Symphony D.
Deity
He doesn't know because it isn't his.
Alternate History Thread IV: The Sequel
- Thread starter Dachs
- Start date
Sheep
Orange Shrooms!
Japan having nuclear weapons based in Okinawa would be a target of Soviet strikes in some areas, however it would come through unrealtively unscathed in its major population zones, provided it deals with the food shortages that would result from the war or the fallout coming in from the Korean penninsula (which wouldnt do so well) and Siberia.
orangelex44
Partisan
Maybe. However, Japan was host to a few hundred thousand US troops at the time (hell, it still is host to a hundred thousand plus).
Love and Peace or Else.
“It is a bad general that doesn’t want to be a warlord.”
-das’ father
There had never quite been a succession crisis like the one that confronted the Makedonian Empire in June and July of 323 BC. All kings had, beforehand, left a son; Alexandros III, lately Great King of Makedonia and Persia, head of the League of Korinthos, Pharaoh, and liege lord of the Indos kings, had done no such thing. Instead, there was a potpourri of generals and admirals, none of whom particularly desired to share power, all maneuvering for their own advantage even before the death of their king and using some key pawns in their struggle. That summer was pregnant with menace for the civilized world, and its issue would be truly epochal in nature.
In order to have a solid claim to power, the various generals of Alexandros required the support of both elements of the military – which, after all, was the supreme arbiter of who did and did not hold the reigns – and of somebody who had a legitimate claim to kingship. Of the latter there were many, due to Alexandros’ lack of a legitimate male heir. He had a brother, who can best be described as ‘weak in the head’, Arrhidaios, and an illegitimate son by the Persian princess Stateira, named Herakles. In addition, his legitimate wife, Roxana, was at the moment of his death pregnant, though with whom was anyone’s guess; if the issue were female, the situation would become most uncomfortable indeed. In addition, there was the problem of the military, which was somewhat scattered; a large armament remained in Makedon itself with the Regent, Antipatros, who had been keeping the members of the League of Korinthos in line. Krateros, another of Alexandros’ marshals, had command over a fleet and army in Kilikia, which had been intended for the subjugation of Qarthadast (though those plans were, for now, to apparently be scuttled). There were significant numbers of infantry at Babylon itself, as well as the elite hetairoi cavalry under the command of Perdikas. The similarly elite corps of argyraspidai, the Silver Shield phalangitai, were stationed in Susiana. There were colonies of Makedonian soldiers scattered around all over the eastern half of the empire, as well.
So as the generals gathered in Babylon, significant heed had to be given to those with the other significant military forces. Krateros and Antipatros engaged in a long series of embassies with the assemblage in Babylon, slowly hashing out a deal. This situation was made more difficult by the events in Babylon themselves. Perdikas, who had political connections within both cavalry and infantry, attempted to force all to defer the decision of kingship until the birth of Roxana’s child. But he underestimated the will of the infantry, who refused to countenance such a period of uncertainty. Whipped up into a mob by Meleagros, the phalangitai in Babylon stormed the city and drove out the cavalrymen and most of the generals, supporting the cause of the weak Arrhidaios as king. Only Perdikas with a few of the royal pages stayed behind in the city to try to reverse the situation, and he did so beautifully; when Meleagros, attempting to solidify his position as power behind the throne, ordered Perdikas’ murder, the latter managed to outface his would-be assassins with sheer bravado. Meleagros’ position was now vulnerable, and Perdikas seized the opportunity, using his supporters in the infantry to push for a compromise, at which Meleagros and Perdikas were formally reconciled in a symbolic meeting of the cavalry and the infantry, and the other generals were readmitted to the city.
This compromise paved the way for another one. Recognizing that it would be unsafe to push for anything other than the status quo, Perdikas, along with the emissaries of Krateros and Antipatros, agreed to a settlement. Antipatros was confirmed in his supremacy in Europe; he still held the control of the large Makedonian home army, after all. For his part, Perdikas remained in the chiliarchy; he was in command of the cavalry and infantry both, and essentially held sway within Asia, with Meleagros formally sharing his power. Krateros, who held control over the richest of the royal treasuries, at Kyinda, as well as the large fleet and army for the now-deferred subjugation of Qarthadast, was given the deliberately-vague position of ‘protector of the interests of the royal house’; essentially he had the ability to draw on the royal funds in Kilikia, one of the richest of the provinces of the empire, and had carte blanche to do whatever he pleased, except go to the East, where Perdikas held sway. In addition, many satraps were confirmed after their provinces, the most powerful of these being Antigonos ‘Monophthalmos’, ruler of Greater Phrygia, which covered most of Anatolia.
The Babylon settlement’s recognition of the status quo in most areas was obviously subject to revision in the sequel. Immediately after elevating Meleagros, his former enemy, to a position at his side, Perdikas instigated seditious talk in the phalanx and proposed to Meleagros that it be weeded out; when his unwitting target acquiesced, it was revealed that those selected for execution were his own supporters. With Meleagros’ power broken, he lingered on in his position for some days, but eventually attempted to flee, and was caught and put to death at Arrhidaios’ orders. For his own part, Arrhidaios was proclaimed king under the title Philippos III, and was to all intents and purposes the creature of Perdikas. Perdikas himself appointed his cronies among the generals to new positions following the fall of Meleagros, including Seleukos as the new hipparchos, a similar post to the original one of Perdikas himself. Perdikas waited for some time before having the king appoint him regent, an episode followed by the birth of Roxana’s child, Alexandros IV, who as male heir would share the throne with Philippos. As regent, he consolidated his power further, forcing many of the former Somatophylaktes (bodyguards) of Alexandros far away from his Babylon base; Ptolemaios was sent to Egypt, Peithon was put in charge of Media, Lysimachos went to Thraikia, and Leonnatos was sent to Hellespontine Phrygia. Only Aristonous among the remaining somatophylaktes remained in Babylon, but he was Perdikas’ tool and served him unquestioningly. Meanwhile, Perdikas seized the opportunity to put another of his supporters in power. Eumenes of Kardia, Alexandros’ old secretary, was supposed to be satrap of Kappadokia, but during the settlement at Babylon it was conveniently passed over that the region was not actually under Makedonian control; a Persian noble, Ariarathes, still held sway there. The satraps of the surrounding regions were ordered to aid Eumenes, but some of them, notably including Antigonos, refused to do so. Perdikas did the deed himself with the royal army at Babylon, winning a pitched battle against Ariarathes and smashing his power, but the insubordination of Eumenes’ neighbors was not forgotten.
While Perdikas solidified his new power, Krateros and Antipatros were running into difficulties. Krateros’ commission as advancer of the royal interest had theoretically allowed him to continue preparations for the Qarthadast expedition, but those plans were scuttled, as previously mentioned, by the phalangitai under his command. Both the men at Babylon and the troops under Krateros’ personal control were adamantly against continuing Alexandros’ Last Plans. The men who had been promised a return to their families and a hefty bonus wished to continue along these lines, not go gallivanting off in the West or into Arabia. These aims were only supported by Perdikas, who wished to reduce Krateros’ army and thus see his own power skyrocket. Antipatros had worse problems. During the summer, Perdikas had thought him a rival of sufficient strength to require pacification, and had asked him for permission to marry his daughter Nikaia to paper over their differences. But within weeks, Antipatros’ power was greatly reduced; upon the arrival of word of Alexandros’ death at Athenai, the politician Demosthenes, instigator of the Fourth Sacred War, organized a new league of Hellenic cities to take advantage of the Great Oppressor’s death. Antipatros was taken by surprise, his armies were routed, and he himself was trapped in the fortress of Lamia in Thessalia. And in December, another problem was easily quashed; a group of colonists that had been settled by Alexandros in Baktria and Sogdiane rose in revolt, forming an army to try to return to their homes in Makedonia. Peithon, satrap of Media, was dispatched to quash them, but a real danger accompanied his expedition; if he failed, Perdikas’ manpower reserves would be weakened, but if he succeeded he might add the defeated colonists to his army and thus emerge as a powerful rival. As it was, the problem was resolved in the most advantageous way possible; Peithon defeated the rebels, but he was forced to massacre them, thus preventing him from becoming a serious rival for the time being.
In early 322, help arrived for Antipatros in the form of the army of Leonnatos, satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia. Leonnatos crossed into Europe early in the year and made his way to Thessalia to lift the siege of Lamia. During the passage through Thessalia, though, Leonnatos’ force was engaged by the locals, who had allied with Demosthenes in the struggle against the Makedonians. The satrap himself lost his life, though his infantry continued to Lamia and secured safe passage for Antipatros and what meager forces he had left. As Antipatros scuttled back to Pella, unable to take the offensive against the Hellenic coalition, Krateros made his move. The Kilikian army that had been originally intended for the Qarthadast operation passed through Anatolia (avoiding Perdikas, who was mopping up in Kappadokia and Hayasdan with the aid of Eumenes and Neoptolemos) and then boarded ship for Greece proper. With the union of Krateros’ and Antipatros’ armies, the Athenians and their allies were doomed, especially hamstrung as they were by the absence of the Aitolian poleis from the coalition. On land, Krateros smashed the allies at Krannon in summer of 322, while at sea the Kilikian fleet annihilated the Athenians at Amorgos. The dual defeat spelled ultimate failure for the alliance; Demosthenes took his life, and Makedonian troops entered Athenai, establishing a garrison at the Peiraieos and ending the democracy in favor of an oligarchy led by ‘allies’ of the Makedonians.
The rapid end of the Lamian War spelled a further revision to the Babylon settlement. Originally, Perdikas had wished Krateros and Antipatros to stay in the West. But during the war, friction had developed between the two men, even though an attempt to paper over the differences had been made with the marriage of Krateros to Antipatros’ daughter Phila. Upon the conclusion of peace with the alliance, Krateros prepared to take ship with his army back to Anatolia. There was further reason to do this: Perdikas was winning prestige with victories in the east. He had, after crushing Ariarathes and installing Eumenes in Kappadokia, besieged and wiped out two rebellious Lykaonian cities that had murdered Makedonian officials; he had also finalized the marriage with Nikaia, Antipatros’ daughter. He was also the recipient of more offers; even though he was already married, Alexandros’ mother, Olympias, offered Alexandros’ sister Kleopatra as a bride. Eumenes recommended that the offer be explored, but Alketas, another in Perdikas’ camp, thought that it would unnecessarily antagonize Antipatros to get rid of Nikaia. Another princess, Kynnane, also entered the equation; she, estranged from Antipatros, fled to Anatolia, where Perdikas (via Alketas) had her killed under mysterious circumstances. This incident nearly drove the infantry to revolt, though, so the Regent attempted to pacify them by having Kynnane’s daughter Eurydike married to King Philippos.
Krateros’ journey east was delayed, however, by more of Perdikas’ machinations. Antigonos, the powerful Phrygian satrap, had stayed a strong ally of Antipatros during the reign of Alexandros. Naturally, Perdikas preferred to eliminate this threat to his supremacy on the Asian continent, and so in the winter of 322-1 he ordered Antigonos to Babylon, to answer accusations against his character. The satrap fled west to Perdikas and Krateros, who were preparing a final, brief expedition against Aitolia before Krateros returned to Asia. The advent of Antigonos and his revelations about the intrigues for the hand of Kleopatra was enough to push Antipatros into open war. And that was not the only problem Perdikas now had. In addition to the misfired plot against Antigonos, he now had to deal with problems from Ptolemaios, the somatophylax who had been awarded the Egyptian satrapy. In the fall of 322 Perdikas had begun shepherding the embalmed body of Alexandros west from Babylon. It is not known whether he wished to take control of the body until its final deposition at the Tombs in Aigai, or if his aim was to keep control of the body for himself, but either way his plan was exploded by the Egyptians. Ptolemaios seized control of the catafalque with Alexandros’ body in Syria, and brought it down to Alexandria with him. This, too, was clear cause for war, and Perdikas, in addition to having the impending battle with Antipatros and his cohorts, was now faced with a second front as he declared Ptolemaios and his allies on Kypros enemies of the state.
To all intents and purposes the fragile settlement at Babylon had been torn totally asunder, and the conflict that all had hoped to postpone was upon the Empire, only a year and a half after Alexandros’ passing. It remained to be seen if Perdikas or his opponents would emerge victorious, or if something else, totally unexpected, would occur…
Dread Intrusion.
“Damn! We’re in a tight spot!”
-Ulysses Everett McGill
Perdikas and the forces of Legitimacy, arrayed as they were under the banner of the king Philippos III, faced two widely spaced opponents. It was politically necessary to immediately open hostilities against Ptolemaios in Egypt, but at the same time Krateros and Antigonos were standing on the Hellespont with the great armament that had smashed the Hellenic allies at Krannon. So while Perdikas himself set off with his lieutenants Seleukos, Peithon, and Antigenes to settle things in Egypt, he commissioned Eumenes, the Kappadokian satrap, to hold off Krateros in the west. To do this, Eumenes was authorized to draw on the resources of Neoptolemos and Alketas.
Of course, neither of Eumenes’ theoretical subordinates was particularly inclined to play that role. Alketas, for his part, simply stayed in Pisidia and refused to aid Eumenes. Neoptolemos went further, leading his army into battle with his nominal superior. Due to the excellent Kappadokian cavalry he was able to recruit, Eumenes forced his opponent to flee the field, and added much of his army to his own. He then made good time through Anatolia to the Hellespont, where Neoptolemos had joined Krateros’ army. The battle they fought was inconclusive. Makedonian refused to fight Makedonian, so the respective phalanxes failed to engage, instead developing into a cavalry action on the wings. Eumenes, leading his right wing against Neoptolemos on the rebel left, bested his rival in single combat and beheaded him, while on the rebel right wing Krateros was pinned under his own horse and was killed. Eumenes was unable to engage the rebel phalanx, though, and so agreed with the enemy infantry to a mutual withdrawal.
In the south, the situation was decidedly worse for the legitimists. Not only had Antigonos repelled the invasion of Kypros, but Perdikas’ invasion of Egypt had misfired badly, failing to break the defenses along the coast at Pelousion. Nevertheless, he still resolved to cross the Nile and struck inland, but in making the transit suffered tremendous casualties. Seleukos, Antigenes, and Peithon, his erstwhile subordinates, turned against him, and assassinated the Regent not long after the crossing. With that, the war in Egypt was concluded, and Ptolemaios successfully made his peace with Seleukos, Peithon, and Antigenes in the opposing camp at Memphis. Since Peithon and company still held the reins of the most powerful extant field army, they had immense negotiating power; Ptolemaios was granted a force of Makedonians to strengthen his satrapal army, while Peithon and Arrhidaios (a different man than King Philippos) were made co-regents. This settlement, however, ignored several key factors, least of which were Eumenes and Antipatros, both of whom controlled significant field armies. Memphis, unlike Babylon, was made without the connivance of the remaining member of the Babylon triad, and thus threatened to become as transitory as the first peace had been. Eumenes, however, was easily dealt with. Ptolemaios, Peithon, and the others at Memphis convinced the army to pass a sentence of death on him in absentia, as well as on the dilatory Alketas and on Perdikas’ admiral Attalos. The sole remaining champion of Legitimacy had, in a stunning reversal of fortune, become the greatest outlaw remaining in the Empire.
With Eumenes still at large and Antipatros biding his time in Kilikia with his and Krateros’ armies, Ptolemaios met with the anti-Perdikan conspirators and with King Arrhidaios at the great triple game park in Syria, Triparadeisos. The army that had invaded Egypt with Perdikas had devolved into a mutinous rabble, with Eurydike agitating amongst them for the promises Alexandros had made at Opis to be made good. The situation turned into an utter mess, with Peithon and Arrhidaios abandoning their posts as Regents at the army’s behest and with nobody, even Eurydike, able to control the situation. At this moment, Antipatros appeared with his and Krateros’ armies. He camped on the other side of the Orontes from Triparadeisos and met with the mutinying army to try to calm the situation. But the mutineers were further angered by the appearance of Krateros’ veterans, who had already been rewarded; Antipatros was nearly lynched before Antigonos arrived with his own forces, aided by Seleukos, who had commanded the Argyraspidai during the campaigns of Alexandros and thus had some sway amongst the mutineers. At this point, Antipatros recovered his nerve, and threatened to use his and Antigonos’ armies, which were both fresh, against the mutineers and Eurydike. Unlike at Babylon, where infantry and cavalry had come to open hostility, the threat of a fight was enough to restore the situation, and Antipatros was acclaimed as the new Regent by both armies.
What followed was the new division of the Empire, made there at the game park at Triparadeisos in the waning months of 321. Antipatros claimed the title of Regent for Alexandros IV and Philippos III, obviously enough, replacing the assassinated Perdikas. Mostly the satrapies were confirmed, especially in the East (because Antipatros didn’t have enough power in Perdikas’ old haunts to remove the latter’s old cronies). A few of the ‘new men’ that had reached prominence following the assassination of Perdikas and the battle with Eumenes at the Hellespont were rewarded, though. Arrhidaios lost the Regency but gained the dead Leonnatos’ satrapy in Hellespontine Phrygia. Peithon received a command in Media once more, but with suzerainty over neighboring areas as well, similar to Antigonos’ position in Greater Phrygia. Seleukos was granted Babylonia, and Amphimachos, brother of King Philippos, was awarded control of Mesopotamia. To replace Seleukos as chiliarch, Kassandros, son of Antipatros, was named as head of the cavalry and chief court functionary. With the Triparadeisos settlement finalized, Antipatros accompanied the kings and Antigonos into Anatolia.
It had taken far too long to resolve the Triparadeisos situation, and the new outlaws had now gained critical breathing space. Alketas had gained other adherents, notably Attalos, commander of the Perdikan fleet, and Dokimos, one of Perdikas’ eastern satraps in what would now be Seleukos’ lands. Pisidia was now a fortress with a sizable army and navy, and would be a tremendously tough nut to crack. Eumenes, on the other hand, was unable to ally with Alketas, mostly due to Alketas’ lingering jealousy over the issue of the command against Krateros, and thus had to fight with his and Neoptolemos’ armies in Anatolia against Antigonos and Antipatros. During 320 he held his own against the new legitimists, remaining in or near Lydia and staying in close contact with Kleopatra, Perdikas’ former betrothed. But in late 320 he made a lightning thrust into Phrygia and the winter saw him occupying Antigonos’ capital at Kelenai. Antipatros, true to form, was a mediocre commander at best, and the skilled Eumenes outmaneuvered him repeatedly, plundering areas theoretically occupied by the Regent’s troops with regularity. Antigonos grew frustrated at the failures of his nominal lord to deal with the enemy, and friction between the two increased, as did the disagreements between Antipatros’ son Kassandros and the Phrygian satrap. Antipatros’ troops threatened to mutiny if they were not repatriated to Makedonia, and so in 319 the Regent vacated Asia in favor of his old haunts in Pella, leaving half of his army under Antigonos’ control.
These new resources and the centralized command, not to mention Antigonos’ superior generalship as compared to that of Antipatros, allowed the Phrygian satrap to herd Eumenes out of western Asia Mikra and ground down the outlaw’s army. By the end of the year Eumenes was trapped in the fortress of Nora with a shadow of his former army. Antigonos left troops to bottle him up, then countermarched into Pisidia and smashed Alketas, who managed to flee before being assassinated by his former lieutenants at Termessos. Clearly, by the end of 319 Antigonos was preeminent in the former Alexandrine empire. He had the greatest agglomeration of military force anywhere, having surpassed the Regent, Antipatros, in both military power and prestige. Antipatros himself had retreated shamefully to Makedonia to waste away the remaining months of his life; by the end of the fall of that year the Regent had passed away, leaving his position not to his son, the chiliarch Kassandros, but to an old ally, Polyperchon, a decision bitterly resented by Kassandros. The latter’s flight to Asia after a failed intrigue against the new Regent allowed Antigonos further political leverage; he was happy to keep the feud alive, weakening his western neighbors further. Compared to these grand designs, Eumenes was a minor irritant, locked in his fortress of Nora, and so in the spring of 318 Antigonos paroled him with merely a token gesture, a recognition by Eumenes of Antigonos’ supremacy. The satrap of Phrygia now prepared to fry his bigger fish…with Kassandros under his wing, and Asia Mikra secure, he prepared to invade Europe to claim the mantle of Regent, and thus supreme authority.
The second of the civil wars was beginning, in 318. Kassandros crossed over to Hellas and attempted to use the oligarchies established by the Makedonians against Polyperchon, who in turn led his army south, espousing the cause of democracy. In Asia Mikra, Antigonos’ vast armament was being held up by resistance on the part of the satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, Arrhidaios, who stubbornly adhered to the legitimist cause. In this atmosphere, the free agent Eumenes was up for grabs by both sides, and given his previous association with Alexandros and the royal family he gravitated towards Polyperchon, who offered him the command over the Argyraspidai corps and a commission as a royal general. Eumenes accepted, and sent orders to Susiana and Antigenes to rouse the best infantry in the world and march to Eumenes’ side in Kappadokia. Along with his excellent Kappadokian cavalry, Eumenes was building a formidable, if small, force that was already forcing Antigonos to think about switching direction eastward. Too, Arrhidaios was proving a tough nut to crack. He had secured the aid of Krateros’ old fleet, now under command of the victor of the Battle of Amorgos, Kleitos the White. Holed up along the coast, Arrhidaios could hold out for quite a long time.
It was this time that Arrhidaios bought him that saved Eumenes. It gave him time to summon the Argyraspidai from their billet in Susiana, and to collect even more troops by the personal magnetism of his name as a close associate of Alexandros and by his battlefield successes. The fact that he was a royally approved general (and thus allowed to draw on the funds at the royal treasuries in Susa and Kyinda) also helped him recruit troops, for whom the kings, even as weak as they were, still held more sway than Antigonos’ naked attempt at securing personal power. Polyperchon, too, had significant clout among the phalangitai, having commanded infantry throughout the campaigns and having also been instrumental in the Opis negotiations. So by the time Antigonos had finally dug Arrhidaios out of his fortresses at Byzantion and Kios, Eumenes had the ability to resist his army with a comparable force. Ptolemaios, who had been the toast of the army after the events of 321, appeared off Eumenes’ base in Kilikia (which had been established so as to be able to secure monies disbursed from the Kyinda treasury) and attempted to convince his troops to mutiny, but the same tactic that had worked after the death of Perdikas failed him here, and he slunk away back down the coast to Egypt. Similarly, Antigonos finally arrived and began to send agents into Eumenes’ camp to try to sow dissension, but these failed as Eumenes invoked Alexandros’ name and that of the kings as he rallied the troops to him again and again. The symbolism of even staying in Kilikia was encouraging to the troops, for this was Alexandros’ hidey-hole from before the Battle of Issos fourteen years prior, at which the argyraspidai and many other of Eumenes’ phalangitai had been present. From the Kilikia base, Eumenes moved south to Phoenike, reversing Ptolemaios’ unilateral annexation of Syria two years prior (which had been universally regarded as unjustifiable and contrary to the spirit of Triparadeisos). From there he could build up a tremendous navy and really threaten Antigonos and Ptolemaios, the latter of whom didn’t have nearly the same numbers as Eumenes.
Antigonos moved as quickly as possible to rectify the threat. With 25,000 men he departed from Phrygia following the seizure of Byzantion and Kios and marched with the minimum of baggage towards the Taurus Mountains. Such an armament outnumbered Eumenes alone, and he was forced to retreat from Phoenike and to abandon the Kyinda mint. But where would he go? The main power base of Polyperchon’s faction was in Greece and Makedonia, where a war of maneuver had commenced between Kassandros and the Regent. Antigonos barred that passage. So Eumenes instead had to go east, through the lands of Seleukos, toward Persia, where a confusing power struggle had already developed. The nominal overlord in Media, Peithon, had developed a rival, Peukestas, lord of Persis, who had the prestige from saving Alexandros’ life at the Malli town during the Indos campaign. Peukestas was already bitter at Peithon for having acquired nominal overlordship over his lands, and Peithon’s exploitation of the crisis in the satrapy of Parthyaia (where the satrap Phrataphernes had been unseated by the Triparadeisian settlement, but his nominal successor had died in the battle to eliminate him, so Peithon was able to intervene and claim dominance in that district) made him too powerful for the other Iranian satraps to stomach. Peukestas gathered a coalition of the Upper Satrapies during the year of 318, including Paropamisdians and Baktrians, and Sibyrtios, the satrap of Arachosia. This force mustered a disposable field army of over 20,000 men and expelled Peithon from Parthyaia in late 318, though Media and Atropatene remained under his control. By the time Eumenes was moving east, Peithon was in Babylonia, soliciting support from Seleukos to regain his formerly won territories.
