Introduction
Immediately after the death of Alexander the Great, his generals fell to division of the spoils, namely an empire that stretched from Greece to Egypt to the Indus River, the family of Alexander himself (valuable pawns in the power struggle to ensue), and the army that had made it all possible. At Babylon, a somewhat equitable settlement was reached between the three most important players: Antipater, regent in Europe and commander of a large army; Craterus, commander of the Cilician army and navy, which had been tasked to prepare for an invasion of Carthage; and Perdiccas, the head of the cavalry, who had seized control of the events at Babylon and come out on top. This settlement was rather ignominiously destroyed by the events of the next few years. Athens rose up violently, with allies, and sparked a conflict in Greece itself, the Lamian War; Perdiccas was then beset by a coalition of allies including Craterus (who died in the fighting), Antipater, and the satraps of Phrygia and Egypt, Antigonus ("Monophthalmus", or the One-Eyed) and Ptolemy respectively. At Triparadeisus they enshrined a new settlement, in which Antigonus was effectively made lord of Asia and the satrapies rearranged in Antipater's and Antigonus' favor.
But one of Perdiccas' supporters, and a supporter of the legitimate heir to the throne of Alexander, held out. Eumenes of Cardia, former secretary of Alexander, was not a Macedonian, but a Thracian Greek; he had not held a general's post and was thus a relative newcomer to the power games and strategy that wracked the former high command. But he proved his acumen at the Battle of the Hellespont against Craterus, who had been the most able of Alexander's subordinates, whereat he not only slew Craterus' second in command, Neoptolemus, but succeeded in driving back Craterus' army, aided in this doubtlessly by Craterus' accidental death. Eumenes, after the assassination of Perdiccas by Ptolemy and a few of Perdiccas' officers, was on the run with only a few men. It was truly ironic that an undefeated supporter of the legitimist camp would be labeled an outlaw by the rest of the Macedonian Empire. But outlaw he was, and only last-second negotiations succeeded in turning away Antigonus' wrath.
This is the story of Eumenes' subsequent meteoric rise and fall, which takes us deep into the salt desert of central Iran, a story of unparalleled generalship and heroic warriors, and of hidden machinations and vile betrayal, involving a cast of characters from places spread thousands of miles apart.
The Resumption of War
Antipater nominally held the supreme command and Regency of the Empire after the settlement at Triparadeisus. His impotence was shown very rapidly. He was unable to trap Eumenes in a series of Anatolian campaigns, and thus left the job to Antigonus, who was given a vastly enlarged satrapy in which to conduct his anti-Eumenes campaigns. In 319 Antipater retired to Europe to waste away the last few months of his life at Pella, where he died in the fall. Immediately the attention of all devolved onto the Regency. It had been expected by many that Antipater would be succeeded by his son, a bloodthirsty little tyrant named Cassander, but Cassander was to be disappointed; instead, Polyperchon, an old war buddy of Antipater's, was the designated successor. Cassander fled to Asia Minor in a rage and brooded at the satrapal palace of Antigonus in Celaenae. Antigonus, recognizing an easy ally, wined and dined him and encouraged his rebellious attitudes, then in the spring of 318 sent him back to Greece with a sizable warchest and a small army, to raise a rebellion against the new Regent.
Eumenes, in the meantime, had been pardoned by Antigonus, a gesture that was accepted by the remainder of the army, so for now he was on the market. He did not remain a free agent for long; Polyperchon, recognizing that he needed allies, sent to him promises of a supreme, official, royal-approved command in Asia, authority to use Alexander's best troops, and the right to receive monies from the treasuries in Asia. This title of strategos autokrator came with an implicit assumption that Eumenes would become the potential successor to Polyperchon as Regent, assuming that Eumenes performed his duties in the coming coalition war well. In any event, Eumenes took the job, and sent orders to the Argyraspides, the Silver Shield pikemen of Alexander, who were billeted in Susiana, in the southern Zagros. They were to march to Cilicia and join up with him at once. Cassander's war was rapidly spreading...
