by David Grant
Although the infantry officers at the Assembly were arguing the fate of the old kingdom – excluded as they were from wider decisions and from Will bequests – the Bodyguards were gathered in the spirit of ‘empire’ and for their Will-inherited chunk. So we might surmise that without the confrontational overlaps – Perdiccas’ role that would oversee both kingdom and empire, the future of Alexander’s half-caste sons, and the fate of the Asian treasuries (and its impact on back-pay and any promised bonuses) – the Assembly could have separated the Macedonian cake from its new Asian icing rather less contentiously.
Up to this point, the immediate demands of Alexander’s Will superficially remained intact, if stretched a little at the edges by wider guardianships. Perdiccas’ position was not specifically cancelled, Roxane’s unborn son remained a potential king, and the most prominent Bodyguards now had a hand in his protection as well as the management of Arrhidaeus’ temporary basileia. Craterus had been finally recognised in office and the Somatophylakes would get their testament-confirmed regional rewards and ceremoniously erect a statue or two to Alexander, as the Will demanded.
Additionally, Alexander would be buried with suitable splendour in Alexandria, and at this stage, no Will-demanded marriage match to Argead women (those visible, for example, in the Romance and Metz Epitome testaments) had been openly repudiated.171 But just when further conflict looked to have been avoided, Meleager dragged the unwitting halfwit Arrhidaeus into the thick of the confrontation. If theatrical, it is not impossible that he was physically presented, and the crowd once again began to slide towards the wholesale rejection of Alexander’s sons in favour of a more permanent elevation of a purer Argead heir – beyond the Will’s design.172 It was at this point that the subtle dividing line between tradition and treason was being tested.
To quote Curtius who was clearly recalling (and adding to) lines from the Iliad: ‘No deep sea, no vast and storm-swept ocean rouses such great billows as the emotions of a multitude, especially if it is exulting in a liberty which is new and destined to be short-lived.’173 The ‘funeral games’ predicted by the Vulgate dying king now began. Donning arms and cuirass, and adorning Arrhidaeus with Alexander’s robes, Meleager led a rebellious procession out to claim the dead king’s body, with a phalanx ‘… ready to glut themselves with the blood of those who had aspired to a throne to which they had no claim.’174
Assemblies did (we believe) gather ‘under arms’ and so soldiers were permitted to attend with their weapons, though tradition required them to remove their helmets when addressing the king.175 ‘In terror, Perdiccas ordered the locking of the chamber in which Alexander’s body lay. With him were 600 men of proven valour; he had also been joined by Ptolemy and the company of the Royal Pages.’176 There followed a skirmish – in which the excited Arrhidaeus was featured – over possession of the corpse that had become a prize and an emblem of authority; this was hardly the action of men who had been abandoned by Alexander with a quip about the bloodshed he knew would soon follow. Whether this took place exactly as we read it, or whether it is, once more, a Homeric comparison, is open to speculation, but Aelian recognised that the struggle was ‘… in some ways akin to the one over the phantom at Troy, which Homer celebrates in his tale, where Apollo laid it down among the heroes to protect Aeneas.’177
A valiant defence reportedly ensued, though Perdiccas is not specifically credited with any heroics, but rather with early submission: ‘After many had been wounded, the older soldiers… began to beg the men with Perdiccas to stop fighting and to surrender to the king and his superior numbers. Perdiccas was the first to lay down his arms, and the others followed his example.’178 Actually, the text more convincingly placed Ptolemy as one of the more effective ‘protectors’. If we reiterate that Curtius, writing as he was some three and a half centuries after events, had no obvious political pretensions towards the Diadokhoi except to add sizzle to an already well-seasoned biographical steak, then Cleitarchus remained consistent in his overall treatment of both Perdiccas and Ptolemy. We may assume he took his lead from the Egyptian dynast’s own treatment of the chiliarch which had been published some years before.179
The outnumbered senior command was forced to retire, though Perdiccas did initially attempt to remain in the city to keep the veneer of unity intact. Meleager warned that Perdiccas’ ‘undisciplined spirit’ would result in a coup, and he urged Arrhidaeus to call for his death. He added: ‘Perdiccas well remembered how he had treated the king’, and ‘no one could be truly loyal to someone he feared’; this clearly called into question Perdiccas’ earlier behaviour.180 Arrhidaeus acquiesced and Perdiccas was summoned; according to Justin, the prominent phalanx commander, Attalus, dispatched some of his men to assassinate the chiliarch.
