Rampant.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
-Revelation vi, 7
Beyond the Caucasus, the vast and trackless steppes stretch onward to infinity. Few Greeks travel these lands, inhabited as they are by fierce nomads, the Skythoi, whom not even Darayavahus Wuzurg had succeeded in conquering. Their horse archers are nigh invulnerable, attacking from range and retreating with speed. These Skythoi have no single base, no real lasting encampments of any kind, and thus they can evade any attackers with impunity. But not all Skythoi are alike. North of Sogdiane and Baktria, there live the Saka, armored horsemen with a barbaric tongue, and the Massagetai, who had killed Kurush centuries ago. The Skythoi to the north of the Caucasus are different. They are called the Saurometai, only recently become lords of that steppe, rulers of a confederation that includes the Roxolani, the Aorsi, the Iazygai, and Thyssagetai, and headed by the Saitai. They are equally at home fighting on horseback or on foot; their cavalry, comprised of a group of noble lancers backed by a formidable array of horse archers, is the primary arm but the foot-archers, the fistaeg fat aexsdzytae, were skilled as well. They are pastoral herders, but they take a great interest in the wealth that crosses their lands, and they profit from the trade that runs through their territories.
It is through that trade that they are connected to the events on the other side of the Caucasus, to the Hai of the mountains. Their lands were disturbed by the passage of fleeing Haikaikan refugees, seeking asylum from the armies of Demetrios Poliorketes. They already knew of the riches of the southern lands, of the Black Sea coast where Eumelos was king over the Bosporos of the Kimmerioi. Similar wealth was to be had in Hayasdan, wealth that had until now been out of reach of the Sauromatai horse-lords. But now the Caucasus passes were poorly fortified. Egrisi and Aghvan lay open to invasion, and the Hellenic armies which had established suzerainty were now withdrawing, leaving behind garrisons insufficient to hold the land. The Khayasha of the Saurometai, Zanticos, spied an opportunity. The puppet Arkah that Demetrios had set over Hayasdan, a Hellene/Haikaikan half-breed albino named Adaskos, was unpopular and intentionally weak, made so by his overlords so as to make Hayasdan simpler to pacify in the event of disloyalty. The same weakness that Demetrios and his father intended to use against a Hai revolt would serve to facilitate the passage of the Saurometai into the rich lands of the south, and finally claim their birthright as warriors. Contrary to popular belief, these plans were already afoot when the dark-skinned men from the south offered great riches to the Khayasha in exchange for such an attack; this offer merely spurred Zanticos preparations for war.
After the passes cleared in the spring of 309, the Saurometai force, with the prince Abeakos at its head and ten thousand horse in its train, irrupted through the Souanian Gates with scarcely any resistance at all, debouching into Kartli, which was overrun easily before advancing into Hayasdan itself. By espousing the cause of Yervand Yervanduni, Avag Sepuh of Hayasdan and dispossessed heir of Orontes II, the Saurometai gained much popular support. Due to the popular support for the invasion, Yervand was able to recruit nakhararakan horsemen, what the Hellenes would call kataphraktoi, and add them to his personal khuveshagan. The popular revolt swelled, and the Antigonid garrisons of Kotais and Mtskheta were thrown out. By the summer of 309, Hayasdan was totally secure under the Saurometai and the growing forces of Yervand, who declared himself the rightful Arkah and crowned himself as such at Armavir.
This news was not well received in Kelenai, and Antigonos ordered Polemaios into the mountains to restore the situation and retake Ani as a base for further operations in Hayasdan. He didnt send Demetrios, the better general, because of an intuition that this was only the beginning of his troubles. He was right: the Third War was on. Taking advantage of the Antigonid distraction in Hayasdan, Ptolemaios had declared war, and a Ptolemaic field army was already en route to Damaskos in Syria-Koile. Ptolemaios unexpected ally, Seleukos, joined the fray as well, leading thirty thousand men into Assyria and Adiabene. Other plots by Ptolemaios coalition commenced as well; Alexandros, Regent of Makedonia, seized the opportunity to dispatch an army into Epeiros that, with popular support, unseated Alketas II and replaced him on the Molossian throne with the ten year old Pyrrhos, whom Alexandros expected to act as his puppet. Antigonos empire was assailed on the seas as well, as Ptolemaios dispatched a fleet under Kleitos the White to seize Kypros as a base for attacking Antigonos in Syria.
