by Bob Bennett
The earliest of these conflicts occurred in an area well known to the Classical world but involving some peoples who were regarded as the most uncivilized of the neighbours of the Hellenistic states, events taking place in some tough terrain where warriors from as far afield as Carthage would, on occasions, feel they had an interest.
Ptolemy, who was the man involved, did nothing to instigate what developed in his very dusty backyard, but when others had brewed the stew he showed he was not averse to expanding the frontiers of his new satrapy. The direction his interest was drawn was westwards towards Cyrene, almost halfway to Carthage, 500 miles west of the delta where the desert coast begins to turn south and a fist of land was fertile between the highlands and the sea. In 631 BC, the city of Cyrene itself had been founded by settlers from the Aegean island of Thera, driven by drought from their homeland. Many who came later were Peloponnesians, people tough and warlike enough to beat off at least one invasion from Egypt in 570 BC. They lived well, growing grain and rearing sheep and horses, but internal tension between the colonists was enough to ensure that groups soon left to found other communities, like Barca, which was inland and 60 miles further west.
The independent communities in this region had not been conquered by Alexander (though they had certainly accepted his tutelage and perhaps paid a tribute) and before Ptolemy’s arrival as their neighbour, no salutary foreign oppression had suppressed those tendencies to communal squabbling they had brought with them from mainland Greece. The years before Ptolemy came to Egypt had been particularly riven with internal strife, a situation aggravated by the arrival of a rootless warlord eager to profit from the political vacuum attendant on Alexander’s death.
Thibron was a Spartan mercenary captain, who had accompanied the dishonest treasurer Harpalus when he fled from Alexander to Athens in 324 BC. After they had been refused entry there, these fugitives took themselves, and the 5,000 veteran mercenaries they had picked up in Asia, on to Crete via the Peloponnese. During their stay on the island, Thibron and his brother officers decided that Harpalus was an albatross around their necks. He would never be forgiven by Alexander, whom he had cheated twice over, and nobody was likely to befriend them for fear of reprisals from the man who effectively ruled the world. Harpalus was assassinated by the very men he had hired to protect him, while the ruthless Spartan took control of both the army, now totalling 7,000 men, and the remaining fortune of his victim.
Amongst the army on Crete were a number of Cyrenean exiles who persuaded their comrades that their old homeland on the North African coast would be an ideal spot for this rootless band to establish themselves. In 324/323 BC, these freebooters landed on the coast near Cyrene city and, guided by local men, approached the place. The citizen soldiers (presumably hoplites bearing aspis and spear but also including war chariots, the use of which they must have learned from the local Libyan tribes) proved no match for Thibron’s men and the Cyrenean army was defeated outside the walls. Many were cut down or made prisoner but the rump managed to get back and man the defences before their enemy could enter the town gates. In the scramble, control of the harbour was lost. Cut off from the sea and badly shaken by defeat, the city fathers were quickly forced to come to terms and pay off these pirates.
It cost the Cyreneans dear to ransom a temporary security: 500 talents and half the chariots they possessed were promised, but, for the moment, their tormentors left and Thibron led his mercenaries, as a sort of mobile protection racket, in a tour of the other major towns in the region. This descent on Africa brought some considerable profits but then the newcomers fell out over the division of spoils and one of Thibron’s Cretan officers, called Mnasicles, deserted the ranks. He returned to Cyrene city and stirred up the citizens against his old commander. A call to arms against the men who had recently humiliated them touched an eager chord amongst the Cyreneans, especially as the ransom had only been partly paid; 440 talents were still due, and reneging on the agreement meant the townsfolk could keep what was still owed.
A considerable war developed between Thibron, his friends at Barca and Hesperis on one side (they were eager to support any enemy of their local rival) and on the other the Cyreneans, Libyan tribesmen and even Carthaginian elements who they had called to their assistance. Thibron hoped that the professional experience of his hard core of mercenaries would quickly win the war for him. He first marched back to the port of Cyrene to establish his headquarters from where he could sort out these treacherous backsliders. Then he moved to besiege the city itself. But he could not encircle the place before the Cyreneans sent out a considerable force to ravage the lands of Barca and Hesperis. The mercenary general responded and marched off to save his new friends but in so doing left the port undefended, so Mnasicles was able to lead the garrison in Cyrene city against it and recaptured the harbour. The Cretan was making himself popular in the city as his enterprise meant the citizens retrieved the goods which had been thought to be lost when it was captured.
