by Bob Bennett
Demetrius had raised his battle cry on the other wing and ordered his high-sided dreadnoughts forward at the same time as his opponent. Ballistae and archers on both sides had opened a withering fire well before the two lines clashed on this seaward flank of the battle and even in these preliminaries the Antigonid sixes and sevens showed a marked superiority. Once the lead ships engaged in a crunching of timbers and splintering of oars all became chaos. ‘For in contests on land’, writes Diodorus, ‘valour is made clearly evident, since it is able to gain the upper hand, when nothing external and fortuitous interferes; but in naval battles there are many causes of various kinds, that contrary to reason, defeat those who would properly gain the victory through prowess.’17 Naval warfare in this age was a lottery. But still there were factors that might give the edge to one side or the other. On this flank the advantage lay with Demetrius, once the two lines were mixed and locked together the greater number of marines on the bigger Antigonid vessels told to great effect.
Some larger craft had their oars swept away by the handier Egyptian boats, but even when elements of Demetrius’ front line were incapacitated there was the second line in support to plug the gaps. It was a desperate affray in this part of the battle, many a boarder slipped and fell into the sea to drown as they tried to cross the rails onto an enemy vessel, and, at close quarters, the ballistae created mayhem with their heavy bolts delivered into the massed ranks of marines on the open decks. Demetrius, himself, was constantly in danger. His flagship, a seven, was naturally the target of attack by a number of enemy ships. Ptolemaic marines boarded his ship in such numbers as to put his life at risk, members of his bodyguard were cut down and he needed all his courage and skill to defend himself. Eventually, with his gilded body armour battered and dented by the ferocity of the blows aimed against him, Demetrius beat off the attackers and regained control of his flagship. Able to look around at the larger picture he saw the powerful left wing squadron he had led into battle had completely routed the enemy ships opposed to them. Ptolemaic craft around him were either sinking or being brought under control by his own men, while the bulk of his ships on this flank were intact and in good condition.
In the centre of the battle, an indecisive contest was in progress. Demetrius’ commander in that sector was Marsyas, the historian and half-brother of Antigonus. He and his Samian colleagues had been handling their triremes with great skill. The enemy had heavier ships but had failed to take advantage of the edge their fours gave them when the two lines clashed. Nothing is known about this contest except that it was still undecided when Demetrius was able to intervene. The signal was given from Demetrius’ flagship and his victorious captains turned their vessels inwards towards the coast and fell on the flank and rear of the centre of Ptolemy’s fleet. The effect was immediate, with the awful threat of being driven onto the shore, the Lagid line crumbled and their will to resist failed in the crisis.
This was the scene of disaster that faced Ptolemy when he collected the ships of his squadron who though they had won the fight on their front had allowed the main conflict to be decided without them. Taking what seemed the only course open, Ptolemy gave the order to withdraw and save what was left of the fleet.
Demetrius had pulled off a brilliant victory, but it had been a very different affair from those achieved by the fleets outfitted by Athens over a hundred years before. Then, sleek triremes manned by skilled crews had been able to achieve victory by dexterous seamanship. But, at this Salamis, it had been different. Here there is no suggestion of the diekplous manoeuvre with a line of boats ahead cutting through the enemy line to come up on their quarter. Nor the periplous where practiced crews would bring their boats around the end of the opposing line to attack the flank of the opponent. It has been suggested that Demetrius pulled off a form of periplous at Salamis but this seems very doubtful.18 His captains did not manouevre round and attack the enemy flank; instead they used brute force to crush the enemy wing in front of them, which then allowed them to fall on the flank of Ptolemy’s centre.
But whatever we call the tactical techniques used by the Antigonid seamen, the victory at Salamis was notable for the innovative use of the long-range weaponry that the new bigger galleys could carry. These catapults caused mayhem, even before the ships closed, when the archers and javelin men could then join in on a devastating barrage. The superships of Demetrius’ fleet, his sevens and sixes had decided the day, not only because the larger vessels enabled much more effective missile fire but they were also able to carry far more marines equipped to fight hand-to-hand. Of course, they also gained advantage by boarding from their higher-sided craft. But, if these advantages counted for much, Demetrius had also been lucky. Apart from having a more powerful fleet qualitatively, with his sixes and sevens as opposed to Ptolemy’s fours and fives, his men had been able to rest and await Ptolemy’s navy who had been tired by the exertions of rowing through at least part of the night just in order to reach the battle.
In Salamis’ harbour, another battle had taken place on the same day. Menelaus had striven hard to obey his brother’s injunction to bring his ships into the battle but his captains had found their egress to the open sea blocked by the ten battleships Demetrius had left to counter just this eventuality. A stern fight took place at the harbour mouth with Antisthenes, Demetrius’ admiral, holding his fives together against the onslaught of six times their number. This resistance could not last indefinitely as even in this confined space the ability of Menelaus’ captains to replace damaged vessels and use relays of fresh marines to make their attacks meant their opponent’s capacity to resist was gradually worn down. Eventually the defensive cordon was breached; the Antigonids found their position untenable and were forced to flee to the safety of the main camp of the army. Even so, their efforts had been sufficient to keep the sixty warships of the Salamis squadron out of the major battle and when Menelaus’ admiral, Menoetius, eventually arrived on the scene Ptolemy’s fleet was already defeated and in flight.
