Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander the Great's Empire (12 page)

Portraiture shaded into more baroque forms of expression. Having discovered the beauty of the particular, artists also became fascinated by more outré experiences and states of consciousness, such as fear, sexual arousal, and drunkenness. Statues large and small struck theatrical poses expressive of emotional intensity. An epigram of Posidippus of Pella (first half of the third century
BCE
) explicitly draws a parallel between sculpture and the poems of Philitas of Cos, the teacher of Ptolemy II, on the grounds that both depict character with equal precision.
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Commemorative epigrams, a genre of poetry perfected in the Hellenistic period, focused poignantly on ordinary folk and their sentiments:

Epigrammatists also used the form to express the same kinds of emotions as are found on sculptures. In this poem, Asclepiades of Samos (late fourth century) addresses the Erotes (gods of love) as his personified lust:

The emphasis on ordinary people and ordinary emotions stands in striking contrast with the grandeur typical of Greek poetry, painting, and sculpture of earlier eras. It is hard to conceive that classical artists would have dedicated their skills to portraying social inferiors such as laborers and slaves, women and children, and even animals; but all of these subjects feature prominently in the early and later Hellenistic periods. It is equally hard to imagine that Jason, the heroic collector of the Golden Fleece, could have been portrayed as he was in the
often tongue-in-cheek
Argonautica
of Apollonius of Rhodes (born ca. 295)—not as a mighty warrior, but as a team builder. Both heroes and gods tend to become reduced in Hellenistic poetry to the level of ordinary human individuals.

A stronger sense of the worth of the individual had social repercussions as well. It led, above all, to a less repressive regime for women. As reflected in the light comedies of Menander (342–291), men were exploring the possibility of marrying for love, not just for practical reasons. An appreciation of wives as individuals, rather than merely as bearers and rearers of the next generation of citizens, led to a greater appreciation of women in general as at least marginally more rational than they had previously been supposed or allowed to be. And so schools began to cater for the education of girls as well as boys, and we begin to meet more female writers.

The poems of Theocritus (first half of the third century
BCE
) and Herodas (a decade or two later), both of whom lived and worked in Ptolemaic Alexandria, include charming depictions of everyday life. They show women attending a festival, setting up a commemorative plaque in a temple, pushing their way through crowded streets, shopping, visiting friends—in short, living ordinary lives that were less restricted to the home. The goods that accompanied dead women in their graves began to be more nearly equal in value and kind to those found in male graves, suggesting greater equality.
²⁴
In due course of time, we find women being allowed privileges that would have been unthinkable in the Classical period, such as being benefactors of their cities in their own names, holding public office, and being signatories of their own marriage contracts (which had previously been contracts between her husband and her father or guardian).
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This is not to say that most women did not still live confined lives, in legal dependency on the male head of the household. But there could be exceptions, and there was overall improvement.

Every government has to find a balance between the demands of individual citizens and the demands of the state as a whole, for the greatest good of the greatest number. Otherwise individuals might express their sense of their own worth in ways that are neither attractive nor constructive. The Successors were untrammeled by any state apparatus, because they were the state apparatus. The Greeks had a word,
pleonexia
, which meant precisely “wanting more than one’s share” or “self-seeking.” In the Classical period, this individualist form of greed was invariably regarded as a particularly destructive and antisocial vice, and it was expected that the gods would punish it or that it
would arouse fierce opposition from other humans. The historian Thucydides, for example, thought that Athenian overreaching was one of the main reasons that they were defeated in the Peloponnesian War.
²⁶
The Successors trampled on such views. For them, and for all the Hellenistic kings who came after them, greed was good. Individualism and egoism are close cousins.