The plan failed; protected by sixteen royal pages, the chiliarch faced-off the would-be assassins, ‘Meleager’s lackeys’, who summarily fled in terror, whereupon Perdiccas joined Leonnatus with the cavalry on the plains outside the city. Justin (who was clearly blending the narratives of Cleitarchus and Hieronymus) credited Perdiccas with delivering an effective speech calling for national unity with ‘eloquence particular to himself’ (T12).181 A blockade was initiated and this led to a famine inside the walls after only a few days, though this was possibly a rhetorical device inserted to heighten the tension; Curtius himself had already stated significant tracts of land remained under cultivation in Babylon to feed the population in case of such a siege, unless Xerxes’ earlier diversion of the Euphrates had ruined the initiative.182
When considering Macedonian army numbers at Babylon in the summer of 323 BCE, and with the addition of Asiatic auxiliaries, it is possible that the main body of the cavalry, with their mounts and equipment, were already billeted along the river outside the city which is estimated to have contained no fewer than 300,000 to 400,000 inhabitants.183 The elephant corps, at least, would have been more safely attended outside the inner wall, and keeping Macedonians and Asian levies billeted apart was probably a prudent move. Some 20,000 Persian troops had recently arrived under the command of Peucestas along with ‘a good number of Cossaeans and Tapurians’ besides recruits from Caria and Lydia under Philoxenus and Menander.
We do not know how many of the armed Asiatic epigonoi from Susa were present, or what percentage remained of the 30,000 Greek mercenary infantry and 6,000 cavalry that had survived the march through Gedrosia and forced settlements and garrison duty along the way.184 Although the Summer or Outer Palace of Nebuchadnezzar II in the Babil suburb of Babylon was constructed with defence in mind and as a military headquarters (as were the structures referred to as either the Northern and Southern Fortresses or Palaces, close to the Ishtar Gate), it could not have accommodated anywhere near these numbers.185 And recalling that new campaigning West was being planned, the city would have swelled significantly if housing the whole army inside its eight fortified gates, or perhaps its inner wall.186
An artist’s impression of Babylon at its height with walls and moats intact; the condition they were in by Alexander’s day in questionable. Cultivated tracts of land inside the walls, to feed the population in case of a siege, are shown, in line with Curtius’ description. The old city is on the right of the Euphrates looking north, and the new on the left. Herodotus’ description: ‘The city stands on a broad plain, and is an exact square, a hundred and twenty furlongs in length each way, so that the entire circuit is 480 furlongs. While such is its size, in magnificence there is no other city that approaches to it. It is surrounded, in the first place, by a broad and deep moat, full of water, behind which rises a wall 50 royal cubits in width, and 200 in height.’187
With food reputedly short, with significant hostile troop numbers amassed on the surrounding plains, and when reflecting further upon their insubordination to both the higher command and the demands of Alexander’s Will (we imagine), the infantry officers began to contemplate their fate. Sources drawing from Hieronymus’ summation cited Meleager as one of the emissaries
sent from the cavalry command to the infantry to negotiate a truce, whereupon he defected to their cause and became its de facto leader; if so, Perdiccas clearly misread where Meleager’s true allegiances lay (T13, T14). This was an unlikely appointment if he had already attacked Perdiccas so vehemently at the Assembly, so we must treat the vitriol within his Curtian speech with care.188 The envoy role (possibly after he was promised a share of command) is, however, sound if we consider his campaign career in which he served under both Perdiccas and Craterus and which spanned the authority of both infantry phalanx and Companion Cavalry command, though this appointment does upset Curtius’ chronology of events.189 Whether royal traitor or peoples’ hero we may never know, but at some point Meleager crossed the line.
