Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [87]
Though his men were exhausted, Perdiccas gave them only a short rest before again ordering an all-night march, south along the Nile’s bank. He was desperate now to find a way over, or he would face mass defections. His reconnaissance had revealed a spot opposite Memphis where the Nile was split by a midriver island. Both sides appeared to be fordable, and the island was large enough for his entire army to make camp. The opposite bank would not be guarded; no one would expect a crossing upstream from the delta, where the Nile’s waters were united in a swift, deep current. It was a daring stroke, much in the manner of Alexander, for Alexander had succeeded, time after time, by suddenly appearing where no one thought he could be.
For the second day in a row, Perdiccas sent his men into the Nile at first light. The first contingents reached the island in safety, though the current was strong and the water came up to their chins in midchannel. Perdiccas tried a new tactic to ease the passage: he sent elephants across upstream of the wading troops to break the force of the current, and had mounted horsemen cross downstream to catch any soldiers who lost their footing. This was a fatal error. The heavy tread of the animals dislodged silt from the riverbed, causing the channel to suddenly deepen. The bewildered soldiers, thinking that Ptolemy had opened a new sluiceway to flood them, could no longer keep contact with the bottom. The crossing was halted. Only half the men had reached the island—too few to defend themselves once Ptolemy arrived, as he no doubt soon would. Perdiccas had no choice but to call them back.
The men on the island cast away their weapons and armor, companions of more than a decade of campaigning, and dove into the swirling current. Stronger swimmers could make it across, but others were pulled downstream, tumbling and flailing as they were swept out of sight. Perdiccas’ situation had become nightmarish, but the worst horror was yet to come. The thrashing of drowning men attracted Nile crocodiles, which arrived in swarms and began to feed on both the living and the dead. More than two thousand men were lost, either to the rushing waters or to the snapping jaws of the beasts.
In camp that evening, the surviving infantrymen raised loud, hoarse lamentations for their comrades and shouted curses at Perdiccas. Perhaps a third of their number had been lost that day, comrades who had served beside them for thirteen years or more, without so much as an inch of progress. The Egyptian campaign had come to nothing; and Asia too had been lost, or so the troops feared, for word had not yet arrived of Eumenes’ stunning victory over Craterus and Neoptolemus. Had this victory been known, Perdiccas would instantly have seen his authority restored, but in this, as in much else, the gods seemed to be against him. The news arrived just one day too late.
Ptolemy could now be seen on the opposite bank, doing his best to increase Perdiccas’ disgrace. His troops were gathering the bodies of the drowned and cremating them with honorable rites. With unerring instincts for self-promotion, Ptolemy was sending a message that he held the soldiers’ lives sacred, unlike Perdiccas, who had so recklessly thrown them away. Perhaps he also meant to show he was clement to his enemies and would treat well any who deserted. Almost certainly, he was already spreading that message by way of agents in Perdiccas’ camp.
Perdiccas had proved a false Alexander. He had failed at the very maneuver at which Alexander had so brilliantly succeeded. He had hurled more lives into the river than Alexander had lost in all his great battles. Not even Perdiccas’ senior officers, paid off with gifts and favors to support the Egyptian invasion, could countenance its disastrous outcome. Three of these—Peithon, Antigenes, and Seleucus—backed by a hundred followers, went to the tent of Perdiccas that very night and stabbed him to death. First to strike was Antigenes, leader of