So Eumenes could reasonably rely on Peukestas’ significant army, which came with a bonus. The intrigues in the East had not stopped with Peithon; in the Indos valley, King Porus, Alexandros’ enemy-turned-vassal from the Battle of the Hydaspes, had been assassinated with the connivance of the Makedonian general Eudamos, who had consequently reaped a significant reward in the form of Porus’ entire elephant stable of some 120 beasts. Eudamos, allying himself with Peukestas’ satrapal coalition against the Medians, had marched to Persis to join Peukestas’ armament and made up easily the most prestigious and powerful (if expensive to provision) element in the upper satrapies’ army. This was a prize that Eumenes could hardly afford to ignore, and thus by the end of 318 he was marching east, staying in Babylonia for a few months during the harshest weather, not only to winter there but also to contact Seleukos and Peithon and inquire in vain as to the possibility of their support. Instead of agreement, Seleukos responded with a slur against Eumenes’ current commission, as well as a failed attempt to get the argyraspidai to switch sides. Eumenes was forced to continue eastward at the end of the winter, spurred to a new effort by the rapid approach of Antigonos’ army from the west.
“It is a bad general that doesn’t want to be a warlord.”
-das’ father
There had never quite been a succession crisis like the one that confronted the Makedonian Empire in June and July of 323 BC. All kings had, beforehand, left a son; Alexandros III, lately Great King of Makedonia and Persia, head of the League of Korinthos, Pharaoh, and liege lord of the Indos kings, had done no such thing. Instead, there was a potpourri of generals and admirals, none of whom particularly desired to share power, all maneuvering for their own advantage even before the death of their king and using some key pawns in their struggle. That summer was pregnant with menace for the civilized world, and its issue would be truly epochal in nature.
In order to have a solid claim to power, the various generals of Alexandros required the support of both elements of the military – which, after all, was the supreme arbiter of who did and did not hold the reigns – and of somebody who had a legitimate claim to kingship. Of the latter there were many, due to Alexandros’ lack of a legitimate male heir. He had a brother, who can best be described as ‘weak in the head’, Arrhidaios, and an illegitimate son by the Persian princess Stateira, named Herakles. In addition, his legitimate wife, Roxana, was at the moment of his death pregnant, though with whom was anyone’s guess; if the issue were female, the situation would become most uncomfortable indeed. In addition, there was the problem of the military, which was somewhat scattered; a large armament remained in Makedon itself with the Regent, Antipatros, who had been keeping the members of the League of Korinthos in line. Krateros, another of Alexandros’ marshals, had command over a fleet and army in Kilikia, which had been intended for the subjugation of Qarthadast (though those plans were, for now, to apparently be scuttled). There were significant numbers of infantry at Babylon itself, as well as the elite hetairoi cavalry under the command of Perdikas. The similarly elite corps of argyraspidai, the Silver Shield phalangitai, were stationed in Susiana. There were colonies of Makedonian soldiers scattered around all over the eastern half of the empire, as well.
So as the generals gathered in Babylon, significant heed had to be given to those with the other significant military forces. Krateros and Antipatros engaged in a long series of embassies with the assemblage in Babylon, slowly hashing out a deal. This situation was made more difficult by the events in Babylon themselves. Perdikas, who had political connections within both cavalry and infantry, attempted to force all to defer the decision of kingship until the birth of Roxana’s child. But he underestimated the will of the infantry, who refused to countenance such a period of uncertainty. Whipped up into a mob by Meleagros, the phalangitai in Babylon stormed the city and drove out the cavalrymen and most of the generals, supporting the cause of the weak Arrhidaios as king. Only Perdikas with a few of the royal pages stayed behind in the city to try to reverse the situation, and he did so beautifully; when Meleagros, attempting to solidify his position as power behind the throne, ordered Perdikas’ murder, the latter managed to outface his would-be assassins with sheer bravado. Meleagros’ position was now vulnerable, and Perdikas seized the opportunity, using his supporters in the infantry to push for a compromise, at which Meleagros and Perdikas were formally reconciled in a symbolic meeting of the cavalry and the infantry, and the other generals were readmitted to the city.
This compromise paved the way for another one. Recognizing that it would be unsafe to push for anything other than the status quo, Perdikas, along with the emissaries of Krateros and Antipatros, agreed to a settlement. Antipatros was confirmed in his supremacy in Europe; he still held the control of the large Makedonian home army, after all. For his part, Perdikas remained in the chiliarchy; he was in command of the cavalry and infantry both, and essentially held sway within Asia, with Meleagros formally sharing his power. Krateros, who held control over the richest of the royal treasuries, at Kyinda, as well as the large fleet and army for the now-deferred subjugation of Qarthadast, was given the deliberately-vague position of ‘protector of the interests of the royal house’; essentially he had the ability to draw on the royal funds in Kilikia, one of the richest of the provinces of the empire, and had carte blanche to do whatever he pleased, except go to the East, where Perdikas held sway. In addition, many satraps were confirmed after their provinces, the most powerful of these being Antigonos ‘Monophthalmos’, ruler of Greater Phrygia, which covered most of Anatolia.
The Babylon settlement’s recognition of the status quo in most areas was obviously subject to revision in the sequel. Immediately after elevating Meleagros, his former enemy, to a position at his side, Perdikas instigated seditious talk in the phalanx and proposed to Meleagros that it be weeded out; when his unwitting target acquiesced, it was revealed that those selected for execution were his own supporters. With Meleagros’ power broken, he lingered on in his position for some days, but eventually attempted to flee, and was caught and put to death at Arrhidaios’ orders. For his own part, Arrhidaios was proclaimed king under the title Philippos III, and was to all intents and purposes the creature of Perdikas. Perdikas himself appointed his cronies among the generals to new positions following the fall of Meleagros, including Seleukos as the new hipparchos, a similar post to the original one of Perdikas himself. Perdikas waited for some time before having the king appoint him regent, an episode followed by the birth of Roxana’s child, Alexandros IV, who as male heir would share the throne with Philippos. As regent, he consolidated his power further, forcing many of the former Somatophylaktes (bodyguards) of Alexandros far away from his Babylon base; Ptolemaios was sent to Egypt, Peithon was put in charge of Media, Lysimachos went to Thraikia, and Leonnatos was sent to Hellespontine Phrygia. Only Aristonous among the remaining somatophylaktes remained in Babylon, but he was Perdikas’ tool and served him unquestioningly. Meanwhile, Perdikas seized the opportunity to put another of his supporters in power. Eumenes of Kardia, Alexandros’ old secretary, was supposed to be satrap of Kappadokia, but during the settlement at Babylon it was conveniently passed over that the region was not actually under Makedonian control; a Persian noble, Ariarathes, still held sway there. The satraps of the surrounding regions were ordered to aid Eumenes, but some of them, notably including Antigonos, refused to do so. Perdikas did the deed himself with the royal army at Babylon, winning a pitched battle against Ariarathes and smashing his power, but the insubordination of Eumenes’ neighbors was not forgotten.
While Perdikas solidified his new power, Krateros and Antipatros were running into difficulties. Krateros’ commission as advancer of the royal interest had theoretically allowed him to continue preparations for the Qarthadast expedition, but those plans were scuttled, as previously mentioned, by the phalangitai under his command. Both the men at Babylon and the troops under Krateros’ personal control were adamantly against continuing Alexandros’ Last Plans. The men who had been promised a return to their families and a hefty bonus wished to continue along these lines, not go gallivanting off in the West or into Arabia. These aims were only supported by Perdikas, who wished to reduce Krateros’ army and thus see his own power skyrocket. Antipatros had worse problems. During the summer, Perdikas had thought him a rival of sufficient strength to require pacification, and had asked him for permission to marry his daughter Nikaia to paper over their differences. But within weeks, Antipatros’ power was greatly reduced; upon the arrival of word of Alexandros’ death at Athenai, the politician Demosthenes, instigator of the Fourth Sacred War, organized a new league of Hellenic cities to take advantage of the Great Oppressor’s death. Antipatros was taken by surprise, his armies were routed, and he himself was trapped in the fortress of Lamia in Thessalia. And in December, another problem was easily quashed; a group of colonists that had been settled by Alexandros in Baktria and Sogdiane rose in revolt, forming an army to try to return to their homes in Makedonia. Peithon, satrap of Media, was dispatched to quash them, but a real danger accompanied his expedition; if he failed, Perdikas’ manpower reserves would be weakened, but if he succeeded he might add the defeated colonists to his army and thus emerge as a powerful rival. As it was, the problem was resolved in the most advantageous way possible; Peithon defeated the rebels, but he was forced to massacre them, thus preventing him from becoming a serious rival for the time being.
In early 322, help arrived for Antipatros in the form of the army of Leonnatos, satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia. Leonnatos crossed into Europe early in the year and made his way to Thessalia to lift the siege of Lamia. During the passage through Thessalia, though, Leonnatos’ force was engaged by the locals, who had allied with Demosthenes in the struggle against the Makedonians. The satrap himself lost his life, though his infantry continued to Lamia and secured safe passage for Antipatros and what meager forces he had left. As Antipatros scuttled back to Pella, unable to take the offensive against the Hellenic coalition, Krateros made his move. The Kilikian army that had been originally intended for the Qarthadast operation passed through Anatolia (avoiding Perdikas, who was mopping up in Kappadokia and Hayasdan with the aid of Eumenes and Neoptolemos) and then boarded ship for Greece proper. With the union of Krateros’ and Antipatros’ armies, the Athenians and their allies were doomed, especially hamstrung as they were by the absence of the Aitolian poleis from the coalition. On land, Krateros smashed the allies at Krannon in summer of 322, while at sea the Kilikian fleet annihilated the Athenians at Amorgos. The dual defeat spelled ultimate failure for the alliance; Demosthenes took his life, and Makedonian troops entered Athenai, establishing a garrison at the Peiraieos and ending the democracy in favor of an oligarchy led by ‘allies’ of the Makedonians.
The rapid end of the Lamian War spelled a further revision to the Babylon settlement. Originally, Perdikas had wished Krateros and Antipatros to stay in the West. But during the war, friction had developed between the two men, even though an attempt to paper over the differences had been made with the marriage of Krateros to Antipatros’ daughter Phila. Upon the conclusion of peace with the alliance, Krateros prepared to take ship with his army back to Anatolia. There was further reason to do this: Perdikas was winning prestige with victories in the east. He had, after crushing Ariarathes and installing Eumenes in Kappadokia, besieged and wiped out two rebellious Lykaonian cities that had murdered Makedonian officials; he had also finalized the marriage with Nikaia, Antipatros’ daughter. He was also the recipient of more offers; even though he was already married, Alexandros’ mother, Olympias, offered Alexandros’ sister Kleopatra as a bride. Eumenes recommended that the offer be explored, but Alketas, another in Perdikas’ camp, thought that it would unnecessarily antagonize Antipatros to get rid of Nikaia. Another princess, Kynnane, also entered the equation; she, estranged from Antipatros, fled to Anatolia, where Perdikas (via Alketas) had her killed under mysterious circumstances. This incident nearly drove the infantry to revolt, though, so the Regent attempted to pacify them by having Kynnane’s daughter Eurydike married to King Philippos.
Krateros’ journey east was delayed, however, by more of Perdikas’ machinations. Antigonos, the powerful Phrygian satrap, had stayed a strong ally of Antipatros during the reign of Alexandros. Naturally, Perdikas preferred to eliminate this threat to his supremacy on the Asian continent, and so in the winter of 322-1 he ordered Antigonos to Babylon, to answer accusations against his character. The satrap fled west to Perdikas and Krateros, who were preparing a final, brief expedition against Aitolia before Krateros returned to Asia. The advent of Antigonos and his revelations about the intrigues for the hand of Kleopatra was enough to push Antipatros into open war. And that was not the only problem Perdikas now had. In addition to the misfired plot against Antigonos, he now had to deal with problems from Ptolemaios, the somatophylax who had been awarded the Egyptian satrapy. In the fall of 322 Perdikas had begun shepherding the embalmed body of Alexandros west from Babylon. It is not known whether he wished to take control of the body until its final deposition at the Tombs in Aigai, or if his aim was to keep control of the body for himself, but either way his plan was exploded by the Egyptians. Ptolemaios seized control of the catafalque with Alexandros’ body in Syria, and brought it down to Alexandria with him. This, too, was clear cause for war, and Perdikas, in addition to having the impending battle with Antipatros and his cohorts, was now faced with a second front as he declared Ptolemaios and his allies on Kypros enemies of the state.
To all intents and purposes the fragile settlement at Babylon had been torn totally asunder, and the conflict that all had hoped to postpone was upon the Empire, only a year and a half after Alexandros’ passing. It remained to be seen if Perdikas or his opponents would emerge victorious, or if something else, totally unexpected, would occur…
Dread Intrusion.
“Damn! We’re in a tight spot!”
-Ulysses Everett McGill
Perdikas and the forces of Legitimacy, arrayed as they were under the banner of the king Philippos III, faced two widely spaced opponents. It was politically necessary to immediately open hostilities against Ptolemaios in Egypt, but at the same time Krateros and Antigonos were standing on the Hellespont with the great armament that had smashed the Hellenic allies at Krannon. So while Perdikas himself set off with his lieutenants Seleukos, Peithon, and Antigenes to settle things in Egypt, he commissioned Eumenes, the Kappadokian satrap, to hold off Krateros in the west. To do this, Eumenes was authorized to draw on the resources of Neoptolemos and Alketas.
Of course, neither of Eumenes’ theoretical subordinates was particularly inclined to play that role. Alketas, for his part, simply stayed in Pisidia and refused to aid Eumenes. Neoptolemos went further, leading his army into battle with his nominal superior. Due to the excellent Kappadokian cavalry he was able to recruit, Eumenes forced his opponent to flee the field, and added much of his army to his own. He then made good time through Anatolia to the Hellespont, where Neoptolemos had joined Krateros’ army. The battle they fought was inconclusive. Makedonian refused to fight Makedonian, so the respective phalanxes failed to engage, instead developing into a cavalry action on the wings. Eumenes, leading his right wing against Neoptolemos on the rebel left, bested his rival in single combat and beheaded him, while on the rebel right wing Krateros was pinned under his own horse and was killed. Eumenes was unable to engage the rebel phalanx, though, and so agreed with the enemy infantry to a mutual withdrawal.
In the south, the situation was decidedly worse for the legitimists. Not only had Antigonos repelled the invasion of Kypros, but Perdikas’ invasion of Egypt had misfired badly, failing to break the defenses along the coast at Pelousion. Nevertheless, he still resolved to cross the Nile and struck inland, but in making the transit suffered tremendous casualties. Seleukos, Antigenes, and Peithon, his erstwhile subordinates, turned against him, and assassinated the Regent not long after the crossing. With that, the war in Egypt was concluded, and Ptolemaios successfully made his peace with Seleukos, Peithon, and Antigenes in the opposing camp at Memphis. Since Peithon and company still held the reins of the most powerful extant field army, they had immense negotiating power; Ptolemaios was granted a force of Makedonians to strengthen his satrapal army, while Peithon and Arrhidaios (a different man than King Philippos) were made co-regents. This settlement, however, ignored several key factors, least of which were Eumenes and Antipatros, both of whom controlled significant field armies. Memphis, unlike Babylon, was made without the connivance of the remaining member of the Babylon triad, and thus threatened to become as transitory as the first peace had been. Eumenes, however, was easily dealt with. Ptolemaios, Peithon, and the others at Memphis convinced the army to pass a sentence of death on him in absentia, as well as on the dilatory Alketas and on Perdikas’ admiral Attalos. The sole remaining champion of Legitimacy had, in a stunning reversal of fortune, become the greatest outlaw remaining in the Empire.
With Eumenes still at large and Antipatros biding his time in Kilikia with his and Krateros’ armies, Ptolemaios met with the anti-Perdikan conspirators and with King Arrhidaios at the great triple game park in Syria, Triparadeisos. The army that had invaded Egypt with Perdikas had devolved into a mutinous rabble, with Eurydike agitating amongst them for the promises Alexandros had made at Opis to be made good. The situation turned into an utter mess, with Peithon and Arrhidaios abandoning their posts as Regents at the army’s behest and with nobody, even Eurydike, able to control the situation. At this moment, Antipatros appeared with his and Krateros’ armies. He camped on the other side of the Orontes from Triparadeisos and met with the mutinying army to try to calm the situation. But the mutineers were further angered by the appearance of Krateros’ veterans, who had already been rewarded; Antipatros was nearly lynched before Antigonos arrived with his own forces, aided by Seleukos, who had commanded the Argyraspidai during the campaigns of Alexandros and thus had some sway amongst the mutineers. At this point, Antipatros recovered his nerve, and threatened to use his and Antigonos’ armies, which were both fresh, against the mutineers and Eurydike. Unlike at Babylon, where infantry and cavalry had come to open hostility, the threat of a fight was enough to restore the situation, and Antipatros was acclaimed as the new Regent by both armies.
What followed was the new division of the Empire, made there at the game park at Triparadeisos in the waning months of 321. Antipatros claimed the title of Regent for Alexandros IV and Philippos III, obviously enough, replacing the assassinated Perdikas. Mostly the satrapies were confirmed, especially in the East (because Antipatros didn’t have enough power in Perdikas’ old haunts to remove the latter’s old cronies). A few of the ‘new men’ that had reached prominence following the assassination of Perdikas and the battle with Eumenes at the Hellespont were rewarded, though. Arrhidaios lost the Regency but gained the dead Leonnatos’ satrapy in Hellespontine Phrygia. Peithon received a command in Media once more, but with suzerainty over neighboring areas as well, similar to Antigonos’ position in Greater Phrygia. Seleukos was granted Babylonia, and Amphimachos, brother of King Philippos, was awarded control of Mesopotamia. To replace Seleukos as chiliarch, Kassandros, son of Antipatros, was named as head of the cavalry and chief court functionary. With the Triparadeisos settlement finalized, Antipatros accompanied the kings and Antigonos into Anatolia.
It had taken far too long to resolve the Triparadeisos situation, and the new outlaws had now gained critical breathing space. Alketas had gained other adherents, notably Attalos, commander of the Perdikan fleet, and Dokimos, one of Perdikas’ eastern satraps in what would now be Seleukos’ lands. Pisidia was now a fortress with a sizable army and navy, and would be a tremendously tough nut to crack. Eumenes, on the other hand, was unable to ally with Alketas, mostly due to Alketas’ lingering jealousy over the issue of the command against Krateros, and thus had to fight with his and Neoptolemos’ armies in Anatolia against Antigonos and Antipatros. During 320 he held his own against the new legitimists, remaining in or near Lydia and staying in close contact with Kleopatra, Perdikas’ former betrothed. But in late 320 he made a lightning thrust into Phrygia and the winter saw him occupying Antigonos’ capital at Kelenai. Antipatros, true to form, was a mediocre commander at best, and the skilled Eumenes outmaneuvered him repeatedly, plundering areas theoretically occupied by the Regent’s troops with regularity. Antigonos grew frustrated at the failures of his nominal lord to deal with the enemy, and friction between the two increased, as did the disagreements between Antipatros’ son Kassandros and the Phrygian satrap. Antipatros’ troops threatened to mutiny if they were not repatriated to Makedonia, and so in 319 the Regent vacated Asia in favor of his old haunts in Pella, leaving half of his army under Antigonos’ control.
These new resources and the centralized command, not to mention Antigonos’ superior generalship as compared to that of Antipatros, allowed the Phrygian satrap to herd Eumenes out of western Asia Mikra and ground down the outlaw’s army. By the end of the year Eumenes was trapped in the fortress of Nora with a shadow of his former army. Antigonos left troops to bottle him up, then countermarched into Pisidia and smashed Alketas, who managed to flee before being assassinated by his former lieutenants at Termessos. Clearly, by the end of 319 Antigonos was preeminent in the former Alexandrine empire. He had the greatest agglomeration of military force anywhere, having surpassed the Regent, Antipatros, in both military power and prestige. Antipatros himself had retreated shamefully to Makedonia to waste away the remaining months of his life; by the end of the fall of that year the Regent had passed away, leaving his position not to his son, the chiliarch Kassandros, but to an old ally, Polyperchon, a decision bitterly resented by Kassandros. The latter’s flight to Asia after a failed intrigue against the new Regent allowed Antigonos further political leverage; he was happy to keep the feud alive, weakening his western neighbors further. Compared to these grand designs, Eumenes was a minor irritant, locked in his fortress of Nora, and so in the spring of 318 Antigonos paroled him with merely a token gesture, a recognition by Eumenes of Antigonos’ supremacy. The satrap of Phrygia now prepared to fry his bigger fish…with Kassandros under his wing, and Asia Mikra secure, he prepared to invade Europe to claim the mantle of Regent, and thus supreme authority.
The second of the civil wars was beginning, in 318. Kassandros crossed over to Hellas and attempted to use the oligarchies established by the Makedonians against Polyperchon, who in turn led his army south, espousing the cause of democracy. In Asia Mikra, Antigonos’ vast armament was being held up by resistance on the part of the satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, Arrhidaios, who stubbornly adhered to the legitimist cause. In this atmosphere, the free agent Eumenes was up for grabs by both sides, and given his previous association with Alexandros and the royal family he gravitated towards Polyperchon, who offered him the command over the Argyraspidai corps and a commission as a royal general. Eumenes accepted, and sent orders to Susiana and Antigenes to rouse the best infantry in the world and march to Eumenes’ side in Kappadokia. Along with his excellent Kappadokian cavalry, Eumenes was building a formidable, if small, force that was already forcing Antigonos to think about switching direction eastward. Too, Arrhidaios was proving a tough nut to crack. He had secured the aid of Krateros’ old fleet, now under command of the victor of the Battle of Amorgos, Kleitos the White. Holed up along the coast, Arrhidaios could hold out for quite a long time.
It was this time that Arrhidaios bought him that saved Eumenes. It gave him time to summon the Argyraspidai from their billet in Susiana, and to collect even more troops by the personal magnetism of his name as a close associate of Alexandros and by his battlefield successes. The fact that he was a royally approved general (and thus allowed to draw on the funds at the royal treasuries in Susa and Kyinda) also helped him recruit troops, for whom the kings, even as weak as they were, still held more sway than Antigonos’ naked attempt at securing personal power. Polyperchon, too, had significant clout among the phalangitai, having commanded infantry throughout the campaigns and having also been instrumental in the Opis negotiations. So by the time Antigonos had finally dug Arrhidaios out of his fortresses at Byzantion and Kios, Eumenes had the ability to resist his army with a comparable force. Ptolemaios, who had been the toast of the army after the events of 321, appeared off Eumenes’ base in Kilikia (which had been established so as to be able to secure monies disbursed from the Kyinda treasury) and attempted to convince his troops to mutiny, but the same tactic that had worked after the death of Perdikas failed him here, and he slunk away back down the coast to Egypt. Similarly, Antigonos finally arrived and began to send agents into Eumenes’ camp to try to sow dissension, but these failed as Eumenes invoked Alexandros’ name and that of the kings as he rallied the troops to him again and again. The symbolism of even staying in Kilikia was encouraging to the troops, for this was Alexandros’ hidey-hole from before the Battle of Issos fourteen years prior, at which the argyraspidai and many other of Eumenes’ phalangitai had been present. From the Kilikia base, Eumenes moved south to Phoenike, reversing Ptolemaios’ unilateral annexation of Syria two years prior (which had been universally regarded as unjustifiable and contrary to the spirit of Triparadeisos). From there he could build up a tremendous navy and really threaten Antigonos and Ptolemaios, the latter of whom didn’t have nearly the same numbers as Eumenes.
