In search of the Lost testament of Alexander the great

‘Tyche and Philip were master of the deeds. Things turned out not as we prayed, but as Philip did.’²

‘It is a general rule of human nature that people despise those who treat them well, and look up to those who make no concessions.’³

‘… it is no longer proper to count these exceptional men a part of the state; for they will be treated unjustly if deemed worthy of equal status, being so widely unequal in virtue and in their political ability: since such a man will naturally be as a god among men… but there can be no law dealing with such men as those described, for they are themselves a law…’⁴

‘An old saying has been handed down that it is not men of average ability, but those of outstanding superiority who destroy democracies.’ Diodorus was quoting an adage that had its roots in the advice shared by the late-7^th century tyrants of Miletus and Corinth: ‘Slay the tallest stalks to protect the crop’, a lesson more colourfully articulated by Livy in a warning from the legendary Tarquin the Proud, the last king of Rome: crop the tallest poppies to stave off revolt.⁵ And as Aristotle was carefully reminding Athens in his chapter headed Politics, the tallest of them all were Philip and Alexander: the ‘lions among the hares’.⁶

Aristotle’s Athenaion Politeia, one of many political treatises attributed to him, appears to have been constructed when Alexander was campaigning deep in Asia (if not before). His enthusiasm for Solon’s reforms of 594/3 BCE and those that followed – which laid the foundations of the republic if not actually sowing the seeds of democracy – seems to have waned, however, by the time Aristotle’s Politics appeared.⁷ For by then, the civil and political community in Athens, the koinonia politike, operating through the Assembly, the Council and the Areopagus (though still incorporating much of the Solonian Constitution) was under the thumb of Aristotle’s client and patron: the Macedonian monarchy. Philip II, ‘as if looking from a watchtower’, had attacked liberties across Greece, and now his former general, Alexander’s regent Antipater, was strangling any notions of true political freedom; the fire of democracy had all but been snuffed out in the Athenian prytaneion.8

Aristotle’s argument – that an exceptional individual is naturally above state law – may have been written to justify the very existence of the remarkable father and then his campaigning son on his ‘undemocratic’ Eastern campaign. For by now, the Graeco-Persian world revolved around the ‘star of Macedonia’, as Curtius referred to him, as history generally attributes the maelstrom that swept from Pella through the Persian heartlands to Alexander alone.⁹ Yet that would be a hugely flawed conclusion. Allocate a part of the storm to his father who galvanised Macedonia into a cohesive spear-won military state with an army able to campaign in both summer and winter (until then a uniquely Spartan ability due the enslaving of the Messenians, the ‘helots’), and credit a further share to his gifted companions, and you have a more accurate picture of the energies at work in that turbulent generation.¹⁰ Moreover, we have evidence that by 323 BCE the sun was beginning to set on the Pellan imposter who slept in the Great King’s bed, for contrary to the utopian vision Onesicritus may have espoused in his Alexandrou Paideia, Alexander’s empire may have been something approaching a dystopia at the time of his death.

The Macedonian conquest of the East is better remembered than the extraordinary period that followed because it was the more easily understood, like the stark-chiselled emotions and clean-sculpted motives that underpinned war in the Iliad. Alexander’s anabasis had shape, direction and cause, operating under the banner of ‘revenge for the earlier Persian invasions of Hellas’, just as Philip’s brief foray into Asia had been punishment for the ‘profanation of temples’.¹¹ To this grievance Alexander had added accusations of the Persian gold backing assassination of his father. The Successor Wars lacked these public-relations-friendly soundbites and yet they were perpetuated by a group of mighty personas almost unparalleled in history: the new Myrmidons of a reborn Achilles.¹²

In a sense, the first generation of Diadokhoi were the true offspring of Alexander, or as Justin termed them, ‘the many Alexanders of Macedonia’, a uniquely privileged generation of ‘prefects who became princes’.¹³ They had learned their trade alongside their king, some as syntrophoi at the Pellan court, and as a cohesive unit they proved unstoppable in the decade that saw the Macedonian military machine advance as far as India. Its leadership became a true meritocracy: the unfortunate had fallen in battle, the non-performers had been sidelined, the indiscreet and loose-tongued were executed, and the frailer constitutions died on the march. Those who survived both the campaign and Alexander, were tough, brutal, ambitious, and most importantly, they proved to be cunning politicians.

