Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander the Great's Empire (7 page)

Meleager’s brief moment had arrived. He was the king’s right-hand man, he controlled Babylon, and he had possession of Alexander’s talismanic corpse. But this was illusory power. Leonnatus’s flight with the cavalry did not serve only to prevent Macedonians killing fellow Macedonians, but was also a tactical move. Their mobility enabled them effectively to put the city under siege.

Eumenes, however, had stayed in Babylon. As a Greek, he was able to steer a course among the opposing Macedonian factions. Meleager could see that the blockade of the city would quickly undermine his position, and certainly not all the infantry were in favor of civil war. So, a few days later, Meleager agreed to the compromise Eumenes suggested, certainly with Perdiccas’s approval: that Arrhidaeus and Rhoxane’s child (if it were male) should
both
be kings; that Meleager should become Perdiccas’s second-in-command; that Antipater should be retained, with the title “Royal General of Europe”; and that Craterus, who was the troops’ favorite as well as a friend of Meleager, should be made “protector of the kingdom,” perhaps the new Harpalus, responsible for the imperial exchequer.
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This compromise calmed things down enough for Perdiccas to return to Babylon, and the agreement was ritually ratified in the presence of Alexander’s corpse, “so that his majesty might witness their decisions.”
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With hindsight, it is easy to see that Perdiccas never intended to honor this agreement.
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His concession was meant only to defuse the current crisis and buy him time. Perhaps this is how he had persuaded Leonnatus to take a back seat, when the first meeting had offered him equal power with Perdiccas in Asia—by telling him, “Give me a few
days, and we should be able to bring you back on to center stage.” At any rate, if Meleager felt secure, he was sorely mistaken. Under the guise of continuing the reconciliation process, Perdiccas isolated Meleager from his most important ally by offering Attalus his daughter in marriage.

When Perdiccas struck he did so in a highly dramatic fashion. The reconciliation and the formal acknowledgment of Arrhidaeus as King Philip III were to be marked by a review and lustration of the entire army, and Perdiccas persuaded Meleager that they should also use the occasion to root out the last of the potential mutineers. In the course of the review, then, the troublemakers were called out—and they were all supporters of Meleager. Three hundred were thrown to the elephants, to be trampled to death—the first time this terrible form of punishment had been used in the Greek world—and to intimidate the infantry. Meleager himself survived for a day or two longer, before being summoned to face Perdiccas. He died “resisting arrest.” Meleager was the first to try to ride to power on the waves of chaos created by Alexander’s death. Those with latent ambitions looked on. Perdiccas’s cruelty taught them an important lesson: the only right would be might.

Perdiccas’s supremacy was ratified when the Bodyguards and other senior officers met again, this time without interference. At this final conference, Perdiccas was made regent, “Protector of the Kings,” one unborn and the other not fully competent; theoretically, all the regional governors of the empire would be subordinate to him. He promoted Seleucus to be his second-in-command, the post left vacant by Meleager’s death, and commander of the elite Companion Cavalry, the main strike force of the army.

The clearest sign of Perdiccas’s dominance is that he felt he could insult Leonnatus, who had been promised the coregency at the initial conference but was no longer slated for such an elevated role. It is likely that Perdiccas and Leonnatus had quarreled and fallen out; at any rate, Perdiccas hardly saw any need to appease him.

Antipater was confirmed as regent in Macedon; he was not to be recalled, as Alexander had wanted. This was sensible of Perdiccas, because whereas Antipater might have obeyed a summons from Alexander, he was hardly likely to submit to Perdiccas. As for Craterus, there was no further mention of “protector of the kingdom”—a grand, but perhaps empty title, probably accepted by Perdiccas and his followers only temporarily, as part of the process whereby they could eliminate Meleager and bring the infantry to heel. He was fobbed off
with the joint generalship of Europe, when under Alexander’s orders he would have had this position all to himself. But perhaps he soon would anyway, since Antipater was well advanced in years. In any case, Craterus was far away in Cilicia; what was he going to do about it?