The second War of the Diadochi was heating up. While Cassander moved through the Peloponnese, seeking support from the oligarchic elites, Polyperchon marched south to counter him, ironically espousing the cause of democracy. Antigonus was moving to join him, but was held up by the annoyance of the satrap Arrhidaeus, who ruled Hellespontine Phrygia and thus held the key to the passage between Europe and Asia. Arrhidaeus, aided by the admiralship of Cleitus the White, proved a very annoying thorn in Antigonus' side, and difficult to reduce. Ptolemy, the de facto independent ruler of Egypt, was also allied to Antigonus, and marched north to protect his claim on Syria, a claim which had resulted from a highly illegal displacement of the previous satrap following Triparadeisus.
In any event, the battle lines were drawn in the Eastern Mediterranean, and Eumenes needed to act quickly. This he managed quite well, for Arrhidaeus bought him critical time. By the time Antigonus was ready to turn back east in the early summer of 318, Eumenes had the Silver Shields at his side, and a sizable army, hired by money from the treasury of Cyinda in Cilicia, from which only he, as royal general, could draw. It was with this force that he successfully faced down Ptolemy, who sailed to the coast of Syria and attempted to incite insurrections in his army. But Ptolemy's tactic failed, and Eumenes took advantage of his opponent's failure to detach Syria and Phoenicia from the Egyptian hold.
Phoenicia was what really spurred Antigonus onward. With command of that ancient coastal district, Eumenes could construct a sizable fleet, and that would be able to menace Antigonus' communications with his protege Cassander. Clearly this occupation needed to be reversed, and this annoying thorn in his side eliminated, and so Antigonus marched east at the head of his great army in the late spring of 318. Antigonus, following the Treaty at Triparadeisus, had command of the largest single army in the Empire, and Eumenes was clearly outnumbered. He needed to retreat somewhere: but where? Europe was where his ally Polyperchon was engaged in inconclusive maneuvering against Cassander, but that passage was barred by Antigonus. The only other option was eastwards, and that path did indeed offer some interesting possibilities. A power struggle was ensuing between the leaders of the Upper Satrapies of Iran and the overweening (and strong) satrap of Media, Peithon, whom Antigonus supported. East also lay the home ground of Eumenes' Silver Shields, and the resources of the royal treasury at Susa. With the Upper Satraps, led by Peucestas, lord of Persis, behind him, Eumenes might be able to beat Antigonus and return to the west.
Journey to the East
Eumenes' move toward the East was coincident with missives from him to the Upper Satraps, detailing his plans and indicating a course of action. It was partly on the basis of this promised support, and also because of internal diplomacy, that the Satraps struck in the summer of 318 BC(E). Peithon, who had occupied the satrapy of Parthyaea, was suddenly set upon by Peucestas with an army of 20,000 men, with an additional reinforcement from the Cathaean rulers of the Indus River valley, consisting of some 120 elephants. The Cathaeans had displaced Porus, who had been made ruler of the northern Punjab by Alexander after the Battle of the Hydaspes; their cohort, Porus' Greek generalissimo Eudamus, was made to represent their positions in Iran, and it was he, along with the prince 'Ceteus' [1], who proved decisive against Peithon, breaking the enemy army with the elephants and seizing control of Parthyaea.
These elephants would be a prize too great to ignore, and it was probably these that spurred Eumenes to new speed as he crossed the Syrian desert towards Babylonia. By winter he had reached Babylonia, and camped not far from Opis itself. He took this opportunity to attempt to gain Seleucus' support. Seleucus, who had been made satrap of Babylonia, was recalcitrant. He owed his position to Antigonus and believed that the Phrygian satrap would win out in the end anyway. Instead of allying with Eumenes, he sent agents to try to detach the Silver Shields from the enemy army, but (as Ptolemy and Antigonus did) he failed. When winter ended Eumenes was back on the march east again, this time skilfully negotiating the river at Opis with the aid of a small fleet of boats that Alexander had had constructed nearly a decade earlier. The river crossing was nearly ruined by Seleucus and Peithon; the former opened up a canal which cut off the Silver Shields' baggage, and the latter sent out several parties of cavalry to harass Eumenes' army. Securing the precious baggage train of the Silver Shields, in which were carried not only the booty of the decade of conquest under Alexander, but also the soldiers' home effects and families, was paramount, and Eumenes only narrowly managed to get the entire load across before Peithon intervened.