The story of the rise of Alexander and the Diadokhoi began with Philip II, possibly the twenty-fourth king of the Argead line (the historicity of the early founding kings is uncertain) who, according to Demosthenes’ orations from the auditorium of the Pnyx, united ‘… the functions of a general, a ruler and a treasurer…’ He saw Philip as the absolute autocrat: commander and master of everyone and everything.¹⁸ If Plutarch considered Cicero as the first ‘professional’ politician to commit himself seriously to such a job, it was simply because he did not biograph Philip whom Cicero himself rated above his ambitious son:¹⁹ ‘Philip, king of Macedonia, I observe, however surpassed by his son in achievements and fame, was superior to him in affability and refinement. Philip, accordingly, was always great; Alexander, often infamously bad.’²⁰

In 359 BCE Philip, at the young age of twenty-three, was ‘forced by the people to take on the kingship’, as his nephew Amyntas IV, the son of his older brother Perdiccas III, was just a child; Philip, who had already administered a region of Macedonia in Perdiccas’ reign, may have initially acted as Amyntas’ regent, but he soon declared himself king in his own right.²¹ At this point he was threatened on all fronts and by five ‘would-be usurpers’ that included three half-brothers.²² Paeonians were pillaging in the north, and Illyrian forces, which had recently killed Perdiccas III along with 4,000 of his men, occupied Upper Macedonia with a history of installing puppet kings at Pella. Both Philip’s father and his brother had been expelled by the Illyrians (Philip was once their hostage at around the age of twelve) and the still independent upper cantons could form an alliance against him at any time, spurred on by foreign interference or funded by the Persian purse.

The Greek city-states dominated the coastal cities of Macedonia and Thrace, and Athens desperately wanted to regain control of the Macedonian-garrisoned Amphipolis (they would try to by installing the elderly compliant Argaeus on the throne – his second attempt). The strongly walled Amphipolis, founded as Ennea-Hodoi (‘Nine Ways’) by Athens in 465 BCE, bridged the Strymon River, control of which provided access to valuable timber resources and pitch extraction. The city had been deemed impregnable, that is until Philip began his siege in 357 BCE in the guise of reclaiming a once Heraclean – thus an Argead – possession, as the legendary family line traced itself back to the hero.²⁴ Philip proclaimed it ‘independent’ but in his own style: the pro-Athenian leaders were banished and it became a key Macedonian stronghold thereafter.

It was this challenging environment, in which the previous three Macedonian kings had died in just ten years, which forced Philip to resort to consorting for survival. He immediately commenced what would become a ‘longstanding practice of fighting war through marriage’, as Satyrus put it.²⁵ Six of Philip’s seven wives we know of, ‘a harem for political purposes’, were all of noble families or from royalty dynasties surrounding the Macedonian state: Audata of the Dardanian Illyrian line of Bardylis (we assume she was his daughter or niece), Meda of the Getae line of King Cothelas in Thrace, Philinna and Nicesipolis of noble Thessalian lines (possibly of the Aleuadae and of Jason of Pherae), Phila of the Elimeote royal family, Alexander’s mother Olympias of the Molossian royal family of Epirus, and a possible wife from the line of King Ataias of the Danube-region Scythians.²⁶ Philip’s final marriage to Cleopatra, the niece of the Macedonian baron Attalus, would have been similarly calculated to provide political stability at home before he set off to campaign in Asia, though a true ‘love match’ was mentioned by Plutarch and Athenaeus.²⁷