At the top of the tree, then, the final Babylon conference established an unequal triumvirate of Perdiccas, Antipater, and Craterus. Perdiccas had taken all Asia for himself; Antipater and Craterus had been restricted to Europe, where Perdiccas was content to leave them to find some way to work together, or to wait for Antipater to die. Before long, however, the framework for a reconciliation between Antipater and Perdiccas was in place. As well as reinstating the old viceroy, Perdiccas also offered to marry his daughter Nicaea. And Antipater’s son Cassander was given the command of the Shield-bearers, the position left vacant by Seleucus’s promotion.

Now that the succession had been settled, provisions had to be made for the maintenance of the empire. Perdiccas kept a number of his supporters by his side, but rewarded others with satrapies. He and his fellow marshals assiduously avoided taking thought for the longer-term administration of the empire. They simply retained the existing structure, for the time being, and took over the old, somewhat laissez-faire Persian system, whereby all the satraps were answerable to the king, but as long as they paid their satrapies’ taxes and kept the peace within and on their borders—as long as they did not draw attention to themselves—were left pretty much to their own devices. They could enrich themselves and their favorites and live like kings in their own right. The only difference was that this time they were answerable not to any single king but to the kings’ representative, Perdiccas, who was assigned no particular territory, and therefore occupied the position held in the past by the Persian king or by Alexander.

So, in the name of Philip III, Perdiccas made provisions for all the satrapies, with Alexander’s satraps replaced or confirmed in their post. The most important measures were these.
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Leonnatus, demoted from potential regent first by the necessary elevation of Meleager and then by Perdiccas’s manipulations, was given the wealthy satrapy of Hellespontine Phrygia, with its critical control over the sea routes between the Black Sea and the Aegean. As if to add insult to injury,
the size of his territory was reduced; Paphlagonia, which had been a subordinate part of this satrapy, was given to Eumenes. But then much of Paphlagonia was more or less independent, as was neighboring Bithynia. Eumenes was awarded trouble spots.

Eumenes received an enormous chunk of Asia Minor—not only Paphlagonia, but also Cappadocia. These are rugged regions, and Alexander had chosen not to slow his eastward impetus by fully pacifying them. Leonnatus and Antigonus were instructed to use their satrapal armies to conquer the region for Eumenes; apart from anything else, it would open up the Royal Road, the main route from Sardis to Mesopotamia. Eumenes was not just a bookish man; he had for the past year commanded a unit of the elite Household Cavalry. But he needed help because his forces were insufficient against the huge numbers of enemy troops, and he had never commanded an entire army by himself.

Ptolemy got Egypt; Alexander’s satrap, Cleomenes of Naucratis, was to be demoted and become his right-hand man. Ptolemy must have been delighted: Egypt was populous, virtually impregnable, and fabulously wealthy. Apart from anything else, Alexander had left a war chest there, which Cleomenes had shrewdly increased to eight thousand talents (about five billion dollars), with which Ptolemy could immediately begin recruiting. Moreover, Alexander had initiated a military training program there, so that Ptolemy would inherit native troops who were or soon would be battle-ready. It would make a very good power base for an ambitious man.

Antigonus was retained in western Anatolia (Phrygia, Lycia, and Pamphylia, with western Pisidia and Lycaonia as addenda); he was not considered a threat, and so there was no need to promote or demote him. He was an unknown quantity, not having accompanied the others on the eastern campaigns. Menander was retained in Lydia, where he had been satrap since 331. Peucestas was retained in Persis; after all, he had taken the trouble to learn the Persian language, and was doing a good job. Peithon gained wealthy Media.

Lysimachus got Thrace, with instructions to keep the unruly northern tribes at bay. Lysimachus was known not only as a man of great personal courage, but as a general with the skill required to pacify the warlike and fiercely independent Thracians. Though his appointment looks like a snub to Antipater, since it deprived him of some of his territory, it actually helped him; in the short term, Antipater was likely to be fully occupied keeping the unruly southern Greeks under control, and in the longer term Thrace had never been fully tamed anyway.
Despite the challenges, Lysimachus might not have been too displeased. Thrace was a strategically placed buffer between Asia and Europe. Hence, in the years to come, even when unable or unwilling to participate more fully, he was able to broker passage through or past his territory for this or that ally. Although nominally subordinate to Antipater, he never acted in anyone’s interest but his own. Even his friendship with Antipater and later his heirs was self-serving: with his western border causing him no alarm, he could focus elsewhere.