By the early summer of 317 Eumenes had reached Susiana, and temporary safety. Here his men could rest and replenish their supplies, and he could gain monies from the Susa treasury, whose head Xenophilus was more than willing to disburse cash to the royal general. (When Eudamus and Ceteus joined up with the elephant corps, Eumenes made sure to award them 200 talents to victual the expensive beasts. In addition, he gave his soldiers six months' advance pay and settled their arrears.) But Antigonus was on his tail. Marching through Mesopotamia to Babylonia and making contact with his unexpected new ally Seleucus, Antigonus launched a recruiting drive to offset the advantage Eumenes had due to his control of the Silver Shields. This gained him several thousand men but lost him the support of the satrap of Mesopotamia, Seleucus' neighbor Amphimachus, who also happened to be the brother of King Philip III, the mentally unstable half-brother of Alexander who sat impotent in Pella while Polyperchon hashed out affairs down south. Amphimachus took his personal satrapal army and fled to Eumenes during the summer of 317, further boosting the general's royalist credentials and his popular support amongst his army.
But in the fall, Antigonus began moving east again, impelled by the wealth that could be had if Susa were to fall and by the clear and present danger Eumenes represented to his ambitions in Asia. Eumenes' plan of resistance was well thought out and considered, and was a product of discussions in Alexander's personal tent amongst his allies and subordinates, including Antigenes and Teutamus, commanders of the Silver Shields, Peucestas, and Eudamus. Since an open field battle would be risky at this point, Eumenes' council's consensus went to a logistical and delaying strategy. Susiana was low in forage and the late-summer climate was viciously hot. Pulling back from Susa, which was well defended and whose citadel would be able to resist any immediate assault, Eumenes placed his army on the Pasitigris River and awaited new developments. When Antigonus attempted to cross the Coprates, further west, Eumenes saw an opportunity to strike, and managed to catch ten thousand of Antigonus' men unprepared and wipe them out with scarcely any casualties, taking 4,000 prisoners. The legitimist army then pulled away again before Antigonus' main force could cross the river and respond in kind.
Antigonus had been stymied at the Coprates but he had other options left. While Seleucus halfheartedly maintained a siege at Susa, he could move through the Zagros to the northeast, link up with Peithon's main army in Media, and boost his numbers to surpass those of Eumenes once more. The problem with the Zagros road was that it passed through the land of the Cossaei, who were known for fierce independence and who had fought Alexander (unsuccessfully) during his passage through the area in 331. Antigonus failed to negotiate with the tribesmen and thus was forced to endure a series of blistering assaults, light-warfare stings that exhausted his army and forced it to endure many casualties. When his army finally limped into Media in the early winter of 317-6, morale was at its nadir. But he had gained the safety of Peithon's districts, and could rest, recuperate, resupply, and rearm. Antigonus had pulled off a masterful maneuver, despite its major faults, and had turned the tables on Eumenes.
The Battle of Paraitacene
Eumenes followed Antigonus by another route into Media, avoiding the Cossaean problem and reaching the highlands without incident, save for a brief episode during an illness of his. Upon his rapid recovery, the divisions within the army - the natural divisions that one might expect from commanding a coalition force - were papered over and the march continued. Near modern Isfahan, the two armies began to maneuver against each other, the usual courtship-dance before the relationship was consummated in a big, bloody battle. Antigonus had a preponderance in cavalry but on the whole had fewer numbers than his opponent: 28,000 infantry to Eumenes' 35,000, and 9,000 horse to Eumenes' 6,100. Eumenes also had a two-to-one advantage in elephants.
The field of battle that separated them could only be called a 'field' very loosely. At Paraitacene the ground was crisscrossed with ravines and valleys, extremely uneven terrain that would play havoc with formations and which thus helped keep the two camps separate for a few days. After those few days, though, forage began to run out, exacerbated by the problem of being on the edge of the great Iranian salt desert in the opening days of winter. Eumenes, with the larger army, needed to resolve the problem first, and with a secret departure at nighttime managed to steal a march on Antigonus. The Phrygian satrap settled on a devious stratagem to prevent Eumenes from gaining good ground and forage: he rode ahead with his cavalry, trying to give the impression that his entire army was with him, and thus occupied a hill in Eumenes' path while the remainder of his army moved up. In the meantime, Eumenes' infantry advantage was whittled down by detachments and supply deficiencies. So going into the first major tactical encounter, he was at a disadvantage in both men and ground.
