Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [100]
Eumenes ended his appeal with deference, saying that anyone who had a better plan should bring his ideas forward. Humility was Eumenes’ best hope of success, for the men he was addressing did not like, trust, or respect him. Alcetas had once before refused to help Eumenes, even when Perdiccas ordered him to do so. If Alcetas hated Eumenes then, as a Greek who was too clever and had too much influence over his brother, he hated him more now that Eumenes had won great glory on the battlefield. Similar jealousies gnawed at Attalus, Polemon, and Docimus, members of an aristocratic warrior caste who did not like being put in the shade by an upstart foreigner.
The issue of who would command the joint forces was held hostage to these rivalries. Alcetas sought the top post for himself, aiming especially at control of the native Macedonians in Eumenes’ infantry, sturdy Alexander veterans all. But Eumenes was unwilling to concede command. In his own mind he was no longer court Greek, servant to the Macedonian warrior elite, but a high-ranking general with proven talents. He could accept being second to someone of Perdiccas’ stature, but surely not to an Alcetas or an Attalus. These men had been his subordinates not long ago, or at least so Perdiccas, and Alexander himself, had wanted.
In the end there was no reconciling these divergent views of Eumenes’ rank, and the five-way parley broke up without agreement. The coalition that could have saved all the Perdiccans was never formed. All would face their enemies on their own terms, and Eumenes, for his part, would face them alone.
9. ANTIGONUS, CASSANDER, ANTIPATER, AND THE KINGS (ANATOLIA, WINTER, LATE 320 B.C.)
Meanwhile, farther north in Anatolia, dissension and defection were also afflicting Eumenes’ enemies, the new custodians of the joint kings. Despite their control of the exchequer, old man Antipater and Antigonus One-eye could not suppress the message that Eumenes’ banditry had sent: piracy pays. Antigonus found some of his troops heeding that message and taking to the hills, just as Eumenes had foreseen in his proposal to Alcetas and the others. A troop of three thousand infantry broke away from Antipater’s army that winter, with them an officer, Holcias, known to be a Perdiccan sympathizer. They had occupied high ground in Cappadocia, a safe place from which to plunder surrounding lands. Antigonus feared they would join Alcetas’ or Eumenes’ army, but he could not incur ill will among his loyal troops by massacring their comrades.
In two years of civil war Antigonus had grown adept at covert operations, and the current crisis called for one of these. He sent out a high officer named Leonidas to the rebels, telling him to gain their trust by pretending to join their ranks. Warmly welcomed by the rebel band and even elected general, Leonidas led the men down from the heights and into an open plain. There, by prearrangement, Antigonus’ cavalry was waiting. With level ground on which to mount charges, Antigonus easily captured the rebel leaders and forced them to swear an oath: to depart Asia with their followers and never return. It was a shame to lose so many soldiers but better than having them join up with the Perdiccan armies.
A worse problem for Antigonus was the quarrel brewing between himself and old man Antipater. This rift had been brought on by Antipater’s son Cassander. The boy had come to mistrust Antigonus, to whom he had been made second-in-command, and had gone to see his father in Phrygia to complain (what his grounds were is unclear). Antipater trusted his son’s qualms enough to summon Antigonus to Phrygia and to change the balance of power resolved at Triparadeisus. Then, Antigonus had been given charge of the kings and leadership of the scrappy veterans of Alexander’s army. Now Antipater