The Monophthalmos would have been a fool not to prepare for a war, and indeed his own schemes were going into motion as well. Lysimachos, basileus in Thraikia, came down on the Antigonid side and led an army into Makedonia to unseat Alexandros and the puppet Herakles. Demetrios took command of the army en route to repel the Syrian invasion, and one Astyochos was ordered into Adiabene. Antigonos himself stayed in Anatolia to coordinate all of the actions and administer the calling up of klerouchoi phalangitai; when he had managed to raise a grand army, probably by the spring of next year, he himself would lead it to attack the target of his choice, as he was the only one qualified to do so, being the basileus and all. Thus was the grand strategy of the Antigonoi; for the year of 309 it seemed to cover all the bases successfully. In Makedonia, Lysimachos pushed towards the Strymon, where he engaged an army of equivalent size under the command of one Pefkolaos, who had been ordered by Alexandros to hold the line while Epeiros was made safe under Pyrrhos, its restored child-king. Between Pefkolaos and Lysimachos a war of maneuver ensued for a few months, but eventually Pefkolaos stood and fought, under the slopes of the Pangaion Hills at Pergamos. There, Lysimachos excellent rhomphaiaphoroi, Thraikian soldiers skilled with the falx, or rhomphaia, carved through the enemy ranks where the ground was rough, but elsewhere on the battlefield, Lysimachos phalanx, made up of Thraikian pantodapoi and doryphoroi, lighter-armed units that were not skilled with the sarissa, were beaten badly by the Makedonian regulars. After a day of mutual slaughter, Pefkolaos, who had come off somewhat the worse, retreated behind the Strymon, while Lysimachos laid siege to Amphipolis, and seized it, going into winter quarters there. Eion, at the mouth of the river, remained in Pefkolaos hands, though, and would be a thorn that needed to be removed the next year. In Hayasdan, Polemaios seized Ani, beating off an attempt at relief by Zanticos. He then camped at Arshamashat for the winter, while the Saurometai and their Hai allies eradicated the last adherents of Adaskos, who had gathered at Phraaspa in Adurbagadan. Demetrios had success against the Ptolemaioi, defeating the covering force for Ptolemaios siege of Damaskos on the Upper Orontes, though failing to break the siege itself as yet. Only in Adiabene were Antigonid arms unsuccessful: Astyochos, debouching from the Maseios Mountains, was caught by the adept Seleukos himself in the crossing of the Zabatos, not far from Gaugamela. At the Zabatos River, the advance force of some 7,000 men that had been sent to cover the crossing of the remainder of the army was annihilated by Seleukos rapid attack, in which his own klerouchoi phalangitai served well against the deuteroi levy pikemen under Astyochos control. Most of the 7,000 perished, driven into the river, and the remainder were taken captive by Seleukos and hired into his own army. Such a debilitating loss prevented Astyochos from relieving Arbela that year, and he retired into the Maseios again while Seleukos successfully assaulted Arbela in the waning months.
Faced with failure on most fronts, Ptolemaios decided to play his ace in the hole starting in 308. Thus far, Antigonos had not been threatened in Anatolia itself. It was high time this happened, but allied naval resources (or lack thereof) had prevented much of anything from being done about it. Still, even the grand armada that Demetrios had led at Skyros and Paphos could not patrol the entire coastline of Asia Mikra, and the signal was given for an uprising to start (along with a tremendous amount of cash, naturally, and other, more nebulous promises). Antigonos departure from Asia Mikra the next spring was, to his dismay, suddenly aborted with the revolt of the city of Pergamon, under the faithless satrap of Mysia, Philetairos the eunuch. Pergamon, as the site of one of Antigonos treasuries (as well as a silver mine nearby), allowed Philetairos to finance a mercenary army, bolstered by his own satrapal troops. Western Asia Mikra was now under serious threat, and any plan of a renewed campaign in Mesopotamia or elsewhere would have to be shelved. Antigonos turned his army westwards to confront the perfidious Mysians, and ordered Demetrios to do his best to fight both Seleukos and Ptolemaios at the same time, withdrawing troops from the Hayasdan campaign as well. The Antigonoi in 308 and for the foreseeable future would have to operate on a shoestring at best.