On the day of battle, Eumenes formed his army up in the typical Macedonian manner, with the infantry organized into the Philippic syntagma and echeloned to the left rear. On the right wing, he placed himself, at the head of his personal cavalry agema [2]; the right cavalry wing was much stronger than the left, because Eumenes wanted to concentrate his forces there to have a chance of beating Antigonus there. At the rightmost part of the infantry line, the Silver Shields under Antigenes took their place, the vanguard of the army; the remainder of the line was made up of the satraps' troops, second-line units and native levies armed with pike. Peucestas was in command there. On the left wing, Ceteus and Eudamus were in charge of the cavalry, as well as the elephants, which were concentrated on the left wing of the army. Eumenes hoped that his elephants would be able to make up for the quality and quantity deficiencies on the left wing.
Antigonus' dispositions resembled more than anything a giant guillotine blade, pointing downhill towards the static force of Eumenes; his right wing cavalry was placed at the apex of a great triangle, echeloned to the left rear as well (and thus mirroring Eumenes' army). Peithon was given command of the left-wing cavalry. Antigonus also made sure to keep his Macedonian elements of the infantry line away from the Silver Shields, for there was no guarantee that the Macedonians would fight each other; they certainly hadn't at the Battle of the Hellespont, where only the cavalry contingents (made up of Eastern horsemen) had engaged. He also made sure to counter Eumenes' concentration of heavy cavalry on the legitimist right wing with units of light skirmisher cavalry to aid Peithon.
Antigonus was supposed to have opened the battle, charging downhill to the tune of the paean and slicing a path through Eumenes' army; nothing of the sort happened. Instead, it was Peithon who moved first, because Antigonus, having marched downhill some ways, was stymied. The elephant detachment that guarded the legitimist left wing was indeed sufficient to halt the enemy in their tracks, for Antigonus' elephants were inferior beasts to these well-trained and maintained war pachyderms. Only Peithon, therefore, could move forward, and move forward he did, harassing Eumenes' cavalry with horse-archer fire. It was then that Eumenes managed the maneuver that had eluded Porus at the Hydaspes, namely that of moving his cavalry round behind his infantry to concentrate the entire force effectively; Peithon's horsemen were shattered by weight of numbers and the Median satrap was ignominiously forced to flee. In the meantime, the two titanic infantry formations clashed. It was here that Eumenes' Silver Shields showed their true worth. Every man had fought for Alexander, had marched across the known world, had defeated many times their number in opponents. The levies of Antigonus could not match up, and when the two troop masses clashed the Silver Shields tore through their opponents with precision and a grim, machinelike skill. Antigonus' phalanx collapsed all along the line and fled in disorder up the hill, pursued by Eumenes' infantry. It was at this point that Antigonus managed to rescue his situation somewhat. The advance of the phalanx had left the left-flank infantry somewhat disordered and exposed, and far away from the cavalry and elephants under Ceteus and Eudamus on the extreme left. Seizing his chance, Antigonus led his cavalry and fragments of the best of his infantry against the allied left, which collapsed. He then withdrew, satisfied with the damage he had wrought. Both sides retired to their camps with the onset of nightfall not long afterward; Eumenes' soldiers were more insistent than Antigonus', being rather worried about the baggage train, so Antigonus was left with possession of the field for a few more hours - a hollow victory, considering the serious damage he had sustained.
So Eumenes had to all intents and purposes won the first round. Antigonus had been unable to crack his army despite numerical superiority, and even the attack on the left wing at the end had not inflicted many casualties. The only remotely successful element of the whole episode for Antigonus had been his possession of the field of battle, which he used to complete his pious duties in burying his troops. Eumenes was not able to do so until later, and so Antigonus had a head start on him, allowing him to escape to Media and Peithon's sanctuary.
