Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander the Great's Empire (31 page)

Just as in Ptolemaic Egypt, a hierarchical pyramid spread out under Seleucus. The first layer was occupied by trusted family members, who
were awarded special commands, such as oversight of all the eastern satrapies (Antiochus) or of western Asia Minor as a whole (Achaeus). The second layer was occupied by his Friends, men we could call his ministers of state, chiefly with broad financial responsibilities; for such an enormous empire, there were very few such dedicated ministers. The third layer was occupied by the military and financial administrators of satrapies and other regions and by the city authorities. Each of these layers of officers had considerable power within their domains, while being answerable to the next level above; each officer had a considerable network of junior officials under him. As in Egypt, the jobs of all officials within the hierarchy were chiefly to ensure security and the smooth collection and storage of taxes.

The Janus nature of Seleucid Asia and Ptolemaic Egypt—the choice not to impose uniformity—meant that kings had to be adaptable in their official discourses. It depended on who they were talking to: should they be king, conqueror, or god? In Egypt, if they presented themselves as kings, should it be in the Macedonian style or as a pharaoh? In some parts of the empire, they presented themselves as promoters of hellenization and spoke of defending the empire against barbarians; other parts, however, were populated precisely by “barbarian” peoples, and so in these areas the kings came across as preservers of local traditions and guarantors of freedom.

The degree to which long-established local systems were taken over, and kept separate from the instruments reserved for the new elite, meant that, in this sense, the coming of the conquerors made little difference. The greatest impact was in the acceleration of processes that were already taking place: goods could travel farther and more easily (though, apart from luxuries and hard-to-acquire necessities, most trade remained fairly local relative to the size of Alexander’s former empire as a whole), peripheries were brought into a closer relationship with the center, monetization rapidly increased.

Societies remained essentially unchanged in their ancient agricultural forms, only with an additional layer of Macedonian and Greek practices. Hellenization and collaboration with the new rulers were encouraged, but not required, because the new rulers could easily get by with mere acquiescence from the majority of their subject populations. Both Ptolemy and Seleucus were necessarily conservative, since the last
thing they needed was to arouse opposition. They supported and even reinvigorated local institutions, and made their subjects’ lives easier and more profitable overall. They were authoritarian rulers and could easily have been despots, but both of them chose the less risky course of appeasement, so that at the same time they could accelerate change in the area that concerned them most—improving the state’s profitability and taxations systems. Their measures worked, in the sense that there was no real trouble in either of their kingdoms during their reigns, or indeed for many years afterward. They managed the most difficult of tricks—a smooth transition to foreign occupation and rule.

T
HE EARLY HELLENISTIC
period is studded with extraordinary personalities, but none of their stories is more amazing than that of Demetrius the Besieger over the next few years. It simply should not have happened. After Ipsus, the Antigonid cause seemed hopeless: Antigonus was dead and Demetrius in flight, his forces few and scattered. But then, if anyone was going to stage a remarkable recovery, it would be Demetrius, the most energetic and flamboyant of the kings. Within seven years, he had seized the throne of Macedon and, even if unrealistically, revived his hopes of imperial power.

It may be that some of our amazement would be mitigated if we could fill more of the gaps in the record. The narrative of the historian Diodorus of Sicily has sustained us so far, but his account ends on the eve of the battle of Ipsus, and the rest of his history, as of all others of the period, is lost. We are condemned to try to piece the picture together out of incomplete and often disparate fragments—of literature, and of archaeological and epigraphic data. Informed guesswork is sometimes the way forward. At least in Demetrius’s case some of the problems are offset by the fact that he earned a Life in Plutarch’s collection. But Plutarch was a biographer, not a historian, and he chose as his subjects men who could serve as paradigms to emulate or avoid. For Plutarch, Demetrius was a model of wasted talent.