This problem was compounded by the surprise victory of the navy of Kleitos the White over the Antigonid fleet, made while the Antigonid admiral, Isidoros Oresteus, had the ships staying at anchor in the cove of Leuke Akte. Following that success up, Kleitos landed a Ptolemaic expeditionary force on Kypros, using connections with the local island kings that allowed the Antigonid garrison to be overrun. The renewal of allied naval supremacy, even if transient, would allow them to support Philetairos better and prolong the Mysian revolt. For a further distraction, Kleitos also made plans to embark a small army under the command of one Pagkrates Lissaios to cause further distraction to Antigonos in Lykia and Pamphylia. That army, made up of most of the Kypros force as well as further reinforcements from Alexandria, would not be ready for battle until next year, but already the expeditions viability was being confirmed. Demetrios, confident in the dilatory siege techniques of the Ptolemaioi at Damaskos, departed for Assyria with most of his army, absorbing the remainder of Astyochos troops along the way. While there was no longer a question of being able to recapture Adiabene, Orrhoa in Assyria could still be made safe. Seleukos was marching past Nisibis already; if he crossed the Euphrates life would become very interesting for Demetrios indeed. The Antigonoi crossed the river and, following a series of maneuvers around Orrhoa, Seleukos and Demetrios fought at Harran. The Breaker of Cities, despite having many of the elephants that his father had been using ever since the aftermath of Triparadeisos, was stymied by Seleukos, who developed an ingenious tactic of elephant traps using spikes and pits; with one of his main advantages thus neutralized, Demetrios was forced into a slower, more grinding fight that ended with the onset of nightfall. Both sides had taken losses, but Seleukos, with the Ptolemaioi to back him up, could afford them. Demetrios, who was the outnumbered one, could not. The strategic defeat of Harran forced the Antigonoi to abandon their remaining territories beyond the Euphrates and conserve their forces in Syria. Meanwhile, the Hayasdan campaign was not going particularly well; Polemaios was having some difficulty coping with the steppe archers of the Saurometai, even if they were less effective in the Caucasus than they were on the trackless steppe to the north. And he had no real answer to the heavy Haikaikan cavalry, the elite nakhararakan horse that withstood repeated blows and who resisted arrow shot with impunity. After a tactical defeat on the Phasis River, compounded by his new deficiency in troops, Polemaios fell back to Arshamashat, unable to renew the campaign. And in Asia Mikra, Antigonos had mixed success; while breaking up Philetairos bum rush on Kelenai at the Battle of the Maiandros (where the hastily-collected would-be grand army stood its ground against a furious series of somewhat uncoordinated attacks), his counterblow, directed at the Mysian-seized cities of coastal Lydia, was a failure, and Sardis remained under rebel control, not to mention all Mysia itself. There were no efforts to cross over into Thraikia by Philetairos, at least not yet.
The area on which Antigonos could most count on for success was Lysimachos, surprisingly enough. Despite being horrendously outnumbered and somewhat overextended, the Thraikian basileus adeptly outmaneuvered Pefkolaos and seized Eion without a fight early in the campaign, then struck out across the Strymon and dismantled his opposite numbers army at the Battle of Berge in Bisaltia. Pefkolaos, fighting in the difficult terrain, failed to decline the engagement and was taken to pieces by the elite rhomphaiaphoroi. Hiring on a significant portion of Pefkolaos defeated army, Lysimachos continued beyond the Chalkidike through Mygdonia into Makedonia proper, where Alexandros was returning with the army from Epeiros. With roughly equal numbers, the two forces elected to stare each other down outside of Charakoma, near where they both encamped for the winter, with Lysimachos in possession of the city itself. Further activity on that front during the year was minimal; Alexandros had no success in bribing the Thraikian barbarians or the coastal poleis to rebel, mostly due to the recent and painful lesson they had learned at his very own hands but also because of the small forces Lysimachos second in command, Pantauchos, had at his disposal for quelling dissent.
