by Bob Bennett
These foreigners, non-Hellenic European and Asiatic horsemen, who would have had no link of affection to the great Macedonian marshal, formed the left of the Perdiccan array. But, it was on the right Eumenes intended to win the fight. Like Alexander, who had won his great battles with cavalry charges on the right wing, this was the pattern his old secretary intended to follow, with the best and largest body of the cavalry. To disguise the identity of the real enemy, Eumenes first gulled his followers into believing that it was not Craterus that was approaching but merely Neoptolemus with some Paphlagonian and Cappadocian cavalry he had recruited. But it was obvious this fiction could not be maintained when the armies closed and another policy was required to sustain the subterfuge. The terrain aided the Greek general as there was a hill between the two armies which masked Craterus and his army from sight. Instead of allowing his own infantry to get close before beginning the battle, he ordered the cavalry wings to attack while the main bodies of the armies were still far apart. This caused considerable consternation amongst Craterus’ forces, as they did not know what to make of the enemy charging at them so unorthodoxly with the opposing phalanxes nowhere near each other.
Now that Eumenes should learn beforehand of his approach and get himself ready for it in advance, one might consider a mark of sober generalship, though not of superlative ability; but that he should keep his enemies from getting any knowledge that would work him harm and besides this that he should hurl his soldiers upon Craterus before they knew with whom they were fighting and conceal from them the name of the opposing general seems to me to have been an exploit peculiar to this commander.14
Plutarch clearly feels this deception, achieved by a fellow Greek when he pulled the wool over these Macedonian’s eyes, was much to be applauded. Perhaps, again, here we see a tendency for the writer to appreciate when his own compatriots outwitted people who were more powerful but regarded as less sophisticated. Only a little time later, when Antigonus had bested Eumenes in battle, the Cardian again outwitted his enemy by doubling back to the field of combat to give rites to his soldiers who had fallen there. Also, when tested by the insubordination of the Macedonian leaders of the Silver Shields, Eumenes used his brains to hoodwink them into thinking that Alexander, in a dream, had inspired him to lead them by convening strategy meetings in a royal tent dedicated to the dead king.15 Nor, if we are to believe Plutarch, was it just Eumenes who was the great manipulator. Crates, a renowned philosopher, is attested as cunningly inducing Antigonus’ son, Demetrius, to give up the siege of Athens in 288 BC and head off on what was to become his final campaign in Asia.16
But still there were problems with this ploy for if Eumenes’ horse was defeated the infantry would not be available to offer a refuge for them to rally on. On the right flank, dramatic events were soon under way. Here, Eumenes, protected by his personal guard of 300 veterans, was in command, leading his thousands of Cappadocian aristocrats and their retainers in what he intended to be the coup de grâce. Xenophon, who had encountered such cavalry in Persian service many years before, described them as having big horses, long lances and scale armour. Opposite stood Neoptolemus, a man whose personal dislike of Eumenes was matched only by the extent this antipathy was returned. Eumenes’ history showed he knew how to hold a grudge and Neoptolemus’ resentment against a man he considered an upstart bureaucrat all made this encounter a particularly vicious personal clash with few real parallels in these pages. To fight an enemy commander and strip him of his arms was a resonant achievement in most ancient societies and most certainly in the military worlds of Greece and Rome. This and the intimate loathing of the participants make a real gladiatorial combat of what is the unanimous evidence of our sources.
Eumenes and Neoptolemus charged at the head of their men:
They had long hated each other with a deadly hatred, but in two onsets neither had caught sight of the other; in the third, however, they recognised each other, and at once drew their swords and with loud cries rode to the attack. Their horses dashed together with the violence of colliding triremes, and dropping their reins they clutched one another with their hands, each trying to tear off the other’s helmet and strip the breastplates from his shoulders. While they were struggling, their horses ran from under them and they fell to the ground where they closed with one another and wrestled for the mastery. Then Eumenes, as Neoptolemus sought to rise first, gave him an undercut in the ham, and himself got to his feet before his adversary did; but Neoptolemus, supporting himself on one knee, and wounded in the other defended himself vigorously from underneath. He could not, however, inflict fatal wounds, but was himself wounded in the neck, fell to the ground and lay there prostrate.17
The wrestling match ended with the two falling off their horses and onto the ground. In this Homeric struggle both men were wounded in several places, before Eumenes dealt his opponent a fatal cut, but not before Neoptolemus had, with almost his last breath, thrust the sword he still retained in his hand into Eumenes’ groin, under the protection of his breastplate. With the death of Neoptolemus, his forces, who had previously been holding their own, as shown by the fact that at least three charges had occurred, lost much of their heart and soon were in retreat. Cavalry fights were more inclined to be affected by the loss of the commanding general than their infantry equivalents. These splendidly-armoured figures, with their bodyguards of friends and servitors, were required to give continual direction to their side of the combat; leading the squadrons in attack, reorganizing and rallying them when the impetus of the charge or enemy resistance had disordered their ranks.