The flotilla returned to Salamis with the news and Menelaus realized, though his ships had won a victory, the war was lost. His position in Cyprus was impossible now that the Egyptian navy could be discounted as a factor of any significance. What allies he had left on the island were bound to transfer allegiance to Demetrius and, deprived of supplies from outside, he could neither pay nor feed the considerable army that was trapped in the city. The sources again differ but well over 10,000 foot and horse were incorporated into the Antigonid army when Salamis surrendered and Menelaus withdrew to Alexandria with what small part of his army he could pile onto the remaining boats, reflecting on the battered hopes of Ptolemaic ambition in the Cypriot seas.
For Ptolemy the day had been an unmitigated disaster. He had committed all his military resources and had lost. Diodorus reports that Ptolemy had lost over 100 of his supply ships with over 8,000 soldiers on board captured. This must have been particularly galling as these men had not even been able to participate in the battle before all had been lost. As for his actual war fleet, forty galleys were captured and a further eighty disabled and towed into Salamis harbour, leaving the Lagid only twenty to flee with. Plutarch recounts that his losses were even greater with only eight warships left to him. To compound Ptolemy’s discomfort, Plutarch goes on to say that the vessels carrying his treasure, personal furniture and mistress had also been captured.19 Demetrius’ losses were minimal, twenty of his ships were disabled but all subsequently recommissioned.
Cyprus was lost and Ptolemy was left with not much more than he had when he first arrived in Egypt. He had beaten the youth Demetrius at Gaza but the man had turned the tables. If the defeated looked to saving what they could, the victors had thoughts on grander things. A charming story told by Plutarch has it that Antigonus was waiting for news of the naval battle when it was heard that his old and trusted agent Aristodemus of Miletus was approaching. The old marshal was in his palace in a ferment of anxiety over the fortunes of his son and fleet. Ar
istodemus had come by swift trireme from Salamis to ensure he was first with news of victory and intended to milk the occasion for all it was worth in the expectation that his commander’s relief would be matched by the generosity of the messenger’s reward. He refused to tell those who came to meet him what he knew and made his way from the boat to the palace on ageing legs and in so doing caused his master an agony of frustration. The potentate became so agitated that he rushed to meet him at the door where, at last, he was released from his ordeal by the tidings of his son’s victory. His joy, though, did not prevent him exacting a small revenge on the self-important old retainer who was informed that as he had delayed in getting his message to Antigonus, likewise would his reward be delayed.
Antigonus had good reason to worry, Demetrius had been commanding the cream of the navy he had spent so long creating and one battle, or even a freak storm, could have ruined that endeavour overnight. His anxiety would have been great when news had come that Ptolemy was coming in full force to face his son. Like Xerxes, at the other Salamis over 150 years earlier, he could only sit and wait, but, unlike the Persian, he was unable to observe the combat firsthand. At times, he must have regretted the decision not to command the fleet himself but even he, at the age of 75, probably balked at starting a new career on an unfamiliar element.
After this second Salamis there was no real rival able to contest the seaways with the Antigonids. Not till near the end of the first generation of Diadochi would this thalassocracy be disputed. But sea power was never quite absolute. Ancient galleys were just not as robust as later sailing ships; they did not last as long. Large numbers of oarsmen could not be kept permanently mobilized and paid. The hardware, itself, was fragile; the boats would not stay seaworthy for long if not very well looked after. They had to be hauled out of water as much as possible to keep them dry, light and fast and free from worm, rot and seaweed. They were also kept in ship sheds, if possible, out of the sailing season which in the Mediterranean usually only lasted from April till November. When peace arrived, the motivation to maintain and repair fell away. Certainly Athens and Carthage famously had military ports well-equipped to keep their fleets in a state of high preparedness, but in neither case did these preparations eventually ensure against the demise of their maritime supremacy.
And, in the later years of the Diadochi, if the Antigonids were the great sea power they were not the only ones. Rhodes, puny in comparison, still remained significant enough to irritate the pirates of the region. The policing role they efficiently undertook (we do not hear of either the Antigonids or the Lagids undertaking this), meant the freebooters were happy to join Demetrius when he attacked that city in 304 BC. Ptolemy still had some ships that had survived the debacle of Salamis and his senior maritime officers would nurture this remnant until changing fortunes allowed it to become the core around which later expansion would occur.