The surprising inactivity of Eumenes, who had significant possible gains for aiding either side, during these years can be explained quickly. Though the increasing tension had necessitated his departure from the Indos valley, the real problem lay in increasing pressure from the north. The Saurometai were not the only group that had decided to launch an opportunistic attack in the recent days, and Eumenes satrap in Margiane, Stasandros, was screaming for aid and relief from the attacks of the Massagetai and Saka. Eumenes thus spent much of his time during the opening years of the Third War repelling raids and even, in 308, a full fledged invasion by the Saka under the leadership of the chieftain Oxyboakes. Though the Saka were repulsed in a campaign culminating in the brilliant Battle of Marakanda, whereat the Eumenid forces managed to trap the heavily armored Saka nobleman cavalry against a syntagma following an intricate series of maneuvers, Eumenes was forced to retain significant forces in the north under Stasandros to help at least alleviate the pressure. Such a commitment, as well as the maintenance of the Indos army under the command of Ceteus to prevent a Mauryan revanche, precluded Eumenes assumption of the offensive even after he returned to Elymais and his capital at Susa in the early part of the year 307.
Pressure on Antigonos was slightly relieved for the coming year, specifically in Hayasdan. Yervand and his Saurometai allies were already quarreling over the matter of independence, and many of the Saurometai chieftains were already complaining about the foreign adventurism of the out of touch Zanticos. As the allies dealt with their own internal squabbles, Polemaios seized the initiative, trying to break the coalition once and for all. Plunging back into the valleys of Hayasdan proper, the Antigonoi brought the allied forces to battle at Zarehavan in the mid-summer of 307. Polemaios, aided by treachery in the Saurometai, convinced many of the other side to defect, and in the confusion Zanticos was killed; the Hai under Yervand withdrew with the death of the allied leader, and Polemaios held the field. He recruited some of the Saurometai as mercenaries, but the majority, who nominated Zanticos son Abeakos to the khayashaship, returned across the Caucasus to home, exhausted of the prolonged foreign expedition. With the new numerical supremacy, Polemaios lost no time in pressing the offensive; Kotais was besieged, and the Saurometai mercenaries began raiding the territory around Armavir.
Antigonos had successes in Asia Mikra as well. Philetairos may have been an able administrator, but his generalship was dwarfed by that of the Monophthalmos. The Antigonoi renewed their attack on rebel Lydia and this time stormed Sardis before the Pergamene army could relieve it, then struck in an unexpected direction instead of seizing the Aigion ports, Antigonos opted to strike north into Mysia to disrupt Philetairos control of his home territory and ravage his home. Thyateira was seized without a fight, and Antigonos made his way down the Makestos unopposed, even demonstrating in front of Pergamon, ravaging the countryside, and then returning south, exhibiting his ability to march at will across Philetairos territory. These audacious moves induced the Pergamene satrap to adopt a more defensive posture, hunkering down in Mysia and harassing Thyateira, which was a dagger pointed at the heart of his satrapy. Antigonos naturally used this relative inactivity to make capital on another front; he returned to Lydia and besieged the recently-moved city of Smyrna, capturing it before returning to winter headquarters. His successes were only tarnished by Kleitos the Whites landing in Lykia and Pamphylia, carrying Pagkrates army and aiding in the successful siege of Myra. The new Ptolemaic base in southern Asia Mikra would have to be dealt with soon enough, and would prove to be an festering ulcer indeed if it were not quickly eliminated.
Demetrios had the promised lively year in Syria. The capture of Harran and Orrhoe meant that Seleukos was dangerously close to uniting his armies with those of Ptolemaios, who had finally captured Damaskos and was marching north along the Orontes, leaving behind one Sogenes to besiege the cities of Phoenike. The Poliorketes elected to engage first Seleukos, then Ptolemaios; proximity was a major factor here, as was the opportunity to catch the Seleukidai as they crossed the Euphrates. While Demetrios missed that particular opportunity, his arrival did catch Seleukos unawares when it did occur in April of 307, at the city of Bambyke. The Antigonoi, who had some twenty thousand infantry and eight thousand cavalry, were outnumbered by Seleukos, who commanded a force of twenty-six thousand infantry and an equal number in cavalry. But the Seleukidai were disorganized and their qualitative disadvantage was clear; Seleukos had had to rely on pantodapoi, ill-trained native troops, to bolster his scarce katoikiai and klerouchoi phalangitai. The difference would show in the coming battle. Demetrios decided to mass most of his cavalry on the right wing, under his personal command, to smash Seleukos left quickly and capitalize, relying on Seleukos likely decision to divide his own horsemen evenly between the two flanks to prevent a similar Seleukid success on the Antigonid left wing. Demetrios expected his phalangitai to have some success over Seleukos infantry, as well, and made provision to transfer some of his lighter-armed soldiers to aid the cavalry left wing in the event of success in the center. Seleukos plan revolved around a maneuver akin to that of Epaminondas at Leuktra, that is a deep column of attack by his phalangitai on his left wing to balance the success he expected his right wing to have. The cavalry, as expected by Demetrios, were deployed evenly from wing to wing.