W
AR WAS ABOUT
to break out among the Successors. No one can have been surprised. There had never been much of a chance that this particular succession crisis would pass without bloodshed. But perhaps no one can have foreseen quite how much blood would have to be shed before the dismemberment of Alexander’s empire was complete. The two decades from 321 to 301 saw four brutal wars—or rather, a more or less unbroken period of warfare, with each phase triggered by the concluding event of the previous one. It was civil war, Macedonian against Macedonian, but on such a scale that it truly deserves to be called a world war. First, the action took place all over the known world, shifting between the Greek mainland and islands, North Africa, Asia Minor, the Middle East, and Iran. Only the western Mediterranean was spared the Successors’ attentions, but it was no less disturbed.
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Second, the objective of a number of the participants was world domination. Thousands upon thousands of lives were lost on battlefields; our sources leave us merely to imagine the suffering and loss of life among civilians. One of the most savage periods of human history was ushered in by the ruthless ambitions of the Successors.

The causes of the first phase of this war, then, were Olympias’s scheming, Perdiccas’s manipulation of the Babylon conference and desire for supreme rule, and Ptolemy’s boldness. Having decided to
attack Egypt, Perdiccas knew that Antipater and Craterus would try to invade Asia. They had approached Lysimachus and would be allowed safe passage through Thrace so that they could cross at the easiest point, the Hellespont. Perdiccas sent Cleitus with a fleet to the Hellespont to block their passage and control the Hellespontine cities, and gave Eumenes a land army of twenty thousand to protect Asia Minor. He also ordered Alcetas and Neoptolemus to place themselves and their forces at Eumenes’ disposal.

Things started badly for the loyalist cause. Antigonus, long familiar with Asia Minor, was sent ahead to test the loyalty of some of the satraps, and he won the immediate defection of Caria and Lydia. The satrap of Caria, Asander, was an old ally, and in Lydia Menander, as we have seen, felt himself to have been slighted by Perdiccas. These defections happened so quickly that Antigonus was almost able to catch Eumenes in a trap near Sardis, but Cleopatra warned her friend, and he escaped.

The rebels thus gained an enormous bridgehead in western Asia Minor. If they could not make the easier crossing from Thrace, they could land an army there. At the same time, Antipater continued a very successful campaign of subornation among Perdiccas’s senior officers. Eumenes stayed loyal, but Cleitus changed sides immediately, and Neoptolemus was drawn into secret negotiations. Moreover, Alcetas declared that he would not support Eumenes—that he would not lead his men into battle against Craterus. This was due not so much to any affection Alcetas might have had for Craterus as to his fears that, given Craterus’s popularity among the Macedonian troops, his men would simply refuse to fight. Alcetas stayed in Pisidia and waited to see what would happen. The loyalist defense of Asia Minor was falling apart before it had started. A lot would depend on the relatively untried Eumenes.

With western Asia Minor lying open, Eumenes fell back toward the borders of Cappadocia. Meanwhile, Perdiccas had marched south, taking the whole court with him, because there was no entirely trustworthy place to leave the kings and their presence legitimated his venture. He made Cilicia his first stop, where he deposed the satrap, who was known to be a friend of Craterus. Meanwhile, one of his senior officers was sent to do the same in Babylonia. The satrap there was close to Ptolemy and was suspected of collusion in the hijacking of Alexander’s corpse; in any case, Perdiccas did not want him on his left flank as he marched south toward Egypt.

Perdiccas assembled a fleet in Cilicia, and divided it into two. One section, commanded by Attalus, was to accompany the land army to
Egypt; the other, under Aristonous, was sent to Cyprus. The island was important for its strategic location (its fortified ports made excellent bases), its naval expertise, and its natural resources (minerals and timber, especially), but it was ruled by princelings who, if they owed allegiance to anyone, had treaties in place with Ptolemy.

Meanwhile, thanks to Cleitus’s defection, Antipater and Craterus crossed the Hellespont unopposed. They divided their forces: Antipater headed for Cilicia, while Craterus marched to face Eumenes. The plan was for Craterus to annihilate Eumenes, while Antipater occupied Cilicia with all its resources of money and men. Then Craterus would link up again with Antipater, and together they would march south. Perdiccas would be trapped between their forces and those of Ptolemy. Antigonus was dispatched to deal with Aristonous in Cyprus.