On the other cavalry wing, Craterus (no doubt cursing his new friend, Neoptolemus, who had promised the enemy would not fight, which they now clearly intended to do) had led his outnumbered troopers forward to confront the enemy so his men might have built up some impetus when the squadrons clashed. ‘Here Craterus did not disgrace Alexander, but slew many foes, and frequently routed the opposing arrays.’18
The two opposing wings of swirling squadrons seemed for some time an even match for each other but then, in the ensuing melee, an event of great moment occurred that would have a profound effect on the succession struggle. The greatest of Alexander’s generals and veteran of most of his wars met his end. The sources are at some variance as to the exact details of Craterus’ death. One account has his horse stumbling and throwing him off to be trampled to death and, if true, it might cause a mordant observer to see it as an apposite demise for this unlucky man. On Alexander’s death, he had not found himself in the right place to go for the top job that his record and reputation undoubtedly fitted him for. But the more likely detail of his fall comes from Plutarch and has him valiantly beating down the enemy before being wounded by a Thracian warrior who came up unnoticed on his blind side. Such though was the respect that he was reputedly held in that an enemy officer called Gorgias19 recognized him and actually shielded his defenceless body from further injury, though he was not able to save the dying general.20
With both Craterus and Neoptolemus dead, the horsemen on the flanks routed and fled towards the protection of their infantry. The foot soldiers had not even begun to fight by the time this occurred and Eumenes, having achieved so much, did not intend that they should. He brought back his cavalry from pursuit, an impressive performance in any age in the midst of battle, halted the foot and set up a trophy to his victory. The leaderless infantry of Craterus had halted where they stood, as going forward would have invited attacks on the flanks and rear of the phalanx which no longer had an intact cavalry force to provide protection. The Cardian general, though wounded, was active enough to desire to reap all the benefits of victory. He wanted to recruit the extremely valuable soldiers that were now at his mercy and he sent agents over to offer them a truce. This was accepted as these formidable warriors had lost their commander-in-chief and did not know what to do. They knew they could not fight on, but equally, they were not prepared to change sides. Eumenes realized most would not actually joi
n his army but at the very least he hoped to neutralize them for the campaign to come. While negotiations were under way, Eumenes allowed them to occupy some local villages to live off the supplies they could find there. However, these loyal warriors were determined not to abandon the cause of Antipater and after they had recuperated and got together provisions, they secretly set out on the road to find him. So, the wily Greek failed to achieve the neutralization of these constant soldiers for even one season.
This loyalty to the cause shown by these soldiers is interesting. The facility with which soldiers changed sides at a later time had not yet become the norm. These men had followed Philip and Alexander in a corporate enterprise and they saw following Craterus and Antipater as a continuation of this. But this war they were involved in and the ones that followed would soon dissolve the ties that so far were so strong. Components of any ruling elite, split against themselves, find it difficult to long retain attachment unless it pulls off the trick of continuous success. Loyalty for most people is a crude dynamic, something simple to hold to that defends their interest, gives them worth, value and profit. But when the centre of loyalty is fractured then just narrow immediate self-interest takes over. Most people want something bigger to belong to, something grand and self-affirming but when it collapses then they will revert to the tribe of just their own selves and their immediate comrades.
Whatever this quality of fidelity really consists of, little enough was found by the banks of the crocodile-infested Nile. After some bad luck, not helped by poor local knowledge, Perdiccas was assassinated in an officer coup led by Pithon. This only left the main army, and in essence the heart of the now peripatetic Macedonian state, virtually leaderless as the First Macedonian Civil War drew to a close.