After a small crisis of confidence, the hard man Thibron recovered his nerve and went back on the offensive. He besieged and took a city called Tauchira, a community something under 100 miles west down the coast from Cyrene and presumably their ally. But he was far from having it all his own way; because he had lost his port facilities at Cyrene, his fleet had had to be beached on the open strand. Then the crews, who could not get food from their stores, went off to forage and were ambushed by Libyans. More than this, those who escaped capture departed in their ships but were caught in a storm that either sank them or left them high and dry on shores as far apart as Cyprus and Egypt.
Thibron sent back to the Peloponnese for more mercenaries. There his recruiting sergeants found many who had heard what good pickings were to be had in North Africa. Approximately 2,500 unemployed soldiers were picked up but before these reinforcements had arrived the Cyreneans had acted. They had trounced the men Thibron had with him and driven them away from the city. But the newcomers were eager and their enthusiasm reinvigorated the dispirited gangsters they found when they arrived. Thibron determined to renew the campaign against targets whose riches made them still very tempting.
With his reinforced army, Thibron again approached Cyrene city to find his enemies had not been idle during the meantime, but had recruited allies and mercenaries from the local Libyans and from Carthage. A huge battle was fought outside the walls with 30,000 claimed on the Cyrenean side, but they were not enough and Thibron’s men cut through the enemy’s massed ranks, dispersed them all and set about besieging both the port and the city itself. Mnasicles still had the citizens’ confidence and he and some others were swiftly elected to replace the generals who had died in the battle. Up to this point, the Cyrenean war had been a local affair but events were now to involve the wider world. The struggle with Thibron had exacerbated stress in Cyrene’s social fabric and this, intensified by the shortage of food due to the siege, meant a coup occurred that deprived the wealthy citizens of the control they previously exercised. Many of these opulent Cyreneans slipped out of the city, fearing their lives as well as their political power and property might be at risk. Some found refuge with Thibron while others made a longer journey into exile in Egypt where they implored their powerful neighbour to intervene.
These events found Ptolemy well established in his new satrapy and also very flush having taken 8,000 talents from his deputy, Cleomenes, who he had just eliminated. He was not currently threatened by any rivals, all of whom had plenty to do in establishing themselves in their several domains. No one else had much of an interest in these western regions, so, if he could overcome the local factions he could expect to enjoy exploitation of the area uncontested. A force was sent west under Ophellas, a Macedonian general, who the future would show harboured unchecked ambitions of his own.
Alarmed as news filtered in that Ophellas was fast marching down to Cyrene, Thibron raised his siege, sent in ambassadors and made common cause with the ‘democratic’ leadership of Cyrene. This
rapprochement was facilitated when the mercenary general murdered all the Cyrenean exiles in his camp, who represented the only substantial domestic opposition still in the area. Those now in power at Cyrene understood Egyptian interference represented a threat far more fundamental than that posed by Thibron’s followers. There would be little room for mercy if the oligarchs who came in the train of the Egyptian army regained control of their city. The popular government had already shown it was capable of mobilizing considerable forces, but Ophellas also had a powerful army and, perhaps, now some who had sent aid before were reluctant to be seen to be opposing the powerful ruler of Egypt. Whatever, Ophellas overthrew Thibron’s mercenaries and local allies with some ease. The Spartan adventurer was captured and crucified while Cyrene and the other towns were taken or came to terms.
After his general’s success, Ptolemy made the long journey west in person. And, when he got there, what is significant is that his handling of Cyrenean affairs showed great sensitivity to world opinion. The cities he had conquered had long been independent and overtly advertising their subjection would dent his reputation in Greece where he sought to make friends. The public relations conundrum was overcome with some panache by Ptolemy’s (still extant) new constitution.2 At first glance it seems an unexceptional polis form of government with citizen bodies, councils of elders and some election by lot. In the shattered and unpredictable world at the turn of 322/321 BC it was well worth an appearance of appeasing the sensibilities of potential allies. However, the Lagid reserved certain vital functions for himself. He was to be permanent strategos, control the election of elders and whether exiles should be re-admitted to the citizen body. And, crucially, though there is no mention in the constitution, Ophellas was left with a garrison to ensure Ptolemaic rule.
