but Adea did not have Cassander, who was at that moment in the Peloponnese shoring up his Greek support. Adea had urgently sent for him when she learned Olympias was on the march but in the end could not wait, or else thought he wasn’t coming. She chose to play the role of field general herself, distributing gifts to her top officers to secure their loyalty. But all her bribes were wasted. Her soldiers, young recruits who had not known Alexander and in whose eyes the conqueror was already a myth, were awed by the sight of his mother, Olympias, and instantly switched sides. The battle ended without a blow being struck. Philip was captured immediately, Adea a short while later while attempting to flee. Olympias, Polyperchon, and the young Alexander marched on to Pella to take control of the riven state.

Olympias had seized power in Macedon at last, the prize for which she had grappled with old man Antipater for so long. Her first order of business was the captured king and queen, Philip and Adea. Olympias walled them up in a cell, supplying rations of food and water through a small opening. Perhaps she thought the Macedonian people, who had deserted the royal pair so readily, would enjoy seeing them treated like beasts in a cage. But she overplayed her hand. Opinion was outraged at her abuse of members of the Argead house. Adea played on her countrymen’s sympathy, crying out from her cell that she, daughter and granddaughter of Macedonian kings, was true queen of the realm, not an outsider from Epirus. Olympias could not allow this shrill voice to go on making itself heard.

Argead monarchs had often killed their kin to secure rule, but they tried to do so covertly. Olympias no longer had this option; her murders of Philip and Adea would have to be done in plain view. A gang of Thracians was hired to stab Philip to death, perhaps because no Macedonians would undertake such a deed. Adea, meanwhile, being a woman, was given the right to kill herself and offered a choice of methods. Olympias sent to her cell a sword, a noose, and a cup of poison, with orders to employ whichever she preferred. Defiant to the end, Adea removed one of her own garments and hanged herself with that, rather than use her captor’s noose. Her guards reported that she died a brave death, worthy of a tragic heroine, first praying that Olympias might herself receive gifts like the ones she had sent to the cell. As a final rebuke to her royal rivals, Olympias hid their bodies and refused to accord them proper burial.