Antigonos moved as quickly as possible to rectify the threat. With 25,000 men he departed from Phrygia following the seizure of Byzantion and Kios and marched with the minimum of baggage towards the Taurus Mountains. Such an armament outnumbered Eumenes alone, and he was forced to retreat from Phoenike and to abandon the Kyinda mint. But where would he go? The main power base of Polyperchon’s faction was in Greece and Makedonia, where a war of maneuver had commenced between Kassandros and the Regent. Antigonos barred that passage. So Eumenes instead had to go east, through the lands of Seleukos, toward Persia, where a confusing power struggle had already developed. The nominal overlord in Media, Peithon, had developed a rival, Peukestas, lord of Persis, who had the prestige from saving Alexandros’ life at the Malli town during the Indos campaign. Peukestas was already bitter at Peithon for having acquired nominal overlordship over his lands, and Peithon’s exploitation of the crisis in the satrapy of Parthyaia (where the satrap Phrataphernes had been unseated by the Triparadeisian settlement, but his nominal successor had died in the battle to eliminate him, so Peithon was able to intervene and claim dominance in that district) made him too powerful for the other Iranian satraps to stomach. Peukestas gathered a coalition of the Upper Satrapies during the year of 318, including Paropamisdians and Baktrians, and Sibyrtios, the satrap of Arachosia. This force mustered a disposable field army of over 20,000 men and expelled Peithon from Parthyaia in late 318, though Media and Atropatene remained under his control. By the time Eumenes was moving east, Peithon was in Babylonia, soliciting support from Seleukos to regain his formerly won territories.
So Eumenes could reasonably rely on Peukestas’ significant army, which came with a bonus. The intrigues in the East had not stopped with Peithon; in the Indos valley, King Porus, Alexandros’ enemy-turned-vassal from the Battle of the Hydaspes, had been assassinated with the connivance of the Makedonian general Eudamos, who had consequently reaped a significant reward in the form of Porus’ entire elephant stable of some 120 beasts. Eudamos, allying himself with Peukestas’ satrapal coalition against the Medians, had marched to Persis to join Peukestas’ armament and made up easily the most prestigious and powerful (if expensive to provision) element in the upper satrapies’ army. This was a prize that Eumenes could hardly afford to ignore, and thus by the end of 318 he was marching east, staying in Babylonia for a few months during the harshest weather, not only to winter there but also to contact Seleukos and Peithon and inquire in vain as to the possibility of their support. Instead of agreement, Seleukos responded with a slur against Eumenes’ current commission, as well as a failed attempt to get the argyraspidai to switch sides. Eumenes was forced to continue eastward at the end of the winter, spurred to a new effort by the rapid approach of Antigonos’ army from the west.
O Fortuna.
“They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beast.”
-Hotel California, The Eagles
Eumenes was forced with two main obstacles when crossing through Babylonia to the safe harbor in Persis. The first was Seleukos and Peithon and their forces, now committed to an alliance with Antigonos and the antilegitimist forces. Fighting on their home ground, they would be able to strike hard and fast against Eumenes’ troops. The other, and perhaps more dangerous, opposition would come from the rivers. Crossing them in the late spring was tantamount to suicide if one needed a ford; only boats would work, and Seleukos was hard at work destroying those that he didn’t have directly under his own control. Eumenes was fortunate to secure a cache of riverboats made at Alexandros’ behest seven years prior, with which he made his way towards Opis and the planned crossing point. His enemies combined to make his situation worse, however; Seleukos opened up a canal behind him and created a new channel that cut off his line of retreat, as well as the route to the precious baggage train of the argyraspidai, which held the treasures of a decade of conquering, from gold and silver to human cargo, including wives and families. A desperate, last ditch attempt by Eumenes and a picked force to secure the baggage met with narrow success, just missing a raid by Peithon’s men. After some timely information from the locals about how to divert the floodwaters, Eumenes was able to reduce the strength of the river in front of him and continue on his way. After he reached the east bank of the Tigris, Seleukos and Peithon recognized the futility of opposing his army and agreed to a truce.
Following the river, marching divided to prevent the army from running out of forage, Eumenes made his way towards the Susiana district and by early summer made camp in the old barracks of the argyraspidai. The temporary safety that Persis afforded him allowed him a respite, while he caught up on the developments to his rear. For Antigonos had similarly been busy. He followed in Eumenes’ wake in the winter and spring of 318-7 and was emboldened by Seleukos’ and Peithon’s requests for aid against Eumenes (though worried enough about stepping on others’ toes to wait for permission before crossing into Seleukos’ satrapy). His stay in Babylonia during spring and summer of 317 was dominated by recruitment drives to bolster his numbers in the face of Eumenes’ impressive advantage of the indomitable corps of argyraspidai. Unfortunately for Antigonos, though, his attempts to gain soldiers gained him several thousand men but lost him a most important ally, Amphimachos, brother of the king and satrap of Mesopotamia, who was irked at the ruination that Antigonos’ army was bringing to his district. In the summer of 317 Amphimachos took a picked body of troops, his personal satrapal agema, and joined Eumenes at Susa. This serious diplomatic blow to Antigonos lent Eumenes, as the king’s general, further legitimacy from having the king’s brother at his side.
Eumenes also derived major advantages from residing in Susiana, much as he had from Kilikia. The treasurer at the Susa reserves, Xenophilos, scrupulously had refrained from disbursing cash to the upper satrapal coalition; only Eumenes, with the commission from the king as strategos autokrator, was allowed to withdraw money, and his ability to do so tied Eudamos and Peukestas to him. Paying the salaries of the soldiers for most of a year, Eumenes also granted Eudamos a tremendous bonus of 200 talents, for the victualling and provision of the elephant corps. And while at Susa, Eumenes resurrected Alexandros’ custom of a general staff meeting in the tent to discuss policy and planning; his use of Alexandros’ personal tent no doubt aided in the symbolic appeal and added to his bona fides as the royal general and emissary. Eumenes’ coalition between himself, the commanders of the argyraspidai, and the upper satrapy alliance thus stayed strong when Antigonos invaded Susiana in the late summer of 317. Facing numbers that were superior to his own, Eumenes elected to retreat to the Pasitigris River on the far side of the city of Susa, leaving a garrison in the citadel to slow down the enemy. The bridge across the Koprates, the route into Susiana from the west, was torn down to further impede Antigonos’ progress. The plan worked perfectly. Antigonos’ army was worn down from the heat and exhausted, and Eumenes easily evaded the Antigonids’ feeble attempts at pursuit. What further weakened the army was Antigonos’ detachment of Seleukos to carry out the siege of Susa to secure the royal treasury and the citadel, eliminating the threat to the rear. However, Antigonos successfully reconnoitered the Koprates banks and began crossing at a spot far away from Eumenes’ camp, sending his troops across in relays to establish a fortified camp before Eumenes could get there. But this time, the Susianan connections of the argyraspidai served them well. The natives relayed information to them of the Antigonid efforts, and Eumenes force-marched a sizable contingent of his army to the crossing point within the day. He was in luck, for Antigonos’ advance force hadn’t yet engaged in their castramentation operation; Eumenes was able to initiate a surprise attack that caught 10,000 of the enemy on the wrong side of the river, slaughtering most of them by either force of arms or by chasing them into the swollen Koprates. Four thousand prisoners were taken, and Antigonos’ ambitions of crossing the river were utterly stymied.
The Phrygian lord now had few options. To the east, the Koprates road was now irrevocably closed. Further attempts to cross the river would only meet with more casualties, and Antigonos was loathe to endure the same fate as Perdikas. Behind him lay the desolate landscape of Susiana, an utter wasteland, depleted from the passage of multiple armies and an effective barrier to his progress. So, for Antigonos, there was only one viable path, that to the northeast. He would join his new ally Peithon in Media to restock his supplies among the multitude of tiny valleys that spilled down out of the Zagros and Elburz Mountains and rest his army. This decision was forced not merely by the supply situation, of course, but also by Peithon’s vastly increased leverage in Antigonos’ camp after the failure at the Koprates crossing. So Antigonos made tracks away from the death trap of Susiana, northwards along the twisting road into the Zagros into the territory of the mountain tribesmen of the Kossaians. Alexandros had refused to brook argument from them years before, when passing through their lands, so Antigonos decided to do the same, sending a picked force of light infantry forward instead of paying the toll as was Peithon’s recommendation. The troops were utterly wiped out, though, and Antigonos was forced to weather serious damage from the tribesmen as his army slogged through the mountains. By the time they were past the episode, morale was at a nadir, casualties were high, and there was dissent in the camp. But he had finally reached Media, and could rest and recuperate among safe country in Peithon’s districts.
Theoretically, Eumenes now had the option of moving back west. Antigonos had left his western lands totally uncovered by moving into Media. With the argyraspidai and his Kappadokian forces Eumenes stood a good chance of seizing Phrygia more or less intact. But that would be alienating his eastern allies, who now made up a disproportionate amount of his forces (with the elephants, who were worth quite a bit, they might even have made up the majority). And there was disturbing news from the west that was beginning to trickle in. Antigonos may not have invaded Thraikia and Makedonia, but his proxy Kassandros had done well for himself, fortifying the Peiraeios and eventually invading Makedon proper. While the attack was repulsed by Polyperchon’s forces, Kassandros managed to seize a significant number of elephants and won enough prestige to convince Eurydike to transfer the commission as strategos autokrator from Eumenes to Kassandros. That royal endorsement that had proved so critical to Eumenes’ ability to keep the coalition together was now null and void for the moment, though not even Eumenes knew it yet (he did know that his position was weakened by Kassandros’ invasion, though, and so felt he had to tread lightly). Marching back westwards might even detach the argyraspidai from his precariously maintained coalition, which would explode any chance he would have had at defeating Antigonos in pitched battle. So for the moment, Eumenes was stuck in the East, dancing to the Monophthalmos’ tune.
Eumenes’ army thus followed Antigonos into the Median highlands, with some minor intrigue among the satrapal coalition being dealt with along the way, temporarily improving Eumenes’ position as commander and solidifying his hold on the army. The allies rested and recuperated just as Antigonos was doing a few hundred miles away, until the Monophthalmos finally advanced from the Median fastness in autumn of 317. With him were 28,000 phalangitai, 9,000 cavalry, and 65 elephants, a tremendous force by any measuring. By the time Antigonos made it onto the plain of Aspandana, Eumenes and the coalition of the upper satraps were well aware of his approach and had mobilized their own force. 35,000 foot, 6,100 cavalry, and 114 elephants accompanied Eumenes, Peukestas, and the rest as they marched to engage Antigonos. On the coalition army’s route, though, a strange thing happened; after a feast and symposium, Eumenes took ill (having acquired one of the most massive hangovers of all time), in a similar manner to that which led to the death of Alexandros himself. Foul play by one of his satrap allies was suspected by many. But one Alexandrine theatric deserved another. Eumenes, in a manner similar to that of Alexandros after the episode at the Malli town (the connivance of Peukestas in both events, both the saving of Alexandros and Eumenes, is apparent), was lifted on a stretcher before the army, raising his fist in a gesture of solidarity and strength, to wild cheers from his argyraspidai, the former hypaspistai of Alexandros himself. The half-farcical show succeeded, Eumenes recovered, and the march went on.
The armies eventually came within contact at the field of Paraitakene. ‘Field’ is probably too euphemistic, though; in reality, it was crossed by a network of ravines that separated the two forces and prevented a serious syntagmic battle. Eventually, though, supplies began to give out, especially as the site, which was on the edge of the great salt desert, suffered from the frosts of late autumn. Eumenes, by departing in the middle of the night, was able to steal a march on Antigonos. Upon realizing his enemy’s escape, the Monophthalmos rode ahead with his agema and managed to give the impression, by taking up a position on a hill, that his army was in hot pursuit, forcing Eumenes to deploy his forces. This in turn allowed the Antigonid army to actually reach the battlefield, seize the heights, and prepare for battle.
Eumenes himself took the position of Alexandros at the head of his agema, leading the right wing of cavalry on the allied side. Forming a link with his cavalry and the syntagma proper were the native Persian hypaspistai of the satraps, as well as the elite argyraspidai, commanded by Antigenes and Teutamos. The syntagma itself was echeloned to the left rear, as practiced by Alexandros and Epaminondas, with Peukestas having the responsibility of the left wing of the phalanx. Due to his investment of elephants, Eudamos was in charge of the elephants of the left wing, which made up the majority of the cavalry forces there. Eumenes’ left wing in cavalry was deliberately weakened so as to be able to meet the Antigonids in numbers on the right; Eumenes was planning for his superiority in elephants to make up the deficit there, as well as to cover the line in general. Meanwhile, Antigonos, who didn’t have to deal with the command problems that Eumenes had (i.e. untrustworthy subordinates), was able to take solid command of the right wing effort. He placed his own Makedonians far away from the argyraspidai, so as to make sure that they would fight (for there was no guarantee, as can be seen from the episode at the Hellespont in 321, that Makedonian would fight Makedonian) and be of use. Against Eumenes’ heavy horse on the allied right wing, he placed light skirmisher cavalry from Arachosia and trained in the Tarantine style. Whereas Eumenes had a defensively oriented line, with the elephants in front to guard against the Antigonid numerical superiority, Antigonos made his line like a guillotine blade, with himself and his own agema at the apex on his right wing, ready to exploit any gaps in the line just as Alexandros had at Gaugamela.
Antigonos was the one to open the action, leading his army down the hillside of Paraitakene. Trumpets sounded, the paean was sung, and the stage was set for an epic clash of the armies. Nothing of the sort happened. Instead, it was Peithon, on the left wing of the Antigonid army, who opened the action. For on the right wing, Antigonos had met the elephants of Eumenes’ allies and was stymied. Nobody was prepared to engage in a clash of the tremendous beasts, least of all their mahouts, for no such thing had yet happened in Hellenic warfare. Instead, there was utter stalemate on Antigonos’ right. His and Eudamos’ cavalry forces never engaged. So it was Peithon that fought the major action initially, harassing Eumenes’ right-wing elephants with horse archer fire. At this point, the maneuver that had eluded Porus at the Hydaspes was made correctly by Eumenes. Eudamos transferred much of the left wing cavalry to the right, riding hard behind the syntagma, and gave Eumenes the boost in numbers he needed to drive Peithon totally off the field. With a combination of these new horse, as well as units of psiloi, just as Alexandros had done against the Sakai, Eumenes was able to drive Peithon off. Meanwhile, the two colossal syntagmai engaged. Antigonos’ mahouts decided not to risk a combat with Eumenes’ superior numbers, especially when the argyraspidai could engage in disabling their mounts just as they had done at the Hydaspes. So a mutual decision emerged not to use the terrifying weapons, and the phalangitai on both sides clashed. As it happened, this swung the balance to Eumenes anyway. His argyraspidai were the perfect warriors, the veterans of the conquest of the world, and they had never been defeated. Antigonos’ syntagma meant little enough to these champions, and they tore through the enemy phalanx with precision and a grim, machinelike skill. Almost all of Antigonos’ infantry were driven off the field in disorder, with vastly disproportionate casualties as the syntagma’s domino effect spread down the line, with units being outflanked and retiring or being slaughtered. At this point, though, the irresistible success of the argyraspidai proved an advantage to Antigonos, in a way. Antigonos, at the head of his agema, saw a gap opening up between Eudamos and the left wing of Eumenes’ syntagma. His hetairoi charged through the space, routed part of Peukestas’ wing but eventually withdrawing in its turn. Both sides sounded the retreat after this final action, with nightfall approaching.
Eumenes, despite the final brief effort by Antigonos, had clearly won the field. Antigonos was able to claim a formal victory when his opponent was forced to withdraw to protect his precious baggage train during the night, but Eumenes had inflicted disproportionate casualties on a force larger than his own. The victory, though, was not total. Antigonos was able to withdraw into his old haunts, while Eumenes held control of the Gabiene plain with its fertile lands for forage, even during the winter. Over the lean months, his forces were better provisioned, and were much better prepared for the renewal of the campaign. So Antigonos attempted to steal a march on Eumenes. In the first months of 316, he and most of his army began to cross the salt desert again to attempt a surprise attack on his enemy. Eumenes’ army was widely dispersed, and if surprise had been achieved, victory would have been total and enough to reverse the verdict of Paraitakene. But Eumenes retained popular support in the area, and he managed to gain ample warning of the enemy’s approach. So in the Alexandrine tent a fierce discussion arose, whether to withdraw into the mountains, making each pass a Thermopylai for Antigonos and exploiting the disunity of forces, or to attempt to concentrate the army in time. Eumenes was inclined to the latter, but Peukestas, who had been partially disgraced, was a supporter of withdrawal. After some soul-searching, Eumenes agreed with his subordinate’s decision. Keeping unity was the most important thing in the face of the renunciation of command by Eurydike, the news of which had arrived not long after Paraitakene (and which had been somewhat overshadowed by the celebrations from the victory). Magnanimity in victory would hopefully help weld the satraps to his side even further.
This course of action was more correct than Eumenes knew. For at the same time, thousands of miles away in Makedonia, the situation was tipping in his favor once more. Earlier that winter, not long after Paraitekene, Olympias, mother of Alexandros III, had raised her own army and wiped out the adherents of Eurydike. The queen herself, as well as her husband Philippos III, had been put to death at Olympias’ orders, and Eumenes had been reinstated. He now held legitimacy once more, though he didn’t know it at the time of the decision. When Antigonos learned of these events, as his troops, tired from crossing the frozen salt desert, prepared to assault one of Eumenes’ encampments in the mountains, he realized that the situation in Greece was now turning against him. The Phrygian satrap, faced with a long, grinding, near-impossible campaign in the mountains, decided to cut his losses. Peithon was virtually abandoned, left with a portion of Antigonos’ grand army to delay the invaders, while the Monophthalmos himself made tracks back west.
And the stage was set for the final act in this most recent of the civil wars…
OOC:
I've had this idea for some time. These posts were mostly background, though; the meat will come soon enough.
Anyway, consider this a primer on the early Wars of the Diadochi, as well as including the PoD itself. And yes, Thlayli, it really was that easy to figure out. Look at my "Location", for God's sake, next time. 
“They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beast.”
-Hotel California, The Eagles
Eumenes was forced with two main obstacles when crossing through Babylonia to the safe harbor in Persis. The first was Seleukos and Peithon and their forces, now committed to an alliance with Antigonos and the antilegitimist forces. Fighting on their home ground, they would be able to strike hard and fast against Eumenes’ troops. The other, and perhaps more dangerous, opposition would come from the rivers. Crossing them in the late spring was tantamount to suicide if one needed a ford; only boats would work, and Seleukos was hard at work destroying those that he didn’t have directly under his own control. Eumenes was fortunate to secure a cache of riverboats made at Alexandros’ behest seven years prior, with which he made his way towards Opis and the planned crossing point. His enemies combined to make his situation worse, however; Seleukos opened up a canal behind him and created a new channel that cut off his line of retreat, as well as the route to the precious baggage train of the argyraspidai, which held the treasures of a decade of conquering, from gold and silver to human cargo, including wives and families. A desperate, last ditch attempt by Eumenes and a picked force to secure the baggage met with narrow success, just missing a raid by Peithon’s men. After some timely information from the locals about how to divert the floodwaters, Eumenes was able to reduce the strength of the river in front of him and continue on his way. After he reached the east bank of the Tigris, Seleukos and Peithon recognized the futility of opposing his army and agreed to a truce.
Following the river, marching divided to prevent the army from running out of forage, Eumenes made his way towards the Susiana district and by early summer made camp in the old barracks of the argyraspidai. The temporary safety that Persis afforded him allowed him a respite, while he caught up on the developments to his rear. For Antigonos had similarly been busy. He followed in Eumenes’ wake in the winter and spring of 318-7 and was emboldened by Seleukos’ and Peithon’s requests for aid against Eumenes (though worried enough about stepping on others’ toes to wait for permission before crossing into Seleukos’ satrapy). His stay in Babylonia during spring and summer of 317 was dominated by recruitment drives to bolster his numbers in the face of Eumenes’ impressive advantage of the indomitable corps of argyraspidai. Unfortunately for Antigonos, though, his attempts to gain soldiers gained him several thousand men but lost him a most important ally, Amphimachos, brother of the king and satrap of Mesopotamia, who was irked at the ruination that Antigonos’ army was bringing to his district. In the summer of 317 Amphimachos took a picked body of troops, his personal satrapal agema, and joined Eumenes at Susa. This serious diplomatic blow to Antigonos lent Eumenes, as the king’s general, further legitimacy from having the king’s brother at his side.
Eumenes also derived major advantages from residing in Susiana, much as he had from Kilikia. The treasurer at the Susa reserves, Xenophilos, scrupulously had refrained from disbursing cash to the upper satrapal coalition; only Eumenes, with the commission from the king as strategos autokrator, was allowed to withdraw money, and his ability to do so tied Eudamos and Peukestas to him. Paying the salaries of the soldiers for most of a year, Eumenes also granted Eudamos a tremendous bonus of 200 talents, for the victualling and provision of the elephant corps. And while at Susa, Eumenes resurrected Alexandros’ custom of a general staff meeting in the tent to discuss policy and planning; his use of Alexandros’ personal tent no doubt aided in the symbolic appeal and added to his bona fides as the royal general and emissary. Eumenes’ coalition between himself, the commanders of the argyraspidai, and the upper satrapy alliance thus stayed strong when Antigonos invaded Susiana in the late summer of 317. Facing numbers that were superior to his own, Eumenes elected to retreat to the Pasitigris River on the far side of the city of Susa, leaving a garrison in the citadel to slow down the enemy. The bridge across the Koprates, the route into Susiana from the west, was torn down to further impede Antigonos’ progress. The plan worked perfectly. Antigonos’ army was worn down from the heat and exhausted, and Eumenes easily evaded the Antigonids’ feeble attempts at pursuit. What further weakened the army was Antigonos’ detachment of Seleukos to carry out the siege of Susa to secure the royal treasury and the citadel, eliminating the threat to the rear. However, Antigonos successfully reconnoitered the Koprates banks and began crossing at a spot far away from Eumenes’ camp, sending his troops across in relays to establish a fortified camp before Eumenes could get there. But this time, the Susianan connections of the argyraspidai served them well. The natives relayed information to them of the Antigonid efforts, and Eumenes force-marched a sizable contingent of his army to the crossing point within the day. He was in luck, for Antigonos’ advance force hadn’t yet engaged in their castramentation operation; Eumenes was able to initiate a surprise attack that caught 10,000 of the enemy on the wrong side of the river, slaughtering most of them by either force of arms or by chasing them into the swollen Koprates. Four thousand prisoners were taken, and Antigonos’ ambitions of crossing the river were utterly stymied.
The Phrygian lord now had few options. To the east, the Koprates road was now irrevocably closed. Further attempts to cross the river would only meet with more casualties, and Antigonos was loathe to endure the same fate as Perdikas. Behind him lay the desolate landscape of Susiana, an utter wasteland, depleted from the passage of multiple armies and an effective barrier to his progress. So, for Antigonos, there was only one viable path, that to the northeast. He would join his new ally Peithon in Media to restock his supplies among the multitude of tiny valleys that spilled down out of the Zagros and Elburz Mountains and rest his army. This decision was forced not merely by the supply situation, of course, but also by Peithon’s vastly increased leverage in Antigonos’ camp after the failure at the Koprates crossing. So Antigonos made tracks away from the death trap of Susiana, northwards along the twisting road into the Zagros into the territory of the mountain tribesmen of the Kossaians. Alexandros had refused to brook argument from them years before, when passing through their lands, so Antigonos decided to do the same, sending a picked force of light infantry forward instead of paying the toll as was Peithon’s recommendation. The troops were utterly wiped out, though, and Antigonos was forced to weather serious damage from the tribesmen as his army slogged through the mountains. By the time they were past the episode, morale was at a nadir, casualties were high, and there was dissent in the camp. But he had finally reached Media, and could rest and recuperate among safe country in Peithon’s districts.
Theoretically, Eumenes now had the option of moving back west. Antigonos had left his western lands totally uncovered by moving into Media. With the argyraspidai and his Kappadokian forces Eumenes stood a good chance of seizing Phrygia more or less intact. But that would be alienating his eastern allies, who now made up a disproportionate amount of his forces (with the elephants, who were worth quite a bit, they might even have made up the majority). And there was disturbing news from the west that was beginning to trickle in. Antigonos may not have invaded Thraikia and Makedonia, but his proxy Kassandros had done well for himself, fortifying the Peiraeios and eventually invading Makedon proper. While the attack was repulsed by Polyperchon’s forces, Kassandros managed to seize a significant number of elephants and won enough prestige to convince Eurydike to transfer the commission as strategos autokrator from Eumenes to Kassandros. That royal endorsement that had proved so critical to Eumenes’ ability to keep the coalition together was now null and void for the moment, though not even Eumenes knew it yet (he did know that his position was weakened by Kassandros’ invasion, though, and so felt he had to tread lightly). Marching back westwards might even detach the argyraspidai from his precariously maintained coalition, which would explode any chance he would have had at defeating Antigonos in pitched battle. So for the moment, Eumenes was stuck in the East, dancing to the Monophthalmos’ tune.