We know nothing of Lysimachus’s naval resources; certainly in the 313 BC campaign, when Antigonus sent a squadron to help his enemies, there is no indication Lysimachus had any ships to oppose it. This might seem surprising as the Greek cities of the Black Sea coast and the Thracian Chersonese would probably have had something in the way of navies, we certainly know Heraclea had some ships at her disposal. But, surely, he could either not get them to fight in any numbers for him or they were not first-rate forces that could stand up in battle against the fleets deployed by the foremost dynasts.20 After Ipsus, Demetrius could raid Lysimachus’ coastline with impunity, even putting his new capital of Lysimacheia at risk, indicating that the Thracian ruler’s naval means were very slim indeed. His only hope was that Ptolemy might show up to help but that pragmatic ruler was not about to risk what was left of his navy to help a distant ally whose interests might not always match his own.21
All Lysimachus could do was wait until Demetrius had vented his bile, as, despite the disaster at Ipsus, he was still unstoppable at sea. Indeed only when Demetrius’ adventures completely ended deep in Asia in 286/285 BC did Lysimachus even begin to gain a navy. Some of the fleet Demetrius left at Miletus went over to him when his men entered the city and forced the Antigonid admirals to sign up with one or other of the remaining sovereigns who could offer them employment. How many ships came over to him we don’t know (some went to Pyrrhus) and no details of any activity are left to us before Lysimachus exited the stage at the Battle of Corupedium in 281 BC.22 After his demise his fleet ended up in the hands of Ptolemy Ceraunus, where ironically it was used victoriously against Demetrius’ son, Antigonus Gonatus, in 280 BC.
Cassander never was a major naval player. He could mobilize fleets on occasions; invading Salamis near Athens in the time of Polyperchon, he put up a fight against Medius, and when he campaigned in the Adriatic against the Illyrians and islanders from Leucas and Corfu he must have had ships. But, it is unlikely that they were numerous or very powerful and after 312 BC there is no record of any naval adventures begun by the ruler at Pella.
Seleucus, after his stint as a maritime functionary in Ptolemy’s pay, never took to the waves again as far as we know. He certainly had his window on the sea, port towns near Antioch where he must have deployed some ships, but we hear of nothing and it is doubtful they were much more than coastguard vessels. Certainly, when Demetrius entertained him on his great thirteener during the negotiations over Seleucus’ marriage to his daughter, Seleucus did not reciprocate with meetings on an equivalent vessel of his own.
In the end, it was the two who had fought at the great set-piece at Salamis that were always the major contenders: the Antigonids on the up when father and son put huge resources into their shipbuilding programmes; Ptolemy, able to hold his own until the disaster at Cyprus made this no longer a credible strategy, then recovering over the decades as the Antigonids fell gradually from the pinnacles they had climbed.
However, the future of naval dominance after all the old men had died was to be a fragmented one. No power completely ruled the east Mediterranean waves in the generation after the Diadochi in the way the Antigonids had done. The Lagids were still sufficiently powerful in the 270s BC that they could attack Antiochus I in Asia Minor. The Seleucids, the Macedonian Antigonids, the Rhodians and the kingdom of Pergamum all would send out fleets and fight set-piece battles. But, in general, the effect was a sort of balance; it might even be claimed that as they fought each other to a standstill, they allowed Rome to intrude in a way that would eventually ensure the eclipse of them all. Rome, bloodily apprenticed at sea against the Carthaginians, and in 190 BC they fought the Seleucids at Myonessus, in tandem with the Rhodians. A new force was arriving that would change everything.
The ever-practical Romans did not follow the Hellenes down a road of naval gigantism though the powers around the east Mediterranean continued with super ships. Ptolemy IV even built a forty, a monster apparently over 400 feet long and requiring 4,000 oarsmen, and there are reports of ships with libraries in them, though almost certainly none of these were meant for use in battle. The Romans utilized triremes and quinqueremes as the mainstay of their fleets though they also used fours and occasionally a six, and at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC Mark Antony even kept his flag on a ten. But, they did not just downsize their ships of the line; they found a way to transfer their strength in terrestrial fighting skills to the sea. Not for them the subtle manoeuvres of the diekplous or the periplous, instead they introduced the corvus, a hinged boarding platform attached to the bow of the ship which they could drop onto an enemy deck. Fighting a land-style war on the waves, they changed combat at sea as they changed so much else in the centuries after Alexander’s death.
Chapter Nine
Border Wars
Apart from the giant tussling that shaped the world of Hellenistic kings, there were also smaller dramas played out; smaller but none the less interesting for that. As with much concerning the Diadochi, what we have to go on is of mixed quality. Inevitably, the centrist bias of our root sources is pretty profound but there are conflict
s on the edges where we find a considerable amount on the record. None get the attention or have their details passed down in the way the great Antigonus-Eumenes battles or some of Demetrius’ campaigns do, yet still there is plenty of interest. Also, impinging as these events do on folk of the wider world, it is often different and introduces peoples who are not encountered in the main story. North, west, east and south of the Successor realms we are told about border wars where the dynasts faced very different problems from the ones they were used to when warring with each other. And what is also apparent in these encounters is how often they came up short.
All of the Diadochi had their encounters with peoples of the periphery, whether it was Seleucus with Indians from the Punjab and steppe tribes of central Asia, Ptolemy in Cyrenaica with Greek settlers or indigenous Libyan tribesmen, or Cassander who spent much of his efforts shoring up his Illyrian, Epirote and Arcananian marches. Then there was Lysimachus, who had to fight for the right to survive, against first the indigenous kings of Thrace and then the Getae and Scythians who frequently threatened his borders. Even Antigonus and Demetrius involved themselves in campaigns against the Nabataean Arabs and the peoples round the Dead Sea that are quite well documented.1