As Craterus advanced, Neoptolemus set out to meet him—not as a foe but as a friend. He too had finally decided to change sides. But Eumenes found out what was going on and confronted him. This battle between the armies of supposed friends, late in May 320, was the first action in the civil wars that were to continue for the next forty years. Neoptolemus lost and fled to the enemy with a small cavalry force. Eumenes captured Neoptolemus’s baggage train and used this as a bargaining counter to persuade the rest of Neoptolemus’s men to join his camp. He had sufficient men to face Craterus, but their mood was uncertain.

The precise location of the battle on the borders of Cappadocia is unknown, but its outcome was a brilliant victory for Eumenes. As he advanced toward Craterus, he took pains to conceal from his men, especially the Macedonian troops, just whom they were going to face. He made out that Neoptolemus, a Molossian, was the enemy commander—and added that Alexander had appeared to him in a dream and promised him victory.

He was doing his best to raise his men’s morale, because he knew that he was at a disadvantage. The chances were that, if it came to a battle between the two infantry phalanxes, his Macedonians, most of whom had been on his side only since his defeat of Neoptolemus, would desert. But Eumenes had considerable cavalry superiority. He sent his Cappadocian horsemen into the attack before the phalanxes were fully deployed for battle, and they swept the enemy cavalry off the field. In the mêlée, Craterus’s horse stumbled and the would-be ruler of Asia was trampled to death. On the other wing, Neoptolemus was killed in hand-to-hand combat by Eumenes himself. Plutarch tells a story of
mutual loathing, in which the two grappled on horseback before tumbling to the ground, where Eumenes dispatched his adversary. Even while he was stripping the supposed corpse of its armor, however, Neoptolemus managed one more feeble strike before expiring.
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The death of the two enemy commanders gave Eumenes the opportunity to wrap up the battle. He sent one of his staff officers to address Craterus’s phalangites. The message was “We won’t fight if you don’t,” and the enemy infantry surrendered and agreed to swell Eumenes’ ranks. But they slipped away by night a short time later and went to join Antipater. Despite his success, Eumenes was still a long way from securing Asia Minor. Now that Craterus was dead, however, Alcetas had little reason to withhold his support, and Eumenes probably planned, with Alcetas’s help, to contain the trouble spots until Perdiccas had defeated Ptolemy in Egypt. After that, he could expect his remaining opponents to surrender, or he could bring massive forces against them by land and sea.

In the early Hellenistic period, land armies consisted of two arms, cavalry and infantry, both of which came in heavy and light forms. Elephants were extra. The heart of the army was the heavy infantry phalanx, which would expect to bear the brunt of the fighting in any pitched battle. And at the heart of the phalanx were the Macedonian troops (either genuine Macedonians or soldiers trained and armed in the Macedonian fashion), as reformed by Philip II.
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Piled many ranks deep, and with its front a bristling line of sturdy pikes, each five meters long (over sixteen feet), it was, until the advent of the Roman legion, virtually impregnable in defense and terrifying in attack. Butt-spikes on the ends of the pikes fixed them firmly in the ground for defense, and could also be used as an offensive weapon should the need arise. For hand-to-hand fighting, phalangites also carried a short sword and a light shield. Next to the Macedonian phalanx fought an even larger phalanx of Greek hoplite mercenaries, armed with a heavier shield, a stabbing spear, and a sword.

As long as a phalanx remained solid, it was almost invulnerable. A direct assault even by heavy cavalry was rarely effective; the men knew how reluctant horses are to hurl themselves at a mass of men, and stayed firm. Elephants occasionally achieved some success, but they were a risky resource: when wounded they were as likely to run amok
among their own lines as they were to trample enemy soldiers. A more consistent tactic was to try to outflank the phalanx, and for battle the cavalry were therefore invariably deployed on the wings.