Immediately after the death of Alexander the Great, his generals fell to division of the spoils, namely an empire that stretched from Greece to Egypt to the Indus River, the family of Alexander himself (valuable pawns in the power struggle to ensue), and the army that had made it all possible. At Babylon, a somewhat equitable settlement was reached between the three most important players: Antipater, regent in Europe and commander of a large army; Craterus, commander of the Cilician army and navy, which had been tasked to prepare for an invasion of Carthage; and Perdiccas, the head of the cavalry, who had seized control of the events at Babylon and come out on top. This settlement was rather ignominiously destroyed by the events of the next few years. Athens rose up violently, with allies, and sparked a conflict in Greece itself, the Lamian War; Perdiccas was then beset by a coalition of allies including Craterus (who died in the fighting), Antipater, and the satraps of Phrygia and Egypt, Antigonus ("Monophthalmus", or the One-Eyed) and Ptolemy respectively. At Triparadeisus they enshrined a new settlement, in which Antigonus was effectively made lord of Asia and the satrapies rearranged in Antipater's and Antigonus' favor.
But one of Perdiccas' supporters, and a supporter of the legitimate heir to the throne of Alexander, held out. Eumenes of Cardia, former secretary of Alexander, was not a Macedonian, but a Thracian Greek; he had not held a general's post and was thus a relative newcomer to the power games and strategy that wracked the former high command. But he proved his acumen at the Battle of the Hellespont against Craterus, who had been the most able of Alexander's subordinates, whereat he not only slew Craterus' second in command, Neoptolemus, but succeeded in driving back Craterus' army, aided in this doubtlessly by Craterus' accidental death. Eumenes, after the assassination of Perdiccas by Ptolemy and a few of Perdiccas' officers, was on the run with only a few men. It was truly ironic that an undefeated supporter of the legitimist camp would be labeled an outlaw by the rest of the Macedonian Empire. But outlaw he was, and only last-second negotiations succeeded in turning away Antigonus' wrath.
This is the story of Eumenes' subsequent meteoric rise and fall, which takes us deep into the salt desert of central Iran, a story of unparalleled generalship and heroic warriors, and of hidden machinations and vile betrayal, involving a cast of characters from places spread thousands of miles apart.
The Resumption of War
Antipater nominally held the supreme command and Regency of the Empire after the settlement at Triparadeisus. His impotence was shown very rapidly. He was unable to trap Eumenes in a series of Anatolian campaigns, and thus left the job to Antigonus, who was given a vastly enlarged satrapy in which to conduct his anti-Eumenes campaigns. In 319 Antipater retired to Europe to waste away the last few months of his life at Pella, where he died in the fall. Immediately the attention of all devolved onto the Regency. It had been expected by many that Antipater would be succeeded by his son, a bloodthirsty little tyrant named Cassander, but Cassander was to be disappointed; instead, Polyperchon, an old war buddy of Antipater's, was the designated successor. Cassander fled to Asia Minor in a rage and brooded at the satrapal palace of Antigonus in Celaenae. Antigonus, recognizing an easy ally, wined and dined him and encouraged his rebellious attitudes, then in the spring of 318 sent him back to Greece with a sizable warchest and a small army, to raise a rebellion against the new Regent.
Eumenes, in the meantime, had been pardoned by Antigonus, a gesture that was accepted by the remainder of the army, so for now he was on the market. He did not remain a free agent for long; Polyperchon, recognizing that he needed allies, sent to him promises of a supreme, official, royal-approved command in Asia, authority to use Alexander's best troops, and the right to receive monies from the treasuries in Asia. This title of strategos autokrator came with an implicit assumption that Eumenes would become the potential successor to Polyperchon as Regent, assuming that Eumenes performed his duties in the coming coalition war well. In any event, Eumenes took the job, and sent orders to the Argyraspides, the Silver Shield pikemen of Alexander, who were billeted in Susiana, in the southern Zagros. They were to march to Cilicia and join up with him at once. Cassander's war was rapidly spreading...
