Alexander the Great Failure
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father. 14 Demetrios had refused and spent some time during 296 in the eastern Mediterranean making sure his lands were well guarded.
Demetrios’ brief friendship with Seleukos was now over. His new commitment
to extending his power in Greece was one result; for he clearly required a larger base if he was to achieve anything. In the Peloponnese he clashed with Messene for some reason,15 then he turned back to Athens. Lachares had now made himself an out-and-out tyrant, 16 which may have persuaded Demetrios that he had a good chance of a quick success. He was wrong. Demetrios had worn out his welcome in Athens years before; his attack united most of the Athenians under
Lachares in resistance.
Demetrios blockaded the city, driving its population towards starvation.
Ptolemy sent a fl eet of 150 ships of his rebuilt navy to attempt relief. Demetrios’
fl eet of 300 ships blocked it. Lachares proved a less than resolute leader, and escaped out of the siege, but the Athenians fought on without him. But Demetrios won; the Athenians gave in. He sent in food but also installed three garrisons to make his control complete. 17
Demetrios staged one of his spectacular events to demonstrate his success.
It was the beginning of the festival of Dionysios. When Demetrios entered the
conquered city he had the citizens gathered into the theatre, and ringed them
with his armed soldiers. A pause ensued, suffi cient to reduce the citizens to a quaking fear. Demetrios then entered the theatre, by way of the stage entrance as used by the tragic actors – in effect taking on the mantle of the god. The
fear increased. Then he declared that he forgave the Athenians, and announced
the gift of grain. The Athenians shouted their relief, and one of their orators, Dromokleides, proposed to hand over Piraios, and the Mounychia to the king as
bases for his garrisons. Since he had probably occupied these places already, this was merely clothing his conquest in politeness. But he appointed his own offi cials in the city, including a new eponymous archon, so manipulating the calendar by beginning a new year to mark the occasion of his conquest. 18
The concentration of Demetrios’ power in Greece, and the bitter and pro-
longed fi ght made by Athens, left the rest of his possessions vulnerable, while his victory raised the prospect of his rise to substantial power again, and the paralysis in Macedon removed any local power balance. The eastern kings therefore conspired to limit potential future damage. Ptolemy’s venture into the Aegean to
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assist Athens showed that it was not practical to challenge Demetrios in Greece, so they aimed to strip him of the territories he could use as forward bases for attacks on them. They were in no doubt that if he could, Demetrios would attack.
Seleukos seized Kilikia, moving his frontier forward, and gave him an advanced defence line along the Taurus Mountains in case Lysimachos developed ambitions, and a stretch of coastline and several cities and ports from which to develop some sea power if he wished; his new Syrian cities were now better protected. Ptolemy seized Cyprus. He had to fi ght for it, ironically having to besiege Salamis, where Demetrios’ mother and children were living. Lysimachos mopped up the cities
along the Aegean coast of Asia Minor which Demetrios held, from Abydos on the
Hellespont to Ephesos. Demetrios therefore gained Athens but lost much more,
and was now confi ned to Greece and the Aegean. 19
The speed of these conquests is as remarkable as the coordination of the attacks.
Only at Salamis was there any real resistance, probably because Demetrios’ family was there. Other cities, equally well fortifi ed, fell with no resistance. Presumably Demetrios had stripped his outlying possessions of troops in order to concentrate on Greece, leaving them vulnerable; no doubt this helped persuade Ptolemy,
Seleukos and Lysimachos to launch their joint attacks. Demetrios was taken by
surprise, for his family had clearly been put in Salamis for safety’s sake.
Even as these reverses for Demetrios became known, a new opportunity
opened up for him. The unstable situation in the Macedonian royal family had
broken down. Thessalonike arranged marriages for both kings: Antipater mar ried Eurydike, a daughter of Lysimachos, and Alexander married Lysandra, a daughter of Ptolemy, but the whole situation was uncomfortable. By 294 Antipater,
irritated at his lack of power and his mother’s favouring his brother, murdered her and drove Alexander out of Pella, though not out of the country. 20 Alexander appealed for help to both Pyrrhos and Demetrios, thereby demonstrating his
complete unfi tness to be king in Macedonia.