Ptolemy’s interfering on his western march was never central to his foreign policy, indeed, in some senses, it caused him more trouble than it was worth, involving him in both the stress of an ambitious viceroy intriguing, and it rubbed him up against the interests of the great city of Carthage. But, for Cassander, his marcher lands were far more central to his thinking. For the man at Pella, his relations with Illyrians, Epirotes and Acarnanians were central to the direction of his whole political strategy.
In the years since Cassander grasped the reins of power in Philip and Alexander’s old kingdom, activity to the south and east had been incessant. Often his involvement there had been a forced policy, proactive in response to the conduct of his mighty rivals. But, while his efforts had been largely directed to building security on the shifting sands of Peloponnesian, Euboean and Boeotian politics (which had been far from universally successful), survival and retention had been the keynote, not expansion and construction. The Aegean and Mediterranean fronts were fraught with danger but in another direction Cassander had seen opportunity beckon. To the west, along the Ionian littoral, Macedonia’s neighbours were, by and large, weak, culturally ‘backward’ and politically divided.
The coast that looked across the straits of Otranto to the heel of the Italian peninsular made a harsh rampart with few of the easy entrances or the tolerable hinterlands of the Aegean flank of Greece. The islands that lie off this coast, though, are large and by nature destined as important staging posts of trade and power. Most notably Corfu (Corcyra), though now a holiday playground, had been, in a past that was recent to Cassander’s contemporaries, the spark that ignited the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC. The main interruption in this stern coastline was the bay of Ambracia (better known by its Roman name, Actium) directly across from the Malian Gulf on the eastern side, indenting like a belt pulled in tight around the waist of central Greece. A natural base with a small but fertile hinterland, this place would have its greatest day in history when Agrippa won the Roman Empire for his seasick commander in 31 BC. The Gulf marked the northern frontier of the Acarnanians who, in 314 BC, Cassander had visited to organize resistance against Aetolia. With these people firm allies, he was able to intervene further in the west. He ferried his army over to Leucas, the large island that flanked the coast of Acarnania. The islanders had little option but to join the cause of the powerful intruder. Directly north of the Gulf of Actium lay Epirus and there, since the war with Olympias (when Aeacides, her cousin, was deposed) a faction favourable to Cassander had been in power. Further up were the lands of the Illyrians, historic enemies of the Macedonians. Along the coastline, where geography had allowed, the Greeks had planted cities but this was only a thin crust over a ‘barbarian’ interior where tribal kings tolerated the benefits this presence brought. It was towards these towns that the Macedonians now sailed on a fleet quickly recruited from Cassander’s allies.
Apollonia had been originally founded by the Corinthians and it had prospered on commerce with the Illyrian hinterland and from its position on the trade route into the Adriatic. The citizenry were ill-prepared for the sudden arrival of a Macedonian warlord and the city, whose defences were more geared to repel Illyrian raids than an attack by a modern Hellenistic army, fell at the first assault. Cassander pressed on eastwards into the heart of Illyria, along the route the Via Egnatia would follow in Roman times. The king in this part of the country was Glaucias, who had had a rough experience of Macedonian arms two decades before, when he had been part of the Illyrian coalition that a young Alexander had routed in preparation for the invasion of Asia. Time had not dimmed his belligerence and he mobilized his army to face this new intruder. The Illyrian reaction shows that, since the death of Antipater, internecine Macedonian strife had allowed an assertion of independence that had been largely suppressed in the days of Philip and Alexander.
Glaucias fielded numerous skirmishers, javelineers, slingers and bowmen as well as the spear-and-shield-bearing core of the national army. But none of these wore anything but the lightest armour and even the nobles would have sported only a helmet and fought as javelin-armed light cavalry. This essentially-tribal agglomeration of warriors was sufficiently organized for the raiding parties that were their normal tool of aggression both on land and sea, but were incapable of the steady and disciplined fighting that characterized the Hellenic army they now had to face. The outcome was the same as almost every contest between Illyrians and Macedonians since the defeat and death of Perdiccas III in 359 BC, with Glaucias beaten and forced to come to terms with Cassander.