The second War of the Diadochi was heating up. While Cassander moved through the Peloponnese, seeking support from the oligarchic elites, Polyperchon marched south to counter him, ironically espousing the cause of democracy. Antigonus was moving to join him, but was held up by the annoyance of the satrap Arrhidaeus, who ruled Hellespontine Phrygia and thus held the key to the passage between Europe and Asia. Arrhidaeus, aided by the admiralship of Cleitus the White, proved a very annoying thorn in Antigonus' side, and difficult to reduce. Ptolemy, the de facto independent ruler of Egypt, was also allied to Antigonus, and marched north to protect his claim on Syria, a claim which had resulted from a highly illegal displacement of the previous satrap following Triparadeisus.
In any event, the battle lines were drawn in the Eastern Mediterranean, and Eumenes needed to act quickly. This he managed quite well, for Arrhidaeus bought him critical time. By the time Antigonus was ready to turn back east in the early summer of 318, Eumenes had the Silver Shields at his side, and a sizable army, hired by money from the treasury of Cyinda in Cilicia, from which only he, as royal general, could draw. It was with this force that he successfully faced down Ptolemy, who sailed to the coast of Syria and attempted to incite insurrections in his army. But Ptolemy's tactic failed, and Eumenes took advantage of his opponent's failure to detach Syria and Phoenicia from the Egyptian hold.
Phoenicia was what really spurred Antigonus onward. With command of that ancient coastal district, Eumenes could construct a sizable fleet, and that would be able to menace Antigonus' communications with his protege Cassander. Clearly this occupation needed to be reversed, and this annoying thorn in his side eliminated, and so Antigonus marched east at the head of his great army in the late spring of 318. Antigonus, following the Treaty at Triparadeisus, had command of the largest single army in the Empire, and Eumenes was clearly outnumbered. He needed to retreat somewhere: but where? Europe was where his ally Polyperchon was engaged in inconclusive maneuvering against Cassander, but that passage was barred by Antigonus. The only other option was eastwards, and that path did indeed offer some interesting possibilities. A power struggle was ensuing between the leaders of the Upper Satrapies of Iran and the overweening (and strong) satrap of Media, Peithon, whom Antigonus supported. East also lay the home ground of Eumenes' Silver Shields, and the resources of the royal treasury at Susa. With the Upper Satraps, led by Peucestas, lord of Persis, behind him, Eumenes might be able to beat Antigonus and return to the west.
Journey to the East
Eumenes' move toward the East was coincident with missives from him to the Upper Satraps, detailing his plans and indicating a course of action. It was partly on the basis of this promised support, and also because of internal diplomacy, that the Satraps struck in the summer of 318 BC(E). Peithon, who had occupied the satrapy of Parthyaea, was suddenly set upon by Peucestas with an army of 20,000 men, with an additional reinforcement from the Cathaean rulers of the Indus River valley, consisting of some 120 elephants. The Cathaeans had displaced Porus, who had been made ruler of the northern Punjab by Alexander after the Battle of the Hydaspes; their cohort, Porus' Greek generalissimo Eudamus, was made to represent their positions in Iran, and it was he, along with the prince 'Ceteus' [1], who proved decisive against Peithon, breaking the enemy army with the elephants and seizing control of Parthyaea.
These elephants would be a prize too great to ignore, and it was probably these that spurred Eumenes to new speed as he crossed the Syrian desert towards Babylonia. By winter he had reached Babylonia, and camped not far from Opis itself. He took this opportunity to attempt to gain Seleucus' support. Seleucus, who had been made satrap of Babylonia, was recalcitrant. He owed his position to Antigonus and believed that the Phrygian satrap would win out in the end anyway. Instead of allying with Eumenes, he sent agents to try to detach the Silver Shields from the enemy army, but (as Ptolemy and Antigonus did) he failed. When winter ended Eumenes was back on the march east again, this time skilfully negotiating the river at Opis with the aid of a small fleet of boats that Alexander had had constructed nearly a decade earlier. The river crossing was nearly ruined by Seleucus and Peithon; the former opened up a canal which cut off the Silver Shields' baggage, and the latter sent out several parties of cavalry to harass Eumenes' army. Securing the precious baggage train of the Silver Shields, in which were carried not only the booty of the decade of conquest under Alexander, but also the soldiers' home effects and families, was paramount, and Eumenes only narrowly managed to get the entire load across before Peithon intervened.
