Battles and Tactics

by Bob Bennett

  Apart from the calibre of the opposition, another drawback for the man from Cardia was that for subordinates he had a group of officers who were about as fractious as they could be. It would soon become clear that one of them was completely treacherous while the others, it seems, wanted Eumenes to fail in his efforts rather more than they ever desired victory for their own side. Neoptolemus was in central Anatolia, on the road from his satrapy of Armenia. This was the man who had twice fallen foul of Eumenes in the few years since the Babylon settlement. Neoptolemus had been made satrap of Armenia, but had found the task of imposing his rule very difficult indeed. A relative of Olympias, he had been little noticed in Alexander’s wars except that he was at the forefront of the assault on the fortress of Gaza in 332 BC. He had also taken over the hypaspists after the Philotas affair, meaning he was Seleucus’ direct superior for a time. Command of these foot guards was a prestigious office and an arduous one, as these veteran infantry frequently spearheaded Alexander’s campaigns in Iran and India. He is not recorded as taking any part in the Babylon debates but as a royally-born, highly-experienced officer he was granted Armenia by Perdiccas, when the carve-up of the imperial satrapies took place.

  This was no easy posting. Alexander had never been near Armenia in his great campaigns and it is unclear to what extent it was ever under Macedonian control. In 331 BC, Mithrines, a Persian officer who had surrendered the citadel of Sardis to Alexander, had been sent to take possession of the province, but whatever success he had did not last. By 323 BC Orontes, its original Persian satrap, had re-established himself, though whether as an Alexandrian protégé is not clear. There was no doubt this large province with considerable mineral resources had great potential, but governing it was always a dangerous business. How deep Persian control had ever gone is also open to question; the mountain tribesmen and baronial aristocrats of Armenia throughout the centuries had a deep reluctance to accept any foreign overlord.

  The task that confronted Neoptolemus when he arrived had been further compounded by the fact that refugees from the king of Cappadocia, Ariarathes, just defeated and killed by Perdiccas, had fled to Armenia where they intended to fight on. Eumenes was despatched by Perdiccas to support Neoptolemus but, instead of this team approach making the difference in the real pacification of the area, all that happened was that a very deep personal antipathy arose between the two men. Eumenes offered his services to Neoptolemus on a second occasion after he had raised a large cavalry force in his own satrapy of Cappadocia. But again he was rebuffed by the Molossian and his officers, who resented deeply this intrusion by a man who, as a civilian foreigner, failed to tick the key boxes for these hoary Macedonian sweats on at least two counts.

  The man who should have been Eumenes’ other main support was Alcetas who, at that time, was ensconced in Pisidia. He was Perdiccas’ brother with a history of considerable achievement under Alexander, in command of a taxis of the Macedonian phalanx. When ordered by Perdiccas to support Eumenes he refused, stating his men would not fight against Antipater and Craterus, who the Macedonians admired from way back. But, there is little doubt his real motivation was fuelled by resentment that his brother had not given the office of commander-in-chief in the west to him. With both these intended props showing they were inclined to flatly refuse the regent’s orders, Eumenes was not clear what he could expect from any of the Perdiccan officers who controlled the Anatolian lands. He found himself left holding a poisoned chalice handed on by his leader, and only his extraordinary qualities allowed him to make a fist of it at all. He must have been close to despair, but it is extraordinary how loyal he stayed, despite the problems he encountered. Even when offered a very good deal by Craterus, he did not reconsider his loyalty to the Perdiccan cause. Eumenes’ qualities were very impressive and loyalty was far from the least of them. In his whole career he displayed a remarkable adherence to the legitimist cause, whoever happened at the time to be in charge. An argument could be made that his own interest usually coincided with the cause he espoused, but equally a man more committed to personal survival surely would not have declared against Antigonus after he left Nora, at a time when the old marshal looked to be by far the most powerful star in the Macedonian cosmos.