Aspects of this agreement throw light on Cassander’s long term policy in the west, ‘he made a treaty with the king according to which Glaucias was not to wage war on Cassander’s allies’, a clause that primarily concerned Epirus.3 Though Neoptolemus II was on the throne (initially under the tutelage of Cassander’s general Lyciscus) the situation was by no means stable.4 The deposed Aeacides still had substantial support, but if his faction was to have any chance of success it would be to Illyria they would look for aid. Glaucias had already shown a preparedness to become involved when he gave refuge to the infant Pyrrhus, Aeacides’ son; and it was against just this that Cassander hoped to insure. Binding oaths were not all the Macedonian ruler utilized in his campaign to curb the Illyrian threat. He garrisoned Epidamnus (another Greek city on the coast) as he had Apollonia before.5 From the straits of Otranto to the Gulf of Corinth, Cassander had planted strongholds or ensured his friends were in power and as he marched east to Pella at the end of the campaigning season of 314 BC, he reasserted Macedonian control of the direct land route from Pella to the Adriatic.
If the Antigonids frustrated Cassander’s ambitions to the east, on the western march distance and terrain was almost as great a hindrance. Macedonian viceroys might prop up the governments of his friends in Acarnania and Epirus and isolated garrisons occupy key stations, but limited means dogged efforts to defend what had been achieved. In the very next year, a minor power was able to make a great dent in Macedonia’s western wall. The rulers of Corfu had deeply resented the intrusion of a new power into their backyard. They had previously sustained a local prominence that, though occasionally threatened by Greek or Itali
an navies, had been durable. King Glaucias was contacted to isolate Cassander’s Illyrian garrisons from the landward side while forces from Corfu landed from the sea. At both Apollonia and Epidamnus the Macedonian garrisons were ejected.
If this erosion of his power was galling enough for Cassander, it was not the greatest threat his western policy was subject to in 313 BC. Epirus, the keystone of the regional alliances, wobbled in its Macedonian allegiance. The context of these events was that Ptolemaeus, Antigonus’ nephew, was rampant in Euboea and Macedonia was under threat from a direct invasion by Antigonus. Able to give little personal attention to events in the west, Cassander at least had good fortune in his lieutenant on the spot. The histories of these Macedonian potentates were very much family affairs. It was from the extended family that dependable senior officers were drawn, that counsel was taken and wholehearted support expected. Alexander’s generals were establishing dynasties long before they took on the diadem of monarchy. They might wrap themselves in the ideological trappings of the sophisticated politics of the Greek cities but at heart they remained familial heads whose trust and ambition rested in sons, daughters, close relatives and established retainers. Antigonus had his talented sons and nephews, Lysimachus and Seleucus became dependent on their sons while Cassander, though he gave independent commands to talented supporters on a number of occasions, relied on his brothers to share the responsibilities of campaigning.6
One of these siblings was called Philip and had served in Asia as a royal page (Justin claims him as an accomplice in the king’s poisoning). He is interesting not just for his activities in 313 BC but for the fact that his son, Antipater, ended up as king of Macedonia for forty-five days in 279 BC, immediately after the last of the Successors had perished. Philip had been given a command against the Aetolians whose antipathy to the Macedonians had only been fuelled by the arrival of Ptolemaeus and his formidable force. Philip had not been granted many troops by Cassander and it was expected that the Acarnanians would help remedy the shortfall; a test of the solidity of the alliance that Cassander had so recently forged. They were instructed to march out from their new cities and join Philip in the push east against Aetolia. However, news from Epirus forestalled these plans. Aeacides had returned to try and reclaim his throne. It is not clear where he had been during his exile but it is known that he had linked up with Polyperchon when they were both at their lowest ebb and had sought refuge in Aetolia. It is probable that he remained there fighting with his hosts and planning his eventual return. Years of border warfare would have bound adventurous Aetolians to him to supplement his loyal band of Epirote retainers. With these followers, he entered Epirus where time had been a great healer of his reputation.