By the early summer of 317 Eumenes had reached Susiana, and temporary safety. Here his men could rest and replenish their supplies, and he could gain monies from the Susa treasury, whose head Xenophilus was more than willing to disburse cash to the royal general. (When Eudamus and Ceteus joined up with the elephant corps, Eumenes made sure to award them 200 talents to victual the expensive beasts. In addition, he gave his soldiers six months' advance pay and settled their arrears.) But Antigonus was on his tail. Marching through Mesopotamia to Babylonia and making contact with his unexpected new ally Seleucus, Antigonus launched a recruiting drive to offset the advantage Eumenes had due to his control of the Silver Shields. This gained him several thousand men but lost him the support of the satrap of Mesopotamia, Seleucus' neighbor Amphimachus, who also happened to be the brother of King Philip III, the mentally unstable half-brother of Alexander who sat impotent in Pella while Polyperchon hashed out affairs down south. Amphimachus took his personal satrapal army and fled to Eumenes during the summer of 317, further boosting the general's royalist credentials and his popular support amongst his army.
But in the fall, Antigonus began moving east again, impelled by the wealth that could be had if Susa were to fall and by the clear and present danger Eumenes represented to his ambitions in Asia. Eumenes' plan of resistance was well thought out and considered, and was a product of discussions in Alexander's personal tent amongst his allies and subordinates, including Antigenes and Teutamus, commanders of the Silver Shields, Peucestas, and Eudamus. Since an open field battle would be risky at this point, Eumenes' council's consensus went to a logistical and delaying strategy. Susiana was low in forage and the late-summer climate was viciously hot. Pulling back from Susa, which was well defended and whose citadel would be able to resist any immediate assault, Eumenes placed his army on the Pasitigris River and awaited new developments. When Antigonus attempted to cross the Coprates, further west, Eumenes saw an opportunity to strike, and managed to catch ten thousand of Antigonus' men unprepared and wipe them out with scarcely any casualties, taking 4,000 prisoners. The legitimist army then pulled away again before Antigonus' main force could cross the river and respond in kind.
Antigonus had been stymied at the Coprates but he had other options left. While Seleucus halfheartedly maintained a siege at Susa, he could move through the Zagros to the northeast, link up with Peithon's main army in Media, and boost his numbers to surpass those of Eumenes once more. The problem with the Zagros road was that it passed through the land of the Cossaei, who were known for fierce independence and who had fought Alexander (unsuccessfully) during his passage through the area in 331. Antigonus failed to negotiate with the tribesmen and thus was forced to endure a series of blistering assaults, light-warfare stings that exhausted his army and forced it to endure many casualties. When his army finally limped into Media in the early winter of 317-6, morale was at its nadir. But he had gained the safety of Peithon's districts, and could rest, recuperate, resupply, and rearm. Antigonus had pulled off a masterful maneuver, despite its major faults, and had turned the tables on Eumenes.
The Battle of Paraitacene
Eumenes followed Antigonus by another route into Media, avoiding the Cossaean problem and reaching the highlands without incident, save for a brief episode during an illness of his. Upon his rapid recovery, the divisions within the army - the natural divisions that one might expect from commanding a coalition force - were papered over and the march continued. Near modern Isfahan, the two armies began to maneuver against each other, the usual courtship-dance before the relationship was consummated in a big, bloody battle. Antigonus had a preponderance in cavalry but on the whole had fewer numbers than his opponent: 28,000 infantry to Eumenes' 35,000, and 9,000 horse to Eumenes' 6,100. Eumenes also had a two-to-one advantage in elephants.
The field of battle that separated them could only be called a 'field' very loosely. At Paraitacene the ground was crisscrossed with ravines and valleys, extremely uneven terrain that would play havoc with formations and which thus helped keep the two camps separate for a few days. After those few days, though, forage began to run out, exacerbated by the problem of being on the edge of the great Iranian salt desert in the opening days of winter. Eumenes, with the larger army, needed to resolve the problem first, and with a secret departure at nighttime managed to steal a march on Antigonus. The Phrygian satrap settled on a devious stratagem to prevent Eumenes from gaining good ground and forage: he rode ahead with his cavalry, trying to give the impression that his entire army was with him, and thus occupied a hill in Eumenes' path while the remainder of his army moved up. In the meantime, Eumenes' infantry advantage was whittled down by detachments and supply deficiencies. So going into the first major tactical encounter, he was at a disadvantage in both men and ground.