Pyrrhos, closest to Macedon, arrived fi rst. His price was the western areas
of Macedon, Parauaea, Atintania and the Macedonian holdings in Akarnarnia,
includ ing the city of Ambrakia, lands taken by Philip II 50 years before. He then installed Alexander as king, but only pushed Antipater off to the east, beyond the Axios River. Antipater asked his father-in-law Lysimachos for help, and he advised a partition of the kingdom. Pyrrhos agreed, and arranged it. For a time, there fore, Macedon was divided into three parts. Lysimachos cannot have been
pleased at the instability, but Pyrrhos was no doubt gratifi ed at increasing his own kingdom, and reducing Macedon to impotence. Pyrrhos engineered a fragile
reconcilia tion between the brothers and then left. Demetrios then arrived from
the south.21
He found things apparently settled, met Alexander, and congratulated him.
The story of their meeting implies that each was plotting to kill the other, and that
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it was Demetrios who was successful. The killing took place at Larissa in Thessaly after the original meeting at Dion in southern Macedon, so they both had time
to set up mutual assassination plots. 22 The sentiments of the Macedonians were demonstrated clearly when Demetrios presented himself to Alexander’s
troops after the murder. He had no diffi culty in persuading them to accept and acclaim him as king. 23 Demetrios was married to a sister of Kassander, so their son, Antigonos Gonatas, was of Antipater’s line, if that counted, and Demetrios had a greater presence and a more convincing royal charisma than the two boys.
Demetrios moved north from Thessaly and was accepted by another Macedonian
army Assembly, perhaps at Pella. Antipater, showing a little sense at last, fl ed to Lysimachos.24 Suddenly Demetrios, reduced to a fl eet and a few cities earlier in the year, had the kingdom of Macedon in his hands.
For once, Demetrios’ impulsiveness had been successful. The result was a swift revival of the international position of Macedon. Demetrios’ ability, plus his fl eet and army, added to the military potential of Macedon, did this without any further effort. But there was also the matter of Demetrios’ ambition and intentions. The parallel with Philip II was all too clear: Demetrios, king of Macedon, lord of Thessaly, controlled much of Greece, all of which was a good basis for even greater power. In reality, his boundaries and his position in Greece were a good deal less extensive and sound than they seemed.
Macedon was considerably smaller than it had been in Philip’s reign, and even
under a vigorous king its comparative power was less. Thrace was separate, and was now an adjunct to Lysimachos’ kingdom of Asia Minor. Demetrios’ eastern
boundary therefore now reached only to Philippi. To the west, Pyrrhos was
not about to give up his recent extensive gains. Kassander had maintained the
kingdom as his father had ruled it, and had dominated Epiros as well as parts of Greece. Demetrios’ kingdom was substantially less.
Macedon’s neighbours had also changed. Lysimachos was a more formidable
pro po sition than the satraps of Asia
Minor Alexander had faced; the Aitolian League had grown in power and confi dence in the last half-century; Pyrrhos’
enlarged kingdom was more formidable than that of Arybbas and Alexander
of Epiros. Demetrios’ Macedon, therefore, was not only smaller than Philip’s,
it had more powerful neighbours, all of whom were instinctively wary of both
him and Macedon.
Demetrios was naturally concerned with all these areas. For the moment, he
established good relations with Lysimachos, who had given refuge to Antipater, and so had the potential to cause trouble.25 Demetrios moved into Thessaly in some strength, thereby stifl ing any possible dissident activities, and founded a new city, Demetrias, on the Gulf of Volos, close to the site of Pagasai. This proved to be perhaps the most enduring of his works. It was also a signal of his independent kingship, for he had at last achieved a kingdom by his own unaided
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efforts – just as had Ptolemy, Seleukos and Lysimachos.