Eumenes’ army thus followed Antigonos into the Median highlands, with some minor intrigue among the satrapal coalition being dealt with along the way, temporarily improving Eumenes’ position as commander and solidifying his hold on the army. The allies rested and recuperated just as Antigonos was doing a few hundred miles away, until the Monophthalmos finally advanced from the Median fastness in autumn of 317. With him were 28,000 phalangitai, 9,000 cavalry, and 65 elephants, a tremendous force by any measuring. By the time Antigonos made it onto the plain of Aspandana, Eumenes and the coalition of the upper satraps were well aware of his approach and had mobilized their own force. 35,000 foot, 6,100 cavalry, and 114 elephants accompanied Eumenes, Peukestas, and the rest as they marched to engage Antigonos. On the coalition army’s route, though, a strange thing happened; after a feast and symposium, Eumenes took ill (having acquired one of the most massive hangovers of all time), in a similar manner to that which led to the death of Alexandros himself. Foul play by one of his satrap allies was suspected by many. But one Alexandrine theatric deserved another. Eumenes, in a manner similar to that of Alexandros after the episode at the Malli town (the connivance of Peukestas in both events, both the saving of Alexandros and Eumenes, is apparent), was lifted on a stretcher before the army, raising his fist in a gesture of solidarity and strength, to wild cheers from his argyraspidai, the former hypaspistai of Alexandros himself. The half-farcical show succeeded, Eumenes recovered, and the march went on.
The armies eventually came within contact at the field of Paraitakene. ‘Field’ is probably too euphemistic, though; in reality, it was crossed by a network of ravines that separated the two forces and prevented a serious syntagmic battle. Eventually, though, supplies began to give out, especially as the site, which was on the edge of the great salt desert, suffered from the frosts of late autumn. Eumenes, by departing in the middle of the night, was able to steal a march on Antigonos. Upon realizing his enemy’s escape, the Monophthalmos rode ahead with his agema and managed to give the impression, by taking up a position on a hill, that his army was in hot pursuit, forcing Eumenes to deploy his forces. This in turn allowed the Antigonid army to actually reach the battlefield, seize the heights, and prepare for battle.
Eumenes himself took the position of Alexandros at the head of his agema, leading the right wing of cavalry on the allied side. Forming a link with his cavalry and the syntagma proper were the native Persian hypaspistai of the satraps, as well as the elite argyraspidai, commanded by Antigenes and Teutamos. The syntagma itself was echeloned to the left rear, as practiced by Alexandros and Epaminondas, with Peukestas having the responsibility of the left wing of the phalanx. Due to his investment of elephants, Eudamos was in charge of the elephants of the left wing, which made up the majority of the cavalry forces there. Eumenes’ left wing in cavalry was deliberately weakened so as to be able to meet the Antigonids in numbers on the right; Eumenes was planning for his superiority in elephants to make up the deficit there, as well as to cover the line in general. Meanwhile, Antigonos, who didn’t have to deal with the command problems that Eumenes had (i.e. untrustworthy subordinates), was able to take solid command of the right wing effort. He placed his own Makedonians far away from the argyraspidai, so as to make sure that they would fight (for there was no guarantee, as can be seen from the episode at the Hellespont in 321, that Makedonian would fight Makedonian) and be of use. Against Eumenes’ heavy horse on the allied right wing, he placed light skirmisher cavalry from Arachosia and trained in the Tarantine style. Whereas Eumenes had a defensively oriented line, with the elephants in front to guard against the Antigonid numerical superiority, Antigonos made his line like a guillotine blade, with himself and his own agema at the apex on his right wing, ready to exploit any gaps in the line just as Alexandros had at Gaugamela.
Antigonos was the one to open the action, leading his army down the hillside of Paraitakene. Trumpets sounded, the paean was sung, and the stage was set for an epic clash of the armies. Nothing of the sort happened. Instead, it was Peithon, on the left wing of the Antigonid army, who opened the action. For on the right wing, Antigonos had met the elephants of Eumenes’ allies and was stymied. Nobody was prepared to engage in a clash of the tremendous beasts, least of all their mahouts, for no such thing had yet happened in Hellenic warfare. Instead, there was utter stalemate on Antigonos’ right. His and Eudamos’ cavalry forces never engaged. So it was Peithon that fought the major action initially, harassing Eumenes’ right-wing elephants with horse archer fire. At this point, the maneuver that had eluded Porus at the Hydaspes was made correctly by Eumenes. Eudamos transferred much of the left wing cavalry to the right, riding hard behind the syntagma, and gave Eumenes the boost in numbers he needed to drive Peithon totally off the field. With a combination of these new horse, as well as units of psiloi, just as Alexandros had done against the Sakai, Eumenes was able to drive Peithon off. Meanwhile, the two colossal syntagmai engaged. Antigonos’ mahouts decided not to risk a combat with Eumenes’ superior numbers, especially when the argyraspidai could engage in disabling their mounts just as they had done at the Hydaspes. So a mutual decision emerged not to use the terrifying weapons, and the phalangitai on both sides clashed. As it happened, this swung the balance to Eumenes anyway. His argyraspidai were the perfect warriors, the veterans of the conquest of the world, and they had never been defeated. Antigonos’ syntagma meant little enough to these champions, and they tore through the enemy phalanx with precision and a grim, machinelike skill. Almost all of Antigonos’ infantry were driven off the field in disorder, with vastly disproportionate casualties as the syntagma’s domino effect spread down the line, with units being outflanked and retiring or being slaughtered. At this point, though, the irresistible success of the argyraspidai proved an advantage to Antigonos, in a way. Antigonos, at the head of his agema, saw a gap opening up between Eudamos and the left wing of Eumenes’ syntagma. His hetairoi charged through the space, routed part of Peukestas’ wing but eventually withdrawing in its turn. Both sides sounded the retreat after this final action, with nightfall approaching.
Eumenes, despite the final brief effort by Antigonos, had clearly won the field. Antigonos was able to claim a formal victory when his opponent was forced to withdraw to protect his precious baggage train during the night, but Eumenes had inflicted disproportionate casualties on a force larger than his own. The victory, though, was not total. Antigonos was able to withdraw into his old haunts, while Eumenes held control of the Gabiene plain with its fertile lands for forage, even during the winter. Over the lean months, his forces were better provisioned, and were much better prepared for the renewal of the campaign. So Antigonos attempted to steal a march on Eumenes. In the first months of 316, he and most of his army began to cross the salt desert again to attempt a surprise attack on his enemy. Eumenes’ army was widely dispersed, and if surprise had been achieved, victory would have been total and enough to reverse the verdict of Paraitakene. But Eumenes retained popular support in the area, and he managed to gain ample warning of the enemy’s approach. So in the Alexandrine tent a fierce discussion arose, whether to withdraw into the mountains, making each pass a Thermopylai for Antigonos and exploiting the disunity of forces, or to attempt to concentrate the army in time. Eumenes was inclined to the latter, but Peukestas, who had been partially disgraced, was a supporter of withdrawal. After some soul-searching, Eumenes agreed with his subordinate’s decision. Keeping unity was the most important thing in the face of the renunciation of command by Eurydike, the news of which had arrived not long after Paraitakene (and which had been somewhat overshadowed by the celebrations from the victory). Magnanimity in victory would hopefully help weld the satraps to his side even further.
This course of action was more correct than Eumenes knew. For at the same time, thousands of miles away in Makedonia, the situation was tipping in his favor once more. Earlier that winter, not long after Paraitekene, Olympias, mother of Alexandros III, had raised her own army and wiped out the adherents of Eurydike. The queen herself, as well as her husband Philippos III, had been put to death at Olympias’ orders, and Eumenes had been reinstated. He now held legitimacy once more, though he didn’t know it at the time of the decision. When Antigonos learned of these events, as his troops, tired from crossing the frozen salt desert, prepared to assault one of Eumenes’ encampments in the mountains, he realized that the situation in Greece was now turning against him. The Phrygian satrap, faced with a long, grinding, near-impossible campaign in the mountains, decided to cut his losses. Peithon was virtually abandoned, left with a portion of Antigonos’ grand army to delay the invaders, while the Monophthalmos himself made tracks back west.
And the stage was set for the final act in this most recent of the civil wars…
OOC:
I've had this idea for some time. These posts were mostly background, though; the meat will come soon enough.
Anyway, consider this a primer on the early Wars of the Diadochi, as well as including the PoD itself. And yes, Thlayli, it really was that easy to figure out. Look at my "Location", for God's sake, next time. 
das
Regeneration In Process
As a pure sidenote, that might not be all that uncomfortable since then some successful general could try and attain legitimacy by marrying her. Yes, that's not how succession works in Macedon, but truth be told we are talking about a newly-born empire facing a succession crisis: in such a situation, might makes succession right. Anyway, it will all go to hell all the same, but it still could be an additional complicating factor that could help someone establish a proper and "legitimate" dynasty.
, who is never heard from again. Which is a shame. Can't find much of anything on him right off hand - did anyone even bother with trying to use him for intrigues?
Isn't it a bit too early for the -ids?
So the PoD is no Battle of Gabiene, then.
Wait, what? One would think Eumenes would have to at least invade it and approach the capital first. Or do you merely mean that brave sir Peithon ran away with his army, so de facto allowing Eumenes to take over Media regardless of the latter's immediate plans?
Anyway, a good read so far. Looking forward to how this might develop.
Yep, Antigonos Monophthalmos grabbed him and used him later on for that very purpose in OTL.
Not as an expeditious way of referring to the adherents of Antigonos, I think.das said:
What else would I say, though? Demetrios Poliorketes (though he doesn't get quite so much mention as he would later in OTL, at least in this installment) is around, too.Yes.das said:
That part was done, admittedly, in haste (so as to finish reasonably close to the arbitrary deadline I set myself that night while conversing with Thlayli and NK via IMs), and is not wholly correct, as we will see soon enough. Our good buddy Peithon merely vacated the country around Gabiene where Eumenes had dispersed his forces.das said:
das
Regeneration In Process
Also, how and by whom was Eumenes "reinstated" (and in what function - I mean, the greater political system has fallen apart again with Philippos III dead, right?)? I presume that Olympias simply granted him recognition of some sort in hopes of getting an ally against Antigonos and his buddies, who would now have to fight a two-front war.
Yes, Olympias, who is effectively regent for Alexandros IV, transferred the office of strategos autokrator from Kassandros to Eumenes in the king's name, with that very aim in mind. It's one of Eumenes' main keys to holding onto his argyraspides, along with, of course, their all-important baggage train.
das
Regeneration In Process
Mhm. And I presume that the lands further east are relatively peaceful and that there is no one to stab Eumenes in the back whilst he stabs the "central powers" in the back (not as in backstab, but speaking in strictly geographical terms). Or am I forgetting someone important?
Further east are the coalition of satraps that helped him. Eudamos was basically the unofficial liege lord of the Indos valley (his absence there might be seized upon but thus far there is nothing much), and the Central Asian satraps are largely part of the coalition, having banded together to help drive Peithon out of Parthyaia. So basically the entire area east of Mesopotamia, save for Peithon in Media, is dominated by Eumenes' allies.
das
Regeneration In Process
Nice. What's up with Ptolemaios? I understand that he was on Antigonos' side until now, but from what I remember about him he isn't the most reliable of allies even by Diadochi standards.
That is indeed an accurate assessment. In 318 BC(E) he was allied to Antigonos mostly out of fear of Eumenes, who was looking pretty strong in Kilikia and who had, in fact, chased his garrisons out of Syria. Now that Eumenes is off in the east, Ptolemaios' efforts in support of Antigonos have been pretty lackluster. In OTL, Antigonos was confronted by emissaries from Ptolemaios and Lysimachos as soon as he had won the Battle of Gabiene, demanding that they, who had in reality done little to aid him, be rewarded for their 'aid' against Eumenes, which is one of the things that sparked off the next War of the Diadochi.
So mostly Ptolemaios has been occupying Syria again and biding his time.
Oh, by the way, I had earlier forgotten, but apparently Herakles was sent by Antigonos to Polyperchon in the Peloponnesos during the outbreak of the Fourth War in 309 BC(E) to serve as a figurehead around whom to rally anti-Kassandrians; Polyperchon, for whatever reason (probably didn't want to be indebted to Antigonos) decided to murder Herakles instead.
das
Regeneration In Process
Rather silly of him. Are you sure he murdered him and didn't murder someone else who looked like him whilst hiding Herakles in some dark dungeon from where he could be extracted if needed?
He murdered him because Kassandros, the perennial regicide, bribed him to do it, according to a recently released book that I have just acquired. I blame it on my relatively dilatory production of this installment; hopefully it - the althistory, not the book - is enjoyable.
Our Mutual Fiend.
“I fought the law and the law won.”
-the Clash, among others
Peithon was left with a significant portion of Antigonos’ original grand army when his patron fled to the west, partly as a sop to make sure that he remained reasonably loyal and partly so that Eumenes and the satrapal coalition would be significantly delayed in reforming their army into an effective fighting force. Forty of the elephants, for example, were left behind, partly due to the issues associated with victualling the enormous beasts on the march in Mesopotamia but also as a further bribe to Peithon. The fact of the matter was, though, that the best the satrap could do was delay. Without the Antigonid main army to back him up, he was well and truly screwed. His only hope lay in maneuver, and at this he made a reasonably good start. Eumenes’ initial attempts to marshal his forces on the plain of Gabiene were briefly stymied and frustrated by Peithon’s raids, forcing them to travel circuitous routes and retarding their progress out of the mountains. Things came to a head when Peithon happened upon Eudamos’ elephant train and immediately attacked. Four of the elephants were slain before an adequate force of cavalry arrived on the scene to protect the precious animals.
Eumenes had lost four months, first hiding from Antigonos and then outmaneuvering Peithon in collecting his forces. But time was on his side, now that Eurydike had been killed, so he didn’t need to move rapidly to make capital off of Peithon’s and the Antigonid difficulties. Following the union of forces in May, Eumenes and Peukestas marched northward to Ekbatana, Peithon’s capital, from which they could likely dictate terms to the weakened satrap. Peithon, for his part, began a desperate recruitment drive and gathered additional forces, but still didn’t have enough men to match the 40,000 soldiers Eumenes and the coalition could throw into the fray. Instead of making a stand for Ekbatana and doing exactly what Antigonos would have wanted him to do, the somatophylax decided that discretion was the better part of valor, in which better part he saved his life, departing from Media as summer wore on and the coalition army neared his capital. Ekbatana retained a citadel garrison (performing the function the satrap himself was intended to), but on the whole there wasn’t much of an impediment to Eumenes’ seizure of Media. The garrison capitulated within days, as it happened, so Peithon hadn’t managed to buy himself much of a respite.
Immediately, though, dissension erupted in the allied camp. Persia had been wholly vacated by Antigonos and his allies, and without a common enemy, Peukestas and Eumenes were at loggerheads. The issue of the Median satrapy, and who would administrate it, was the pretext for a series of arguments that struck at the very necessity of the coalition itself. Peukestas threatened to go his own way, withdrawing his commitment from Eumenes’ army, and several other satraps threatened to do so if they were insufficiently rewarded. At the same time, though, any concerted action against Eumenes was made impossible, because none of the satraps wished to see their neighbors aggrandized in any significant way. Eumenes was able to seize on this and enact a provisional solution. The satrapy of Media would be held in trust by one of Eumenes’ associates, Hieronymos of Kardia, but it would be somewhat reduced in size, so as to not become so much of a threat as Peithon’s Media had been. Outlying slices of territory were awarded to Media’s neighbors, though it was a pittance to be sure. Essentially an attempt at papering over the differences within the eastern satrapy coalition, the Ekbatana convention was a stopgap measure, an attempt to allow the alliance to at least last long enough to restore the remaining king and his regents Polyperchon and Olympias to preeminence and for a more lasting solution, like Triparadeisos had been intended, to be worked out.
Besides, Eumenes had other objectives for the allies to pursue. First and foremost among these was Susiana. Evacuated in the previous year, Susa, home to one of the great royal treasuries, had been occupied by Seleukos following a brief siege of the token garrison in the citadel. The critical sums there needed to be recovered, and at once; the money would provide a salve for the alliance, which had been fortified by the cash that had been withdrawn the previous year. After the Ekbatana episode, the allies were somewhat slow to move, but before summer they had reached Susiana. Seleukos, who was in the unenviable position that Peithon had been in not long before, now did the reverse of Eumenes’ operation the year prior and withdrew to the west while leaving a garrison in the Susa citadel, which was cracked after a siege of nearly a month. For the rest of the summer, the allied army rested in Susiana, whilst Seleukos and Peithon in Babylonia worked to prepare defenses against their onslaught and raise more soldiers. Seleukos, for his part, knew that he was now no longer trustworthy and couldn’t switch sides as he had the previous summer, and was stuck with the Antigonids. Essentially his only hope was to make an invasion of Babylonia too costly for the satrapal coalition to deal with, thus hopefully leading to internal problems and a refocusing of the satraps’ aggression in Eumenes’ direction. He had the advantage in many ways: this was his home ground, and he had the support of the populace, due to many of the same things Peukestas had done in Persis. He had the Mesopotamian river system, which had nearly stymied Eumenes during his anabasis of the previous campaign. And he had the aforementioned political wedge of the alliance itself, even though it had been somewhat fixed up by the disbursement of monies from the Susa treasury.
Eumenes’ goal, then, was to secure a lodgement in Babylonia before the winter hit, and then to press his advantage into Seleukos’ defeat the following year. Striking into Charakene, he expelled Seleukos’ general Athenaios from Charax Alexandria and occupied the city before the authorities in Babylon could respond effectively. While Eumenes fortified Charax, Seleukos and Peithon led an armament out of Babylon roughly equal in numbers to the allied forces but not nearly as well trained, especially absent the elephant corps and the elite argyraspidai. Engagement was not their goal, though; instead, Seleukos’ army devastated the land north of Charakene and prevented Eumenes from reasonably expecting to advance northward along the Euphrates. The drawback to that plan, though, was the loss of some of Seleukos’ popular support. Ruining the land of his subjects right before harvest time wasn’t particularly endearing to a lot of people, and it was due to this that Eumenes was able to secure boats in sufficient numbers to allow him to cross the rivers with most of his army, leaving behind a token force under Kelbanos, another close adherent of Eumenes (Hieronymos was still in Media seeing to the administration of that district) to guard Charakene and tie down a few of Seleukos’ garrisons.
This success, though, was partially undone by events further west. Word only reached Babylonia of the course of the war in Greece at least a month after the fact, having only a delayed effect on operations. As it happened, in the spring of 316, Kassandros had begun a resurgence in Greece. Taking shreds of his old army and those of the army of Philippos and Eurydike, he refounded Thebai as a base and then struck north into Thessalia. Reaching Pydna, Kassandros engaged Olympias’ army and in an assault crossing of the Elpeus River smashed it badly. With Polyperchon, the boy-king Alexandros, and fragments of the remaining army, Olympias vacated Makedonia by sea (using the still-extant fleet of Kleitos the White, former admiral of Arrhidaios, satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia) and fled first to the Peloponnesos, which Polyperchon fortified. The king and his grandmother continued to Kypros, which was easily seized from Ptolemaic control. But the main effect was thus: Kassandros had control of Pella and Aigai, the city of the kings and their tomb, and the symbolic effect was tremendous. While he was unable to deal a death-blow to the legitimist forces in the west, failing to crack the Isthmus after being given a bloody nose by Polyperchon at Megara, Kassandros’ grip on his army was solidified and he claimed the right to form a regency council due to the death of the ‘rightful’ king Philippos III, with himself obviously at its head and other cronies of Antigonos involved as well.
This news shook up the structures of both sides as much as Olympias’ original victory over Philippos and Eurydike had. Although Eumenes and the legitimist satrapal coalition was still preeminent east of the Tigris, their cause had been nearly dismantled in the West. Antigonos and his cohorts were clearly on the rise. The immediately threatened one among them was Ptolemaios, who had failed to support Antigonos effectively after the Syrian episode in 318. The satrap in Alexandria had an obvious intuition that he was going to be next, after Antigonos and his allies turned against Eumenes and the satraps once more. And Syria, Ptolemaios’ coveted satrapy that he’d occupied once more in the aftermath of Eumenes’ upcountry march, was also a clear target of Antigonos, who’d want it for a buffer zone at the very least…and possibly a conquest of Egypt in the future. So during the autumn and winter of 316, Ptolemaios began to prepare for a real war, as opposed to the false commitment he had given to Antigonos; he was confronted by emissaries of Antigonos over Kypros, which (Antigonos accused) had been simply given away by Ptolemaic forces, an action which was tantamount to aiding the fugitives. While it hadn’t been true originally, that rapidly became the case, as the Egyptian satrap covertly turned to the legitimist camp and negotiated to support Polyperchon and Olympias. The Ptolemaic navy bolstered Kleitos the White’s forces, and Egyptian money was sent to the Peloponnesos and Kypros.
Of course, to secure the monies necessary for these operations, Ptolemaios needed a quick influx of cash, and he spied an opportune nearby target: the Nabataian Arabs, living just to the east of the Sinai around Petra. As it happened, the Nabataians had a quadrennial festival, during which they would make a difficult journey into rough ground en masse, leaving many of their possessions behind. Ptolemaios thus ordered one of his generals, Pleistarchos, to plan and carry out a raid on these possessions and then escape back to Idumaia, bolstering the Ptolemaic war chest by a significant amount. Pleistarchos managed to force-march the 120 miles inland from the coast in three days and seize the valuables with no contest from the Nabataians. But while his exhausted troops were on the return journey, the Nabataians returned to their encampment and, infuriated by the theft of their valuables, set upon Pleistarchos with such alacrity that his tired troops were totally unprepared and were virtually annihilated, with their prize returning to the Nabataians. This utter failure tightened the Egyptians exchequer and, to an extent (albeit a small one) the manpower reserves, decreasing the forces available in Syria in 315 for the next year’s campaigning.
In the aftermath of the failed raid on the Nabataians, the Ptolemaic forces in Syria were somewhat diminished compared to their opponents, Antigonos’ army, which had barely been engaged for most of the previous year. Ptolemaios had several advantages compared to his more numerous opponents, though. He had an excellent position in northern Syria at Beroia, near the critical Kilikian treasury, whereas his opponent had been forced to encamp on the road from his capital at Kelenai. The plan was to march rapidly through the Amanos Mountains to Kyinda, where he would be able to secure the treasury and refill his depleted coffers. This position would also help him sever the connection between Antigonos and his allies in Babylonia, preventing Eumenes from being rapidly destroyed by the conjunction of Antigonos and Seleukos. Kassandros would be distracted by Polyperchon, bolstered with copious amounts of naval support. The problem was that the legitimists were still horrendously outnumbered. Their strongest army was in Mesopotamia, and it was only numerically equal to its enemy, which was one of the smallest of the forces available to Antigonos and his allies. Ptolemaios, even with the advantage of the Kyinda treasury and the Kilikian mountain position, would be hard pressed to hold off the extremely large Antigonid army. An Alexandros could do it…but Ptolemaios, in all probability, was no Alexandros.
That was the front that first exploded into action in 315, with Ptolemaios beginning his move even during the last weeks of winter to try to gain a further time advantage on the Antigonids (as it happened, Antigonos was able to start moving pretty early as well, so the advantage was slim if anything). Kyinda was occupied, and the Antigonid garrison chased out; with the added stamp of royal legitimacy, Ptolemaios drew on the funds held within the treasury and recruited more troops rapidly, while fortifying the major passes into Kilikia. With the last minute recruiting, Ptolemaios’ army was now nearly two-thirds the size of Antigonos’, though of somewhat inferior quality. Upon reaching the Kilikian passes, Antigonos began to maneuver and feint in an attempt to uncover a weakness in Ptolemaios’ defense.
Eumenes, in the east, believed it imperative to unite his forces with those of Ptolemaios to help the alliance stand something of a chance, and thus opened his campaign to secure Babylon and drive out Seleukos relatively early as well. Some of the land was devastated, but it had been relatively ineffective, and Eumenes’ cavalry had been active over the wintertime (which used up more supplies, but Charakene was secure and could be drawn upon) protecting some stores of grain. As it would happen, these depredations by the defenders did not do much for their popular support, shockingly enough. And Seleukos and Peithon did not rate their chances of standing up to a siege for long, especially with the argyraspidai on Eumenes’ side – the same argyraspidai that had stormed countless fortresses in Central Asia during Alexandros’ epic campaign of ten years ago. So Seleukos and his ally led nearly forty thousand men – 6,400 cavalry, 32,000 infantry, and thirty-eight elephants (less the two beasts that had perished in the interval since Antigonos’ departure from the Gabiene region) – south along the Euphrates River. Near the ruined city of Orchoe, their army and that of Eumenes clashed in an epic contest as great as those of Pydna and Paraitakene in the previous years.
