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homeland. The pattern of mitosis that had beset the empire since Alexander’s death seemed to be recurring without end. First the royal army had split into two factions and designated two kings to take Alexander’s place; then the designs of Perdiccas had become split between two wives; finally all of Asia had been split by the falling-out of Perdiccas and Antipater, and by the war those two had handed down to their surrogates, Eumenes and Antigonus. Now Macedonia was splitting as well, between Cassander and Polyperchon, and with that split would come a division of the Greek world over which Macedon held sway. At the center of that world, about to become its principal battleground, stood Athens, the violet-crowned city, with the aging Phocion at its helm.

3. ANTIGONUS ONE-EYE (PISIDIA, IN SOUTHERN ANATOLIA, SUMMER 319 B.C.)

News of Antipater’s death reached Antigonus One-eye in Pisidia, where he had just won a resounding victory over the Perdiccan coalition. It was an opportune moment for such news to arrive. One-eye’s reputation had never been brighter or his army more powerful, augmented now by forces that had belonged to Perdiccas’ brother Alcetas and other leaders of the fallen regime.

Antigonus had reached Pisidia by round-the-clock marches after leaving Nora, where Eumenes was safely penned in his craggy fortress. He had kept up the bone-cracking pace of forty miles a day over a grueling week of travel. The leading Perdiccans, Alcetas and his allies, held a strong position in the center of a pass, and Antigonus’ best hope was to arrive before they could expect him. At this he succeeded brilliantly. The first warning his foes had of his approach was the trumpeting of elephants from atop a nearby hill—a sound that sent them into panic, for they knew that only Antigonus, the general appointed to destroy them, possessed a stable of war elephants.

Alcetas gamely mounted a counterattack, charging uphill with his cavalry to dislodge the forces on the high ground. He might have succeeded, except Antigonus made a lightning advance and launched a charge of his own at the infantry in the pass. Alcetas, about to be cut off from his phalanx, abandoned the hilltop and dashed back to the pass, only just getting there in time. The elephants and cavalry of Antigonus now descended from the hill and fell on Alcetas’ infantry, still struggling to get into formation. It was the first time elephants had been used by one European general against another, and the results were devastating: most of the Perdiccan forces surrendered without a fight. Antigonus made prisoners of three leaders—Attalus, Docimus, and Polemon—and sent them under guard to a fort he controlled. Their troops he attached to his own army, building an aggregate of sixty thousand infantry and ten thousand cavalry, the largest force yet commanded by any European.

Alcetas made it out unharmed and put a predesigned escape plan into effect. A nearby city, Termessus, occupied an impregnable position. Its inhabitants were deeply attached to Alcetas, thanks to his gifts over the years and the invitations he had extended to share his banquet table. They happily took Alcetas in and vowed to protect him. But when Antigonus arrived in the valley below, threatening to feed his massive army there while waiting for Alcetas’ surrender, a generational dispute broke out among the Termessians. The older men dreaded the loss of their harvest, while their sons, filled with youthful defiance, vowed to defend Alcetas at any cost.

When the older men saw they could not prevail, they made a secret plan with Antigonus, directing him to feign retreat so as to draw the youths away. Antigonus did as instructed; the young men, as anticipated, set off after him. The elders quickly descended on Alcetas. Alcetas saw he had been betrayed and took his own life. The old men carried his body out of the city, hiding it under a cloth lest their returning sons catch sight of it, and brought it to Antigonus.

One-eye was not normally a cruel man, but he could be cruel on occasion. He subjected Alcetas’ corpse