Curtius next narrated what appears to be a rather genuine and unadorned picture (he ‘sloughed his snake skin of rhetoric’, using Tarn’s words) of the state of affairs in the palace: ‘In fact, the royal quarters still looked as they had before: ambassadors of the nations came to seek audiences with the king, generals presented themselves and armed men and attendants filled the vestibule.’ Envoys were arriving from across the known world with new pledges of fealty to the new Great King, and this was undoubtedly to avert the Macedonian war machine from landing on their shores. This short and rhetoric-free digression paints a poignant picture of the confusion that must have terrified both Macedonian and foreign statesman alike, when ‘mutual suspicion’ prevailed so they ‘dared not converse with anyone but turned over secret thoughts each in their own minds…’190
Following Meleager’s defection, the infantry faction now formally proclaimed Arrhidaeus ‘King Philip III of Macedonia’ (perhaps enacted through a hastily convened ‘infantry’ Assembly) and to quote Plutarch more fully: ‘A mute diadem, so to speak, passed across the inhabited world.’191 In response, Perdiccas sent the infantry officers his new terms: a truce would require them handing over the troublemakers. Meleager, sensing a backing wind, had already spent three days ‘brooding over plans he kept changing’. The trapped infantry now fully appreciated the gravity of their position, for they had now been branded ‘traitors’. Many surely reflected on the vast distance home and on Arrhidaeus’ capacity to lead them there, for they were ‘in the midst of foes dissatisfied with the new rule’, which rather summed up the state of the Macedonian-governed empire. When the terms of the truce were announced, uproar ensued and soldiers armed themselves once more.192
The clamour brought the newly crowned Arrhidaeus out of his tent. The halfwit king was not so mute after all, and though up to this point he had been ‘cowed by the authority of the generals’, he made an impassioned plea for peace and reconciliation and for a funeral that had yet been denied Alexander.193 He reportedly ended with: ‘So far as I am concerned, I prefer to relinquish this authority of mine rather than to see the blood of fellow citizens flow because of it, and if there is no other hope of accord, I beg and entreat you to choose a better man (or more ‘valued’– potiorem).’194
If Cleitarchus had heard reports that Arrhidaeus had been associated with performing sacrifices and ceremonies at Babylon, he could have drawn a number of conclusions, as could we.195 The first: Alexander did indeed have plans for him, perhaps as a figurehead in Pella, when Alexander headed to Arabia and to the West along the southern Mediterranean shores; Craterus’ installation at Pella might have been to facilitate and oversee just that. New mention of his name in the ceremonial role could also suggest that Arrhidaeus may have recently arrived from Macedonia for he was never previously mentioned in any campaign account (he could have arrived with Cassander, for example). So as far as Cleitarchus and Curtius after him were concerned, Arrhidaeus was capable of some articulation; it was that perception which led to the construction of the impossibly noble speech from the half-witted Assembly pawn who apparently never uttered a coherent word again until his death some six years, or so, later.196
Curtius’ overlay developed what was essentially a contio, a Roman-style public debate, with the author presiding as the literary magistrate; in fact contiones appear throughout his monograph as informal debates in the presence of varied audiences: advisers, commanders, or in front of the entire army in the manner of those attached to Scipio Africanus.197 Arrhidaeus’ speech appears, once again, to be sautéed in Roman seasoning, here capturing elements of the cowed Claudius who was found hiding behind curtains upon the assassination of Caligula, for Claudius also surprised Rome later with his own (though genuine) eloquence.198 And as it has been noted, Arrhidaeus’ olive branch captured something of the Roman struggle between optimates against populares in its attempt to please the ‘people’.199
If the manipulative hand of Curtius is undoubtedly at work, it seems unlikely he would have placed such vocal articulation upon an otherwise completely dumb character unless Cleitarchus had recorded some communication, as Curtius would have been risking his credibility at a crucial juncture in his book. Ultimately, the voice provided to Arrhidaeus was one that reinforced his inability, or refusal, to govern the state, let alone the empire, and this provides further justification to Ptolemy’s proposal of group rule by those who could; that is more suggestive of Cleitarchus’ agenda. The infantry commanders had made fools of themselves elevating Arrhidaeus beyond the Will’s design, and they were about to atone in blood.