On the day of battle, Eumenes formed his army up in the typical Macedonian manner, with the infantry organized into the Philippic syntagma and echeloned to the left rear. On the right wing, he placed himself, at the head of his personal cavalry agema [2]; the right cavalry wing was much stronger than the left, because Eumenes wanted to concentrate his forces there to have a chance of beating Antigonus there. At the rightmost part of the infantry line, the Silver Shields under Antigenes took their place, the vanguard of the army; the remainder of the line was made up of the satraps' troops, second-line units and native levies armed with pike. Peucestas was in command there. On the left wing, Ceteus and Eudamus were in charge of the cavalry, as well as the elephants, which were concentrated on the left wing of the army. Eumenes hoped that his elephants would be able to make up for the quality and quantity deficiencies on the left wing.
Antigonus' dispositions resembled more than anything a giant guillotine blade, pointing downhill towards the static force of Eumenes; his right wing cavalry was placed at the apex of a great triangle, echeloned to the left rear as well (and thus mirroring Eumenes' army). Peithon was given command of the left-wing cavalry. Antigonus also made sure to keep his Macedonian elements of the infantry line away from the Silver Shields, for there was no guarantee that the Macedonians would fight each other; they certainly hadn't at the Battle of the Hellespont, where only the cavalry contingents (made up of Eastern horsemen) had engaged. He also made sure to counter Eumenes' concentration of heavy cavalry on the legitimist right wing with units of light skirmisher cavalry to aid Peithon.
Antigonus was supposed to have opened the battle, charging downhill to the tune of the paean and slicing a path through Eumenes' army; nothing of the sort happened. Instead, it was Peithon who moved first, because Antigonus, having marched downhill some ways, was stymied. The elephant detachment that guarded the legitimist left wing was indeed sufficient to halt the enemy in their tracks, for Antigonus' elephants were inferior beasts to these well-trained and maintained war pachyderms. Only Peithon, therefore, could move forward, and move forward he did, harassing Eumenes' cavalry with horse-archer fire. It was then that Eumenes managed the maneuver that had eluded Porus at the Hydaspes, namely that of moving his cavalry round behind his infantry to concentrate the entire force effectively; Peithon's horsemen were shattered by weight of numbers and the Median satrap was ignominiously forced to flee. In the meantime, the two titanic infantry formations clashed. It was here that Eumenes' Silver Shields showed their true worth. Every man had fought for Alexander, had marched across the known world, had defeated many times their number in opponents. The levies of Antigonus could not match up, and when the two troop masses clashed the Silver Shields tore through their opponents with precision and a grim, machinelike skill. Antigonus' phalanx collapsed all along the line and fled in disorder up the hill, pursued by Eumenes' infantry. It was at this point that Antigonus managed to rescue his situation somewhat. The advance of the phalanx had left the left-flank infantry somewhat disordered and exposed, and far away from the cavalry and elephants under Ceteus and Eudamus on the extreme left. Seizing his chance, Antigonus led his cavalry and fragments of the best of his infantry against the allied left, which collapsed. He then withdrew, satisfied with the damage he had wrought. Both sides retired to their camps with the onset of nightfall not long afterward; Eumenes' soldiers were more insistent than Antigonus', being rather worried about the baggage train, so Antigonus was left with possession of the field for a few more hours - a hollow victory, considering the serious damage he had sustained.
So Eumenes had to all intents and purposes won the first round. Antigonus had been unable to crack his army despite numerical superiority, and even the attack on the left wing at the end had not inflicted many casualties. The only remotely successful element of the whole episode for Antigonus had been his possession of the field of battle, which he used to complete his pious duties in burying his troops. Eumenes was not able to do so until later, and so Antigonus had a head start on him, allowing him to escape to Media and Peithon's sanctuary.