With flanks resting on the river, both sides were able to deploy cavalry to the other wing of their army. Eumenes’ clear superiority in elephants normally would have induced him to have them in front of his phalangitai, but judging by the performance of his soldiers at Paraitakene, he wouldn’t need to bother; the argyraspidai would be able to start a chain reaction and roll up the entire enemy syntagma as per usual. Instead, he added an elephant contingent to his right wing, where his cavalry had been massed, and then placed the remainder of the elephants – some seventy beasts – in a reserve under the control of one Ceteus, a prince of the Indos valley and a former vassal of Porus. Eumenes believed that his argyraspidai could hamstring the enemy elephants were they to appear before the enemy infantry, as they had done at the Hydaspes; if the enemy elephants appeared on the enemy left wing with their cavalry, Eumenes’ beasts were sure to be able to defeat them. Eudamos commanded the elephants on the right wing and Eumenes himself led the cavalry, with his agema at the forefront. Antigenes, the solid lineman, was in charge of the argyraspidai at the right wing of the syntagma, which was as usual echeloned backwards to the left rear, with progressively weaker units being placed further left. The fully left wing was led by Peukestas once more, who also had his personal agema and a small force of light cavalry to guard against a sneak attack by enemy horse riding along the river. Opposite them, Seleukos led the cavalry contingent on the antilegitimists’ left wing, with Peithon in command of the infantry on that wing. The elephants were placed in front of the phalanx to try to guard against the argyraspidai as best they could and perhaps distract them from the phalanx battle that would be going on at the same time; Seleukos, as a former commander of the argyraspidai, knew that he would need all possible advantages to defeat his old rankers. To prevent the infantry from engaging the argyraspidai too quickly, Seleukos’ syntagma was echeloned in parallel with that of Eumenes.
The battle opened with the usual exchange by the sphendonetai, akontistai, and other elements of the psiloi in the middle of the field between the two infantry masses. While the infantry were thus occupied, the cavalry action commenced. Eumenes had a clear inferiority in horse, but he had elephants to back him up. Seleukos’ heavy cavalry, including his own personal agema, failed to approach the massive beasts, so instead the antilegitimist light horsemen, the Saka and Daha riders, opened up with volleys of arrows, targeting the mahouts and the sensitive spots on the elephants’ bodies with some success. Eumenes, however, had had the opportunity to secure better missile cavalry, especially since he held the allegiance of the satraps of Sogdiane, Baktria, and Margiana; he had Daha and Saka too, and elements of Massagetai cavalry to boot. Using these light cavalry to draw the enemy missile horsemen away from the fight, his elephants once more bore down on Seleukos’ agema and heavy horse. A brief engagement followed before the antilegitimists could extricate themselves and flee towards Babylon, to the north.
This cavalry fight finished up just as the light infantry battle was ended. Noting the lack of Seleukos’ cavalry on the enemy right wing, Peukestas charged across the syntagma’s front line and aided the psiloi in chasing off their opposite numbers on Seleukos’ side. The missile infantry then bombarded Peithon’s syntagma at their leisure while the phalangitai closed in. Thus Peithon’s infantry were already weakened from missile fire before they were engaged by the magnificent argyraspidai, and once more the elite world-conquerors ran over their opponents, utterly routing the enemy phalangitai and shattering Peithon’s forces. The erstwhile satrap of Media was killed in the battle, too; Eumenes, leading the cavalry on a sweep down the flank of the antilegitimist infantry, encountered his enemy, and one of the members of his agema dispatched the former somatophylax. Of the nearly forty thousand soldiers Seleukos had led to the field, some fifteen thousand were lost as either prisoners or dead, with most of the remainder scattered and unavailable to Seleukos, who had managed to reach Babylon safely within days of the battle.
News of the tremendous defeat at Orchoe revolutionized proceedings in Kilikia. It became far more critical for Ptolemaios to be finished off to prevent the union of the two armies, as far off as that may have seemed in the spring of 315. Antigonos intensified his raids on Ptolemaios’ position, keeping the latter’s troops on their toes and constantly responding to alarm after alarm from various ends of the valley. But what the allies hadn’t prepared as well for (Antigonos believed) was a descent from the sea. His fleet set sail from his ports in Ionia, making for the Kilikian coast to land an expeditionary force at Soli and have a secure base within the Kilikian mountain fastness. But the ships were spotted by those of the Rhodians, who were somewhat sympathetic to Ptolemaios (despite official neutrality with all of the sides in the civil war) and who alerted the Ptolemaic navy and that of Kleitos the White. Ptolemaios’ admiral Menelaos and Kleitos engaged Antigonos’ fleet off Cape Anemurion, and with their combined numbers were able to turn back the antilegitimists, though not causing many casualties among the enemy fleet. Following the Cape Anemurion defeat, Antigonos immediately launched a simultaneous attack down the Kyanas River and up the coast from Selinos-in-Pamphylia. As Ptolemaios moved the bulk of his forces to the western end of Kilikia to deal with this twin threat, Antigonos with the main army entered the nearly ungarrisoned egress route along the Pyramos River and marched rapidly towards Mopsuestia, dispatching a body of cavalry and infantry to guard the Syrian Gates against a Ptolemaic retreat.
Completely trapped, Ptolemaios withdrew his troops towards Soli, save for a large element of his cavalry, which stayed behind to harass Antigonos’ three pronged attack and slow his advance. Failing to take the option of simply attacking the weaker western forces that Antigonos had marshaled, Ptolemaios was content to simply save his own forces and withdraw from Kilikia entirely, using the navy to evacuate his troops first to Kypros and then to Phoenike, where he would be reforming a defensive line. About two thirds of his army managed to escape before Antigonos besieged Soli, and only five thousand of the original thirty thousand remained in the city when the Antigonid army broke in, too late to catch Ptolemaios. Still, the losses had been a serious blow to the allies, as had the ability to prevent the linkup of what was left of the army of Seleukos and that of Antigonos. Combined with the inconclusive actions in the West – where Polyperchon, though bedridden, repulsed the somewhat halfhearted efforts of Kassandros to breach the Peloponnesos – the overall outcome of the war as of midyear 315 was somewhat balanced, but marginally in favor of the legitimist forces, who had dealt a far deadlier blow to Seleukos than had been suffered by Ptolemaios.
This happy situation did not continue into an equivalent sequel. What had been presumed to be a decisive victory in Babylonia ended up being nothing of the sort, as Eumenes besieged Seleukos’ capital with inconclusive results. The victory of Orchoe was not followed up successfully, as Eumenes had been wounded in the final engagement with Peithon and the antilegitimist infantry and was thus unable to mount an immediate pursuit in stark contrast with the actions of Alexandros after Gaugamela. By the time the strategos autokrator emerged from his tent and was able to lead the army, Seleukos had reached the city and was fortifying his position feverishly, collecting what soldiers he could for use as garrison troops. Upon reaching Babylon itself, Eumenes declined to storm the city, even with the elite argyraspidai, because he was none too willing to enhance the glory of Antigenes, their commander, who had garnered significant accolades in the aftermath of Paraitakene and Orchoe. So while the situation in Babylonia stalemated over the summer, that in Syria and Phoenike moved rapidly towards a more final decision. Antigonos placed garrisons in the newly occupied Kilikia and then pushed south across the Orontes towards Ptolemaios’ coalescing army in Phoenike. The Egyptian satrap, fully aware of his inability to resist effectively, retired into Idumaia and Ioudaia while Antigonos besieged Tyre, a job made more difficult by his inability to control the seas. For the remainder of the year 315, the action slowed down; all of the key participants were unable to crack the defenses that stood before them.
Naturally the action turned to the diplomatic field in an effort to break the stalemate. The satrap Asandros of Karia was contacted by the allies in an effort to get him to bestir himself in opposition to Antigonos; the petition failed, though, as Asandros didn’t feel particularly threatened by the somewhat beleaguered (or at least insufficiently successful) antilegitimists, especially since their main army was in the Levant. The nominal ruler of Thraikia, Lysimachos, was similarly courted, as his position was ideal for striking into Kassandros’ and Antigonos’ unprotected rear areas; but Lysimachos had his own problems. He was theoretically the overlord of Seuthes, the paramount native Thraikian king in Odrysa, but when he made his way to his new governorship after Babylon eight years ago he had failed to militarily subdue the natives. A strange joint relationship had been worked out with Seuthes, with Lysimachos receiving nominal sovereignty but which amounted to essentially no control over Seuthes whatsoever. Not only was his command of the interior limited, but he had little actual sovereignty over the coasts as well; in particular, the colony of Kallatis remained as a strong mercantile polis, as did that of Odessos. Frequently these two cities would flaunt their ability to disregard his orders, and eventually Lysimachos gave up on trying to govern them directly. He was relatively powerless, and didn’t feel strong enough to go seeking a new power base in Asia Mikra. For their part, the antilegitimists focused on trying to break up Eumenes’ coalition. They had several things working against them, such as the fact that Antigonos had threatened to have several of them killed (Eudamos was among this number, so there was scant possibility of detaching Eumenes’ elephant train; Antigenes was also on Antigonos’ shortlist), but Peukestas was probably the most amenable to side-switching, and entered into discussions with emissaries from Seleukos and Antigonos secretly during the fall and early winter of 315. The elimination of Peithon had allowed one of the major stumbling blocks to an alliance between Peukestas and Antigonos, so in exchange for promises of his satrapy’s aggrandizement Peukestas undertook to divide himself from the army of Eumenes and enter into the lists on the antilegitimist side. Armed with the secret promise of division in the allied camp, Antigonos dispatched his nephew Polemaios to Babylonia and personally detached most of his own army to move south, leaving his son Demetrios in charge of the Tyre siege.
The operations in this second civil war were about to move into a new, decisive phase…
I blame it on my relatively dilatory production of this installment; hopefully it - the althistory, not the book - is enjoyable.Our Mutual Fiend.
“I fought the law and the law won.”
-the Clash, among others
Peithon was left with a significant portion of Antigonos’ original grand army when his patron fled to the west, partly as a sop to make sure that he remained reasonably loyal and partly so that Eumenes and the satrapal coalition would be significantly delayed in reforming their army into an effective fighting force. Forty of the elephants, for example, were left behind, partly due to the issues associated with victualling the enormous beasts on the march in Mesopotamia but also as a further bribe to Peithon. The fact of the matter was, though, that the best the satrap could do was delay. Without the Antigonid main army to back him up, he was well and truly screwed. His only hope lay in maneuver, and at this he made a reasonably good start. Eumenes’ initial attempts to marshal his forces on the plain of Gabiene were briefly stymied and frustrated by Peithon’s raids, forcing them to travel circuitous routes and retarding their progress out of the mountains. Things came to a head when Peithon happened upon Eudamos’ elephant train and immediately attacked. Four of the elephants were slain before an adequate force of cavalry arrived on the scene to protect the precious animals.
Eumenes had lost four months, first hiding from Antigonos and then outmaneuvering Peithon in collecting his forces. But time was on his side, now that Eurydike had been killed, so he didn’t need to move rapidly to make capital off of Peithon’s and the Antigonid difficulties. Following the union of forces in May, Eumenes and Peukestas marched northward to Ekbatana, Peithon’s capital, from which they could likely dictate terms to the weakened satrap. Peithon, for his part, began a desperate recruitment drive and gathered additional forces, but still didn’t have enough men to match the 40,000 soldiers Eumenes and the coalition could throw into the fray. Instead of making a stand for Ekbatana and doing exactly what Antigonos would have wanted him to do, the somatophylax decided that discretion was the better part of valor, in which better part he saved his life, departing from Media as summer wore on and the coalition army neared his capital. Ekbatana retained a citadel garrison (performing the function the satrap himself was intended to), but on the whole there wasn’t much of an impediment to Eumenes’ seizure of Media. The garrison capitulated within days, as it happened, so Peithon hadn’t managed to buy himself much of a respite.
Immediately, though, dissension erupted in the allied camp. Persia had been wholly vacated by Antigonos and his allies, and without a common enemy, Peukestas and Eumenes were at loggerheads. The issue of the Median satrapy, and who would administrate it, was the pretext for a series of arguments that struck at the very necessity of the coalition itself. Peukestas threatened to go his own way, withdrawing his commitment from Eumenes’ army, and several other satraps threatened to do so if they were insufficiently rewarded. At the same time, though, any concerted action against Eumenes was made impossible, because none of the satraps wished to see their neighbors aggrandized in any significant way. Eumenes was able to seize on this and enact a provisional solution. The satrapy of Media would be held in trust by one of Eumenes’ associates, Hieronymos of Kardia, but it would be somewhat reduced in size, so as to not become so much of a threat as Peithon’s Media had been. Outlying slices of territory were awarded to Media’s neighbors, though it was a pittance to be sure. Essentially an attempt at papering over the differences within the eastern satrapy coalition, the Ekbatana convention was a stopgap measure, an attempt to allow the alliance to at least last long enough to restore the remaining king and his regents Polyperchon and Olympias to preeminence and for a more lasting solution, like Triparadeisos had been intended, to be worked out.
Besides, Eumenes had other objectives for the allies to pursue. First and foremost among these was Susiana. Evacuated in the previous year, Susa, home to one of the great royal treasuries, had been occupied by Seleukos following a brief siege of the token garrison in the citadel. The critical sums there needed to be recovered, and at once; the money would provide a salve for the alliance, which had been fortified by the cash that had been withdrawn the previous year. After the Ekbatana episode, the allies were somewhat slow to move, but before summer they had reached Susiana. Seleukos, who was in the unenviable position that Peithon had been in not long before, now did the reverse of Eumenes’ operation the year prior and withdrew to the west while leaving a garrison in the Susa citadel, which was cracked after a siege of nearly a month. For the rest of the summer, the allied army rested in Susiana, whilst Seleukos and Peithon in Babylonia worked to prepare defenses against their onslaught and raise more soldiers. Seleukos, for his part, knew that he was now no longer trustworthy and couldn’t switch sides as he had the previous summer, and was stuck with the Antigonids. Essentially his only hope was to make an invasion of Babylonia too costly for the satrapal coalition to deal with, thus hopefully leading to internal problems and a refocusing of the satraps’ aggression in Eumenes’ direction. He had the advantage in many ways: this was his home ground, and he had the support of the populace, due to many of the same things Peukestas had done in Persis. He had the Mesopotamian river system, which had nearly stymied Eumenes during his anabasis of the previous campaign. And he had the aforementioned political wedge of the alliance itself, even though it had been somewhat fixed up by the disbursement of monies from the Susa treasury.
Eumenes’ goal, then, was to secure a lodgement in Babylonia before the winter hit, and then to press his advantage into Seleukos’ defeat the following year. Striking into Charakene, he expelled Seleukos’ general Athenaios from Charax Alexandria and occupied the city before the authorities in Babylon could respond effectively. While Eumenes fortified Charax, Seleukos and Peithon led an armament out of Babylon roughly equal in numbers to the allied forces but not nearly as well trained, especially absent the elephant corps and the elite argyraspidai. Engagement was not their goal, though; instead, Seleukos’ army devastated the land north of Charakene and prevented Eumenes from reasonably expecting to advance northward along the Euphrates. The drawback to that plan, though, was the loss of some of Seleukos’ popular support. Ruining the land of his subjects right before harvest time wasn’t particularly endearing to a lot of people, and it was due to this that Eumenes was able to secure boats in sufficient numbers to allow him to cross the rivers with most of his army, leaving behind a token force under Kelbanos, another close adherent of Eumenes (Hieronymos was still in Media seeing to the administration of that district) to guard Charakene and tie down a few of Seleukos’ garrisons.
This success, though, was partially undone by events further west. Word only reached Babylonia of the course of the war in Greece at least a month after the fact, having only a delayed effect on operations. As it happened, in the spring of 316, Kassandros had begun a resurgence in Greece. Taking shreds of his old army and those of the army of Philippos and Eurydike, he refounded Thebai as a base and then struck north into Thessalia. Reaching Pydna, Kassandros engaged Olympias’ army and in an assault crossing of the Elpeus River smashed it badly. With Polyperchon, the boy-king Alexandros, and fragments of the remaining army, Olympias vacated Makedonia by sea (using the still-extant fleet of Kleitos the White, former admiral of Arrhidaios, satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia) and fled first to the Peloponnesos, which Polyperchon fortified. The king and his grandmother continued to Kypros, which was easily seized from Ptolemaic control. But the main effect was thus: Kassandros had control of Pella and Aigai, the city of the kings and their tomb, and the symbolic effect was tremendous. While he was unable to deal a death-blow to the legitimist forces in the west, failing to crack the Isthmus after being given a bloody nose by Polyperchon at Megara, Kassandros’ grip on his army was solidified and he claimed the right to form a regency council due to the death of the ‘rightful’ king Philippos III, with himself obviously at its head and other cronies of Antigonos involved as well.
This news shook up the structures of both sides as much as Olympias’ original victory over Philippos and Eurydike had. Although Eumenes and the legitimist satrapal coalition was still preeminent east of the Tigris, their cause had been nearly dismantled in the West. Antigonos and his cohorts were clearly on the rise. The immediately threatened one among them was Ptolemaios, who had failed to support Antigonos effectively after the Syrian episode in 318. The satrap in Alexandria had an obvious intuition that he was going to be next, after Antigonos and his allies turned against Eumenes and the satraps once more. And Syria, Ptolemaios’ coveted satrapy that he’d occupied once more in the aftermath of Eumenes’ upcountry march, was also a clear target of Antigonos, who’d want it for a buffer zone at the very least…and possibly a conquest of Egypt in the future. So during the autumn and winter of 316, Ptolemaios began to prepare for a real war, as opposed to the false commitment he had given to Antigonos; he was confronted by emissaries of Antigonos over Kypros, which (Antigonos accused) had been simply given away by Ptolemaic forces, an action which was tantamount to aiding the fugitives. While it hadn’t been true originally, that rapidly became the case, as the Egyptian satrap covertly turned to the legitimist camp and negotiated to support Polyperchon and Olympias. The Ptolemaic navy bolstered Kleitos the White’s forces, and Egyptian money was sent to the Peloponnesos and Kypros.
Of course, to secure the monies necessary for these operations, Ptolemaios needed a quick influx of cash, and he spied an opportune nearby target: the Nabataian Arabs, living just to the east of the Sinai around Petra. As it happened, the Nabataians had a quadrennial festival, during which they would make a difficult journey into rough ground en masse, leaving many of their possessions behind. Ptolemaios thus ordered one of his generals, Pleistarchos, to plan and carry out a raid on these possessions and then escape back to Idumaia, bolstering the Ptolemaic war chest by a significant amount. Pleistarchos managed to force-march the 120 miles inland from the coast in three days and seize the valuables with no contest from the Nabataians. But while his exhausted troops were on the return journey, the Nabataians returned to their encampment and, infuriated by the theft of their valuables, set upon Pleistarchos with such alacrity that his tired troops were totally unprepared and were virtually annihilated, with their prize returning to the Nabataians. This utter failure tightened the Egyptians exchequer and, to an extent (albeit a small one) the manpower reserves, decreasing the forces available in Syria in 315 for the next year’s campaigning.
In the aftermath of the failed raid on the Nabataians, the Ptolemaic forces in Syria were somewhat diminished compared to their opponents, Antigonos’ army, which had barely been engaged for most of the previous year. Ptolemaios had several advantages compared to his more numerous opponents, though. He had an excellent position in northern Syria at Beroia, near the critical Kilikian treasury, whereas his opponent had been forced to encamp on the road from his capital at Kelenai. The plan was to march rapidly through the Amanos Mountains to Kyinda, where he would be able to secure the treasury and refill his depleted coffers. This position would also help him sever the connection between Antigonos and his allies in Babylonia, preventing Eumenes from being rapidly destroyed by the conjunction of Antigonos and Seleukos. Kassandros would be distracted by Polyperchon, bolstered with copious amounts of naval support. The problem was that the legitimists were still horrendously outnumbered. Their strongest army was in Mesopotamia, and it was only numerically equal to its enemy, which was one of the smallest of the forces available to Antigonos and his allies. Ptolemaios, even with the advantage of the Kyinda treasury and the Kilikian mountain position, would be hard pressed to hold off the extremely large Antigonid army. An Alexandros could do it…but Ptolemaios, in all probability, was no Alexandros.
That was the front that first exploded into action in 315, with Ptolemaios beginning his move even during the last weeks of winter to try to gain a further time advantage on the Antigonids (as it happened, Antigonos was able to start moving pretty early as well, so the advantage was slim if anything). Kyinda was occupied, and the Antigonid garrison chased out; with the added stamp of royal legitimacy, Ptolemaios drew on the funds held within the treasury and recruited more troops rapidly, while fortifying the major passes into Kilikia. With the last minute recruiting, Ptolemaios’ army was now nearly two-thirds the size of Antigonos’, though of somewhat inferior quality. Upon reaching the Kilikian passes, Antigonos began to maneuver and feint in an attempt to uncover a weakness in Ptolemaios’ defense.
Eumenes, in the east, believed it imperative to unite his forces with those of Ptolemaios to help the alliance stand something of a chance, and thus opened his campaign to secure Babylon and drive out Seleukos relatively early as well. Some of the land was devastated, but it had been relatively ineffective, and Eumenes’ cavalry had been active over the wintertime (which used up more supplies, but Charakene was secure and could be drawn upon) protecting some stores of grain. As it would happen, these depredations by the defenders did not do much for their popular support, shockingly enough. And Seleukos and Peithon did not rate their chances of standing up to a siege for long, especially with the argyraspidai on Eumenes’ side – the same argyraspidai that had stormed countless fortresses in Central Asia during Alexandros’ epic campaign of ten years ago. So Seleukos and his ally led nearly forty thousand men – 6,400 cavalry, 32,000 infantry, and thirty-eight elephants (less the two beasts that had perished in the interval since Antigonos’ departure from the Gabiene region) – south along the Euphrates River. Near the ruined city of Orchoe, their army and that of Eumenes clashed in an epic contest as great as those of Pydna and Paraitakene in the previous years.
With flanks resting on the river, both sides were able to deploy cavalry to the other wing of their army. Eumenes’ clear superiority in elephants normally would have induced him to have them in front of his phalangitai, but judging by the performance of his soldiers at Paraitakene, he wouldn’t need to bother; the argyraspidai would be able to start a chain reaction and roll up the entire enemy syntagma as per usual. Instead, he added an elephant contingent to his right wing, where his cavalry had been massed, and then placed the remainder of the elephants – some seventy beasts – in a reserve under the control of one Ceteus, a prince of the Indos valley and a former vassal of Porus. Eumenes believed that his argyraspidai could hamstring the enemy elephants were they to appear before the enemy infantry, as they had done at the Hydaspes; if the enemy elephants appeared on the enemy left wing with their cavalry, Eumenes’ beasts were sure to be able to defeat them. Eudamos commanded the elephants on the right wing and Eumenes himself led the cavalry, with his agema at the forefront. Antigenes, the solid lineman, was in charge of the argyraspidai at the right wing of the syntagma, which was as usual echeloned backwards to the left rear, with progressively weaker units being placed further left. The fully left wing was led by Peukestas once more, who also had his personal agema and a small force of light cavalry to guard against a sneak attack by enemy horse riding along the river. Opposite them, Seleukos led the cavalry contingent on the antilegitimists’ left wing, with Peithon in command of the infantry on that wing. The elephants were placed in front of the phalanx to try to guard against the argyraspidai as best they could and perhaps distract them from the phalanx battle that would be going on at the same time; Seleukos, as a former commander of the argyraspidai, knew that he would need all possible advantages to defeat his old rankers. To prevent the infantry from engaging the argyraspidai too quickly, Seleukos’ syntagma was echeloned in parallel with that of Eumenes.
The battle opened with the usual exchange by the sphendonetai, akontistai, and other elements of the psiloi in the middle of the field between the two infantry masses. While the infantry were thus occupied, the cavalry action commenced. Eumenes had a clear inferiority in horse, but he had elephants to back him up. Seleukos’ heavy cavalry, including his own personal agema, failed to approach the massive beasts, so instead the antilegitimist light horsemen, the Saka and Daha riders, opened up with volleys of arrows, targeting the mahouts and the sensitive spots on the elephants’ bodies with some success. Eumenes, however, had had the opportunity to secure better missile cavalry, especially since he held the allegiance of the satraps of Sogdiane, Baktria, and Margiana; he had Daha and Saka too, and elements of Massagetai cavalry to boot. Using these light cavalry to draw the enemy missile horsemen away from the fight, his elephants once more bore down on Seleukos’ agema and heavy horse. A brief engagement followed before the antilegitimists could extricate themselves and flee towards Babylon, to the north.
