Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [140]
As for the Silver Shields, who had at Gabene shown all their qualities in high relief—arrogance, willfulness, and invincible combat prowess—Antigonus brought their illustrious history to a close. He felt that the empire, now practically his empire, would be safer without this ungovernable band of supermen. The platoon was broken up, and most of the men were dispatched to remote garrisons throughout Asia. The most unruly were sent to Arachosia, what is now eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan. The satrap there, Sibyrtius, was given secret orders by Antigonus to send these men out, in ones and twos, on missions from which they would never return. Like the man they betrayed, they were denied the battlefield deaths that would have suited their glorious careers. Their strength merely seeped away into the dry sands of the East.
3. OLYMPIAS AND CASSANDER (PYDNA AND PELLA, WINTER, EARLY 316 B.C.)
Though she was too far from Gabene to know yet what had taken place there, Olympias had suffered a huge setback with Eumenes’ defeat and death. During the days that Antigonus had wavered over the Greek’s fate, the fate of the royals too was hanging in the balance, for Eumenes was the last general in the field with the ability, and will, to defend them. Perhaps, had Antigonus leaned a hair further toward clemency and taken Eumenes on as consigliere, things might have turned out differently for the Argeads. Eumenes had a gift for argument and persuasion, as well as for deception and manipulation. He might have convinced Antigonus that the united empire could be sustained only under a thriving Argead house. He might have once again erected his magical tent and initiated Antigonus into the cult of Alexander, opening a path toward relief of the conqueror’s mother and son.
But as things were, relief was nowhere in sight. The royal family was beginning to starve. The grim logic of warfare by famine was making its inexorable progress through the city of Pydna. Olympias’ indomitable will meant that the entire population, combatants and civilians alike, was doomed to see the ordeal through to the end, and the end would be terrible indeed.
The town’s meager supplies were stretched to their utmost to permit the survival of the royals and their troops. Enlisted soldiers were allotted about a quart of grain each week, only a few mouthfuls a day. Irregular troops and civilians were given no grain at all. Some survived on butchered horses and pack animals, others on the flesh of those who had already perished. The fodder of the elephants proved the greatest challenge to Pydna’s defenders. Desperate not to lose a precious military resource, they sawed up wood and fed sawdust to the wretched beasts, then watched helplessly as they weakened and died.
At last there was no food at all for the soldiers, and with touching deference they asked Olympias for release from service in order to surrender to Cassander. The queen granted their request. There was not much for them to do anyway, except to hoist dead bodies over the walls when these became too numerous to bury.
What comfort could be offered now to the young Alexander as he stared out at the sea, watching for the masts of a rescue fleet? In theory, his power was such that he could command that sea to drain away, leaving a path of escape back to Asia, the place of his birth. But now his circle of empire had shrunk to a walled-up town filled with bloated, stinking corpses. He was surrounded by a thousand shapes of death, barely preserving his own life with a tiny