When the two forces finally clashed, Demetrios rode hard to engage the Seleukid left wing, under the command of Seleukos satrap of Charakene, Theokles, before Seleukos himself could realize the danger and redeploy forces to meet the threat. But the disorganized Seleukid army was unable to respond in time; Theokles wing was split in two by the wedged Antigonoi, and annihilated. At the same time, the two groups of phalangitai began to engage. The pushing match on the Antigonid right would have ended in disaster for Demetrios had his cavalry not met with such rapid success. As it was, his Kappadokian horse and lonchophoroi medium cavalry were able to wheel into the Seleukid phalangitais flank, despite a temptation to pursue Theokles off the field. The addition of his cavalry at the critical moment induced a rout, which cascaded down the line as successive elements of Seleukos syntagma were outflanked and forced to retire. The rout was total; of the thirty-four thousand troops Seleukos had brought to the battlefield, half of them were killed or surrendered to Demetrios. Victory begat victory; the Antigonid ranks swelled with turncoats from the Babylonian basileus army. Pursuit allowed Demetrios to clear the west bank of the Euphrates of Seleukos forces; Seleukos himself returned to Orrhoe and requested reinforcements from back home. But the summer was not over yet, not by a long chalk, and now Demetrios had to turn to face the Ptolemaioi. Fortunately, Ptolemaios was as slow as ever in his advance, and his army was still on the Orontes when Demetrios, marching at speed (after having had some rest following the Battle of Bambyke), made contact near Amathe. The contest there was more inconclusive. Ptolemaios had the better of a long engagement, aided by his troops more rested condition and his persistent numerical superiority, but he lost some five thousand men and elected to withdraw somewhat further south, covering the operations in Phoenike but without overextending himself into Syria. Having accomplished his mission as best he could, Demetrios busied himself for the remainder of the year recruiting more men and preparing to recross the Euphrates.
Lysimachos in Makedonia renewed his campaign in 307, but earlier than expected. During the winter months, he formed his army and attempted to launch an unexpected attack on Alexandros. He had better luck in this endeavor than had Antigonos nine years prior; Alexandros was unable to scatter to ratholes as had been Eumenes option, and was forced to stand and fight. The resultant engagement, the Battle of the Echedoros River, saw Alexandros army put up a reasonable fight, but its poor positioning allowed Lysimachos to get the better of it and force much of the phalanx into the freezing cold river. Much of Alexandros army was drowned, and of the remainder many were recruited into Lysimachos force (as can be seen, it was becoming common practice among the successors to do so; success generated success, as it were). The road to Pella lay open, and the Thraikian basileus took it, along the way capturing Alexandros to be executed in front of the court and unceremoniously dumped in the Axios. The boy-king Herakles, illegitimate son of Alexandros Megas himself, was also murdered, but he received a more honorable burial at Aigai. And Lysimachos himself was crowned at Pella, adding to his title of basileus of Thraikia the more important and storied one of Makedonian king. The somewhat convenient death of Nikaia, Lysimachos wife and the daughter of Antipatros (no foul play, as it happened, was involved, though), allowed Lysimachos to marry into the Argeades, namely to the widow of Kassandros and the half-sister of Megas Alexandros, Thessalonike. For her, Lysimachos renamed Pellas port from Therma to Thessalonika, and apparently the marriage was a prosperous one from the start. But the victory of the Echedoros did not mean the end of the war in Makedonia. Alexandros and Herakles may have fallen, but Alexandros general Pefkolaos, with the remnants of the royal army, coalesced around Pyrrhos of Epeiros, whose guardians refused to extradite the troublemakers. Lysimachos also had enemies at home to deal with; the general Epaphrodeitos still held sway in the Chalkidike, while south of Thessalia, the Hellenic poleis were totally out of control, variously declaring independence, swearing allegiance to Pyrrhos, or (in the isolated case of Demetrios Phalereus, seizing power once more in Athenai) declaring for Lysimachos. It was an almighty mess, and it would preclude action against the Molossians for now. To all intents and purposes, the Hellenic theater had been closed to Antigonos and Ptolemaios.
