With these two off the scene, Olympias set about settling scores with the family of Antipater, which she held to blame for the poisoning (as she saw it) of her son. Antipater was dead, as was his son Iolaus, who had allegedly slipped the toxin into Alexander’s drink. But Olympias took revenge on the son anyway, opening his grave and scattering his ashes to the elements. She then killed another son of Antipater’s, Nicanor (a different person from the Piraeus garrison commander); he had never been implicated in Alexander’s death but, by long-standing Macedonian custom, was presumed an enemy because of his blood ties to other enemies.

Cassander was out of reach in the Peloponnese, where Olympias could not get at him, but she selected an even hundred of his partisans and had them all executed. She felt she must eliminate his base of support before he attempted to invade, as he was sure soon to do.

7. EUMENES AND THE EASTERN COALITION (SUSIANA, SPRING 317 B.C.)

As yet unaware of Olympias’ victory in Europe, Eumenes made his way farther east into Asia, seeking new troops and new partners. His anabasis now brought him into contact with yet more satraps disinclined to accept his authority.

One in particular, Alexander’s former Bodyguard Peucestas, presented Eumenes with a daunting prospect. A crafty and ambitious man, beloved by his subjects for learning to speak their language and dressing in indigenous clothes, Peucestas had steadily built up power in his satrapy, Persis, the heartland of the old Persian empire. Peucestas had trained and equipped a force of ten thousand Persian archers along with a smaller phalanx and cavalry. With this huge resource he had assumed leadership of a regional coalition that had come together to stop the presumptuous Peithon.

Eumenes rendezvoused with Peucestas and his allies in Susiana, where, at his suggestion, they had brought their coalition army. The camp Eumenes found there was a truly breathtaking sight: more than eighteen thousand infantrymen and forty-six hundred cavalry, the largest force seen in the East since the departure of Alexander. Among them was Eudamus, newly arrived from India with 120 precious elephants he had stolen from a murdered raja, Porus. If this army were joined with the comparably large force under Eumenes, an aggregate would be formed that could easily best either Peithon or Antigonus One-eye, or even the two together, should they also join forces.

But melding troops led by proud Macedonians with others led by a Greek was a complex matter, as Eumenes well knew. Peucestas already had command of the coalition army and was reluctant to accept a lesser role. Yet it was Eumenes who bore the commission of the kings, had control of the Silver Shields, and was entitled to tap the royal treasuries. Compromise between these two leading generals seemed impossible to achieve. The infantry captain Antigenes tried a diplomatic solution, suggesting that the Silver Shields, by right of their enormous value as a military asset, ought to choose the commander. But to accede to this seemed tantamount to selecting Eumenes, so the debate went on.

As the rivalry continued, threatening to become an insurmountable rift, Eumenes reverted to an old but still effective device. He once again set up Alexander’s tent and introduced to his new comrades the daily worship ritual he had first shared with Antigenes and Teutamus. As it had done before, the spectral presence of Alexander dispelled tension and knit the factions together. Somehow, in the sanctuary of the tent, Eumenes was able to assert leadership without troubling stiff-necked Peucestas.

With the conflict over command thus defused, the two great armies were merged into one. Each leader was made responsible for paying his own forces, to prevent the practice of influence buying from spiraling out of control. Eumenes, however, exempted himself from this rule in one instance, paying a special grant of two hundred talents to Eudamus, allegedly for upkeep of his elephants. Such a valuable, and treacherous, ally could not be left unbribed.

8. ANTIGONUS AND EUMENES (THE RIVER COPRATES, SUSIANA, SUMMER 317 B.C.)

By contrast with Eumenes, now head of a kind of board of joint chiefs, Antigonus was imperious and solitary in command. He shared counsels with no one and entrusted no one with his plans, not even the son Demetrius whom he cherished. Once when the two were on campaign together, and Demetrius asked what time in the morning the soldiers should break camp, his father withheld even this banal information. “Are you worried that you alone will fail to hear the trumpet sound?” he upbraided the boy. Such secretiveness was to be a key weapon in the campaign ahead.

Antigonus headed east, undaunted by news that Eumenes had joined forces with Peucestas and the other satraps. He could surpass their newly increased numbers by recruitment, and by troop contributions from Peithon and Seleucus in Babylon (with whom he had by now forged an alliance). A bigger deficit, though, was the money he needed to pay for those troops. Eumenes alone could tap the royal treasuries, as was now demonstrated at Babylon: the guardians of the citadel where the imperial coin was stored refused to admit anyone but Eumenes, defying the wills of Antigonus and Seleucus both. Much the same happened when Antigonus’ army arrived at Susa. A guard captain named Xenophilus stuck to Eumenes’ orders, not to disburse money to Antigonus or even enter into conversation with him. Inside the Susa cache lay twenty thousand talents in coin and treasure, including the “Climbing Vine,” a stunning representation of a grapevine with ripe fruit, done all in fine gold, that had once curled around King Darius’ bedposts. Antigonus left Seleucus to put the place under siege, and moved eastward to find Eumenes.

Antigonus was on unfamiliar terrain, having never gone east with Alexander as other generals had. As he moved out of Susa, he found himself at the mercy of geography and climate. It was midsummer, and though he marched only at night, he lost some troops to extreme heat. Worse, he was traveling blind, blocked by a river called the Coprates from ascertaining Eumenes’ position. His adversary was in fact less than ten miles away, across an even larger river, the Pasitigris.

Movements of Antigonus and Eumenes leading up to the battle of Paraetacene, in what is now Iran (Illustration credit 9.2)

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Eumenes had chosen the Pasitigris as his line of defense. He knew that Antigonus must cross it to follow the easy route to the East, along the coast. His plan was to force Antigonus to instead go the long way around, through the mountains of Media. If Antigonus headed this direction, Eumenes planned to wait until he was safely out of range and then bring the entire coalition army back toward the West, into regions that were now nearly emptied of foes, Anatolia and Phoenicia. From here he could open a naval link with his allies in Europe, Polyperchon, Olympias, and the young Alexander. Antigonus would be cut off from his home base, starved of reinforcements, and, if Cassander could be defeated for good, robbed of his political raison d’être.

Eumenes lined up his troops across a wide stretch of the Pasitigris, knowing Antigonus would do his utmost to cross unobserved. When even forty thousand coalition troops did not stretch far enough, he asked Peucestas to recruit ten thousand more from his home satrapy, Persis. The request implied superior rank and caused Peucestas to bridle, but in the end his mistrust of Antigonus bested his pride. Peucestas gave the order for Persian reinforcements, sending it echoing from one mountaintop to the next by a relay of criers, so that it reached Persepolis, almost a month’s travel to the east, in only a day.