Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [88]
So ended the brief reign of Perdiccas, Alexander’s top-ranking Bodyguard and inheritor of his signet ring. He had begun his time in power by killing his own men under the feet of elephants and ended by killing them in the maws of crocodiles. The compromise government he had forged at Babylon, designed to preserve the balance and unity of the continents, had been smashed to ruins; the empire was utterly divided and leaderless and spattered with the blood of the generals who had founded it. These men had made all of western Asia their battleground. Soon the violence would spread to Europe as well, engulfing Athens, the Greek world generally, and the Macedonian homeland itself.
The reign of the joint kings went on into its third year.
7
The Fortunes of Eumenes
Egypt, Western Asia, and Macedonia
SUMMER 321–SPRING 319 B.C.
The empire no longer had a center. Alexander had moved the royal seat from Pella to Babylon, but now Babylon had been emptied of the elements that defined royalty: the royal army, the crowned heads themselves, and Alexander’s mummified body. The latter two were now in Egypt but separated by the enormous gulf of the Nile. As for Alexander’s army, it had become fragmented as never before. One part was following Eumenes in Anatolia, another was in Egypt, while a third had become mixed with fresh troops from Europe and was now with Antipater in Cilicia. No part was large enough to constitute the assembly that traditionally acclaimed new leaders; and who could propose a new leader for acclamation, a replacement for the fallen Perdiccas, even if a quorum could be gathered somewhere?
Like Babylon, the royal city of Pella in Macedonia had been stripped of its centering figures. No Argeads dwelled there. Olympias had long ago fled to Epirus, and Cleopatra, Cynnane, and Adea had departed into Asia. Old man Antipater too, for years the only general who stayed in a fixed location, had joined the others and gone on the move. His surrogate, Polyperchon, held nominal command in Pella, but he was a second-rank officer with little of Antipater’s gravitas, as the years to come would demonstrate all too clearly.
The only real capital the empire now had was the place the joint kings were stationed, wherever that might be. For the moment, that meant the encampment of an exhausted, bloodstained, and leaderless band of men, a desolate spot opposite Memphis on the east bank of the Nile.
1. PTOLEMY, PEITHON, AND ARRHIDAEUS (EGYPT, SUMMER 321 B.C.)
On the morning after the murder of Perdiccas, Ptolemy crossed the Nile to the army that had twice failed to vanquish him. He had almost certainly been in contact with Peithon, his former fellow Bodyguard, to make sure of a friendly reception. Whether such contacts preceded, or even arranged, Perdiccas’ murder is not known, but the two men had much to gain by colluding in this deed: Ptolemy wanted to be rid of the army of invasion, while Peithon, the same man who had tried to bring the rebellious Greeks over to his side, wanted more power. The murder of Perdiccas was a good first step toward both goals.
Ptolemy brought with him food for the depleted troops and the cremated bones of the men recovered from the river. These remains were distributed to friends and kinsmen of each soldier, a humane gesture designed to win over the rank and file. Ptolemy knew he had support in Perdiccas’ army, for these troops had already refused to condemn him at the trial Perdiccas had held some days before. But they had also agreed to attack him, and many no doubt still resented his theft of their monarch’s corpse. Ptolemy delivered a carefully balanced speech before the assembled army, defending his separatist actions of the past two years and assuring Perdiccas’ loyalists that they would not be subject to a purge. Perhaps he demonstrated good faith by arranging honorable rites for Perdiccas’ body, though there is no record