Ipsus was a critical battle, but only in a counterfactual sense:
if
Antigonus had won, there would have been little to stop him achieving his ambition of ruling all Alexander’s empire, or at least of bequeathing that distinct possibility to his son. But the fact is that Antigonus lost, and so Ipsus was critical only in that it stopped him. In other respects, little changed. True, ever since Alexander’s death, warfare had been given its impetus because someone aspired to rule over the entire empire: Perdiccas at first, and then Antigonus. After Ipsus there was at least the possibility of less warfare and more consolidation, so that a balance of power could emerge, but that did not happen immediately. It is illusory to think that Antigonus’s death “marks the final passing of the idea of an empire reviving that of Alexander.”
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The remaining Successors, and Demetrius above all, still entertained imperialist ambitions, as we shall see. They did not see Antigonus’s death as ending grand imperialist dreams; they saw it as creating space for
their
dreams. But first they had some consolidating to do. All Ipsus did was slow things down for a while.

After the battle, “the victorious kings sliced up Antigonus’s domain like an enormous carcass, each taking his portion.”
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The prisoners of war, and the three thousand talents Antigonus had brought from Cilicia, were divided among the victorious kings, but it was by partitioning the Antigonid realms that they made really significant gains.

Lysimachus, who had commanded the coalition forces, was the biggest winner, since he was awarded all of Asia Minor up to the Halys River. Asia Minor was not a whole, however. There were independent cities such as Heraclea, and the princelings of Cappadocia had taken advantage of the constant warfare to gain a kind of independence. The countries on the south coast of the Black Sea, protected by the sea on one side and formidable mountains on the other, had never been fully under Macedonian control, if at all. Bithynia had always been independent, and it is testimony to the survival skills of its ruler, Zipoetes, that he held his territory for forty-seven years, from 327 until his death in 280. A noble Persian called Mithradates had recently established himself in Pontus. Both Bithynia and Pontus turned out to be successful kingdoms, which lasted until, respectively, 74 and 63
BCE
. Paphlagonia too had attained a similar kind of independence, but Lysimachus soon brought it within his sway. All these dynasts valued their independence, but had to accept the fact that they were surrounded by bigger fish than themselves.

Essentially, Lysimachus now held, in addition to Thrace, pretty much the same territory that Antigonus had held in 318, before his expansion eastward. It had been the foundation of Antigonus’s power; it could do the same for Lysimachus too. He was only sixty, or a little over; he had some time. His most valuable new possessions were the Asiatic Greek cities, famed for their wealth (from both commerce and natural resources) and rich in manpower. After Ipsus, many cities were cowed into surrendering of their own accord, but Antigonid garrisons remained in Ephesus, Miletus, and elsewhere. No doubt many cities had built or repaired their walls over the past few years of peace in their land, in preparation for just such an emergency. Lysimachus’s first job was the subjugation of these cities, to consolidate his hold over Asia Minor and gain the ability to exploit its wealth. It took a few years of almost unremitting effort.

Cassander (who traveled from Macedon to Asia Minor to attend the post-battle conference) gained nothing, but Greece was left vulnerable by Demetrius’s departure and the collapse of the Hellenic League he had revived a couple of years earlier. Cassander clearly expected to recover Greece, and just as clearly expected no interference from the others while he did so. In other words, he expected recognition of his kingship of Macedon, even after eliminating the last Argeads to obtain it. He got this, but no more; after all, he had not been present on the battlefield. By the same token, Ptolemy officially gained nothing either, but there was no resentment against him on the part of the others for the meager part he had played in the final campaigns. He had done his bit by fighting off the Antigonid invasion of Egypt a few years earlier.

Cassander’s brother Pleistarchus, however, who had taken part in the battle, was given Cilicia as his personal fiefdom. This may have been at Cassander’s insistence, since he looked out for his family’s interests: he also had a dotty brother called Alexarchus, who was allowed to found a utopian community called Ouranopolis, “The Heavenly City,” on the Athos peninsula, within Macedon. He dressed as the sun, and his citizens were the “children of heaven.” Official documents were written in a complex, archaic form of Greek—”too difficult even for the Delphic oracle.”
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In an era of literary utopias and escapist literature, one eccentric tried to make it real.

