Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [48]
While overseeing Phrygia, Antigonus had raised his only surviving son, Demetrius. Now, in early adolescence, the boy was turning out to be almost as big as his father, and far more dissolute. Antigonus doted on this staggeringly handsome boy and teased him about his appetites for wine and women, both of which were soon to become legendary. On one occasion he had gone to visit Demetrius in his quarters, where the boy had shut himself in, claiming a fever. As he approached his son’s bedroom, he spied a beautiful courtesan slipping away from it. Antigonus went in, sat down beside the boy, and pretended to take his temperature. “The fever has left me now,” Demetrius lied, to which Antigonus winkingly replied, “I know, I met it just now on its way out.”
On another occasion described by Plutarch, Demetrius one day came into the palace staterooms, fresh from a hunt, without bothering to first store his javelin. Antigonus was meeting with some foreign envoys, and Demetrius blithely seated himself next to his father, weapon still in hand. Antigonus proudly pointed out to his visitors that he trusted Demetrius to bear arms in his presence. The episode prompts Plutarch to offer a pointed comment: one can measure the perils of power, the great moralist remarks, by the fact that Antigonus could make a boast of not fearing his own son.
Service in Phrygia had not been Antigonus’ choice, for any general with his talent and temperament would have preferred to go east with Alexander. He had been sidelined here, the first high-ranking officer of the invasion to be left behind in a rear-guard post. Perhaps Alexander thought Antigonus too old for the rigors of the campaign; if so, the years to come would prove him badly mistaken. Perhaps, as one source reports, he mistrusted Antigonus’ love of power, a judgment far closer to the mark. Satrapal appointments were a tactful way for Alexander to neutralize ambitious men before they could become threats. Alexander later shucked off Cleitus, another senior officer, by making him satrap of Bactria, just before starting on the Indian leg of his journey of conquest. Cleitus took this as a slight and began grumbling bitterly during his departure banquet, finally becoming so strident that Alexander killed him with his own hands.
Whatever the reason for his stranding in Phrygia, Antigonus had been a good steward of his province. His small Macedonian army had won several battles against determined Persian resistance. He had maintained peace and stability, so much so that his wife, Stratonice, had left her wealthy Macedonian home to join him in the Phrygian capital, Celaenae. This courageous lady became one of the first European colonial wives in Asia, the forerunner of many later memsahibs.
For ten years Antigonus held sway in Phrygia as Alexander receded ever farther toward the horizon. Few orders came to him from the East, and he had gotten used to running his province his own way, with his own troops. But now, that autonomy was being compromised. He had received commands from Babylon, from a new government installed without his consent. The task Perdiccas had set him—helping little Eumenes win his way into power—was a humiliating one, in effect a demand for total submission.
For a man like Antigonus, the choice of how to respond was an easy one. Saying nothing about his intentions or his reasons, he simply declined to show up for the invasion of Cappadocia. It was a passive rebellion but unmistakable in its significance. Antigonus, the first man outside Babylon called upon to support the new regime, had become the first to defy it. One of the last of his generation, the older men thrust aside, left behind, or killed by Alexander, he was not ready to give up his prerogatives and make way for the triumph of the young.
2. THE REVOLT IN BACTRIA (NORTHERN AFGHANISTAN, UZBEKISTAN, TAJIKISTAN, SUMMER 323 B.C.)
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