Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [101]
Antipater collected the royal family and his son Cassander and made for the Hellespont. Asia had brought him little but travail and humiliation since he first arrived there, and he was destined to suffer one last indignity on its shores. As his column made its way through Anatolia, Adea, King Philip’s grasping young wife, began reminding the soldiers of their long-deferred bonus pay. The royal army mutinied once again. Antipater could appease them only by feigning that money was waiting just ahead at Abydus, on the shores of the Hellespont. Having lured them to that crossing point, Antipater slipped across the straits in the dead of night with the kings and a few top officers. The stranded army had little choice but to follow the next day and return to Europe, where Antipater was better able to control them and their teenage queen.
The joint kings had left Asia for good, together with much of the grande armée that had fought under Alexander. What their countrymen made of these unruly veterans on their return, or of the strange Bactrian woman and half-breed toddler, Alexander’s next of kin, whom they now beheld for the first time, or of the bizarre living war machines called elephants that lumbered in their train, has not been recorded by any ancient writer. Indeed ancient historians seem not to have marked the significance of this crossing, with the exception of Arrian, who chose it as the end point of his Events After Alexander.
It was indeed a terminus, the end of a daring experiment in cross-continental monarchy. Alexander the Great had started that experiment, and Perdiccas had tried, however incompetently, to maintain it. By a unilateral decision, Antipater ended it and repatriated the Argead house, severing it from Bactria and Babylon and restoring it to the foothills of the Balkans. Asia might remain part of the Macedonian empire, but it would never again be the center, as Alexander had dreamed and planned.
What was left of that dream was written on the complexion and features of Alexander’s son, who, if he could survive another ten years or so, would become the first Asian-born monarch to rule on European soil. But given the whirlwind of events in his first four years, that was likely to be a long and dangerous decade indeed.
10. ANTIGONUS AND EUMENES (ANATOLIA, SPRING 319 B.C.)
With Antipater off the scene and winter ending, Antigonus One-eye and Eumenes prepared to decide the contest for Asia. It was a duel between two intelligent and honorable men, former friends from their days at Philip’s court, but driven by political accident onto opposing sides. Both claimed to fight under the Argead banner, and both headed largely Macedonian armies; they had never harmed each other, and there was no ideological gulf between them. Yet Eumenes had been declared an enemy of the state, and Antigonus, commander in chief of Asia, had been assigned the task of destroying him.
Eumenes, however, was not going to be easy to destroy. His Cappadocian cavalry outnumbered Antigonus’ horsemen and outclassed them in skill and experience. Antigonus was not about to make the same mistake as Craterus and face a charge by that cavalry, at least not without softening them up first. Fortunately, he had plenty of money to accomplish that softening. His bribes turned the loyalties of one of Eumenes’ cavalry officers, a man named Apollonides. Through covert messages, Apollonides promised Antigonus he would desert Eumenes and draw away an entire unit of horse.
Unaware of this looming betrayal, Eumenes confidently sought battle with Antigonus