Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [107]
The outcome of the trial was never in doubt, but Demades might have been surprised when he saw his executioner. According to Plutarch, Cassander carried out the sentence himself, and added a cruel touch perhaps of his own devising, forcing Demades to first watch the murder of his son. The spatters of the boy’s blood, in Plutarch’s lurid account, stained the folds of the father’s white cloak. Then Cassander heaped insults on Demades for betraying Antipater’s cause, and killed him.
What Antipater thought of all this is hard to say. Plutarch represents him as too ill to take part in the proceedings, perhaps even unaware of them. The larger question facing Antipater, as he neared death, was what he thought of his son generally—whether he deemed Cassander fit to take over stewardship of the kings and control of the empire.
Up to this point, Antipater had entrusted his son only with support jobs, never a command of his own. He had not given Cassander control of Europe when he himself crossed into Asia, but instead appointed Polyperchon, an undistinguished officer in his sixties, to mind the home front. Then, at Triparadeisus, he had made Cassander chiliarch, or right-hand man, to Antigonus One-eye, rather than a satrap in his own right—again entrusting power to an older man and making his son an apprentice. Perhaps he did not think Cassander was ready for leadership, or perhaps he thought that more senior men should have their turn first. He had watched as Alexander, king at age twenty, had begun chasing unheard-of visions of godhead and universal empire. That bizarre spectacle made him wary of the excesses of youth.
Whatever his reasons, Antipater, from his sickbed, made known a fateful decision: custody of the kings would pass not to his son but to Polyperchon. Cassander was to be chiliarch, once again second-in-command, to the new ruler.
Cassander was aghast. In his thinking he had been disinherited: custody of the kings was equivalent to royalty itself and so, like kingship, ought to pass from father to son. As Antipater’s life ebbed away, Cassander resolved not to accept the subordinate role to which his father had once again consigned him. He would strike out on his own and claim the patrimony he had worked for so hard and waited for so long.
Even before his father died, Cassander began laying his plans. He dispatched a trusted aide, a certain Nicanor—probably not Aristotle’s adopted son, though long assumed to be—to Athens, with instructions to quietly replace Menyllus as garrison commander. Many Athenians, he knew, were unreconciled to the new oligarchy; news of Antipater’s death might prompt them to overthrow it. An Athenian revolt would deprive him of a valuable asset, for the fortified harbor of Piraeus was the most important naval base in the region. Cassander would not let it fall into the hands either of Athens’ democratic hooligans or of his future adversary, Polyperchon.
At last the day of his father’s death, and Polyperchon’s accession, arrived. Cassander masked his true feelings as he joined in the rites of burial and transfer of power. But shortly thereafter, making a pretense of going on a hunting trip, Cassander went to the countryside to enlist support for revolt. He sent an envoy to Ptolemy, still lingering in newly won Syria and Palestine, to arrange an alliance. And he secured access to the Hellespont so that, when the time was right, he could make his way into Asia and seek out Antigonus One-eye, now master there. A new partnership could be formed by those who stood to gain by Polyperchon’s fall. Cassander could play the grand game of two continents against one, this time uniting Asia and Africa for an assault on Europe.
Civil war, already raging in Alexander’s overseas conquests, was about to find its way to the Macedonian