Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [124]
Eumenes’ plans in the West had been dashed. He could no longer offer assistance to Polyperchon and the kings, nor they to him. He had no choice but to turn to the East, to Bactria and Sogdiana, where he might raise enough troops and horses to confront the massive army of Antigonus. If he could somehow prevail in that fight, he could return to the West and help his European allies. It was a slender hope, but it was all he had left. In any case, he could not stay where he was, for Antigonus would soon be upon him in Phoenicia. He mustered the Silver Shields, folded up the Alexander tent, and headed for the region that had for centuries been the refuge of the desperate, the upper satrapies.
4. POLYPERCHON, CASSANDER, AND THE ROYAL FAMILY (GREECE, EPIRUS, AND MACEDONIA, SUMMER 318 B.C.)
Eumenes could not yet have known the story behind this triumphant arrival of Antigonus’ ships. Polyperchon had been dealt a crushing setback at the Hellespont, in another episode, like the one at Megalopolis, where near victory turned suddenly to defeat.
Cleitus the White, Polyperchon’s admiral, had easily prevailed in an initial engagement at the Hellespont, routing ships captained by Cassander’s officer Nicanor. Confident that Nicanor was beaten, Cleitus pulled up his ships onto the beach, on the European side, and disembarked his crews for the night. But he did not reckon with Antigonus One-eye, whose army seemed safely removed across the straits.
Ever alert to the complacency of his foes, Antigonus hired vessels from nearby Byzantium and conveyed his best archers, slingers, and javelin men across the straits in the dark. Before dawn this force arrived at Cleitus’ camp. The royalists were still asleep, under light guard; they awoke in a hail of projectiles. Cleitus’ panicked crews threw gear and booty aboard their ships and launched in disorder. That made them easy prey for Nicanor, who, forewarned of the plan, hurried back to the scene with his surviving vessels. Antigonus sent his fleet as well to take part in the slaughter, his first direct clash with the government of the kings. Unsure whether his men would attack the royalists, he placed a trusted confederate aboard each ship to observe crew members and threaten them with death if they did not row well.
The rout of Cleitus’ navy was total. Only one ship escaped, that of Cleitus himself, but it was later seized in Thrace, where Cleitus was put to death. Polyperchon had lost his navy, only a few weeks after losing his elephant herd, and his support in the European theater of war began to crumble. Military failures could be pardoned in a king, who had the sanctity of Argead lineage to protect him. But for a mere general they were fatal, as Perdiccas had proved. Greek and Macedonian leaders alike left Polyperchon’s side and went over to Cassander. The democracies installed by the freedom decree began to topple as exiled oligarchs returned.
The democracy at Athens was, as it had often been, a lone holdout. Hagnonides and his followers were loath to give up the counterrevolution that had cost so much effort and that had killed Phocion in its exuberant strength. But the army of Polyperchon’s son Alexander, the crucial military prop of the democratic regime, had left. Cassander was no longer penned up in Piraeus; he sallied forth into Attica and took control of Athens’ already meager food supply. In the Athenian Assembly, a single brave pragmatist—his name has gone unrecorded—proposed that the city come to terms with Cassander and return to oligarchic government. Shouted down at first by democratic ideologues, he soon found his proposal gaining support and,