As for Eumenes, his first two battles show that as a commanding general he already had it all: happy to use ruses to confound his enemies and even to keep his own followers in the dark; making sure the decisive events occurred in those sections of the battlefield where his troops were strong on the wings and ensuring that what happened in his weak centre in the end did not matter; using terrain features to aid his battle plans; and, finally, fighting as a hero at the front of his own men and personally besting one of the opposing commanders.
Chapter Four
Gabene and Paraetacene
The settlement of Triparadeisus was only a semicolon in the Diadochi Wars, hardly bringing a pause to the ongoing saga of venomous embattlement. Antipater soon returned to Pella, leaving Antigonus at the helm in Asia. He, in charge at last, began to show the qualities of decisiveness, speed, imagination and determination that would define his career. But, for all his success against Eumenes, against Alcetas and in reclaiming the Aegean provinces from hostile satraps, it was only to be a prelude.
Everything draws the attention towards the campaigns of 317/316 BC; we have comprehensive details of the manoeuvring and the epic clashes that characterize this time, which is rarely true of other years. The thinking of the combatants is understandable; the very battle plans themselves are available, as is seldom the case in any period before modern times. The reason is that we have a real spy on the ground. Hieronymus of Cardia, who provides the main source for Diodorus at this time, was in a unique position to understand and report on events and probably would even have had access to recorded orders of battle. He was present at the highest levels for not just one but for both sides. In a long life he first spent years in the entourage of Eumenes and, on his demise, became a long-term officer in the service of the great Antigonids, father and son; and he was still active at the court of Antigonus Gonatus. Indeed it is possible to read an agenda into his work that while critical of Antigonus and Demetrius, he buffed with relish the reputation of the grandson in a period when that king was trying to establish a south Balkan hegemony. This remarkable chronicler who we are so dependent on (channelled through Diodorus) is even claimed to have lived to 104 years of age.1
The one great drawback in understanding these events is that the fighting took place in Susiane, Persia and the heart of Iran, not places familiar to those who described the course of events. Many informants may have been to these places with Alexander, or after, but they did not know the terrain, as they would have the country around Pella, Vergina, Thermopylae or the Gulf of Corinth. So they are much less able to pinpoint where things occurred than they would have been in the familiar terrain of Greece, or even Western Anatolia. And this ignorance from the start is compounded by the fact that for many generations little in the way of archaeology or even historical geographical exploration has been possible in an area wracked by war and foreign invasion. People do try and make guesses where the events were placed but it is all conjecture of the least convincing kind. How can a comment in the sources about where a ridge, a river or a salt plain were really enable somebody to pinpoint the great battlefields of this war? All that is possible is to suggest the general region where the specific conflicts were played out. Yet, the drama of the two greatest of the commanders to emerge in the decade after Alexander’s death slugging it out with the most formidable armies fielded by any of the Diadochi none the less makes it compelling.
Antigonus, in late 319 BC, looked to many unstoppable, but that was only a local perspective. While he pushed all over before him in Pisidia, then Hellespontine Phrygia and Lydia, a brew of troubles was being concocted for him by a formidable trio. Polyperchon, as guardian of the kings, egged on by Olympias, mother of Alexander, had mobilized that temporarily dormant genius, Eumenes, to get back in the ring. Credibility, legitimacy and the money it opened up meant this brilliant man had been able to create a force round the veteran Silver Shields that he would wield with lambent intelligence in the couple of years to come. He had retreated into the heart of Asia, as Antigonus harried him again, but it was not just to get away but also in the hope of finding friends there. Seleucus, at Babylon, had not been responsive but as he approached the Iranian satrapies, the rulers there, already united against their problematic neighbour, Pithon, satrap of Media, had joined him in Susiane.
