Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [136]
Eumenes immediately sent messengers to all the camps in Gabene, urging his men to join him on the double. Then he took a contingent of troops up to some high ground, measured off stations about thirty feet apart, and at each station posted a crew of fire tenders. Their orders were to light fires each night, letting them blaze up for a few hours but slowly die down toward dawn, just as the watch fires of an army on campaign would do. Eumenes knew how Antigonus, with his fear of deserters and moles, would react, and he was right. Seeing the fires on the ridge, Antigonus assumed that his plans had been divulged and that the entire coalition army was waiting for him. Disheartened, he turned aside from his desert route and took his men into country where they could rest and provision themselves. He assumed they would have not an ambush but an open-field battle ahead.
The stratagem bought Eumenes just enough time to assemble his units. The last to arrive, the slow-moving elephant herd, only barely made it, and Eumenes had to send troops to rescue it from attack, for Antigonus had by then discovered he had been tricked and had brought his troops to Gabene.
For the second time in six months, two great armies, each more than thirty thousand strong, came together for battle on the dry, dusty plains of what is now Iran.
Eumenes put himself and his best cavalry units on the left wing this time, facing Antigonus and Demetrius. He would confront his nemesis face-to-face. He put Peucestas directly on his right, perhaps as a way to ensure he could keep an eye on his troublesome colleague during the battle. It seems Eumenes realized that his fractious coalition was not in good repair. Plutarch reports that rival generals were plotting against his life and that Eumenes himself knew this, but the story lacks confirmation in other sources. In any case, Eumenes had tangled with Peucestas often enough to know not to trust him.
In front of his strong left wing, Eumenes placed a screen of his best elephants. They would attack the elephants of Antigonus while also fending off frontal cavalry charges, for horses were wary of the sight and smell of elephants and would not approach them. At the center of his line, Eumenes stationed his infantry phalanx, spearheaded by the Silver Shields, his greatest asset and best hope of victory. He kept his right wing weak and ordered it to stay out of the battle as long as possible. He would try to score a knockout blow from his own wing, aiming his best units squarely at the enemy leader. It was what Alexander had done in his battles against the Persians, and his model had already become the gold standard of military heroism.
As the two armies drew within a few miles of each other on the barren plain, Antigenes, the Silver Shields’ commander, ordered a lone rider to gallop forward and deliver a message. When this man came within earshot of One-eye’s lines, he shouted: “Villains! It is your own fathers you are wronging, men who marched with Philip and Alexander and conquered the whole empire!” The boast and the reproach had come, unmistakably, from the Silver Shields. The message unsettled Antigonus’ men, who had no great wish to fight the most revered—and most deadly—soldiers of their age. But it raised a cry of approval from Eumenes’ side, as a report of its content passed from unit to unit. Hearing that cry, Eumenes led his cavalry forward, and Antigonus, on his side, did the same.
The soil on which the troops were