Demetrios had before him the examples of Antipater and Kassander, and of
Philip and Alexander, as contrasting uses to be made of Macedonian power. The
Argead kings had dominated Greece and used their military power to conquer
Asia; the Antipatrids had been content to hold Greece and had ignored Asia as
much as possible. The former policy had been glorious but terribly expensive
in Macedonian manpower; the latter had maintained the internal peace of the
kingdom, and allowed a recovery from Alexander’s excesses.
It lay within Demetrios’ grasp to adopt either of these policies, and there was no question which alternative he chose, but it is worth noting them. He was
clearly consumed with a wish to emulate Alexander, with whom he was being
compared in many eyes, but also to gain revenge for his father’s defeat and death.
His personal history was thus something of a burden for him, but it was not
necessary to succumb to it. His son, Antigonos Gonatas, had the same possible
futures before him two decades later, and possessed the same familial loyalty, and yet he chose to remain as a Macedonian king. By then Macedon had gone through
yet another succession crisis, which damaged the land even more severely than
before, but both men had the same choices, and chose differently.
To control Greece, Demetrios had to remove the hostility of Boiotia, and later in 294 he seized it by a surprise attack launched on the day after the delivery of his declaration of war to the meeting of the Boiotarchs. This not only annoyed the Boiotians, but alarmed the Aitolians as well. 26 Aitolia, the region of hills and mountains between Delphi and Akarnarnia, had developed during the
previous half-century into a well-organized league, which had intervened
occasionally in affairs in the wider Greek world over the previous generation. It had not yet seriously begun to expand, but it was boxed in by Demetrios’ and by Pyrrhos’ lands.
Aitolia allowed Kleonymos, a Spartan prince, to pass through its territory
on his way to Boiotia the next year. The Boiotians seized the opportunity of his arrival (Kleonymos presumably brought some troops with him) to rise against
Demetrios’ control, but, like Lachares, Kleonymos did not stay to see the con sequences of his actions; Demetrios moved quickly and frightened him off. The
Boiotians, overwhelmed by Demetrios’ speed and numbers, surrendered again, 27
but they tried to regain freedom once more in 292, 28 in alliance with the Aitolian League and Phokis, so forming a solid block of allies across central Greece.29
Demetrios’ methods of control were clearly ineffi cient. He appears to have
relied on his personal charm and on generosity to his political opponents to
win them over, while also imposing garrisons in certain places. The leader of the Boiotian revolt in 293, Peisis of Thespiai, was appointed polemarchos of his own city, on the assumption that he had been won to Demetrios’ support at a meeting; but a governor was also imposed over Boiotia. This was all surely designed to
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conciliate, but it also suggests that Demetrios did not appreciate the strength of his enemies’ convictions. It was grossly ineffi cient to have to conquer Boiotia three times in three years. The fi rst two conquests had been achieved above all by speed and by the arrival of overwhelming forces, and in neither case did the Boiotians believe they had really been beaten. On the third occasion the revolt was sparked by the news that Demetrios had sailed off to the Hellespont when
he heard that Lysimachos was in diffi culties in fi ghting on the Danube.30 The
Boiotians therefore had the opportunity to prepare another rebellion with more care, and make that alliance with Aitolia and Phokis. This time it took two years for Demetrios to conquer, and he had to besiege Thebes. 31 Demetrios was thus preoccupied with the conquest and control of a single Greek region for fi ve years.
It was scarcely a productive use of his time, where an investment in diplomacy might well have defused the situation much more easily.
Lysimachos’ diffi culties were with the Getai, whose king, Dromichaetes,
actually captured him late in 292. He was released in the spring of 291, perhaps on payment of a ransom. 32 He had been fi ghting the Getai for some time, which may have been one of the reasons he had failed to intervene seriously in the succession crisis in Macedon. He cannot have been pleased that the crisis resulted in the resurrection of Demetrios’ power; involvement in the Getic war, which seems to have begun in 294, no doubt compelled Lysimachos to accept the situation, while Demetrios’ evident involvement in Boiotia similarly kept the two kings apart.
