Before reaching the Pasitigris, Antigonus had to ferry his men across the Coprates, a river too deep to ford. Here Eumenes, knowing Antigonus was advancing blind, had planned a trap. Antigonus would have to use relays of boats, meaning that, in mid-crossing, his army would be split on two sides of the river. Eumenes waited in hiding until about ten thousand had reached the eastern bank, then signaled a charge. Antigonus’ men tried briefly to resist. Then all fled at once for the boats, some of which sank under the weight of those cramming onto them, or dove in panic into the river, which carried away all but the strongest swimmers. Their comrades, out of artillery range across the Coprates, could merely look on in dismay. More than four thousand men finally surrendered and became prisoners of Eumenes, to be incorporated into his army. That put a dent in Antigonus’ troop strength, but greater still was the damage to his reputation. Formerly master of the smart surprise attack, Antigonus had been outsmarted.
Antigonus gave up on crossing the river and headed north along a hard road into Media. Eumenes’ grand plan was working, but it required the joint commanders, including the eastern satraps, to agree to head for the West. The Silver Shields and Eumenes’ own staff backed the plan wholeheartedly, but Peucestas and his partners refused to leave their satrapies to the ravages of Antigonus. They were even less inclined than before to follow Eumenes’ lead, having been upstaged by him at the Coprates, a victory in which they apparently played no part. Reluctantly, Eumenes gave up his grand strategy and agreed to fight in the East. It was that or watch the combined army split into its constituent halves, either of which would make easy prey for Antigonus One-eye.
9. THE ROYAL FAMILY AND CASSANDER (MACEDONIA)
Greek writers loved to contemplate women who resembled tragic heroines, and in Olympias they found all the parallels they could ask for. Born a neo-Trojan princess named Polyxena, she seemed to them to have lived her whole life in mythic roles. As Philip’s wife, she had morphed into Medea, murderess of the princess who stole her husband’s affections; as mother of the dead Alexander, she resembled Hecuba grieving for fallen Hector. As ruler of Macedonia, she evoked Clytemnestra, the iron-fisted queen of Argos, as well as Antigone, but an Antigone in reverse, driven by her passionate devotion to kin to unbury the dead.
Whichever of these roles we cast her in—or whether, following biographer Elizabeth Carney, we reject them all as gender stereotypes—Olympias was undeniably a tragic figure. With her triumphant return to Macedon, she seemed to have come safely through the perils that surrounded her, and rescued her grandson as well; she no doubt had plans to bring her daughter Cleopatra, still stranded in Sardis without prospects, back into the palace and the restored royal family. But her time in power was fated to be brief. An avenging Orestes was stalking her from across the mountains, from Greece, and though she knew he was coming, she somehow proved unable to stop him.
Olympias’ political leadership was forceful to the point of despotism, but her command of the army did not have the same strength. When the long-awaited Cassander appeared with his forces, key passes and choke points had not yet been sealed off. The soldiers following her chief general, Polyperchon, wavered in their allegiance; some accepted bribes to desert to Cassander. The armies of Olympias’ nephew Aeacides also abandoned her cause and, returning home to Epirus, overthrew Aeacides, unseating a royal dynasty that had ruled (according to legend) since the Trojan War. Olympias, despite having custody of the only surviving Argead monarch, found her position eroding rapidly, undermined by the ill will she had bred in killing the other.
With military resources dwindling, Olympias reached out to Aristonous, a former member of Alexander the Great’s Bodyguard come home to Macedonia to retire. Enlisting this man in the defense of her regime, she withdrew to the coastal city of Pydna. There, even if her generals were defeated, she might hope to be rescued by sea by her supporters, perhaps by Eumenes, whose position at this moment she could not know for certain. She brought with her the most helpless hostages to Fortune: the six-year-old Alexander and his equally young consort, Deidameia, and Rhoxane, the Bactrian queen mother. Other members of the court accompanied them, along with a cohort of loyal soldiers and the few precious elephants not done in by the spikes at Megalopolis.
The royal refuge had not been stockpiled with stores of food, and Cassander knew he could make short work of a siege. Arriving outside Pydna with his army, he ordered a firm palisade built across the headland on which the city sat, cutting it off from relief by land, and requisitioned ships and ship-mounted siege machines to attack it from the sea. Nearly two years after his father’s death and the accession of Polyperchon, he had finally seized his patrimony. His enemies were cornered quarry, and he did not intend to let them escape.
10. EUMENES AND PEUCESTAS (PERSEPOLIS, AUTUMN 317 B.C.)
Eumenes’ army marched east into Persis. This was Peucestas’ home province, and he played the gracious host, feeding the army liberally from cattle herds it passed en route. Dismayed at Eumenes’ popularity, Peucestas determined he would win back the esteem of the troops. Food, as he well knew, was an important magnet that drew their allegiance, along with money, victory, and marks of favor from Alexander the Great. Since Eumenes could best him in the other three categories, Peucestas staked his claim to the first.
In Persepolis, his satrapal capital, Peucestas sponsored an enormous banquet for an army of more than forty thousand. A vast set of four concentric circles was laid out in open ground, the outer one more than a mile in circumference, and dining couches were built out of heaped-up leaves covered with carpets. The troops were assigned to various rings according to their status: rank-and-file infantry in the outermost, Silver Shields and other Alexander veterans next, then cavalrymen and lower officers, and top generals in the inmost ring. At the center of this military cosmos stood altars of the gods, with two new ones added for the divinized Alexander and his father, Philip. This was a banquet of unprecedented grandeur. The admiration of the troops, and the growth in Peucestas’ power, were palpable.
Eumenes was hard put to respond. It was clear now that Peucestas wished to contest leadership of the army, but for Eumenes even to acknowledge this rivalry, never mind counter it, might lead to an open split. He did not want a showdown over the right to invoke Alexander’s ghost, like the showdown over Alexander’s corpse in which his master, Perdiccas, had been wrecked. Eumenes sought a different solution, drawing not on his military skills but on those he had learned in his first career, as secretary to the Macedonian kings.
From Persis to Macedonia was a journey of weeks, and news that traveled between the two places was old by the time it arrived. Eumenes took advantage of this time lag by forging a letter that gave news of dramatic events in the West. Olympias had defeated Cassander and killed him, his letter reported; the young Alexander was securely ensconced on the throne; Polyperchon and his army had crossed into Asia with able troops and elephants, and were moving eastward at that very moment. Eumenes tricked the letter up to look like a report from Orontes, the Persian satrap of Armenia, a known friend of Peucestas, whose word would be trusted by all. For added authenticity he composed it in Aramaic, the lingua franca of the old Persian empire.
Eumenes had the forged letter sent round to all the commanders, and word of its content spread quickly. The camp came alive with ebullience, elation, and esteem for Eumenes. Hisallies, the men believed, had triumphed in the West and were headed east to help himin his fight with Antigonus. Because of Eumenes, they would all be redeemed; after an easy victory, they could count on rewards from a grateful monarchy and an end to the civil wars. It was Eumenes, they foresaw, who would dominate the postwar era. He could obtain promotion or punishment for any of them, based on how loyally they followed him now. The little Greek’s stature among the troops soared to new heights.