  Whatever his inner soul-searching, his situation demanded effective action, so he moved to the Hellespont where he could hope to close the crossing from Europe to Asia. Here were garrisons and strongpoints that with his own army in support might even stop the enemy getting across to challenge Perdiccan control of Asia. Strengthening the defences and garrisons occupied Eumenes’ mind for the moment, in this, his first independent military campaign of any magnitude. He knew two of Macedonia’s greatest soldiers were marching through the Thracian Chersonese to test his defences, certain components of which were bound to have a loyalty to their commander which was, at best, highly questionable.

  While he waited for whatever, if any, reinforcements might arrive, Eumenes received news that made him realize he could not just sit and defend where he was. He heard news that his opponents’ plans for invasion included a seaborne attack on the Aegean provinces far to the south of his position. In that region, Perdiccas’ handling of the local elite had not helped the task of defence. The regent had been allying himself with Cleopatra, Alexander the Great’s sister, and he handed overall control of the region to her, an act that alienated the officers who previously had enjoyed near-independent control of these provinces and now had to rule under her orders. In these circumstances, Eumenes would not have been so surprised that when Antigonus arrived with a small army in Caria, on ships provided by the Athenians, Asander, the local satrap, went over to him immediately and Menander of Lydia also seemed only too happy to co-operate with the one-eyed invader. Perdiccan control in the Aegean provinces looked set to be completely undermined in no time at all, and, with Alcetas well-placed in Pisidia but clearly doing nothing, Eumenes had to respond himself. Moving south by forced marches, he had not made contact with Antigonus when he heard that Antipater and Craterus with their main army had already crossed into Asia, apparently not opposed at all by the forces Eumenes had left deployed around the Hellespont. With his defensive line breached and the potential of being outflanked to north and south, Eumenes felt keenly exposed with only his own army under hand and none of his subordinates yet come up. In this predicament, he decided the only course was to withdraw into the interior of Phrygia.

  Eumenes got away unscathed, but he now knew his position was such that the soldiers Neoptolemus was bringing with him were an absolutely vital ingredient if he was to have any chance of fighting the armies from Europe with any prospect of success. Eumenes’ forces were well-mounted, mobile and knew the country and, even in the vastness of Western Anatolia, his Cappadocian troopers soon found what was supposed to be an important reinforcement for the Perdiccans. Somewhere east of the Hellespont the two forces encountered each other. When Eumenes ordered Neoptolemus to join him the worst followed. Clearly, Neoptolemus was disregarding orders to put himself under Eumenes’ command, indeed his reaction showed that his plan was to join the invading army under Antipater and Craterus. This may have been because he believed the cause of opposing them was already lost but there was probably much personal enmity in it too. He hated Eumenes and the feeling was reciprocated. The Greek general at the head of his men found Neoptolemus with his army drawn up ready in battle array. It was clear this army was going to fight; Eumenes would need to clash with his own men before he even reached the main enemy. Now there were three armies ranged against him, Antipater and Craterus with one, Antigonus with another and now Neoptolemus as well.

  In extraditing himself from this situation the Cardian would have to show persuasion, skill, resolution, imagination and courage and he never came up in short supply of any of them:

  He had managed to render the lives of his associates cheerful, inviting them all by turns to his own table, and seasoning the meal thus shared with conversation which had charm and friendliness.
For he had a pleasant face, not like that of a war-torn veteran, but delicate and youthful, and all his body had as it were artistic proportions, with limbs of astonishing symmetry; and though he was not a powerful speaker still he was insinuating and persuasive, as one may gather from his letters.5

  This social paragon’s first move to resolve this difficult puzzle was enacted somewhere in Phrygia, where the terrain of that country was instrumental in the outcome of events. This was cavalry country of broad open valleys that invited the sweeping manoeuvres of skilled troopers and gave little natural protection for the vulnerable flanks and rear of ponderous infantry battalions. Eumenes was weak in the infantry he commanded: only a mixed force of mainly Asiatic foot, many of them light infantry with few Macedonians to give beef to his line. But Anatolian cavalry he had aplenty and in this undulating terrain he intended they should be the battle winner.