As campaigning opened in 317 BC, Eumenes had both his own army and the combined forces of the satraps that consisted of 18,700 foot and 4,600 horse. But the group that had come together so recently was not without its fissures. The personal dynamic was fraught with individual rivalries as, apart from Peucestas, there were a number of formidable leaders present. The satraps of Carmania, Arachosia, Aria and Drangiana had all contributed troops and Eudamus had come from India, where the Alexandrine settlement was crumbling, with a considerable army that included 120 elephants. Tension amongst these egos was inevitable, as all of them could boast years of experience in the army of Alexander and their very survival in positions of great importance, since his demise, labelled them as veterans of considerable stature and ability. They knew Antigonus had disposed of most of their colleagues around the Aegean and would be bringing a huge army with him. He had followed Eumenes across Mesopotamia, but to reach them there were still natural obstacles in the way. But, soon enough news arrived that the intruders had thrown a pontoon bridge over the Tigris and their army was across the last great natural barrier between them and Susa. Eumenes and the satraps, despite rivalry over command, had come to a modus vivendi that, at least, allowed key decisions to be made. The first of these was premised on the fact that they were outnumbered and so they decided to decamp.
As they struck their tents and marched out south, the coalition leaders were on the look out for a place that they could hope to defend with confidence. They thought they had found it at the Pasitigris River, a waterway which Alexander himself had cruised down to the sea in 324 BC, shortly after the Susa weddings. This, they decided would provide a front line that any attacker would find difficult to pierce with an active defender ensconced on the other side. The great drawback was the extent of the shield which they sought to utilize; it was bound to try the abilities of any defender to watch over its whole length effectively.
Pickets were
posted along the bank, from the source of the river to the sea, to ensure the enemy could not slip by unnoticed. To cover this vast front was no small matter. In fact, it required Peucestas to call on the resources of the province he had controlled since before Alexander’s death. Officers were despatched back to his adjacent satrapy to raise 10,000 more Persian bowmen. And, there is little question this display of local might was not intended to be lost on both the leaders and the soldiers of the coalition. This was not the first time Peucestas had shown what a cornucopia of military resources he controlled. In 323 BC, he had provided Alexander with 20,000 soldiers who it had been intended to incorporate in the body of the Macedonian phalanx. It was planned that each file of the new combined units would consist of four Macedonian pikemen and twelve Iranian troops using lighter local equipment that would provide the new regiments with missile-hitting power. This experiment was not destined to last long; as soon as Alexander died it was shelved, never to be resuscitated.
Antigonus, meanwhile, had joined the Royal Road to Susa, after crossing the Tigris. Days of marching in the late June heat had meant very real attrition for Antigonus’ men. Trekking when the sun was down helped a little but still the temperatures were almost more than the body could bear and, on top of this, the road to the Pasitigris was far from clear. Before reaching this watercourse, the invaders found themselves confronted by a considerable tributary called the Coprates.
Eumenes had been keeping Antigonus under surveillance all the way and scouts in forward positions kept him well informed on his movements. At the Coprates, Antigonus found himself in some difficulties, as his officers could not find sufficient boats to transport the army across the river. He immediately began ferrying what men he could across the river to build, as quickly as possible, a defended camp that could hold the position while the rest got across. When this was reported, Eumenes decided on a surprise attack. Covering the 9 miles from his encampment to the Coprates at great speed, he and a small force of 4,000 foot and 1,300 horse fell on the Antigonids. About 9,000 men had crossed when Eumenes launched his attack but 6,000 had dispersed to forage. Whether this was indiscipline, or even if sanctioned by the high command, it was very foolish when such an active commander as Eumenes was not far away. The remainder of the soldiers had begun to dig a defensive ditch and to construct a palisaded bridgehead, but the stockade was incomplete and the defenders had their backs to the river, with no room to manoeuvre when the enemy arrived. The Antigonids did not have time to put down their tools, pick up their arms and get into proper fighting formations. As all they could do was defend themselves as best they could against superior numbers, this was not likely to be successful. The faint hearted soon started to run for the boats and what order they had struggled into began to crumble. Soon, all organized resistance ceased and the only thought that Antigonus’ men had was to get back over the river to the protection of the main army. The old man looked on helplessly as the debacle was completed when the very numbers of terrified fugitives capsized the boats and dumped his soldiers into the rushing waters, which carried most away to their death. The men who had gone off to forage now returned in dribs and drabs and, unable to put up any defence at all, were killed or captured. Eumenes was outnumbered and his command structure fractured, but he was an extraordinary talent and this coup had cost Antigonus as many as 8,000 casualties including 4,000 prisoners.