The envoys sent out from the Cavalry camp now returned; those chosen had been Greeks including mercenaries, not Macedonians, and it seems they provided Perdiccas with a list of troublemakers.200 Eumenes may well have had an active hand in that, for he ‘… remained behind in the city and mollified many of the men at war and made them more disposed towards a settlement of the quarrel.’ Plutarch suggested Eumenes sided with Alexander’s ‘principal officers, or companions, in his opinions’, but he further stated that Eumenes had remained silent in the Assembly as he ‘… was a kind of common friend to both and held himself aloof from the quarrel, on the ground that it was no business of his, since he was a stranger, to meddle in disputes of Macedonians.’201 Moreover, if Eumenes had been instrumental in drafting Alexander’s Will, he needed to maintain the veneer of neutrality lest any suspicion of manipulation fall on him.
A brief calm and fragile concord emerged, and one that superficially accepted Meleager as a ‘third’ general (hyparchos) alongside Perdiccas himself (and, we assume, Leonnatus, if absentees were not being referred to). Justin interpreted the outcome: ‘Such an arrangement being made, Antipater was appointed governor of Macedonia and Greece; the charge of the royal treasure was given to Craterus; the management of the camp, the army, and the war, to Meleager and Perdiccas’ (T20). Both armies exchanged salutations and were finally reconciled, or so they thought.202
THE HEADLESS SYNEDRION
With the complicity of an unwitting Meleager, Perdiccas (probably with the help of the previously hostile Attalus, now promised the hand of his sister) called for a lustration of the ‘united’ army.203 This was a ritual of purification linked to pastoral migration and the springtime cleansing of men in arms, and it was usually held in the month of Xanthikos, shortly before the vernal equinox in March. The religious observance should have signified reconciliation and it may have been invoked at the accession of new kings.204 Protocol called for a bitch to be cut in two (fore part placed to the right, hind part and entrails to the left) and for the army to march between the disembowelled flesh, with royal insignia and the king’s weapons carried before it. Possibly because the infighting at Babylon had commenced in the last days of Daisios, when superstition held no battle should take place, the importance of the delayed ceremony was heightened.205
The cavalry and war elephants were arranged opposite the phalanx, and the infantry soon sensed a trap. Perdiccas ‘in his treachery’ had the new king call for the execution of the dissenters. The infantrymen were ‘stunned’, the insurgents singled out, and the elephants urged forward by their Indian mahouts. Some three hundred men (thirty according to Diodorus) were trampled at the foot of the
city walls and an outmanoeuvred Meleager took refuge in a nearby shrine where he was hunted down and ‘not even protected by the sanctuary of the temple’, a further slur on Perdiccas’ impiety (T11, T14, T20).206 Despite the inference that Perdiccas was operating alone, which may again serve to illustrate his manipulation of affairs, the Bodyguards and influential Companions, now acting as a kingless synedrion, were probably united in the action to protect their combined inheritances. If so, it was the only unity they would ever know and the ‘first flush of freedom’ was indeed short-lived. Compromise is never sweet but as Aristotle’s Politics reasoned, ‘a common danger unites even the bitterest of enemies’.207
The sedition had been quelled and yet a dilemma remained: the distant Heracles in Pergamum had been vocally rejected, and the pregnant Roxane could still bear a girl. King Philip III had to be recognised as the new king simply to avoid further bloodshed. So the Babylonian settlement was concluded; like the Will itself, it was an uneasy and unworkable state of affairs that fully satisfied no one, whilst dissatisfying many.
It was at this point, we propose, that Perdiccas allotted the satrapies as Alexander had detailed in his testament, and not in accordance with his own machinations, as has always been unanimously believed (T16, T17, T18, T20). The most influential generals must have had their say in ‘who fitted where’ for it would be naive in the extreme to assume no discussions had ever taken place between Alexander and his Somatophylakes about empire ‘administration’.208 The appetite and territorial ambition of each manifested itself throughout the Successor Wars and was unlikely to have been absent before. Perhaps at Susa when gold crowns were bestowed on the court favourites, requests were tendered, promises made, and a broad shape of ‘who would govern where’ was in place long before the return to Babylon, if not before, following Alexander’s earlier brushes with death.209