Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [89]
Ptolemy’s speech was a resounding success. The army seemed about to offer him Perdiccas’ old post, guardianship of the joint kings. But Ptolemy had already resolved not to accept. He instead put forward Peithon, leader of the mutiny against Perdiccas, for that job, along with Arrhidaeus, former custodian of Alexander’s corpse. The soldiers gave their acclaim to this pair, though only on a temporary basis. They were aware that their decisions were contingent on events in Asia: two far loftier authorities, Antipater and the beloved Craterus, were on the march there, and report had it that Craterus was preparing to fight Eumenes, Perdiccas’ Greek consigliere—a battle Craterus was sure to win.
But while Ptolemy was still conferring with the army of invasion, news came that Craterus had been killed in that battle, along with Neoptolemus. A wave of shock and outrage went through the troops. The idea that Eumenes, a humble Greek, had brought down the most revered of Alexander’s generals, while serving the now-discredited Perdiccas, was intolerable. The army demanded vengeance. A death sentence was passed in absentia on Eumenes and fifty other leaders of Perdiccas’ government, including Alcetas, Perdiccas’ brother. His sister Atalante was immediately seized and executed. There would be no mending of fences now, no effort to knit the empire back together. The war would go on until Eumenes, and anyone else who had aided Perdiccas, was destroyed.
Leaving the army to its new crusade, Ptolemy recrossed the river to his palace in Memphis, no doubt glad to return to a less volatile environment. The swings of emotion he had witnessed over the past three days had been bewildering and disturbing. First, Perdiccas’ troops had made two determined efforts to penetrate his Nile defenses. Then, with Perdiccas dead, they had embraced him as their hoped-for leader, nearly handing him regency over the kings, the keystone of imperial control. Finally, news of Craterus’ death had sent them into a murderous rage and turned them back toward Asia to attack their former commanders. It was all too reminiscent of the tumultuous week in Babylon following Alexander’s death, the last time Ptolemy had been united with these unruly veterans. Clearly, Perdiccas had failed to tame them during the intervening years.
There was no telling what would happen when this ungovernable beast returned to Asia, but that uncertainty was not Ptolemy’s problem. Undoubtedly, the fabric of the empire would be rent by the collisions and clashes there, but Egypt could remain detached. Ptolemy’s Nile defenses had held despite all Perdiccas had thrown at them, ensuring that no Macedonian army would soon attack again. And it had escaped no one’s notice that the army was leaving without the prize it had come for, Alexander’s body. Neither of the new commanders, Peithon and Arrhidaeus, had dared ask for its return (indeed Arrhidaeus had, not coincidentally, helped Ptolemy obtain it to begin with). Ptolemy’s declaration of independence had stuck. He had his own empire, his Egypt, and needed little from the rest of Alexander’s realm—except perhaps some trained Indian elephants, a precious resource he took the liberty of commandeering from the departing army.
Ptolemy rejoined his burgeoning household with its two trophy women, Thais, the beautiful Athenian courtesan who had already borne him three children, and now a new bride, Antipater’s youngest daughter, Eurydice. One brought him pleasure and the other power, but Ptolemy was still vulnerable to a third impulse, love. By this time he had taken notice of his bride’s young cousin and lady-in-waiting, a widow by the name of Berenice. Soon he made this woman his mistress, and ultimately his wife. She bore him his two heirs, Ptolemy II and Arsinoe, a brother and sister who, following an old Persian royal custom, married each other. Through his children by Berenice Ptolemy founded a dynasty that ruled Egypt for almost three centuries, until