  Neoptolemus’ phalanx had a core of Macedonian veterans, a combination of those sent with him when he first received his satrapy and more, no doubt, sent as part of the support package of which Eumenes himself was an unwelcome part. Perhaps some were part of the 4,000 veterans that Craterus had left behind in Cilicia when he left for Europe and the Lamian War. Whoever they were, they very quickly dispersed Eumenes’ soft infantry centre, an outcome that the Cardian surely must have expected. But he was still confident that his superiority in cavalry would tell. The cavalry left him by Perdiccas and his Cappadocian squires, born to the horse, spear and sword, had the Molossian’s few cavalry on the run in double quick time. The desperate princeling, seeing his cavaliers scattered, almost made Eumenes’ day by nearly getting himself killed in the combat. But his luck held long enough for him to escape from the melee with a few hundred horsemen, leaving his infantry leaderless after they had all but won him a victory.

  The Cardian reformed his troopers and returned to confront the enemy phalanx who:

  intending to make their appearance have the most fearful impact upon the cavalry, they advanced in close order; and the troops behind them, those who were cavalry, began to fire javelins where the opportunity offered in order to throw back the cavalry charge by means of the continuity of their barrage. When Eumenes saw the close-locked formation of the Macedonian phalanx at its minimum extension and the men themselves heartened to venture every hazard, he sent Xennias once more, a man whose speech was Macedonian, bidding him declare that he would not fight them frontally but would follow them with his cavalry and units of light troops and bar them from provisions.6

  This makes it clear the remains of Neoptolemus’ cavalry had taken refuge behind the phalanx, which closed to locked-shield formation and were helping the infantry keep off Eumenes’ triumphant troopers, who were surrounding them. It had all the appearance of a stalemate, with Neoptolemus’ infantry impervious to the assault of enemy cavalry and, yet, not able to come to blows and defeat their more mobile adversaries. The decisive factor was that while pursuing Neoptolemus, Eumenes’ men had captured his army’s baggage train. Without supplies and unable to forage in the face of the enemy horsemen’s control of the countryside, the infantry, though victorious in battle, were faced with both starvation and the permanent loss of whatever moveable wealth and dependents had remained in the camp. In these circumstances, the leaderless warriors had no alternative but to throw in their lot with Eumenes’ army. They were an important addition but one whose loyalty was always questionable.

  Only days after this action, while Eumenes was incorporating as best he could the remnants of Neoptolemus’ troops into his own army, ambassadors arrived from Antipater and Craterus. The Greek was an old enemy of Antipater. It is certainly difficult to imagine a meeting of minds between the handsome socialite and the grumpy old man of Philip’s court and they had been in that king’s entourage long enough to dislike each other. And, more than this, Eumenes was close to Antipater’s bête noir, Olympias, and even Cardian politics played a part with Antipater a partisan of an hereditary rival of Eumenes’ family in that city.7 But Craterus had always got on well with Eumenes in Alexander’s time. Both hated the king’s favourite, Hephaistion. Eumenes had most memorably fallen out with him when Hephaistion had tried to commandeer quarters set up for Eumenes, for a flute player who was part of Hephaistion’s entourage. Furious, Eumenes had confronted Alexander who at first agreed with him but then changed his mind and berated Eumenes for his insolence.8

  Now, it seemed this closeness might make negotiations possible. If these tentative discussions showed a disinclination to get down to battle between old comrades, this fellow feeling did not survive the arrival of Neoptolemus in Antipater’s and Craterus’ camp. He brought little from the wreck of his army but he assured his new friends that Eumenes’ men would desert at the sight of Craterus, who the Macedonian veterans loved for articulating their deeply felt xenophobia that Alexander had so offended when he began to take on Persian ways as the heir of the Great King Darius. The two generals from Europe were easy to persuade and, with the talking over, Craterus led out his forces to confront Eumenes while Antipater took his part of the army and headed southeast towards the Taurus mountains and on to the Levant to try and bring succour to Ptolemy, who faced the brunt of the main Perdiccan army.

