Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [68]
The day ended without a clear decision. The Greeks had prevailed with their cavalry before being bested in their infantry. Even then, their losses had been light, about five hundred killed, thanks to the orderly retreat of the phalanx. If reinforced by the Greek cities to their south, they still had good hope of prevailing in the end.
But somehow that hope was not enough to sustain them. The Athenian general Antiphilus and his Thessalian colleague, Menon, were not confident they could hold the army together until recruits could arrive. Plutarch says these commanders were young and, being epieikeis—a complex Greek word blending notions of fairness, rationality, and gentleness—could not retain the respect of their men. Whatever their qualities, they certainly did not measure up to their illustrious fallen predecessor, Leosthenes.
Antiphilus and Menon took counsel together, and on the day after the battle of Crannon, usually reckoned as August 6, they sent heralds to the Macedonian camp asking for terms of surrender. It was a quiet end to an otherwise climactic sequence of events. No bloodbath or rout had crushed the cause of Greek freedom, but simply a sense that with money and morale running low, there was no longer any point in fighting. The Hellenic War had come to an end.
9. ANTIPATER, PHOCION, AND DEMADES (THEBES, SUMMER 322 B.C.)
The Greek generals hoped to arrange common terms of surrender for their entire alliance, but Antipater was in no mood to bargain. He demanded separate arrangements for each Greek city, clearly intending to deal most harshly with the Athenians. While the Greeks debated this matter, Antipater drove his point home by storming several Thessalian towns, then granting easy terms when they surrendered. The message was clear: he had Athens in his sights and would be clement to others if they broke with Athens—which all the Greek allies now hastened to do. Athens stood alone as Antipater, to enforce his demand for unconditional surrender, led his army into neighboring Boeotia and prepared to attack.
Inside the Athenian walls, a panicked Assembly cast about for direction. The political order of the city, violently overturned the previous year by news of Alexander’s death, had to be inverted once again. Hyperides was now discredited, along with his fellow advocate of revolt, Demosthenes. It was instead to Phocion, and the even more pro-Macedonian Demades, that the Athenians turned, hoping to find favor with Antipater and escape complete destruction.
But Demades had been stripped of citizen rights amid the war fervor of the previous year. He now played this irony for all it was worth, refusing to reply even when public officials called him three times to the speaker’s platform. The Assembly hastily restored his citizenship and removed his fines, and he came forward at last. He relied on a time-tested strategy and proposed that a negotiating party, led by him and Phocion, be sent at once to Antipater. Phocion, for his part, could not let pass an opportunity to point out he had been right about the war. “If you had trusted my advice before,” he told the Assembly, “we would not now be debating such proposals.” But he agreed to take part in the diplomatic mission.
Demades and Phocion—the same team that had been sent to Alexander thirteen years earlier, when the lives of ten orators were on the line—met with Antipater at Thebes, amid the remains of the city Alexander had destroyed. The setting was a pointed reminder of what might befall Greeks who defied Macedonian rule. Antipater had Craterus with him, clearly now his partner in command as well as his future son-in-law.
The negotiations were an exercise in humility for Phocion and Demades. They had little to bargain with except the goodwill they had earned in more than thirteen years of entente with the Macedonians. For Craterus, who had spent those thirteen years on campaign in Asia, that counted