This cavalry fight finished up just as the light infantry battle was ended. Noting the lack of Seleukos’ cavalry on the enemy right wing, Peukestas charged across the syntagma’s front line and aided the psiloi in chasing off their opposite numbers on Seleukos’ side. The missile infantry then bombarded Peithon’s syntagma at their leisure while the phalangitai closed in. Thus Peithon’s infantry were already weakened from missile fire before they were engaged by the magnificent argyraspidai, and once more the elite world-conquerors ran over their opponents, utterly routing the enemy phalangitai and shattering Peithon’s forces. The erstwhile satrap of Media was killed in the battle, too; Eumenes, leading the cavalry on a sweep down the flank of the antilegitimist infantry, encountered his enemy, and one of the members of his agema dispatched the former somatophylax. Of the nearly forty thousand soldiers Seleukos had led to the field, some fifteen thousand were lost as either prisoners or dead, with most of the remainder scattered and unavailable to Seleukos, who had managed to reach Babylon safely within days of the battle.
News of the tremendous defeat at Orchoe revolutionized proceedings in Kilikia. It became far more critical for Ptolemaios to be finished off to prevent the union of the two armies, as far off as that may have seemed in the spring of 315. Antigonos intensified his raids on Ptolemaios’ position, keeping the latter’s troops on their toes and constantly responding to alarm after alarm from various ends of the valley. But what the allies hadn’t prepared as well for (Antigonos believed) was a descent from the sea. His fleet set sail from his ports in Ionia, making for the Kilikian coast to land an expeditionary force at Soli and have a secure base within the Kilikian mountain fastness. But the ships were spotted by those of the Rhodians, who were somewhat sympathetic to Ptolemaios (despite official neutrality with all of the sides in the civil war) and who alerted the Ptolemaic navy and that of Kleitos the White. Ptolemaios’ admiral Menelaos and Kleitos engaged Antigonos’ fleet off Cape Anemurion, and with their combined numbers were able to turn back the antilegitimists, though not causing many casualties among the enemy fleet. Following the Cape Anemurion defeat, Antigonos immediately launched a simultaneous attack down the Kyanas River and up the coast from Selinos-in-Pamphylia. As Ptolemaios moved the bulk of his forces to the western end of Kilikia to deal with this twin threat, Antigonos with the main army entered the nearly ungarrisoned egress route along the Pyramos River and marched rapidly towards Mopsuestia, dispatching a body of cavalry and infantry to guard the Syrian Gates against a Ptolemaic retreat.
Completely trapped, Ptolemaios withdrew his troops towards Soli, save for a large element of his cavalry, which stayed behind to harass Antigonos’ three pronged attack and slow his advance. Failing to take the option of simply attacking the weaker western forces that Antigonos had marshaled, Ptolemaios was content to simply save his own forces and withdraw from Kilikia entirely, using the navy to evacuate his troops first to Kypros and then to Phoenike, where he would be reforming a defensive line. About two thirds of his army managed to escape before Antigonos besieged Soli, and only five thousand of the original thirty thousand remained in the city when the Antigonid army broke in, too late to catch Ptolemaios. Still, the losses had been a serious blow to the allies, as had the ability to prevent the linkup of what was left of the army of Seleukos and that of Antigonos. Combined with the inconclusive actions in the West – where Polyperchon, though bedridden, repulsed the somewhat halfhearted efforts of Kassandros to breach the Peloponnesos – the overall outcome of the war as of midyear 315 was somewhat balanced, but marginally in favor of the legitimist forces, who had dealt a far deadlier blow to Seleukos than had been suffered by Ptolemaios.
This happy situation did not continue into an equivalent sequel. What had been presumed to be a decisive victory in Babylonia ended up being nothing of the sort, as Eumenes besieged Seleukos’ capital with inconclusive results. The victory of Orchoe was not followed up successfully, as Eumenes had been wounded in the final engagement with Peithon and the antilegitimist infantry and was thus unable to mount an immediate pursuit in stark contrast with the actions of Alexandros after Gaugamela. By the time the strategos autokrator emerged from his tent and was able to lead the army, Seleukos had reached the city and was fortifying his position feverishly, collecting what soldiers he could for use as garrison troops. Upon reaching Babylon itself, Eumenes declined to storm the city, even with the elite argyraspidai, because he was none too willing to enhance the glory of Antigenes, their commander, who had garnered significant accolades in the aftermath of Paraitakene and Orchoe. So while the situation in Babylonia stalemated over the summer, that in Syria and Phoenike moved rapidly towards a more final decision. Antigonos placed garrisons in the newly occupied Kilikia and then pushed south across the Orontes towards Ptolemaios’ coalescing army in Phoenike. The Egyptian satrap, fully aware of his inability to resist effectively, retired into Idumaia and Ioudaia while Antigonos besieged Tyre, a job made more difficult by his inability to control the seas. For the remainder of the year 315, the action slowed down; all of the key participants were unable to crack the defenses that stood before them.
Naturally the action turned to the diplomatic field in an effort to break the stalemate. The satrap Asandros of Karia was contacted by the allies in an effort to get him to bestir himself in opposition to Antigonos; the petition failed, though, as Asandros didn’t feel particularly threatened by the somewhat beleaguered (or at least insufficiently successful) antilegitimists, especially since their main army was in the Levant. The nominal ruler of Thraikia, Lysimachos, was similarly courted, as his position was ideal for striking into Kassandros’ and Antigonos’ unprotected rear areas; but Lysimachos had his own problems. He was theoretically the overlord of Seuthes, the paramount native Thraikian king in Odrysa, but when he made his way to his new governorship after Babylon eight years ago he had failed to militarily subdue the natives. A strange joint relationship had been worked out with Seuthes, with Lysimachos receiving nominal sovereignty but which amounted to essentially no control over Seuthes whatsoever. Not only was his command of the interior limited, but he had little actual sovereignty over the coasts as well; in particular, the colony of Kallatis remained as a strong mercantile polis, as did that of Odessos. Frequently these two cities would flaunt their ability to disregard his orders, and eventually Lysimachos gave up on trying to govern them directly. He was relatively powerless, and didn’t feel strong enough to go seeking a new power base in Asia Mikra. For their part, the antilegitimists focused on trying to break up Eumenes’ coalition. They had several things working against them, such as the fact that Antigonos had threatened to have several of them killed (Eudamos was among this number, so there was scant possibility of detaching Eumenes’ elephant train; Antigenes was also on Antigonos’ shortlist), but Peukestas was probably the most amenable to side-switching, and entered into discussions with emissaries from Seleukos and Antigonos secretly during the fall and early winter of 315. The elimination of Peithon had allowed one of the major stumbling blocks to an alliance between Peukestas and Antigonos, so in exchange for promises of his satrapy’s aggrandizement Peukestas undertook to divide himself from the army of Eumenes and enter into the lists on the antilegitimist side. Armed with the secret promise of division in the allied camp, Antigonos dispatched his nephew Polemaios to Babylonia and personally detached most of his own army to move south, leaving his son Demetrios in charge of the Tyre siege.
The operations in this second civil war were about to move into a new, decisive phase…
Sledgehammer.
“Is anybody alive in here?”
-Miss Gradenko, the Police
Instead of a more auspicious incident, the year of 314 began with a confusing struggle in the dark. Alerted to the approach of Polemaios and his relief force, Eumenes had begun to prepare for an assault on the walls, finally using the dreaded argyraspidai. To forestall this, Peukestas decided to launch his own plans with an assassination attempt on Eumenes and Antigenes. But the attack failed to come off; Eumenes killed the assassins dispatched against him personally, and the argyraspidai rallied to save their commander. What ensued was a totally undirected battle in the middle of the allied siege lines at the middle of the night, with Peukestas’ troops attempting to incite violence between the allies in the confusion. Often likened to the fight on the Epipolai nearly a hundred years before, the battle of the camp was a close-ran engagement, with the advantage resting in Peukestas’ hands much of the time, but when the argyraspidai joined the melee, it was only a matter of time before Peukestas’ defeat. The Persian satrap extricated his own personal agema with some difficulty, as well as other elements of his cavalry, but the infantry were either slain or co-opted into Eumenes’ army. Peukestas fled not to the antilegitimist armies, but to his home satrapy in Persis to firm up his personal control over his land and possibly make trouble for Eumenes.
Seleukos had failed to sally against Eumenes’ army during the epic fight that night, partly because he wasn’t really aware of the goings-on but also partly because of his remaining antipathy to his former neighbor and a vague wish to see bad things done to him. Despite the lack of aid given to Peukestas, though, good things came of the midnight battle. Eumenes’ army had been reduced, and the relieving forces under Polemaios would pose him a serious threat. Too, Peukestas could raise serious problems to the east. So the command decision was made to withdraw from the siege of Babylon. Eumenes had little choice; the remaining satraps in his coalition, though thinned by intrigues, combat deaths, and the like, still held control of a significant portion of the military, and besides, if he lost Susa to Peukestas then the purse-strings would be threatened, and there was no guarantee of keeping the coalition together then. Leaving a garrison in Charakene under Kelbanos, Eumenes retired across the Zagros within a few weeks in pursuit of Peukestas, who had already begun to raise a fresh army from his satrapy. After making sure Susa was secured, Eumenes plunged into Persis, finally bringing Peukestas to bay at the ruins of Pasargadai, fighting a battle within sight of the Great Tomb of Kurush Wuzurg. Peukestas was killed and his nascent army eliminated, securing Eumenes’ rear; in the interval, though, Seleukos and Polemaios had pushed into Charakene, forcing Kelbanos to move back to Susiana, fearful of any engagement that might further reduce the legitimists’ armies.
Back in Syria-Koile, Antigonos’ new armament had brushed aside the Ptolemaic garrison at Damaskos and plunged into northern Ioudaia. Offering scant resistance, Ptolemaios fell back first to Panion and then to the gates of Egypt in Idumaia. Antigonos advanced more slowly, making sure to secure his newly spear-won lands with garrisons. Inconclusive maneuvering followed, during which Antigonos forced Ptolemaios towards the coast; finally, the two armies engaged at Raphia. Antigonos’ advantage in elephants proved decisive at the battle, countering Ptolemaios’ advantage of a newly recruited taxis of Ioudaioi; Ptolemaios could come up with no effective counter to the beasts and his army was wrecked, forcing him to flee to Egypt. Antigonos, on the other hand, decided not to press on further. Several things militated against it: the defenses of Pelousion and the fate of Antipatros, for one. Antigonos was not sure at all that he could crack the Nile Delta, especially given the situation in flux to the east. Allied naval power would also doubtless make life difficult for him. The siege of Tyre was still undecided, and his supply lines were pretty bad. So instead the Monophthalmos settled for constant pressure on the Egyptians, by maintaining a significant force in the area of Raphia under the command of one Nikanor, which was supposed to bar the way into Ioudaia and to raid Egypt in hopes of preventing Ptolemaios from raising another armament. Antigonos himself returned to the north, first to supervise further siege actions at Tyre by his son Demetrios, then to Kilikia to supervise the beginning of the construction of a new fleet to attempt to counter those of the allies.
In the western theater, Kassandros decided to lick his wounds, as the constant presence of the allied navy militated strongly against an attempt to break into the Peloponnesos still. The constant failure was undermining his legitimacy at Pella – where the courtiers were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with his autocracy, preferring a boy-king and Regent they could attempt to manipulate – and with his own army, which was getting restive. In an attempt to calm the masses, Kassandros opened a campaign against the Aitolians in the early summer, seeking to finish the job that had been abandoned after the Lamian war. At Kallion, near Mount Oeta, the Makedonian troops engaged an Aitolian force nearly equal to them in numbers and were surprisingly defeated, losing some six thousand casualties. Immediately, there was a revolt in Athenai against the newly-established Demetrios Phalereus, the creature of Kassandros; Polyperchon remained too infirm to take the field, but while he was at Korinthos his son Alexandros marched on Athenai, aided the revolters in pushing out Demetrios, and then moved northwards into Boiotia, symbolically redemolishing Kassandros’ refounded Thebai along the way. Kassandros, with a vastly decreased army and a brewing plot at Pella, decided to make tracks to the north, declining to hold Thermopylai and instead fortifying the vale of Tempe, along the way making a brief trip to Pella to drown the court in the blood of those he suspected of plotting against him.
Alexandros, however, would have been foolish to stop now. Remaining in constant contact with further intriguers in the capital, he made representations to rightful king of the Molossians and Epirotes, Aiakides, who had been chased from his throne after supporting Olympias a few years prior. With aid from the allies, especially an element of the legitimist fleet, Aiakides marched into Epeiros and routed Philippos, Kassandros’ brother, who had been ordered to govern over those lands. The rethroned king then spent some two months making sure of his kingdom before going once more on the offensive, moving across the Aous into western Makedonia. Kassandros was forced to abandon the Tempe position and retreat to the capital, leaving a small garrison at Pydna to delay Alexandros. Thereupon he struck west, trying to defeat Aiakides before the legitimists could link up; while moving along the Haliakmon towards the confrontation, though, he was assassinated by one of his generals in concert with a plot back in Pella, and combined with the traitorous Pydna garrison this allowed the legitimists to reoccupy the ancient seat of Makedonian power and recall Olympias and the young Alexandros to home. This disastrous reversal’s sequel was not nearly so bad for Antigonos, however. In Babylonia and Elymais, Eumenes was stuck in a war of maneuver with Polemaios and Seleukos, who ably managed to prevent the master warrior from reentering Charakene or besieging Babylon. Inconclusive skirmishes were the sole result, with the antilegitimists extremely worried about the possibility of an actual engagement with the fabled argyraspidai. Eumenes was able to successfully thwart new intrigues against his command, though.
The next year, things got worse for Antigonos. In Egypt, Nikanor was bribed away from his service by Ptolemaios, who took control of the army at Raphia and then had the traitorous general killed lest he switch sides again at a less opportune moment. Moving northward, Ptolemaios successfully reclaimed Ioudaia and southern Syria-Koile, though he was held up by a siege of Damaskos that prevented him from interfering with Demetrios at Tyre. For his part, Demetrios earned a new epithet by successfully storming the city, realizing that he was short of time as Ptolemaios approached; the brilliant conclusion to the siege, worthy of an Alexandros, induced his contemporaries to label him Poliorketes, the Breaker of Cities. With a newly freed-up army, Demetrios marched to relieve Damaskos and managed to forced Ptolemaios to draw off back south into Ioudaia; his army remained far to small to advance, though, so Demetrios stayed put in Syria-Koile and awaited further orders or reinforcements from his father as summer approached.
313 saw the final pacification of Makedonia and Hellas proper and the preparation of an expedition to send against Antigonos’ possessions in Asia Mikra. To counter that, Antigonos had been supervising the construction of a fleet himself in Kilikia; he ordered Demetrios to take command of it on its maiden voyage in the fall of 313 as Antigonos himself returned to the Syrian army, bringing reinforcements from Kelenai. Demetrios acquitted himself brilliantly with the navy, as well, smashing a Ptolemaic armada led by Ptolemaios’ brother Menelaos at the Battle of Paphos, allowing him to land an expeditionary force on Kypros and pacify it. This success was matched by the only success Antigonid generals could expect these days, that is to say inconclusive results by the impressive forces marshaling against them. In Syria Antigonos himself pushed south and besieged Hierosolyma, what the Ioudaioi called ‘Yerushalayim’, an action relatively uncontested by Ptolemaios, whose inferior army fell back to Idumaia. The eastern front saw Eumenes breach the perimeter into Charakene successfully, but fail to besiege Charax itself due to an adept threat made by Seleukos against his lines of supply. Preventing the army with the argyraspidai from taking the field was a victory all by itself.
War exhaustion was beginning to set in by 312. Antigonos was clearly able to prevent Ptolemaios from making significant inroads in the south, and a deadlock continued in the east. Eumenes had to deal with a new problem, further to his rear, that is to say that invasion of a new Indic threat. The man called ‘Sandrokottos’ by the Greeks, Chandragupta by the Indians over whom he ruled in the Mauryan Empire, had attacked the lands of Eudamos and his allies the Kathaians, denuded by the needs of Eumenes’ army the Zagros. The Indos valley was overrun nearly as far as Paropamisdai and Arachosia during the past few years, and Eumenes’ allies suggested that they might return home to retake their lands instead of continue to serve uselessly in the war of maneuver. And Antigonos himself was beginning to weary of keeping so many men in the field and was unable to break the deadlock himself, with Eumenes’ unbeaten army to the east, the fortifications at Pelousion to the south, and the inaccessible lands of Hellas to the west. But a peace of exhaustion was unthinkable to Olympias, and Eumenes was against it as well; recognizance of Antigonos’ unassailable position would break apart the Empire. Clearly this was unacceptable, so Alexandros prepared to cross the Aigion and take the fight to Antigonos’ heartland in Asia Mikra.
What undid this plan was the naval battle at Skyros. Demetrios Poliorketes, with the same armada that had helped him to secure Kypros, made his way to the Aigion in preparation for the coming invasion, and met the allied fleet under the command of one Alketas off Skyros. Despite somewhat inferior numbers, Demetrios’ superior marines carried the day, storming the ships of the enemy fleet and turning some of them against their original owners. Alketas was killed in single combat with Demetrios aboard his flagship, and the remainder of the allied armada was wiped out. With command of the Aigion, Demetrios launched raids against the legitimist holdings in Hellas and supported an attempt by Alketas II, brother of Aiakides, to claim the Epirote throne, which was successful. The defeat at Skyros had more momentous consequences than ensuring the failure of Antigonos’ many enemies to annihilate his empire, though. Court intrigues at Pella stepped up again, angered over the continuing war; these were facilitated by the death of Olympias of old age early in the year and the continuing ailment of the other Regent, Polyperchon. A coup was launched by one Killes, a disaffected noble, and Alexandros ordered that elements of the army be brought in to slaughter the would-be conspirators. In the confusing battle that ensued in Pella, the boy-king Alexandros IV was killed, either by accident or by the design of a particularly incensed nobleman. Alexandros recaptured the city and crushed the uprising, but the last of the Argeades was dead.
Once the news finally disseminated among the rest of the empire, Antigonos proposed a universal truce and a meeting at Kelenai to discuss the future state of the empire. Due to his recent victories by force of arms, none had the force to desire it done differently. Eumenes – leaving his friend Hieronymos in command of the army – as well as Ptolemaios, Alexandros, and Seleukos all attended, as well as several of the minor satraps. The peace agreement that would be hammered out by them was later referred to as the peace of the Dynasts, for it was there that the fiction of empire was dismantled and a new order hashed out. Antigonos, with his son Demetrios, was confirmed in his control of Asia Mikra and Syria, along with Kypros. He had weathered the blows of the others with aplomb and skill, scoring several victories later in the war. Babylonia and Mesopotamia were confirmed in Seleukos’ control, too; even if he had required Antigonos’ help, he had managed to successfully repulse the invasions of his territory and had shown himself an excellent operational commander later in the war. Ptolemaios kept Egypt, and, surprisingly enough, Ioudaia, though it had been mostly conquered by Antigonos anyway. This decision, along with that to allow Seleukos self-control as opposed to Antigonid absorption, was what allayed many fears among the others of Antigonos’ alleged wishes for a universal monarchy with himself at its head. Alexandros claimed the formal title of Regent in Makedonia, along with his father, with Herakles, the illegitimate son of Alexandros Megas by Stateira, as the formal king. Alexandros also undertook to aid the Thraikian satrap, Lysimachos, against his wayward subjects, the Odrysans, Triballians, and the poleis of Kallatis and Odessos. Alketas II remained king of Epeiros, though Pyrrhos, the son of Aiakides and the legitimate heir, remained out of his reach in Illyria under the guardianship of the king there, Glaukias. Eumenes, perhaps the most staunch of the legitimists, who had weathered great trials in order to see Alexandros reach his majority, was confirmed in control of Media, Persis, Susiana, and the Eastern satrapies. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, Eumenes’ friends were in important positions throughout the region. Hieronymos in particular was a key ally of his, in control of the satrapy of Media. Secondly, he did have de facto control over those lands, and it would have made no sense to place another man over his head. And finally, Eumenes himself had slowly grown to adopt the affectations of kingship. Though he had originally shown no inclination towards assuming the throne himself, he had used the personal tent of Alexandros Megas throughout the campaign, affected Eastern dress for some time – thus endearing himself somewhat to his subjects – and was not only an excellent political animal but a superb general as well. So with some reluctance, at the age of fifty, he adopted, like Antigonos, Seleukos, and Ptolemaios, the title of basileus and the affectations thereof.
With the Peace of the Dynasts in 312, the split in the empire that Alexandros Megas had won became final. The king in Pella now failed to rule anything but Greece even in name. What remained to be seen was if the arrangements of these diadochoi, the successors of Alexandros, would remain in place for very long, or if the agreement at Kelenai would go the way of those of Babylon and Triparadeisos.
“Is anybody alive in here?”
-Miss Gradenko, the Police
Instead of a more auspicious incident, the year of 314 began with a confusing struggle in the dark. Alerted to the approach of Polemaios and his relief force, Eumenes had begun to prepare for an assault on the walls, finally using the dreaded argyraspidai. To forestall this, Peukestas decided to launch his own plans with an assassination attempt on Eumenes and Antigenes. But the attack failed to come off; Eumenes killed the assassins dispatched against him personally, and the argyraspidai rallied to save their commander. What ensued was a totally undirected battle in the middle of the allied siege lines at the middle of the night, with Peukestas’ troops attempting to incite violence between the allies in the confusion. Often likened to the fight on the Epipolai nearly a hundred years before, the battle of the camp was a close-ran engagement, with the advantage resting in Peukestas’ hands much of the time, but when the argyraspidai joined the melee, it was only a matter of time before Peukestas’ defeat. The Persian satrap extricated his own personal agema with some difficulty, as well as other elements of his cavalry, but the infantry were either slain or co-opted into Eumenes’ army. Peukestas fled not to the antilegitimist armies, but to his home satrapy in Persis to firm up his personal control over his land and possibly make trouble for Eumenes.
Seleukos had failed to sally against Eumenes’ army during the epic fight that night, partly because he wasn’t really aware of the goings-on but also partly because of his remaining antipathy to his former neighbor and a vague wish to see bad things done to him. Despite the lack of aid given to Peukestas, though, good things came of the midnight battle. Eumenes’ army had been reduced, and the relieving forces under Polemaios would pose him a serious threat. Too, Peukestas could raise serious problems to the east. So the command decision was made to withdraw from the siege of Babylon. Eumenes had little choice; the remaining satraps in his coalition, though thinned by intrigues, combat deaths, and the like, still held control of a significant portion of the military, and besides, if he lost Susa to Peukestas then the purse-strings would be threatened, and there was no guarantee of keeping the coalition together then. Leaving a garrison in Charakene under Kelbanos, Eumenes retired across the Zagros within a few weeks in pursuit of Peukestas, who had already begun to raise a fresh army from his satrapy. After making sure Susa was secured, Eumenes plunged into Persis, finally bringing Peukestas to bay at the ruins of Pasargadai, fighting a battle within sight of the Great Tomb of Kurush Wuzurg. Peukestas was killed and his nascent army eliminated, securing Eumenes’ rear; in the interval, though, Seleukos and Polemaios had pushed into Charakene, forcing Kelbanos to move back to Susiana, fearful of any engagement that might further reduce the legitimists’ armies.