  Top men from Alexander’s time were squaring up to fight: Craterus, that epitome of Macedonian military virtue; Neoptolemus, a scion of the royal house of Epirus, a noble of the highest status, who had been part of Alexander’s innermost circle in the later years; and Eumenes, as royal secretary, one of the key figures at the Macedonian court from even before the death of Philip. All had marched from Pella to Taxila and back with the greatest conqueror the ancient world had ever known and it is no surprise, now that blood was to be spilt between them, the shadow of their dead king hovered over events. Indeed, Eumenes, the night before the battle, was disturbed by dreams.9 ‘He dreamed, namely, that he saw two Alexanders ready to give each other battle, each at the head of a phalanx; then Athena came to help the one, and Demeter the other, and after a fierce struggle the one who had Athena for a helper was beaten, and Demeter, culling ears of grain, wove them into a wreath for the victor.’10

  The Cardian comforted himself, somewhat, by interpreting the victory of the goddess of fertility as referring to his own corn-growing satrapy of Cappadocia, but his confidence really returned when deserters informed him that indeed the enemy password for the battle was Athena and Alexander. That this is an anachronistic confection, from the mind of Plutarch, a second century AD Roman provincial, does not detract from the reality that, in these first years of conflict, the common experience of the rivals under Alexander cannot but have affected their thinking.

  True or not, Eumenes had given considerably more thought to this encounter than somebody who regarded the outcome as already decided by the machinations of fate. What he intended was that his Macedonian infantry would not hear that the general opposed to them was Craterus until he had been able to decide the fight with his horsemen. Craterus, now seconded by Neoptolemus, commanded a formidable array, of the quality that Alexander had taken over the same route fourteen years before. Of the 20,000 infantry a good proportion were Macedonian phalangites, veteran foot to be fielded at the centre of his battle line, men who had known very little defeat in their careers. They were a combination of those who had returned with Craterus, Leonnatus and Polyperchon from the eastern wars and the national levy. Some would have grown to manhood since Alexander had initially drained Macedonia of its manpower. They were an impressive combination of hardy veterans and vital youngsters, whose forest of pikes must have made a deadly show as they approached Eumenes’ position. The rest of the infantry were the usual skirmishers, most probably recruited from Thracian and Illyrian tribes, who provided a screen in front of their heavier comrades. This was a very formidable force but the invaders’ weakness was not in foot soldiers but in cavalry. Craterus had only slightly over 2,000 horse. After the Lamian War they would not have had many, if any, Thessalian or Greek horse. Such re
cent enemies would neither have had the inclination to join the invading army nor if they had, could they have been trusted. Interestingly, Diodorus states ‘and more than two thousand horsemen as auxiliaries’, not a designation often used for cavalry in this period.11 This may be just a stylistic device to emphasise that the army was strongest in infantry. Whatever the truth, we know the senior generals took their posts with these horse soldiers on the wings. Craterus led 1,000 or so cavalry on the right wing, the place of honour, while Neoptolemus held the other side with what was left of the troopers present.

  Eumenes equally had 20,000 infantry on hand but their quality was not comparable. There were a few thousand Macedonian pikemen, lately of Neoptolemus’ defeated army, but the rest were mainly a muddle of mercenaries from the provinces of Asia Minor and light infantry from Mesopotamia and Iran, who had followed Perdiccas west from Babylon. In terms of both calibre and loyalty Eumenes was at a real disadvantage. He must have known he could not keep the identity of the enemy general permanently a secret from his Macedonians and when they did find out it was probable they would desert. This would be especially the case if some were part of the 4,000 veterans left by Craterus in Cilicia when he went to aid Antipater.12 Eumenes was now trying to lead them in battle against Craterus himself. Eumenes was banking on his 5,000 horse against the enemy’s 2,000 to win the day, well before the infantry got to grips. Yet, even his cavalry were not without their weak links. Some of them were Macedonians or others who had served in Alexander’s army and allegedly the very sight of Craterus might cause them to change sides. To counter this effect, Eumenes, seeing that Craterus led on the right, ‘arrayed against Craterus not a single Macedonian but two troops of foreign horse commanded by Pharnabazus the son of Artabazus and Phoenix of Tenedos’.13