Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [102]
Antigonus used this interlude to play a demoralizing trick on his former friend. While Eumenes’ heralds were in his camp, One-eye instructed a soldier to run up to him breathlessly and call out, “Our allies have arrived!” The heralds who witnessed this scene duly reported to Eumenes that Antigonus had been reinforced. The next day Antigonus marched his phalanx forward in double-wide formation, as though he had indeed received fresh recruits. This sight eroded the confidence of Eumenes’ infantry, who, not perceiving from their vantage that the formation was also half-deep, thought they had lost superiority of numbers.
Two devious ploys, neutralizing both his cavalry and his infantry strength, proved too much for Eumenes. The battle of Orcynia—from which no detailed account has survived—turned quickly into a rout. Antigonus butchered some eight thousand of Eumenes’ forces and also captured his baggage train, the booty and belongings of his army. Since booty had made Eumenes a hero to his troops, this was a huge psychological blow.
But Eumenes was not done for yet. He escaped the battle with a portion of his army that had neither deserted nor surrendered, including much of his swift-moving cavalry. After somehow catching and killing the traitor Apollonides, Eumenes doubled back to Orcynia, eluding Antigonus, who was still tracking him in the direction he had fled. He was determined to give his slain soldiers burial, a privilege normally obtained by formal concession of defeat. Since Orcynia was barren of trees, Eumenes ordered wood collected from the doors of nearby houses and had two vast pyres built, one for officers, the other for enlisted men; then he raised a mound of earth over their ashes. When Antigonus finally arrived, the grave was complete and Eumenes was gone. Though he had lost the battle, Eumenes had recovered his dignity, denying Antigonus the right of the victor to set terms for return of the dead.
Eumenes hoped to make a dash for Armenia and there recruit a fresh army. But Antigonus was closing in on him quickly. Eumenes had no choice but to make use of a preplanned, last-ditch escape. On the border of Cappadocia lay a fortress called Nora, a set of buildings atop an impregnable crag only four hundred yards around. Stocked with enough food, salt, and firewood to last a small force for years, it could hold out against any attacker. Eumenes released from his service all but six hundred followers and with these shut himself inside the fort, a tiny island of security in a sea of enemies. Here he could wait for the political winds to shift, or for his would-be allies, Alcetas and the others, to come to his rescue. The prospect of long isolation in a mountaintop prison was dismal, but better than defeat.
Antigonus One-eye arrived at Nora to find Eumenes safely barred within. He prepared to surround the fort with double walls, ditches, and guard posts, positions he might need to maintain for years. Before committing to that expensive alternative, however, he decided to try negotiation. He sent his own nephew into the fort as a hostage guaranteeing Eumenes’ safety and persuaded Eumenes to come out and talk.
The two men had not seen each other in fifteen years, not since the early days of Alexander’s campaign. But they found it easy to put their conflict aside and recover old bonds of friendship. They embraced each other and spoke kind words of greeting, while Antigonus’ troops, recruits of a younger generation, strove to get a glimpse of a famous man—the victor over Craterus, the bookkeeper who had become a general, the general who had become an outlaw. They pressed in so close that Antigonus feared for Eumenes’ safety and threw his arms around his old friend to protect him from the overeager—and perhaps hostile—crowd.
The parley