Not all these measures served Perdiccas’s interests, but an overall pattern emerges of dividing and thereby hoping, presumably, to conquer. When Alexander died, all seven Bodyguards were in Babylon; now only Perdiccas and his yes-man Aristonous remained there in the center. The distribution put ambitious men in close proximity to one another. In any case, several of them had their forces tied up for the foreseeable future by rebellions within their territories or by necessary military ventures. Perdiccas had at least bought himself time to strengthen his position, now that the immediate storm had been weathered.

He also cancelled Alexander’s “Last Plans”—or rather, he saw to it that the army voted them into oblivion. They had had enough of world conquest, and Alexander’s plans were as ambitious in the west as they had been in the east. As Perdiccas saw it, and as testified by his desire to bring Cappadocia within the imperial domain, the job now was consolidation, not expansion. But consolidation brought risks: the restless energy of the senior officers would now have no external outlet; it would inevitably be turned upon themselves.

The cancellation also left Craterus with nothing to do in Cilicia, and was an unsubtle reminder that his return to Europe was overdue. Nearchus, who had been slated to command the new fleet, was left without a job, and joined the entourage of his friend Antigonus. The “Last Plans” had also promoted intercourse between easterners and westerners; with their cancellation, few of Alexander’s senior officers saw any reason to retain the eastern wives that Alexander had arranged for them in the mass wedding at Susa in April 324. The women were mostly cast aside, no doubt to their relief, since these were forced marriages, a demonstration of the superiority of Macedonians over easterners. Alexander’s Successors were far more interested in controlling the east than in blending it with the west. Few of them had any intention of sharing power with the locals, except where necessity compelled them.

Finally, arrangements were made for Alexander’s funeral cortège and the construction of the bier on which the embalmed corpse was to
be trundled slowly but splendidly from Babylon to its resting place in Macedon, in the Argead tombs at Aegae.
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Since it was Macedonian tradition that the previous king’s funeral rites should be overseen by the dead king’s heir, since this would be Philip III’s job, and since Perdiccas was responsible for Philip, Perdiccas must already have been intending to enter Macedon himself, accompanied by the king and the cortège. It would be an impressive arrival. The moves he had already made to be reconciled with Antipater were doubtless designed in part to alleviate the aged governor’s natural concerns about such a threatening and delicate situation.

In August or September 323, not long after that intense week or two in June, Rhoxane gave birth to a boy, who was named after his father. The waiting was over, but now Alexander’s heirs were faced with the uncomfortable situation that there were two kings. Perdiccas assumed the regency of the infant Alexander IV, along with the guardianship of Philip III. In the meantime, with Perdiccas’s support, Rhoxane had eliminated the last female members of the Persian royal house, including Alexander’s two Persian wives. There is no evidence that either of them was pregnant, but Rhoxane was making it clear that the future lay with her lineage, not theirs. In any case, the immediate future was a foregone conclusion: a struggle to control the empire by controlling the two kings. Pity the poor boys and their mothers, knowing they were pawns in such a major power play, and knowing the Macedonian and Persian practices of assassinating unwanted rivals. As historian Elizabeth Carney reminds us, “No Macedonian child-king had ever retained the throne for any length of time.”
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C
APPADOCIA WAS UP
in arms; Thrace was in open rebellion; the Indian provinces were so disturbed that they were scarcely part of the empire at all; Rhodes seized the moment of uncertainty to throw out its Macedonian garrison, and we can imagine that others did too, even if their struggles did not make the historical record. But two of the most formidable rebellions that followed Alexander’s death were Greek, and for a while they had the rest of the world holding its breath.

Alexander had left Afghanistan secured with fortresses and garrisons. While the subjugation of Bactria had proved relatively easy, Sogdiana, on the far bank of the Oxus, was another matter. It took Alexander the best part of two years to fail to subdue it, and he suffered the worst military defeat of his career when a force of two thousand men under one of his generals was wiped out in an ambush in the Zeravshan valley. He could not expect that the region would remain calm; hence the fortresses and their garrisons.