Back in Syria-Koile, Antigonos’ new armament had brushed aside the Ptolemaic garrison at Damaskos and plunged into northern Ioudaia. Offering scant resistance, Ptolemaios fell back first to Panion and then to the gates of Egypt in Idumaia. Antigonos advanced more slowly, making sure to secure his newly spear-won lands with garrisons. Inconclusive maneuvering followed, during which Antigonos forced Ptolemaios towards the coast; finally, the two armies engaged at Raphia. Antigonos’ advantage in elephants proved decisive at the battle, countering Ptolemaios’ advantage of a newly recruited taxis of Ioudaioi; Ptolemaios could come up with no effective counter to the beasts and his army was wrecked, forcing him to flee to Egypt. Antigonos, on the other hand, decided not to press on further. Several things militated against it: the defenses of Pelousion and the fate of Antipatros, for one. Antigonos was not sure at all that he could crack the Nile Delta, especially given the situation in flux to the east. Allied naval power would also doubtless make life difficult for him. The siege of Tyre was still undecided, and his supply lines were pretty bad. So instead the Monophthalmos settled for constant pressure on the Egyptians, by maintaining a significant force in the area of Raphia under the command of one Nikanor, which was supposed to bar the way into Ioudaia and to raid Egypt in hopes of preventing Ptolemaios from raising another armament. Antigonos himself returned to the north, first to supervise further siege actions at Tyre by his son Demetrios, then to Kilikia to supervise the beginning of the construction of a new fleet to attempt to counter those of the allies.
In the western theater, Kassandros decided to lick his wounds, as the constant presence of the allied navy militated strongly against an attempt to break into the Peloponnesos still. The constant failure was undermining his legitimacy at Pella – where the courtiers were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with his autocracy, preferring a boy-king and Regent they could attempt to manipulate – and with his own army, which was getting restive. In an attempt to calm the masses, Kassandros opened a campaign against the Aitolians in the early summer, seeking to finish the job that had been abandoned after the Lamian war. At Kallion, near Mount Oeta, the Makedonian troops engaged an Aitolian force nearly equal to them in numbers and were surprisingly defeated, losing some six thousand casualties. Immediately, there was a revolt in Athenai against the newly-established Demetrios Phalereus, the creature of Kassandros; Polyperchon remained too infirm to take the field, but while he was at Korinthos his son Alexandros marched on Athenai, aided the revolters in pushing out Demetrios, and then moved northwards into Boiotia, symbolically redemolishing Kassandros’ refounded Thebai along the way. Kassandros, with a vastly decreased army and a brewing plot at Pella, decided to make tracks to the north, declining to hold Thermopylai and instead fortifying the vale of Tempe, along the way making a brief trip to Pella to drown the court in the blood of those he suspected of plotting against him.
Alexandros, however, would have been foolish to stop now. Remaining in constant contact with further intriguers in the capital, he made representations to rightful king of the Molossians and Epirotes, Aiakides, who had been chased from his throne after supporting Olympias a few years prior. With aid from the allies, especially an element of the legitimist fleet, Aiakides marched into Epeiros and routed Philippos, Kassandros’ brother, who had been ordered to govern over those lands. The rethroned king then spent some two months making sure of his kingdom before going once more on the offensive, moving across the Aous into western Makedonia. Kassandros was forced to abandon the Tempe position and retreat to the capital, leaving a small garrison at Pydna to delay Alexandros. Thereupon he struck west, trying to defeat Aiakides before the legitimists could link up; while moving along the Haliakmon towards the confrontation, though, he was assassinated by one of his generals in concert with a plot back in Pella, and combined with the traitorous Pydna garrison this allowed the legitimists to reoccupy the ancient seat of Makedonian power and recall Olympias and the young Alexandros to home. This disastrous reversal’s sequel was not nearly so bad for Antigonos, however. In Babylonia and Elymais, Eumenes was stuck in a war of maneuver with Polemaios and Seleukos, who ably managed to prevent the master warrior from reentering Charakene or besieging Babylon. Inconclusive skirmishes were the sole result, with the antilegitimists extremely worried about the possibility of an actual engagement with the fabled argyraspidai. Eumenes was able to successfully thwart new intrigues against his command, though.
The next year, things got worse for Antigonos. In Egypt, Nikanor was bribed away from his service by Ptolemaios, who took control of the army at Raphia and then had the traitorous general killed lest he switch sides again at a less opportune moment. Moving northward, Ptolemaios successfully reclaimed Ioudaia and southern Syria-Koile, though he was held up by a siege of Damaskos that prevented him from interfering with Demetrios at Tyre. For his part, Demetrios earned a new epithet by successfully storming the city, realizing that he was short of time as Ptolemaios approached; the brilliant conclusion to the siege, worthy of an Alexandros, induced his contemporaries to label him Poliorketes, the Breaker of Cities. With a newly freed-up army, Demetrios marched to relieve Damaskos and managed to forced Ptolemaios to draw off back south into Ioudaia; his army remained far to small to advance, though, so Demetrios stayed put in Syria-Koile and awaited further orders or reinforcements from his father as summer approached.
313 saw the final pacification of Makedonia and Hellas proper and the preparation of an expedition to send against Antigonos’ possessions in Asia Mikra. To counter that, Antigonos had been supervising the construction of a fleet himself in Kilikia; he ordered Demetrios to take command of it on its maiden voyage in the fall of 313 as Antigonos himself returned to the Syrian army, bringing reinforcements from Kelenai. Demetrios acquitted himself brilliantly with the navy, as well, smashing a Ptolemaic armada led by Ptolemaios’ brother Menelaos at the Battle of Paphos, allowing him to land an expeditionary force on Kypros and pacify it. This success was matched by the only success Antigonid generals could expect these days, that is to say inconclusive results by the impressive forces marshaling against them. In Syria Antigonos himself pushed south and besieged Hierosolyma, what the Ioudaioi called ‘Yerushalayim’, an action relatively uncontested by Ptolemaios, whose inferior army fell back to Idumaia. The eastern front saw Eumenes breach the perimeter into Charakene successfully, but fail to besiege Charax itself due to an adept threat made by Seleukos against his lines of supply. Preventing the army with the argyraspidai from taking the field was a victory all by itself.
War exhaustion was beginning to set in by 312. Antigonos was clearly able to prevent Ptolemaios from making significant inroads in the south, and a deadlock continued in the east. Eumenes had to deal with a new problem, further to his rear, that is to say that invasion of a new Indic threat. The man called ‘Sandrokottos’ by the Greeks, Chandragupta by the Indians over whom he ruled in the Mauryan Empire, had attacked the lands of Eudamos and his allies the Kathaians, denuded by the needs of Eumenes’ army the Zagros. The Indos valley was overrun nearly as far as Paropamisdai and Arachosia during the past few years, and Eumenes’ allies suggested that they might return home to retake their lands instead of continue to serve uselessly in the war of maneuver. And Antigonos himself was beginning to weary of keeping so many men in the field and was unable to break the deadlock himself, with Eumenes’ unbeaten army to the east, the fortifications at Pelousion to the south, and the inaccessible lands of Hellas to the west. But a peace of exhaustion was unthinkable to Olympias, and Eumenes was against it as well; recognizance of Antigonos’ unassailable position would break apart the Empire. Clearly this was unacceptable, so Alexandros prepared to cross the Aigion and take the fight to Antigonos’ heartland in Asia Mikra.
What undid this plan was the naval battle at Skyros. Demetrios Poliorketes, with the same armada that had helped him to secure Kypros, made his way to the Aigion in preparation for the coming invasion, and met the allied fleet under the command of one Alketas off Skyros. Despite somewhat inferior numbers, Demetrios’ superior marines carried the day, storming the ships of the enemy fleet and turning some of them against their original owners. Alketas was killed in single combat with Demetrios aboard his flagship, and the remainder of the allied armada was wiped out. With command of the Aigion, Demetrios launched raids against the legitimist holdings in Hellas and supported an attempt by Alketas II, brother of Aiakides, to claim the Epirote throne, which was successful. The defeat at Skyros had more momentous consequences than ensuring the failure of Antigonos’ many enemies to annihilate his empire, though. Court intrigues at Pella stepped up again, angered over the continuing war; these were facilitated by the death of Olympias of old age early in the year and the continuing ailment of the other Regent, Polyperchon. A coup was launched by one Killes, a disaffected noble, and Alexandros ordered that elements of the army be brought in to slaughter the would-be conspirators. In the confusing battle that ensued in Pella, the boy-king Alexandros IV was killed, either by accident or by the design of a particularly incensed nobleman. Alexandros recaptured the city and crushed the uprising, but the last of the Argeades was dead.
Once the news finally disseminated among the rest of the empire, Antigonos proposed a universal truce and a meeting at Kelenai to discuss the future state of the empire. Due to his recent victories by force of arms, none had the force to desire it done differently. Eumenes – leaving his friend Hieronymos in command of the army – as well as Ptolemaios, Alexandros, and Seleukos all attended, as well as several of the minor satraps. The peace agreement that would be hammered out by them was later referred to as the peace of the Dynasts, for it was there that the fiction of empire was dismantled and a new order hashed out. Antigonos, with his son Demetrios, was confirmed in his control of Asia Mikra and Syria, along with Kypros. He had weathered the blows of the others with aplomb and skill, scoring several victories later in the war. Babylonia and Mesopotamia were confirmed in Seleukos’ control, too; even if he had required Antigonos’ help, he had managed to successfully repulse the invasions of his territory and had shown himself an excellent operational commander later in the war. Ptolemaios kept Egypt, and, surprisingly enough, Ioudaia, though it had been mostly conquered by Antigonos anyway. This decision, along with that to allow Seleukos self-control as opposed to Antigonid absorption, was what allayed many fears among the others of Antigonos’ alleged wishes for a universal monarchy with himself at its head. Alexandros claimed the formal title of Regent in Makedonia, along with his father, with Herakles, the illegitimate son of Alexandros Megas by Stateira, as the formal king. Alexandros also undertook to aid the Thraikian satrap, Lysimachos, against his wayward subjects, the Odrysans, Triballians, and the poleis of Kallatis and Odessos. Alketas II remained king of Epeiros, though Pyrrhos, the son of Aiakides and the legitimate heir, remained out of his reach in Illyria under the guardianship of the king there, Glaukias. Eumenes, perhaps the most staunch of the legitimists, who had weathered great trials in order to see Alexandros reach his majority, was confirmed in control of Media, Persis, Susiana, and the Eastern satrapies. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, Eumenes’ friends were in important positions throughout the region. Hieronymos in particular was a key ally of his, in control of the satrapy of Media. Secondly, he did have de facto control over those lands, and it would have made no sense to place another man over his head. And finally, Eumenes himself had slowly grown to adopt the affectations of kingship. Though he had originally shown no inclination towards assuming the throne himself, he had used the personal tent of Alexandros Megas throughout the campaign, affected Eastern dress for some time – thus endearing himself somewhat to his subjects – and was not only an excellent political animal but a superb general as well. So with some reluctance, at the age of fifty, he adopted, like Antigonos, Seleukos, and Ptolemaios, the title of basileus and the affectations thereof.
With the Peace of the Dynasts in 312, the split in the empire that Alexandros Megas had won became final. The king in Pella now failed to rule anything but Greece even in name. What remained to be seen was if the arrangements of these diadochoi, the successors of Alexandros, would remain in place for very long, or if the agreement at Kelenai would go the way of those of Babylon and Triparadeisos.
Man in a Suitcase.
“It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.”
-Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Those who thought that the states that arose from the wreckage of the empire of Alexandros would remain quiescent and nonviolent in the aftermath of the second civil war were horribly mistaken. All of the new dynasts, with the sole possible exception of Eumenes, had the ambition to seize Alexandros’ empire in its entirety, and their arms were now bent not towards each other but to acquiring new means for a renewed war. Antigonos dispatched his son, Demetrios, on a mountain expedition to force the submission of Orontes II, who had reclaimed the throne of Hayasdan and asserted his independence both nominal and practical. Seleukos had to deal with a revolt in Charakene, led by a group of Makedonian colonist-soldiers who had been settled there by Alexandros. Ptolemaios reoccupied Kyrenaika, which had briefly decided to assert its independence. Lysimachos, the Thraikian lord, weakest of the diadochoi, marched into Odrysai with aid from Alexandros in Makedonia and subdued Seuthes. And at the same time, Alexandros schemed to remove Alketas from the throne of Epeiros and install the young Pyrrhos, still safe with King Glaukias in Illyria.
But the largest of these actions would take place in a long-abandoned area of the empire. Eumenes, being reasonably able to rely on a quiet western front, was now hurrying east along the old caravanserai routes to restore the situation in the Indos valley. Said situation was somewhat grave. Before Chandragupta had turned back to the east, concentrating on Indic affairs, his armies had occupied imperial territory as far as Kophen, the main city of Paropamisdai. The entirety of the Indos valley was overrun, including that of the Kathaians, whose prince Ceteus was in Eumenes’ service. As previously noted, the importunings of Ceteus and Eudamos induced Eumenes to agree to the Peace of the Dynasts; now, with that agreement safely under his belt, the Kardian made his way east to rectify the conquests there. The possibility of even outdoing Alexandros clearly occurred, though the argyraspidai, who had been among the men who forced the Great King to turn back fifteen years prior, would clearly be opposed to it. Their position at the core of Eumenes’ forces gave their wishes a large amount of force.
Upon arriving at Prophthasia in Drangiane in the winter of 312-11, Eumenes began to devise operational plans with the aid of Antigenes, Eudamos, Hieronymos, and the others in the old Alexandros tent. It was decided that attempting to debouch from Paropamisdai near Nysa would be too obvious; that pass was the primary one that was used, and the Mauryan troops would be mostly concentrated around that area, anyway, pacifying Porus’ old kingdom and the lands of the Kathaians. To gain secure egress into the Indos valley, a further south entrance would be used, that at Alexandropolis-in-Arachosia. Upon the army’s debouchment into the Indos valley, Opiana would be seized as a base for operations upriver against the forces in the vicinity of Taxila. Eumenes had reasonable expectations of support from the Kathaians, as well as the intermittent settlements of klerouchoi that Alexandros had scattered throughout the valley. From these sources he gleaned intelligence about the enemy dispositions and their numbers; though the Indic infantry outnumbered that of Eumenes, the elephant numbers were roughly matched, and Eumenes surprisingly had a slight edge in cavalry, having recruited horsemen from Arachosia, yielding the superb Hauravatish Asabaran skirmishers, as well as Baexdzhyntae hippotoxotai from the Daha. With the missile cavalry augmenting Eumenes’ formidable unit of hetairoi and prodromoi, the expeditionary force had a powerful mobile arm.
As soon as the passes through the Paropamisdai had been more or less cleared of snow, Eumenes’ army debouched into Sattagydia with virtually no resistance, moving to Opiana and placing it under siege. Mauryan response was somewhat dilatory, with first a small unit of cavalry scouting out the situation rather late in the siege, but eventually a portion of the forces under the command of the Taxilan governor moved down the Indos to try to relieve the siege. Eumenes left a covering force under Kelbanos to blockade the city and then marched north, ironically engaging the Mauryan army not far from the Malli town where Alexandros nearly met his end. The most skilled units of the Indian force, the sreni pattya yoddaha guild warriors, used some of the best-worked armor and weapons ever seen, indeed higher quality than the equipment used by Eumenes’ army. But their primary function was close combat, and the spearmen that accompanied them, the pattisainya, were horribly underarmored compared to the argyraspidai and the klerouchoi phalangitai that comprised Eumenes’ military. The fact that the pattisainya comprised the vast majority of the Mauryan infantry was a huge disadvantage. What followed at the Malli town was a bloodbath. The phalangitai simply ran right over the pattisainya, and the poorly coordinated fire of the patiyodha longbowmen – though it was deadly when it was properly used, the governor in charge of the Mauryan army failed to give effective orders to his missile infantry - was brushed aside before the light infantry themselves were chased down by the prodromoi. On the wings, Eumenes’ elephants initially had some trouble, but when assisted by long-range fire from the Daha horse-archers and Hauravatish hippakontistai, they managed to drive the other elephants off the field, clearing the way for Eumenes’ cavalry to rout their Indian opposing numbers. The sreni infantry took longer to reduce, but they were worn down by missiles until a combined assault by the argyraspidai and the other phalangitai broke them apart. Ending as an utter disaster for the Indian forces in the Indos valley, the battle of the Malli town concluded with a pursuit by Eumenes’ cavalry that hacked apart much of the fleeing enemy infantry, whereupon the Persian basileus immediately reformed his army and launched a pursuit, trying to seize control of the lands of the Kathaians and the old kingdom of Porus before the current advantage was lost. News eventually reached Chandragupta of the events when at his capital in Pataliputra, whereupon he began preparing a large armament to retake the Indos valley. This army hadn’t been fully gathered by the end of the year 311, but it was marshaling in the vicinity of Sthanvisvara in Kurukshetra and would be prepared to engage Eumenes’ forces early the next year. For his part, Eumenes was occupied in pacifying the remainder of Gandhara and sending an expedition to the south to garrison Patala at the mouth of the Indos. The main campaign would clearly be fought in Gandhara, though, so that was where most of Eumenes’ forces were gathered. He deigned not to seek a diplomatic solution due to the advantageous series of events to the west.
Seleukos was occupied with a series of devastating raids by Gerrhaian pirates, who nearly captured Charax and engaged in depredations up the Euphrates. Antigonos was still occupied with his own projects in Anatolia and Syria, and his son Demetrios, while successfully in control of Armavir, Sophene, and Ani, was engaged in a long and slow campaign outside Mtskheta, made all the more difficult due to the harsh Caucasian winters severely restricting the campaigning season. Ptolemaios had successfully captured Kyrene, but had elected to embark on an expedition to the south, seizing Erythraia and founding a colony there, Ptolemais-Theron, as both a trading port for the profitable Erythraian trade as well as an elephant stable for use in his armies. And finally, Lysimachos had been so successful against the Odrysans, seizing Tylis easily and forcing Seuthes to heel, that he proclaimed himself basileus along with the other diadochoi and began minting his own coinage, using his past occupation as somatophylax and his successful fight with a lion in Sogdiane while protecting Alexandros Megas as further backups to his assumption of the title. The ritual killing of a lion, a historical activity of kings, lent legitimacy to his claim and induced him to mint coins with the image of Alexandros Megas on the obverse and that of a lion on the reverse. Also in Europe, the Regent Alexandros gained sole claim to that title, with the death from old age of his father Polyperchon. To cement his standing with the court in Pella, he planned an expedition against the Aitolians to finally and definitively pacify them. And in Epeiros, intrigues against Alketas II continued, though nothing came of the plots to undermine his autocratic rule…yet.
So the rest of the world was quite busy, and Eumenes felt ready to renew the campaign in 310 as Chandragupta led his army of some eighty thousand men across the Hyphasis into Gandhara. Clearly aware of the nonviability of the strategy of Porus, to patrol the rivers and shadow the enemy army in an attempt to prevent a crossing, Eumenes instead elected to initiate the same strategy that had worked so well for him at the Koprates back in 317, and kept a series of cavalry detachments and friendly Kathaian natives at key points along the river, prepared to warn him of any attempt to cross. Chandragupta chose to cross the Hydraotes in the middle of terrible weather, and partly by luck he managed to avoid Eumenes’ eyes, but in the process several hundred of his men drowned. Figuring that he could take the losses, the Mauryan king pushed on, towards Sangela. Eumenes, who had some sixty thousand men with him – having augmented his core Makedonian forces, pantodapoi, and foreign cavalry with Indos river valley levies – was already across the Hydaspes and moving to intercept. The two sides’ cavalry contacted each other not far from Sangela, with Chandragupta’s Kamboja light cavalry coming off somewhat the worse in an engagement with Eumenes’ prodromoi and Hauravatish skirmisher horse. This paved the way for a battle on the flat ground at Sangela in the next few days.
Eumenes was at a clear numerical disadvantage, and he could fully expect massive amounts of arrow fire, coordinated by an Indian native tactical genius. He, however, had acquired patiyodha units of his own to counter that, and hopefully his more heavily armored phalangitai would not suffer too badly from the rain of arrows. To deal with Chandragupta’s two hundred elephants, which were arrayed in the front of his line, Eumenes would need to rely on the skills of his argyraspidai and those of his Daha and Hauravatish missile cavalry, the former to engage the elephants in direct combat while the horsemen would shower arrows and javelins on the great beasts from afar. Too, Eumenes’ own hundred elephants would prove useful in that regard. Eumenes also had another trick to deal with: the Mauryans’ yuddah rathah, war chariots manned by highly skilled archers. Having had the experience of Gaugamela, Eumenes’ basic plan was to engage these chariots with his psiloi and to open up lanes between his infantry for the chariots to pass through. After dealing with the elephants, longbowmen, and chariots, fighting the Indian infantry would be a relatively easy task, but even that wasn’t going to be entirely a cakewalk, because Chandragupta has some of the few Mauryan units of pratradhaka ksatriya, warrior-caste heavily armored spearmen armed in a fashion similar to that of the Hellenic hoplitai. Though these made up less than a thousand-man unit and were not particularly skilled with their arms quite yet, since the hoplitai were a very new type of unit and had only been introduced recently, they would still doubtless prove to be more of a threat than the pitiful pattisainya that had been wiped out at the Malli town and which still made up the overwhelming portion of the Indic infantry. His opponent, on the other hand, decided to try for something less orthodox than simply a straightforward charge; a human wave attack would be a poor plan even with the elephants to spearhead the charge. His attempts to assassinate Eumenes having failed, Chandragupta decided to heed the advice of his advisor Kautilya in preparing for battle. As mentioned, the elephants were arrayed in the front of the infantry, to counter the powerful phalangitai; the chariots were stationed to the flanks, as were the Kamboja light horsemen. The best of the heavy horse, the Taxilan agema that Chandragupta had recruited while suzerain of Gandhara, were stationed behind the elephants to exploit any gaps they might tear in the syntagma.
The ground was hard underfoot and the sky clear when the battle lines were formed at Sangela. Even when the armies were forming up, the patiyodha on both sides were firing harassing arrows at each other, the ones on the Greek side being bolstered by the addition of some nizagan troops, that is to say a unique sort of Persian archer-spearmen. After this obligatory display of martial prowess, both sides’ long-range missile troops ceased fire to conserve ammunition while the other soldiers lumbered into position. Eumenes was surprised that the pratradhaka weren’t present in the front lines of the enemy forces, but instead deployed to the rear, as a kind of reserve; nevertheless, he gave the order to begin advancing on the enemy, as the Mauryan elephants lumbered forward. The psiloi rushed ahead of the main body, sphendonetai and akontistai sending stones and spears streaking towards the all-important mahouts, trying to hit either the elephant drivers or the sensitive skin around an elephant’s eyes. The approach of Mauryan heavy cavalry brought in the light cavalry under the command of Stasanor, satrap of Baktria and Sogdiane; the pinpoint accuracy of the Baexdzhyntae proved sufficient to drive off the enemy cavalry. Combined with the entry of part of Eumenes’ own elephant force, the psiloi and light cavalry were sufficient to halt the advance of the Mauryan van and confuse the greater part of their army. Meanwhile, on the flanks, Eumenes’ initial attempt to envelop the Mauryans’ main body with his agema and prodromoi was repulsed by the yuddah rathah and the light Indic cavalry. He thus ordered Antigenes and Teutamos, in control of the two wings of the syntagma, to advance on the center, to help in driving the elephants back on their own army. The argyraspidai dove into the confusing melee in the center as Stasanor nimbly extricated his own cavalry for action on the flanks, and then in unison with the psiloi attacked the elephants, using the experience of the great Battle of the Hydaspes to try to hamstring the beasts.
Chandragupta was somewhat alarmed at the result in the center and decided to ****** the irresistible phalangitai in any way he could. Ordering the advance of much of his infantry, he planned to buy time to extricate the remainder of his army, increasing the confusion in the center to prevent the argyraspidai from effectively working against his troops. The problem was that Eumenes was already renewing his assault on the flanks of his army. This time, Stasanor was with him, and with the superb Daha archers at the forefront the chariots were turned back on their own men to destructive result. But already Eumenes’ cavalry was becoming exhausted; the horse archers had already had to endure the fight in the center against the elephants, and thus were unable to perform as effectively as they otherwise would have. The Indic Kamboja asvaka were thus able to hold off the closing jaws of the encirclement for nearly an hour while the engagement in the center of the battlefield raged with little conclusion. Eumenes was disinclined to send in his last sixty elephants, because he wanted to keep a reserve just as Chandragupta was holding onto his own pratradhaka infantry. The argyraspidai took quite some time to break apart the enemy to the front of them, to find that about two thirds of Chandragupta’s infantry was withdrawing. They themselves had suffered almost no casualties, but the klerouchoi had taken a beating, and the pantodapoi phalangitai had been mauled badly. With most of the syntagma in disarray, the infantry was in no condition to pursue, and Eumenes’ tired cavalry only made a brief, perfunctory pursuit of the Mauryan army before turning back at the behest of the fresh pratradhaka troops, who turned to counter any chase before reforming in good order and departing the field.
