Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [52]
In Babylon, Perdiccas, head of the embattled new regime, was also seeking to become Antipater’s son-in-law. Perhaps he had gotten wind of the old man’s offer of Phila to Craterus and feared being isolated by this new marital bond. Antipater represented legitimacy, stability, and authority; Antipater’s blessing was vital to anyone who sought to take Alexander’s place. Thus, shortly after appointing himself regent for the joint kings, Perdiccas wrote to Antipater seeking the hand of his daughter Nicaea, and the old man wrote back agreeing to the match.
Now, as he awaited the arrival of his bride, Perdiccas contemplated the two rebellions on two extremes of Asia. To his west, Antigonus One-eye had rejected his orders, refusing to lend aid to Eumenes in Cappadocia. To his east, the Greek hoplites stationed in Bactria were on the move after abandoning Alexander’s garrisons. Perdiccas’ authority, reestablished at such high cost after the uprising of Meleager, was under grave challenge in both places. Leaving Antigonus alone for the present, Perdiccas moved to tackle the problem of the Bactrian Greeks. He sent for his onetime fellow Bodyguard and close ally, Peithon.
Peithon had been one of Perdiccas’ chief supporters during the tumultuous week after Alexander’s death. Too low in stature to vie for command, he had been content to second Perdiccas’ proposals for the complex structure of the new government. As a reward he had been appointed satrap of Media, a wealthy and important province. There, Peithon had begun to nourish larger ambitions: dominion over the empire’s cavalry-rich eastern sector, the upper satrapies of Bactria and Sogdiana, an ideal place to start an independent kingdom or build power for a takeover of all Asia. For the moment, however, he kept this longing hidden.
Responding to Perdiccas’ summons, Peithon arrived in Babylon. There he received an expeditionary force of three thousand infantry and eight hundred cavalry, chosen by lottery from Perdiccas’ own forces. Peithon was also given letters allowing him to levy more troops from the other satraps of the East and to serve as strat¯egos, or “commander in chief,” of the whole region. Such letters, sealed with the signet ring Perdiccas carried, were the standard instruments by which the empire was managed. On their directives, troops or funds were moved here and there across its vast expanse. A satrap who received them was obliged to obey or other letters would be sent to the local garrison ordering his arrest, or worse.
The letters given to Peithon were a necessary means of dealing with one rebellion, but Perdiccas worried that they would spawn another. Somehow, Perdiccas had begun to mistrust Peithon, the man he had just appointed to a prestigious command. He feared that the mission to the upper satrapies would place Peithon beyond the reach of central authority. Were Peithon to collaborate with the Greek rebels rather than subduing them, he could easily control the East. Perdiccas decided to take no chances. He gave instructions to Peithon’s army that the Greek rebels were not to be taken prisoner but killed, and he granted the right to plunder their possessions as a reward for compliance. None of over twenty thousand former comrades was to be left alive. It was a desperately cynical strategy—the preemptive destruction of an entire army to prevent its use by a rival. The upper satrapies would be largely stripped of colonists, but at least they would not threaten the empire as a whole. If Perdiccas had to cut off a limb to preserve the rest of the body, that was a price he was willing to pay.
And so he sent Peithon off to the East, while he waited for an envoy to arrive from the West with Antipater’s daughter Nicaea, his bride-to-be.
5. PTOLEMY (EGYPT, AUTUMN 323–SUMMER 322 B.C.)
Meanwhile, in the south of the empire, in Egypt, yet another of Alexander’s generals, Ptolemy, was also about to marry a daughter of Antipater—the old man’s youngest, Eurydice. Ptolemy had sought this woman’s hand as part of a pact with Antipater, whose support he