Seleucus added Mesopotamia and Syria to his enormous kingdom. The stretch of Mediterranean coastline he gained was critically important, but his pleasure was not unalloyed. First, northern Syria was an undeveloped region. The small population was relatively prosperous,
but almost entirely rural, with only one city (Antigonus’s half-built Antigonea) and a few scattered trading towns—and Seleucus had rivals to the north and south. Second, the cities on the coastline south of the Eleutherus were currently in Ptolemy’s hands (with the extra anomaly that Demetrius held Tyre and Sidon), and, having finally reestablished himself in the region, Ptolemy was disinclined to make way for their new owner. Trouble therefore brewed once again for Phoenicia, but postwar fatigue on both sides gave Ptolemy the chance to settle in. Seleucus made out that he refrained from attacking Ptolemy out of friendship, but everyone knew that the real reason was that he was in no position to challenge Ptolemy at sea.

The known world, as it emerged from the settlement, appeared relatively stable. All the kings had core territories and sons who seemed destined to become kings after them. Phoenicia, Greece, and the western seaboard of Asia Minor were the most likely trouble spots in the short term, as the kings sought to gain firm control of the areas they had been allotted. But such consolidation was not their only focus; they still looked out for opportunities for expansion. What emerged after Ipsus was not so much a balance of power as a balance of fear. They also reverted to the default Successor position of helping one’s neighbor only in the direst emergencies—and then only if significant gains could be made out of it.

Demetrius fled from the battlefield with several thousand men, chiefly members of the cavalry contingent he had been commanding. He holed up in Ephesus, where he had a garrison, and took stock of his position. His last remaining strength was his command of the sea. He had a substantial fleet. He held Cyprus, Tyre, and Sidon; most of the original Cycladic League and other strategic Aegean islands, including Euboea; a few places on the Hellespont and the Aegean coast; and the most important ports on the Greek mainland. He had sufficient funds to be able to retain his men and maintain his fleet. He could certainly still make a nuisance of himself at sea, even if he was a spent force on land. It was not in his nature to give up. He determined to stay in the game, the only game he had ever known in his harsh life. He felt he had enough strength at sea to survive by moving between his safe havens and by making raids as the opportunity presented itself. He decided, then, on a course of grand piracy.

Demetrius set sail from Ephesus for the city he had come to regard as the center of his kingdom, Athens. But, possibly prompted by Lysimachus (who was to woo Athens with benefactions over the next few years), the Athenians turned against him. Embarrassed by their earlier obsequiousness, they passed a resolution that they would from now on strive for neutrality. One of Demetrius’s wives, Deidameia, was still resident in the city, along with his eighteen-year-old son by Phila, Antigonus Gonatas, who was being educated in the university town; the Athenians bundled them off to Megara.

An Athenian delegation found Demetrius on Delos. He accepted their insulting decisions with good grace, or icy calm, and asked for the return of some warships that were docked in Piraeus. The Athenians agreed, in keeping with their posture of neutrality. Demetrius settled the members of his family in garrisoned Corinth, a more secure bolt-hole than Megara. Then he sailed to Cilicia, where he recovered other family members, who were made safe on Cyprus. Then he waited. One thing he had going for him was the near certainty that the post-Ipsus rapport between his enemies would not last.

While he waited, he continued to provoke Lysimachus. In 300 or 299 he sent a sizable raiding party to the Thracian Chersonese. It was a nasty little campaign, in the course of which Lysimachus killed thousands of his own men to quell a mutiny after Demetrius captured their baggage train.
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Not one of Lysimachus’s former coalition partners raised a finger to help him.

Seleucus’s first priority after Ipsus was to secure northern Syria. Within a few years—a remarkably few years—he had demolished Antigonea and started to build five major cities, which were named, in typical Macedonian fashion, after himself and members of his family. The “Syrian tetrapolis” consisted of Antioch with its port of Seleucia Pieria, and Apamea with its port of Laodicea; and the fifth foundation, Seleucia-on-the-Euphrates (also known as Zeugma), controlled the main Euphrates crossing. The cities were ringed with protective forts and were designed with security in mind: each of them had a strong acropolis, which was not entirely surrounded by the rest of the city, so that in an emergency the garrison could still communicate directly with the outside world. The area as a whole was called Seleucis and was to be the heart of his kingdom, both secure and splendid.
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