When Lysimachos was captured, Demetrios mounted an expedition against the
Thracian Chersonese, aiming to capture Lysimacheia.33 He failed and the new rising in Boiotia brought him back to Greece. No one could have any doubt that Demetrios’ ambitions remained alive and vigorous.
Lysimachos’ rule in Asia Minor was not popular, perhaps because he was
a good deal more autocratic than Antigonos had been. Lysimachos felt under
permanent threat from Demetrios and Seleukos. He had to maintain a substantial army, on a lower tax base than Antigonos, who had also controlled Syria, though he had also acquired at least two of Antigonos’ treasure citadels. He was unable to extend his territory in any direction since Ipsos, except into Demetrios’ Ionian cities, and the defeat by Dromichaetes effectively stopped any expansion in the Balkans.
In the north of Asia Minor the peoples along the Black Sea coast had never yet been conquered by any of these rulers. The Paphlagonians had surrendered to
Alexander, but it does not seem that anyone did anything about it, and Perdikkas was distracted in 321. The Bithynians, a Thracian tribe settled to the east of the Bosporos, dated their era from 297/296, having presumably succeeded in
maintaining their independence at that time, presumably from Lysimachos. Their King Zipoites took the title of king, and this was later commemorated by the
inauguration of the new era, but they had been independent until then anyway.
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The people of the coast east of Sinope became organized as a kingdom, Pontos,
under a Persian lord, Mithradates, who had been with Antigonos for a time. So
were the Armenians in their diffi cult mountains, also under a Persian aristocrat, Orontes, who was descended from a survivor of the Akhaimenid defeat, and
had successfully resisted the imposition of a Macedonian satrap.34 Between these states, the Greek city of Herakleia Pontike, under a family of tyrants, had expanded its power and territory; the current tyrants were the sons of Amastris, a Persian lady who had been married to Perd
ikkas for a time, and briefl y to
Lysimachos at the time of the Ipsos campaign.
Along the south coast of Asia Minor Ptolemy had kept or revived his earlier
power, from Kilikia west to Lykia. With all this, Lysimachos could be forgiven for feeling encircled, especially after Seleukos gained control of Kilikia and the southern exits of the passes through the Taurus Mountains.35
Ptolemy, having gained what he had always been after – Palestine, Phoenicia
and Cyprus, and a domination of the southern Asia Minor coast – relapsed
into satisfi ed quietness. Seleukos remained restless. He had a huge kingdom to govern, and like Lysimachos he faced potential threats from several directions.
Ptolemy might decide to extend north of the Eleutheros River, so he had to
be on his guard in north Syria. The great cities he was building would do that eventually, but it took time to construct and fortify and populate them. He
faced Lysimachos across the Taurus, and must have feared above all an active
alliance between Ptolemy and Lysimachos; in 298 Lysimachos married Ptolemy’s
daughter Arsinoe, though of all people Seleukos knew how little such a marriage meant in terms of real power. But the two men had the potential to push him out of his western territories without too much diffi culty. His acquisition of Kilikia pushed his defence line forward, but at the cost of his friendship with Demetrios.
Seleukos had become internationally isolated from 294.
It may be this Kilikian episode which ultimately lay behind the curious episode of Seleukos’ second wife. He was married fi rst to Apama, the daughter of the
Sogdian lord Spitamenes, at Alexander’s great wedding ceremony in 324. It was
reputedly the only one of those marriages to continue after Alexander’s death.
They had two sons, Antiochus and Akhaios. One must assume that Seleukos
already had in mind the political importance of his wife, though it was years
before her Baktrian connections proved useful, and mutual affection is not to
be excluded. Seleukos’ establishment of control over Baktria was surely assisted by his wife’s origins.