by David Grant
266.Ptolemy, Laomedon and Philotas are the first three names in all versions. Antigonus, Asander, Menander and Leonnatus likewise appear in the same order in all. Eumenes and Peithon always appear side by side although their relative positions in the overall list change. A reference to Illyria in Justin’s epitome is a corruption of either Pamphylia or Lycia, each assigned to Antigonus.
267.Diodorus 18.3.1-2; Curtius 10.10.3; Arrian 1.5-6 and Dexippus all echo a similar sentiment. Justin 13.4 does not, yet was epitomising radically. A useful table of the comparative allocation appears in Goralski (1989) pp 104-105. Curtius 10.10.3-4 suggested Eumenes declined his ‘assignment’. None of the Hieronymus-derived satrapal breakdowns mentioned Eumenes declining his task. This is better translated as ‘he alone failed to complete his assignment’, for once Antigonus and Leonnatus refused to aid him, Eumenes needed the royal army under Perdiccas to complete the job.
268.For the relative length of Hieronymus’ books and Arrian’s Events After Alexander see Hornblower (1981) pp 97-99.
269.The extant Will texts also state ‘the satraps should retain what they variously govern.’ See Heckel (1988) p 16. It is a sentiment echoed in Curtius 10.10.3-5 Arrian Events After Alexander 1.7; Diodorus 18.3.2 and Justin 13.4.
270.For a full discussion of the misunderstood references to the Seleucus’ inheritance and in fact the relative authority of the eastern satraps, see final chapter titled Lifting the Shroud of Parrhasius.
271.Arrian 7.27.1-3, Plutarch 77.5.
272.Homer Odyssey 24.57-97, translation by S Butler, 1900.
273.Demosthenes Against Leptines 141, in which he praised the Athenians’ funeral orations.
274.Hesiod Works and Days 650-660. Thucydides 2.34.1-3 for Pericles’ speech, however the authenticity of its content is questionable. See Grant (1995) p 47 footnote 19 for discussion. The speech was given in the first year of the Peloponnesian War 431/430 BCE. See discussion in Grant (1995) p 47 and Hansen (1999) p 73 for the digression on the Athenian constitution.
275.Pseudo-Plutarch Isocrates; Evargoras’ son, Nicocles, paid him 20 talents for the encomium.
276.Flower (1994) pp 26-27 for Theopompus’ oratorical fame.
277.Recorded by Demosthenes On the Crown 285 and Plutarch Demosthenes 21, discussed in Worthington (2000) p 91.
278.Cicero De Oratore 2.56.
279.Arrian 7.14.10 claimed funeral games were held for Hephaestion and that the same 3,000 artists ‘were said to have’ taken part in Alexander’s funeral games (7.14.1). His wording is cautious or shows doubt (‘it is said’). The funeral games seem highly unlikely against the background of infighting at Babylon and the general tone of fear and hostility and lack of mention in other sources.
280.Homer Iliad 23.257-897 for Patroclus’ funeral. For details of Philip II’s funeral see Antikas (1995) pp 86-97. Philip II of Macedonia was buried in 336 BCE, and following Hephaestion’s funeral in Ecbatana in 323 BCE, Alexander threw extravagant games with participants described. Justin 12.3.1 for the funeral games and three-day mourning for Alexander Molossus.
281.Diodorus 18.28-4-5.
282.Dalley (2013) pp 121-124 for discussion of the widespread use of Semiramis. The title ‘Semiramis’ potentially included the second wife of Sennacherib, Naqia. Herodotus 1.184-191 for additional references to Semiramis.
283.Following Dalley (1994) p 54.
284.Dalley (2013) p 20 for discussion of the Greek kremastos. Pliny 19.194 for an example of hortos pensilis.
285.Strabo 16.1.5, Diodorus 2.10.1-6 for the irrigation devices. Following discussion by Dalley (1994) p 46. How permanent the river diversion was is debatable.
286.Diodorus 2.7.1, also discussed in Dalley (1994) pp 45-58 and for Ctesias see Van der Mieroop (2004) p 1.
287.Discussed in detail in Van der Mieroop (2004) pp1-5.
288.Dalley (2013) p 112 for the gates at Nineveh and p 117 for the Borsippa references. Dalley (2013) p 119 for references to Nimrud and Sippar. Herodotus’ geography quite clearly argues that he was not aware of the two distinct dynasties of Babylonia and Assyria when he termed Babylon the ‘new Assyrian capital’ after Nineveh’s destruction; Strabo seems to have followed suit. Dalley (1994) pp 47-48 quoting Herodotus 1.179 and Strabo 16.1.16. An inscription depicting the sacking of Babylon by Sennacherib in 689 BCE is closely paralleled by Nabopolassar’s revenge sacking of Nineveh in 612 BCE, heralding in the Neo-Babylonian period (612-539 BCE).
289.For the etymology ‘gate of the gods’ see Dalley (1994) p 50.
290.Linen was made from Nile flax although attributed to the Lydian Ariadne.
291.Egyptian embalmers placed the organs of the deceased in four Canopic jars before mummification. See Casson (2001) p 122.
292.Romance, final line of the poem on the concluding page.
293.Quoting Bevan (1927) p 262 for ‘foundation’ of modern Egyptology.
10
THE TRAGIC TRIUMVIRATE OF TREACHERY AND OATHS
Did Eumenes of Cardia have the credentials to be the chief architect of the Pamphlet and was it he who broadcast the existence of Alexander’s Will?
The first eight years of the Successor Wars in Asia were dominated by the rivalry between the supporters of Perdiccas and the opposing Macedonian coalition, out of which emerged a remarkable conflict between Eumenes and Antigonus Monophthalmos.
We review the unique, tragic and mercurial relationship between these former generals of Alexander and their respective patronage of the eyewitness historian who recorded their careers. For in these years emerged the tensions, battles, treacheries and alliances of desperation that led to the drafting of the Pamphlet and to its subsequent eradication.
‘Antigonus paid no heed to the edicts of Perdiccas, being already lifted up in his ambitions and scorning all his associates.’1
Plutarch Life of Eumenes
‘If Eumenes could have contented himself with the second place, Antigonus, freed from his competition for the first, would have used him well, and shown him favour.’2
Plutarch The Comparison of Sertorius with Eumenes
‘I regard no man as my superior, so long as I am master of my sword.’3
Plutarch Life of Eumenes
‘The account given by Hieronymus is different… for a man who associates with royalty cannot help being a partial historian.’4
Pausanias Guide to Ancient Greece
Like much of Greek culture, the concept of mediation was rooted in mythology. Negotiations were best conducted in a neutral location, ideally Themis’ home, Delphi, where Heaven and Earth were thought to meet.5 Mediation demanded the qualities of ethos, pathos and logos from a presiding proxenetas who performed his sacred role though the presence of Rhea, ‘the mother of gods’, who bore the law-giving Demeter, and through her, to the adjudication of Themis, the ancient goddess of justice. Its Latin evolution encompassed the names intercessor, interpolator, conciliator, interlocutor and interpres, the roots of many of our modern words associated with a brokered settlement. Clearly, in the Greek and Roman worlds, the mediator role was already valued and much employed.
Eumenes of Cardia was without doubt the mediator of Alexander’s generation, and here we explain his impact on the early Successor Wars when his coercive genius heralded in a remarkable solo career. For an influential time, the son of a ‘man whom poverty drove to be a waggoner’, according to Duris of Samos, or the son of an impoverished funeral musician, in Aelian’s text, innovated something of a political sensation in his bid for survival in Alexander’s fragmenting empire.6
Eumenes was first employed for seven years as Philip II’s secretary from the age of twenty (ca. 342 BCE) at the royal court at Pella.7 Long before Alexander set off on his Asian campaign, Eumenes had successfully straddled the growing divide between Philip and Olympias, as well as Alexander’s own rift with his father.8 The decade-long Asian campaign saw him reconcile his additional administrative duties under Alexander (he was now termed a hypomnematographos, broadly an ‘archiv
ist’) with a cavalry command, while integrating his Greek origins into the Macedonian war machine.9 And he remained a friend, confidante, and finally, an accomplice, of Olympias until his death, a relationship, we argue, that played a significant factor in the birth of the Pamphlet.10
As his prominence grew, Eumenes engendered and sidestepped the jealousy that stemmed from his proximity to, and rapport with, Alexander; it was an intimacy that rankled with Hephaestion, the king’s first chiliarch.11 After Hephaestion’s death in Ecbatana in 324 BCE, Eumenes was entrusted with Perdiccas’ cavalry command once he assumed Hephaestion’s hipparchy of the Companion Cavalry.12 The increased responsibilities saw the Cardian royal secretary become a court hetairos and the status brought him wealth, and that qualified him as a trierarchos of the Hydaspes-Indus River fleet; a melted mass of gold and silver totalling (the suspiciously high sum of) 1,000 talents was reportedly retrieved from his burned tent in India.13 Moreover, Eumenes was one of the few men Alexander selected to marry into the Persian nobility at Susa, where he, along with Ptolemy and Nearchus, became a relative of the king’s mistress, Barsine, who had a son, Heracles, with Alexander.14
Crucially at Babylon in the days after Alexander’s death, Eumenes managed to bridge the divide between the senior infantry officers and the aristocratic cavalry Companions when brokering a settlement which averted Macedonian ‘civil war’.15 At the opening of his account of the Successor Wars, Arrian gave a summary of the leading commanders at Babylon and it included all of the surviving Somatophylakes:
The most eminent of the cavalry and leaders were Perdiccas the son of Orontes, Leonnatus the son of Anteas, and Ptolemy, son of Lagus. The ones after them were Lysimachus the son of Agathocles, Aristonus the son of Peisaeus, Peithon the son of Crateuas, Seleucus the son of Antiochus, and Eumenes of Cardia. These were the leaders of the cavalry; Meleager led the infantry.16
As many as fourteen names have been associated with the position of Somatophylax in the campaign accounts; some died and one was executed, whilst others were retired (those originally appointed by Philip II) or they simply faded out of the story.17 After Hephaestion’s death, a vacancy presented itself and Peucestas was already absent in the East; possibly an established royal hypaspist (or a hyperaspisantes), Peucestas had become an ‘eighth’ addition to a fellowship traditionally seven in number, which might have upset the Pythagorean association of ‘seven’ with ‘opportunity’. Peucestas had been appointed governor of Persis and the Bodyguard role was only bestowed on those operating in the king’s immediate presence (as the title suggests).18 In which case – and perhaps alongside a recently promoted Seleucus – Eumenes was being cited in his place, an elevation that might have come with the acquisition of Perdiccas’ hipparchy.19
Eumenes’ significance to Alexander and the campaign is unquestionable. Recalling the politics that shaped the early eyewitness accounts, we should not be alarmed or even surprised that neither Ptolemy, Aristobulus nor Cleitarchus mentioned Eumenes’ military prominence more frequently. But it was in the Successor Wars that Eumenes demonstrated the abilities that argue so strongly for his candidacy as author (or co-author) of the Pamphlet. For we are presented with a string of brilliant intrigues borne out of his precarious position as a prominent Greek satrap in a Macedonian-controlled empire.
THE SUCCESSFUL SYNEDRION AND THE FAILED SYNASPISMOS
Eumenes’ solo career commenced the minute he departed Babylon to take up his satrapal inheritance; Cappadocia. Hieronymus appears to have given the impression that Alexander bypassed much of Cappadocia, so leaving it aporthetos, wholly unconquered, due to his preoccupation with facing Darius III.20 This was perhaps to emphasise the task Eumenes now faced, though clearly no Macedonian had been governing the province since. Eumenes’ expansive grant included Paphlagonia as far eastwards as Trapezus (modern Trabzon in Turkey), the influential Black Sea port found by Milesians (T16, T17, T18, T19, T20). It was the city Xenophon and his Greeks (by now 6,000 according to Isocrates, most unable to return home because of their ‘faults’) finally reached as somewhat unwelcome arrivals, but had circumstances been different, Xenophon would have founded his own colony there.21
Paphlagonia had previously been associated with Hellespontine Phrygia,22 and according to Strabo, Cappadocia had since been divided into two: Cappadocia Pontica in the north, and Cappadocia Proper (or Cappadocia near Taurus) in the south where Sabictas was governor.23 Under Persian rule the northern region had extended to the Black Sea coast past Amisus and Trapezus, effectively absorbing the kingdom of Pontus. Lycaonia, too, had formerly been part of the southern Cappadocian satrapy.24
Ariarathes, the first ‘king’, had retained independence in the northern region, which was nominally under Achaemenid rule, and although he is not attested as fighting for Darius at Issus, he may have been present at Gaugamela. Alexander had annexed the south, but Ariarathes seems to have regained control of the southern region soon after, possibly through an accord struck with Antigonus for the king’s neutrality in the interest of keeping the Royal Road open.25 Ariarathes was eighty-two, wealthy, and a figure of much historical confusion, but he appears to have had at his disposal some 30,000 infantry (many of them mercenaries) and 15,000 cavalry to defend his still ungarrisoned kingdom.26 Eumenes’ expansive inheritance and the trust placed in him by Perdiccas in the First Diadokhoi War made it abundantly clear that he had already proven himself as a commander of men.
After two decisive battles the sidetracked Perdiccas was in no mood for leniency. Ariarathes was tortured and crucified and all his followers impaled, or, according to Justin, Ariarathes killed his wife and children himself to stop them falling into Macedonian hands.27 A rebellious Lycaonia and Pisidia soon felt Perdiccas’ wrath; the city of Laranda was stormed, all men of fighting age put to the sword with the population sold into slavery. A defiant Isauria put up a fight and its defenders self-immolated in despair, but Antigonus’ Phrygia was never touched at this time.28 Perdiccas’ iron fist set the tone for Diodorus’ description of the next campaign against Egypt, led by a chiliarch now described (possibly following the sentiment in Cleitarchus’ final pages) as a ‘man of blood’ and a ‘usurper of power’.29
The rising tensions between Perdiccas and the ‘anti-royalist’ faction through the next two years saw the repudiation of Antipater’s daughter, Nicaea (Perdiccas had recently married her, or was pledged in marriage, texts are ambiguous), in favour of a union with Alexander’s sister Cleopatra, who probably arrived at Sardis at about the same time.30 Indeed, Perdiccas had initially planned to ‘work in harmony’ with Antipater, but Eumenes’ advocating the marriage to Cleopatra put an end to that. The implication here is that only after success in Cappadocia (and the death of Leonnatus), and underpinned by Eumenes’ friendship with Olympias, did Perdiccas seek what was reportedly an independent path to supreme power in Macedonia. But these two years also saw Antigonus and Leonnatus abandon their satrapies and cross to Thessaly and Macedonia in support of Antipater, or to further their own designs; both had refused to assist Eumenes in his pacification of Cappadocia, and both probably underestimated the extent of his military acumen.31
Upon their return to Asia following victory in the Lamian War, a synedrion was convened by Antipater and Craterus (Antigonus may have been present). It appears the former Perdiccan fleet commander, White Cleitus, was now supporting their cause. After naval victories off Greece, Cleitus was said to have been sporting a trident and playing the part of Poseidon while walking on purple carpet, and his newly expanded fleet had facilitated the regent’s re-crossing to Hellespontine Phrygia in the spring of 320 BCE.32 The gathering of generals close by signalled the opening of what is referred to as the First Diadokhoi War, and here it was decided that Craterus would confront Eumenes, or turn him to their cause. The regent and Antigonus would face the remainder of the royal army under Perdiccas.
At an earlier Perdiccan war council convened after instating Eumenes in Cappadocia, and following further campaig
ning to install Perdiccas’ younger brother, Alcetas, in Pisidia, it had been decided that the bulk of the royal army would invade Egypt in response to Ptolemy’s capture of Alexander’s funeral bier, for that action (justified or otherwise) amounted to a ‘declaration of independence’ from the central authority the acting chiliarch represented. Perdiccas additionally ordered the invasion of Cyprus; a fleet of merchant ships procured from Phoenicia set off from Cilicia led by the Rhodian admiral Sosigenes, though the Somatophylax Aristonus was in overall command.33 Along with other Cypriot kings, Nicocles, who was already minting independent coinage, had recently aligned with Ptolemy who needed the island’s timber resources and strategic location for his own naval plans; they were now besieging the city of Marium with almost 200 ships, a state of affairs which suggest a pro-Perdiccas initiative in governance must have been formerly in place.34
In response to the threat of hostile forces crossing from Macedonia, Eumenes, along with Alcetas and Neoptolemus, were to delay for as long as possible any bridgehead being formed near the Hellespont. If too late, they were to hinder the regent’s southwards progress until the royal army could unite with them once more. Eumenes was now commander-in-chief west of Mount Taurus as well as ‘commander of the forces in Armenia and Cappadocia with plenary powers’.35 His military mandate now encompassed Paphlagonia, Caria, Lycia, and Phrygia, in other words, Antigonus’ abandoned satrapies, ‘in addition to the provinces that he had already received’.36