The beginning of 306 saw the Antigonoi clearly preeminent in the war once more. Despite setbacks in Syria, the most recent actions had gone their way, and Antigonid armies were victorious in Hayasdan and Asia Mikra as well. Ptolemaios and Seleukos knew that their time was running out; as soon as Philetairos and the Lykian expedition were smashed, both of them were in deep trouble. They needed to unite and kill Demetrios army quickly, for it was the last obstacle between them and a meeting on the fields of Asia Mikra and a final victory over the Antigonoi. But their own manpower reserves, as well as those of the Antigonoi, were running low. Seleukos and Ptolemaios were rapidly approaching the point at which they would have to prostrate themselves before Eumenes and beg for his intervention. An intervention in which Eumenes was not particularly interested (or capable of undertaking): the Kardian was instead concentrating on reforms at home, using the shield of the continued, draining war in the west to initiate his projects in peace. His argyraspidai, which had been settled in Susiana, were institutionalized into a formal organization, to be expanded with the elite phalangitai of the next generation; colonists from Hellas, fleeing the confusion that Lysimachos ascension had caused, filled the military settlements that Eumenes set up, the katoikiai and klerouchoi, providing a readily levied phalangial army of no small skill. Eumenes also began a building project in Susa, his capital, and solidified the administration system of his disparate provinces. In any event, all of these programs Eumenes had been engaging in prevented him from intervening in the Third War even if he had wanted to, though sneaking a piece of Babylonia or Hayasdan was never particularly far from his mind.
So the year of 306 began not with a Eumenid intervention but instead with Antigonos campaigns in Asia Mikra. That winter, he had driven Philetairos out of most of Lydia; now, he began to push towards Pergamon itself. But the Mysian satrap had one last card to play; his mercenary army was still strong, and had not engaged much with the Antigonoi; it was this army that he risked at Phokaia, as Antigonos marched along the Aigion coast towards Kidainis, port of Pergamon, to first seize that and then capture the jewel of Mysia itself. With an excellent core of cavalry and a solid mixture of both traditional, classical hoplitai and the more modernized phalangitai of the Makedonian style, aided by a detachment of the Karian Uazali light armed troops, the Pergamene army would be a formidable opponent. But Antigonos had impressive coffers too, and his army was largely made up of the veterans of the world-conquering Alexandros. His troops were elite, and they showed it at Phokaia. Philetairos attempted to use his Uazali warbands to rain javelin fire on Antigonos cavalry, to try to aid in outflanking his opponent; but Antigonos responded with his own troops, the excellent medium prodromoi cavalry. The Uazali scattered, and Antigonos troops broke the Pergamene wing; the fight in the center was more prolonged, but it was eventually resolved in Antigonos favor as well. Philetairos was ruined, his army smashed; he retreated back to Pergamon, which was put under siege, with Antigonos general Antagoras supervising. Antigonos himself took the bulk of the army south. In a series of rapid operations he cleared Pisidia and Karia of the Ptolemaioi, driving them back into Pamphylia. Pagkrates army eventually congregated at Side, but Antigonos refused to let up; though his forces were exhausted, and the winter was approaching, he launched an assault on the city before Kleitos the White could arrive and evacuate the Ptolemaic army, and shattered the expeditionary force. Asia Mikra was thus cleared, and extra troops freed up. To the south and east, engagements went well for the Antigonoi again. Polemaios success in capturing Armavir and Kotais nearly broke the back of Yervands remaining supporters; his victories were complemented by Demetrios repulse of the Ptolemaioi at Beroia and the successful assault crossing of the Euphrates that allowed Demetrios to secure a foothold in Assyria with the capture of Harran. Seleukos, fearing an engagement with his ill trained levies, withdrew to the Araxes River.
That said, yes, it might hinder most of them.
). I'm serious about the Zoroastrian option, though; in the long-term it might very well happen, and you did mention the whole wearing eastern clothes thing, as well as the extant ties with the Persian aristocracy. And the Hellenistic roots will weaken over time; Persia is relatively detached from the main cultural and commercial ties of the Eastern Mediterranean/Western and Central Near Eastern region. The Eumenid Empire, just like Baktria in OTL, will inevitably be more drawn to the east, but Zoroastrianism, if properly interpreted, is a superior (from the royal point of view) alternative to Buddhism.