The Greeks had won a victory and kept the field, but the casualties to Eumenes’ army were atrocious, with many losses among the Indic allies and the elephants. Chandragupta had suffered worse losses, but his army could take a beating much better than Eumenes, having a far larger recruitment pool with which to replace losses. All told, the Greeks suffered some nine thousand casualties on the field, with the Mauryan army losing nearly twenty-five thousand men. The operational result, the departure of the Mauryan army back behind the Hydraotes River, was a partial success for Eumenes. Still, though, he could not maintain this position indefinitely, and it was best to capitalize on his gains while he could and then turn back west to prepare for whatever was thrown at him later by his fellow diadochoi. The deputation to Chandragupta requested a formal treaty to recognize the conquests of Alexandros. Chandragupta, well aware that Eumenes had possible difficulties brewing elsewhere but wanting already to turn his prodigious energies to other tasks, opted to acknowledge these reconquests, but made it clear that he expected the Indos valley to be more or less autonomous from the remainder of Eumenid Persia. This Eumenes, who had no real desire to govern the lands directly, agreed to, and the treaty was formalized by the purchase of some two hundred elephants to restock Eumenes’ stables, as well as an exchange of prisoners. With that, the Mauryan emperor withdrew back into his own realm, biding his time until Eumenes was either dead or occupied, and the Greeks vacated the Indos valley as well, save for the installation of a few new klerouchoi to serve as rapidly mobilizable troops in case of an Indian invasion.
Eumenes’ haste to return to the west was well warranted. By the end of 310, Demetrios had pacified all Hayasdan, following the seizure of Mtskheta and the successful conquest of Pontos Paralios, site of the colony of Trapezous. Setting a puppet king on the throne to replace Orontes, who went into hiding, Demetrios returned to Kelenai and immediately helped his father put down a revolt by Asandros of Karia, who had apparently been worried about the resurgence of Antigonid power. Evidence arose that Asandros had been financed by Ptolemaic gold, and a major diplomatic furor arose, with the Antigonids threatening war over this and other atrocities committed by Ptolemaios, such as an attack by the Ptolemaic general Timotheos on the Nabataians, renewing the hostilities from the raid in 316. Timotheos failed in his raid, but Antigonos seized on the episode as ‘an assault on the liberties of the Nabataian people’ and made representations to the envoys of Ptolemaios, ostensibly on their behalf. War was clearly in the air as 310 closed in Syria. And that was not the only trouble spot. The Aitolian campaign had not gone brilliantly for Alexandros, who managed to defeat the Aitolians in open battle at Agrinion in the spring, but who failed to successfully besiege Thermon and who eventually concluded an accord with them that recognized Makedonian official suzerainty but little else and no factual control. The loss of significant numbers of troops during the battle began to stir up yet more intrigues in Pella, Korinthos, and Athenai against Alexandros, who would doubtless have to fall back to a different recourse if he were to retain his position as Regent. And Lysimachos was courted by both sides once more, having the advantageous (albeit not very wealthy) position of basileus in Thraikia and thus the ability to project power against both Antigonos and Alexandros, assuming the two of them were in opposition. Finally, in Babylonia, Seleukos was clearly rearming, having defeated the pirates and briefly occupied Gerrha itself; his aim was doubtful, and once more he was the target of diplomats from both Antigonos and Ptolemaios.
All that was needed for a third war to be set off was a single spark…a spark which would come from a most unexpected direction…
“It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.”
-Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Those who thought that the states that arose from the wreckage of the empire of Alexandros would remain quiescent and nonviolent in the aftermath of the second civil war were horribly mistaken. All of the new dynasts, with the sole possible exception of Eumenes, had the ambition to seize Alexandros’ empire in its entirety, and their arms were now bent not towards each other but to acquiring new means for a renewed war. Antigonos dispatched his son, Demetrios, on a mountain expedition to force the submission of Orontes II, who had reclaimed the throne of Hayasdan and asserted his independence both nominal and practical. Seleukos had to deal with a revolt in Charakene, led by a group of Makedonian colonist-soldiers who had been settled there by Alexandros. Ptolemaios reoccupied Kyrenaika, which had briefly decided to assert its independence. Lysimachos, the Thraikian lord, weakest of the diadochoi, marched into Odrysai with aid from Alexandros in Makedonia and subdued Seuthes. And at the same time, Alexandros schemed to remove Alketas from the throne of Epeiros and install the young Pyrrhos, still safe with King Glaukias in Illyria.
But the largest of these actions would take place in a long-abandoned area of the empire. Eumenes, being reasonably able to rely on a quiet western front, was now hurrying east along the old caravanserai routes to restore the situation in the Indos valley. Said situation was somewhat grave. Before Chandragupta had turned back to the east, concentrating on Indic affairs, his armies had occupied imperial territory as far as Kophen, the main city of Paropamisdai. The entirety of the Indos valley was overrun, including that of the Kathaians, whose prince Ceteus was in Eumenes’ service. As previously noted, the importunings of Ceteus and Eudamos induced Eumenes to agree to the Peace of the Dynasts; now, with that agreement safely under his belt, the Kardian made his way east to rectify the conquests there. The possibility of even outdoing Alexandros clearly occurred, though the argyraspidai, who had been among the men who forced the Great King to turn back fifteen years prior, would clearly be opposed to it. Their position at the core of Eumenes’ forces gave their wishes a large amount of force.
Upon arriving at Prophthasia in Drangiane in the winter of 312-11, Eumenes began to devise operational plans with the aid of Antigenes, Eudamos, Hieronymos, and the others in the old Alexandros tent. It was decided that attempting to debouch from Paropamisdai near Nysa would be too obvious; that pass was the primary one that was used, and the Mauryan troops would be mostly concentrated around that area, anyway, pacifying Porus’ old kingdom and the lands of the Kathaians. To gain secure egress into the Indos valley, a further south entrance would be used, that at Alexandropolis-in-Arachosia. Upon the army’s debouchment into the Indos valley, Opiana would be seized as a base for operations upriver against the forces in the vicinity of Taxila. Eumenes had reasonable expectations of support from the Kathaians, as well as the intermittent settlements of klerouchoi that Alexandros had scattered throughout the valley. From these sources he gleaned intelligence about the enemy dispositions and their numbers; though the Indic infantry outnumbered that of Eumenes, the elephant numbers were roughly matched, and Eumenes surprisingly had a slight edge in cavalry, having recruited horsemen from Arachosia, yielding the superb Hauravatish Asabaran skirmishers, as well as Baexdzhyntae hippotoxotai from the Daha. With the missile cavalry augmenting Eumenes’ formidable unit of hetairoi and prodromoi, the expeditionary force had a powerful mobile arm.
As soon as the passes through the Paropamisdai had been more or less cleared of snow, Eumenes’ army debouched into Sattagydia with virtually no resistance, moving to Opiana and placing it under siege. Mauryan response was somewhat dilatory, with first a small unit of cavalry scouting out the situation rather late in the siege, but eventually a portion of the forces under the command of the Taxilan governor moved down the Indos to try to relieve the siege. Eumenes left a covering force under Kelbanos to blockade the city and then marched north, ironically engaging the Mauryan army not far from the Malli town where Alexandros nearly met his end. The most skilled units of the Indian force, the sreni pattya yoddaha guild warriors, used some of the best-worked armor and weapons ever seen, indeed higher quality than the equipment used by Eumenes’ army. But their primary function was close combat, and the spearmen that accompanied them, the pattisainya, were horribly underarmored compared to the argyraspidai and the klerouchoi phalangitai that comprised Eumenes’ military. The fact that the pattisainya comprised the vast majority of the Mauryan infantry was a huge disadvantage. What followed at the Malli town was a bloodbath. The phalangitai simply ran right over the pattisainya, and the poorly coordinated fire of the patiyodha longbowmen – though it was deadly when it was properly used, the governor in charge of the Mauryan army failed to give effective orders to his missile infantry - was brushed aside before the light infantry themselves were chased down by the prodromoi. On the wings, Eumenes’ elephants initially had some trouble, but when assisted by long-range fire from the Daha horse-archers and Hauravatish hippakontistai, they managed to drive the other elephants off the field, clearing the way for Eumenes’ cavalry to rout their Indian opposing numbers. The sreni infantry took longer to reduce, but they were worn down by missiles until a combined assault by the argyraspidai and the other phalangitai broke them apart. Ending as an utter disaster for the Indian forces in the Indos valley, the battle of the Malli town concluded with a pursuit by Eumenes’ cavalry that hacked apart much of the fleeing enemy infantry, whereupon the Persian basileus immediately reformed his army and launched a pursuit, trying to seize control of the lands of the Kathaians and the old kingdom of Porus before the current advantage was lost. News eventually reached Chandragupta of the events when at his capital in Pataliputra, whereupon he began preparing a large armament to retake the Indos valley. This army hadn’t been fully gathered by the end of the year 311, but it was marshaling in the vicinity of Sthanvisvara in Kurukshetra and would be prepared to engage Eumenes’ forces early the next year. For his part, Eumenes was occupied in pacifying the remainder of Gandhara and sending an expedition to the south to garrison Patala at the mouth of the Indos. The main campaign would clearly be fought in Gandhara, though, so that was where most of Eumenes’ forces were gathered. He deigned not to seek a diplomatic solution due to the advantageous series of events to the west.
Seleukos was occupied with a series of devastating raids by Gerrhaian pirates, who nearly captured Charax and engaged in depredations up the Euphrates. Antigonos was still occupied with his own projects in Anatolia and Syria, and his son Demetrios, while successfully in control of Armavir, Sophene, and Ani, was engaged in a long and slow campaign outside Mtskheta, made all the more difficult due to the harsh Caucasian winters severely restricting the campaigning season. Ptolemaios had successfully captured Kyrene, but had elected to embark on an expedition to the south, seizing Erythraia and founding a colony there, Ptolemais-Theron, as both a trading port for the profitable Erythraian trade as well as an elephant stable for use in his armies. And finally, Lysimachos had been so successful against the Odrysans, seizing Tylis easily and forcing Seuthes to heel, that he proclaimed himself basileus along with the other diadochoi and began minting his own coinage, using his past occupation as somatophylax and his successful fight with a lion in Sogdiane while protecting Alexandros Megas as further backups to his assumption of the title. The ritual killing of a lion, a historical activity of kings, lent legitimacy to his claim and induced him to mint coins with the image of Alexandros Megas on the obverse and that of a lion on the reverse. Also in Europe, the Regent Alexandros gained sole claim to that title, with the death from old age of his father Polyperchon. To cement his standing with the court in Pella, he planned an expedition against the Aitolians to finally and definitively pacify them. And in Epeiros, intrigues against Alketas II continued, though nothing came of the plots to undermine his autocratic rule…yet.
So the rest of the world was quite busy, and Eumenes felt ready to renew the campaign in 310 as Chandragupta led his army of some eighty thousand men across the Hyphasis into Gandhara. Clearly aware of the nonviability of the strategy of Porus, to patrol the rivers and shadow the enemy army in an attempt to prevent a crossing, Eumenes instead elected to initiate the same strategy that had worked so well for him at the Koprates back in 317, and kept a series of cavalry detachments and friendly Kathaian natives at key points along the river, prepared to warn him of any attempt to cross. Chandragupta chose to cross the Hydraotes in the middle of terrible weather, and partly by luck he managed to avoid Eumenes’ eyes, but in the process several hundred of his men drowned. Figuring that he could take the losses, the Mauryan king pushed on, towards Sangela. Eumenes, who had some sixty thousand men with him – having augmented his core Makedonian forces, pantodapoi, and foreign cavalry with Indos river valley levies – was already across the Hydaspes and moving to intercept. The two sides’ cavalry contacted each other not far from Sangela, with Chandragupta’s Kamboja light cavalry coming off somewhat the worse in an engagement with Eumenes’ prodromoi and Hauravatish skirmisher horse. This paved the way for a battle on the flat ground at Sangela in the next few days.
Eumenes was at a clear numerical disadvantage, and he could fully expect massive amounts of arrow fire, coordinated by an Indian native tactical genius. He, however, had acquired patiyodha units of his own to counter that, and hopefully his more heavily armored phalangitai would not suffer too badly from the rain of arrows. To deal with Chandragupta’s two hundred elephants, which were arrayed in the front of his line, Eumenes would need to rely on the skills of his argyraspidai and those of his Daha and Hauravatish missile cavalry, the former to engage the elephants in direct combat while the horsemen would shower arrows and javelins on the great beasts from afar. Too, Eumenes’ own hundred elephants would prove useful in that regard. Eumenes also had another trick to deal with: the Mauryans’ yuddah rathah, war chariots manned by highly skilled archers. Having had the experience of Gaugamela, Eumenes’ basic plan was to engage these chariots with his psiloi and to open up lanes between his infantry for the chariots to pass through. After dealing with the elephants, longbowmen, and chariots, fighting the Indian infantry would be a relatively easy task, but even that wasn’t going to be entirely a cakewalk, because Chandragupta has some of the few Mauryan units of pratradhaka ksatriya, warrior-caste heavily armored spearmen armed in a fashion similar to that of the Hellenic hoplitai. Though these made up less than a thousand-man unit and were not particularly skilled with their arms quite yet, since the hoplitai were a very new type of unit and had only been introduced recently, they would still doubtless prove to be more of a threat than the pitiful pattisainya that had been wiped out at the Malli town and which still made up the overwhelming portion of the Indic infantry. His opponent, on the other hand, decided to try for something less orthodox than simply a straightforward charge; a human wave attack would be a poor plan even with the elephants to spearhead the charge. His attempts to assassinate Eumenes having failed, Chandragupta decided to heed the advice of his advisor Kautilya in preparing for battle. As mentioned, the elephants were arrayed in the front of the infantry, to counter the powerful phalangitai; the chariots were stationed to the flanks, as were the Kamboja light horsemen. The best of the heavy horse, the Taxilan agema that Chandragupta had recruited while suzerain of Gandhara, were stationed behind the elephants to exploit any gaps they might tear in the syntagma.
The ground was hard underfoot and the sky clear when the battle lines were formed at Sangela. Even when the armies were forming up, the patiyodha on both sides were firing harassing arrows at each other, the ones on the Greek side being bolstered by the addition of some nizagan troops, that is to say a unique sort of Persian archer-spearmen. After this obligatory display of martial prowess, both sides’ long-range missile troops ceased fire to conserve ammunition while the other soldiers lumbered into position. Eumenes was surprised that the pratradhaka weren’t present in the front lines of the enemy forces, but instead deployed to the rear, as a kind of reserve; nevertheless, he gave the order to begin advancing on the enemy, as the Mauryan elephants lumbered forward. The psiloi rushed ahead of the main body, sphendonetai and akontistai sending stones and spears streaking towards the all-important mahouts, trying to hit either the elephant drivers or the sensitive skin around an elephant’s eyes. The approach of Mauryan heavy cavalry brought in the light cavalry under the command of Stasanor, satrap of Baktria and Sogdiane; the pinpoint accuracy of the Baexdzhyntae proved sufficient to drive off the enemy cavalry. Combined with the entry of part of Eumenes’ own elephant force, the psiloi and light cavalry were sufficient to halt the advance of the Mauryan van and confuse the greater part of their army. Meanwhile, on the flanks, Eumenes’ initial attempt to envelop the Mauryans’ main body with his agema and prodromoi was repulsed by the yuddah rathah and the light Indic cavalry. He thus ordered Antigenes and Teutamos, in control of the two wings of the syntagma, to advance on the center, to help in driving the elephants back on their own army. The argyraspidai dove into the confusing melee in the center as Stasanor nimbly extricated his own cavalry for action on the flanks, and then in unison with the psiloi attacked the elephants, using the experience of the great Battle of the Hydaspes to try to hamstring the beasts.
Chandragupta was somewhat alarmed at the result in the center and decided to ****** the irresistible phalangitai in any way he could. Ordering the advance of much of his infantry, he planned to buy time to extricate the remainder of his army, increasing the confusion in the center to prevent the argyraspidai from effectively working against his troops. The problem was that Eumenes was already renewing his assault on the flanks of his army. This time, Stasanor was with him, and with the superb Daha archers at the forefront the chariots were turned back on their own men to destructive result. But already Eumenes’ cavalry was becoming exhausted; the horse archers had already had to endure the fight in the center against the elephants, and thus were unable to perform as effectively as they otherwise would have. The Indic Kamboja asvaka were thus able to hold off the closing jaws of the encirclement for nearly an hour while the engagement in the center of the battlefield raged with little conclusion. Eumenes was disinclined to send in his last sixty elephants, because he wanted to keep a reserve just as Chandragupta was holding onto his own pratradhaka infantry. The argyraspidai took quite some time to break apart the enemy to the front of them, to find that about two thirds of Chandragupta’s infantry was withdrawing. They themselves had suffered almost no casualties, but the klerouchoi had taken a beating, and the pantodapoi phalangitai had been mauled badly. With most of the syntagma in disarray, the infantry was in no condition to pursue, and Eumenes’ tired cavalry only made a brief, perfunctory pursuit of the Mauryan army before turning back at the behest of the fresh pratradhaka troops, who turned to counter any chase before reforming in good order and departing the field.
The Greeks had won a victory and kept the field, but the casualties to Eumenes’ army were atrocious, with many losses among the Indic allies and the elephants. Chandragupta had suffered worse losses, but his army could take a beating much better than Eumenes, having a far larger recruitment pool with which to replace losses. All told, the Greeks suffered some nine thousand casualties on the field, with the Mauryan army losing nearly twenty-five thousand men. The operational result, the departure of the Mauryan army back behind the Hydraotes River, was a partial success for Eumenes. Still, though, he could not maintain this position indefinitely, and it was best to capitalize on his gains while he could and then turn back west to prepare for whatever was thrown at him later by his fellow diadochoi. The deputation to Chandragupta requested a formal treaty to recognize the conquests of Alexandros. Chandragupta, well aware that Eumenes had possible difficulties brewing elsewhere but wanting already to turn his prodigious energies to other tasks, opted to acknowledge these reconquests, but made it clear that he expected the Indos valley to be more or less autonomous from the remainder of Eumenid Persia. This Eumenes, who had no real desire to govern the lands directly, agreed to, and the treaty was formalized by the purchase of some two hundred elephants to restock Eumenes’ stables, as well as an exchange of prisoners. With that, the Mauryan emperor withdrew back into his own realm, biding his time until Eumenes was either dead or occupied, and the Greeks vacated the Indos valley as well, save for the installation of a few new klerouchoi to serve as rapidly mobilizable troops in case of an Indian invasion.
Eumenes’ haste to return to the west was well warranted. By the end of 310, Demetrios had pacified all Hayasdan, following the seizure of Mtskheta and the successful conquest of Pontos Paralios, site of the colony of Trapezous. Setting a puppet king on the throne to replace Orontes, who went into hiding, Demetrios returned to Kelenai and immediately helped his father put down a revolt by Asandros of Karia, who had apparently been worried about the resurgence of Antigonid power. Evidence arose that Asandros had been financed by Ptolemaic gold, and a major diplomatic furor arose, with the Antigonids threatening war over this and other atrocities committed by Ptolemaios, such as an attack by the Ptolemaic general Timotheos on the Nabataians, renewing the hostilities from the raid in 316. Timotheos failed in his raid, but Antigonos seized on the episode as ‘an assault on the liberties of the Nabataian people’ and made representations to the envoys of Ptolemaios, ostensibly on their behalf. War was clearly in the air as 310 closed in Syria. And that was not the only trouble spot. The Aitolian campaign had not gone brilliantly for Alexandros, who managed to defeat the Aitolians in open battle at Agrinion in the spring, but who failed to successfully besiege Thermon and who eventually concluded an accord with them that recognized Makedonian official suzerainty but little else and no factual control. The loss of significant numbers of troops during the battle began to stir up yet more intrigues in Pella, Korinthos, and Athenai against Alexandros, who would doubtless have to fall back to a different recourse if he were to retain his position as Regent. And Lysimachos was courted by both sides once more, having the advantageous (albeit not very wealthy) position of basileus in Thraikia and thus the ability to project power against both Antigonos and Alexandros, assuming the two of them were in opposition. Finally, in Babylonia, Seleukos was clearly rearming, having defeated the pirates and briefly occupied Gerrha itself; his aim was doubtful, and once more he was the target of diplomats from both Antigonos and Ptolemaios.
All that was needed for a third war to be set off was a single spark…a spark which would come from a most unexpected direction…
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
Nice. For a moment, I thought that Alexandros IV was leading the attack in Greece. I was all, "Nice job, boy-king. Not even your dad could lead a campaign before puberty." As soon as he got back to Pella, I was looking forward to all the crazy hijinks involved with a restored Argead dynasty.
Until he died.
Also, props to the battle between Chandragupta and Eumenes. This is VERY interesting, mostly because Seleucus tried to do the same thing and basically got his ass handed to him, resulting in the cession of the Indus Valley AND probably Bactria, given what we know of the extent of the Mauryas from rock edicts and such.
This has big long-term cultural implications for the Indus Valley, and while I don't think it'll be completely Hellenized, it will be much more so than in OTL. Depends on how long Eumenes controls it, and to what degree the Eumenid territories are Sinified. Heck, we could never even SEE a Parthia emerge at this point.
The one drawback for Eumenes is that Seleucus got 500 elephants instead of the 200 Eumenes came away with. Still, he holds the Indus and such, so he can draw on an entirely different pool of Indian soldiers for his further wars, mixing up the tactical pool a little. (Though not the ksatriyas, since they lose caste status if they leave India.)
Until he died.
Also, props to the battle between Chandragupta and Eumenes. This is VERY interesting, mostly because Seleucus tried to do the same thing and basically got his ass handed to him, resulting in the cession of the Indus Valley AND probably Bactria, given what we know of the extent of the Mauryas from rock edicts and such.
This has big long-term cultural implications for the Indus Valley, and while I don't think it'll be completely Hellenized, it will be much more so than in OTL. Depends on how long Eumenes controls it, and to what degree the Eumenid territories are Sinified. Heck, we could never even SEE a Parthia emerge at this point.
The one drawback for Eumenes is that Seleucus got 500 elephants instead of the 200 Eumenes came away with. Still, he holds the Indus and such, so he can draw on an entirely different pool of Indian soldiers for his further wars, mixing up the tactical pool a little. (Though not the ksatriyas, since they lose caste status if they leave India.)
I suck at not realizing that somatophylaktes is the plural form of the word somatophylax. 
Crazy hijinks that would have screwed the empire over by prolonging the war, 'cause nobody could break Antigonos, but at the same time a settlement that kept both him and the empire intact was virtually impossible. The death of Alexandros IV cut the Gordian knot, if you will. And, hopefully the name confusion will be resolved soon; I think I've weeded out most of the dudes with the same names, and Ptolemaios hasn't started having kids yet.
Nice. For a moment, I thought that Alexandros IV was leading the attack in Greece. I was all, "Nice job, boy-king. Not even your dad could lead a campaign before puberty." As soon as he got back to Pella, I was looking forward to all the crazy hijinks involved with a restored Argead dynasty.
Until he died.
Crazy hijinks that would have screwed the empire over by prolonging the war, 'cause nobody could break Antigonos, but at the same time a settlement that kept both him and the empire intact was virtually impossible. The death of Alexandros IV cut the Gordian knot, if you will. And, hopefully the name confusion will be resolved soon; I think I've weeded out most of the dudes with the same names, and Ptolemaios hasn't started having kids yet. According to Indian historians, anyway. The Greeks sorta gloss over it and indicate that the actions were inconclusive. Given that we don't really know a huge amount about the Mauryan Empire in general, and that this is an especially poorly chronicled period in Greek history as well, the conclusion of epic failure on either part is premature, I think. I usually side with Dupuy in concluding that the actions were inconclusive. Chandragupta got to keep what he had seized during the Third War, while Seleukos was busy serving as an admiral for Ptolemaios and developing the plan for the Battle of Gaza. Seleukos got his war-winning elephants in exchange. Given that he hadn't actually controlled the territories in question at the beginning of the campaign, I think that argues more for Chandragupta buying Seleukos off, and Seleukos not having had sufficient success to demand territorial cessions. In short, his war score wasn't high enough.Thlayli said:
That's the thing, though, ain't it?Thlayli said:
lolwutThlayli said:
That depends on the distractions or lack thereof of the polity that is in control of Iran.Thlayli said:
That's correct; the sreni infantry aren't all that great compared to heavy thorakitai anyway, especially as more advanced metallurgy starts filtering into the West. Introduction of patiyodha forces will indeed be quite interesting, though.Thlayli said:
