Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [121]
Just how Adea got her husband out of Polyperchon’s grasp is unclear. The regent had initially toted Philip with him as he made his way into Greece, fighting now here, now there to install his allies and evict Cassander’s. Perhaps Polyperchon was distracted by these fights and neglected to watch his royal ward. Or perhaps he was glad to let Philip go after the disturbing episode at Phocion’s hearing, when he had prevented violence only by forcefully restraining the maddened monarch. However it happened, Adea got her husband clear of Polyperchon’s power and returned him to Macedonia. Working as his agent, she laid plans to ally with the rebel Cassander, now hunkered down behind the walls of Piraeus. Perhaps the son of Antipater might be her route to supreme power, in place of the son she now feared she would never have.
2. POLYPERCHON (THE PELOPONNESE, SUMMER 318 B.C.)
Polyperchon began his campaign through Greece with many reasons to be confident. He carried with him the legitimacy bequeathed by Antipater and an army of more than twenty thousand Macedonians. He also brought with him, across the isthmus of Corinth and into the Peloponnese, his supreme weapon, a lumbering, trumpeting herd of Indian elephants, each ridden by its own mahout.
These stalwart beasts, acquired in India by Alexander, had over the past eight years walked the entire length of the empire. They had been brought westward by Craterus over the mountains of what is now Pakistan and through the deserts of Afghanistan and Iran. While Alexander lived, they stood in a circle around his tent, one of the concentric rings of his spectacular honor guard. In Babylon, Perdiccas had used them to trample the leaders of the infantry rebellion; in Egypt he sent them into the Nile, causing the erosion that destroyed his army and his reputation. After Perdiccas’ murder the herd was split between old man Antipater and Antigonus One-eye at Triparadeisus, and Antipater brought his half across the Hellespont. The survivors, sixty-five in number, now made the journey into southern Greece in the train of Polyperchon, the first of their species ever seen on European soil.
Alexander’s soldiers had been terrified of elephants when they first faced large numbers of them in combat, at the battle against Porus in India. But Alexander coolly devised special weapons and tactics to neutralize the beasts. His phalanx was taught to part ranks before the charging elephants, then hack at their trunks and bellies with long scythes while also using sarissas to kill or dislodge the mahouts who rode them. These harassments drove the elephants into a frenzy of pain and anger, making them more dangerous to their own side than to the enemy’s. Porus had been defeated with only small Macedonian losses, and the war elephant had never again so intimidated Alexander’s troops.
The only known depiction of elephant warfare from Alexander’s own time, on a medallion apparently struck by Alexander. The drawing by historian Frank Holt shows details of the coin’s image (Illustration credit 9.1)
One veteran of that battle, a Greek named Damis, had since retired from service and returned home, bringing with him many tales about the elephants of India. At the time of Polyperchon’s invasion he was living in the Peloponnese, in Megalopolis, the region’s last bastion of support for the rebellion of Cassander. A determined population there had armed fifteen thousand men, strengthened the city walls, and built catapults and torsion weapons with which to fight off a siege. The most potent weapon the city possessed, however, though