Although branded a slayer of Greek democracy after his victory at Chaeronea in 338 BCE, Philip had, nevertheless, become the archon of Thessaly for life, protector of shrines for the Hellenic and Amphictionic Leagues, and he was voted promanteia (broadly ‘privilege of priority at ceremonies’) in 346 BCE by the Delphians who erected a statue in the sanctuary of Apollo where he also presided over the Pythian Games; Philip was truly the consummate politician.³⁰ The Macedonian king’s manipulative arsenal of weapons had included, to quote Fredericksmeyer, ‘… diplomacy, bribery, intimidation, deceit, subversion, sabotage, assassination, marriage, betrayal, war – and on occasion, he even scrupulously kept his promise.’³¹

Philip’s success was well epitomised in Isocrates’ call to him, rather than Spartan leadership, to head the Panhellenic invasion of Persia in his Address to Philip. His evidently clear intention to accept Isocrates’ challenge spurred Artaxerxes III Ochus to arms and his invasion of Phoenicia and Egypt followed (345-343 BCE) providing immediate employment for many Greek mercenaries. Philip agreed to a non-aggression pact with the Persian Great King, apparently to buy himself time. But by the early 340s Philip had already more than trebled the size of his realm, ruling over the ‘old’ and ‘new’ kingdoms he would successfully integrate; the self-governing cantons of Orestis, Lyncestis, Tymphaea and Elimea came into the Pellan fold, and a fair degree of autonomy was at first permitted.³² Although ‘the possessions of the Macedonian kings were always more extensive than the lands inhabited by Macedonian citizens’,³³ Philip now controlled everything to the immediate north of Hellas in a domain described as ‘the first large land-empire in the history of Europe’.³⁴ It was a state of affairs that saw Athens align with Artaxerxes: gold crossed the Aegean and the city-states armed themselves; the battle at Chaeronea was one of the inevitable bloody results.

In 336 BCE Philip arranged the marriage of Alexander’s sister, Cleopatra, to King Alexander Molossus of Epirus, the brother of Olympias who had been elevated and ‘housed’ by Philip at Pella for eight years. It was another political bond following Molossus’ informal ‘hostageship’, though this time it had been arranged to outmanoeuvre Olympias herself, for she appears to have repudiated him in some way after his recent marriage to the niece of Attalus.³⁵

What Alexander inherited from his father was a formidable war machine and a network of alliances, even if continued border threats and treasury limitations restricted the size of any army that could be immediately transported to Asia. Philip had to rewrite the rules of engagement to avoid the fate of his predecessors and complete the military reforms that were probably initiated by his elder brothers.³⁷ At the head of his command chain was Antipater, veteran general and the leading statesman in Macedonia in the king’s absence; he would become Alexander ‘general over Europe’.³⁸ Left in Macedonia with a modest force of 1,500 cavalry and 12,000 infantry, probably from the more predictable Lower Macedonian cantons (Pieria and Bottiaea), he was variously referred to as the ‘regent’ (though neither Greek nor Latin have direct equivalents for that role) and strategos, thus a military administrator who was the caretaker, epimeletes, of the kingdom.³⁹

Elsewhere Antipater is cited as holding a hegemonia, a regional or league command, whilst Plutarch suggested he, and the young Alexander before him, shared authority as a kurios, or one of the guardians of power, when Philip was on campaign.⁴⁰ In fact it seems more likely that Antipater shared power with Olympias while Alexander was in Asia – Antipater in a military capacity and she administratively as figurehead of the Argead royal house – before an irrevocable rift between them saw her take up residence in Epirus once more.⁴¹ The title of Alexander’s widowed mother is never specifically stated, though her basileia, regal authority, required little explanation; even Athens had shuddered to open captured correspondence between her and her king.⁴²

Operating under Antipater were lesser governors and officers or hyparchoi, though this title later became a utility word denoting a variety of positions.⁴³ The terms relating to the relative authoritas attached to the Macedonian court nobles were employed less than clinically by the secondary sources, because Polybius, Diodorus, Livy, Curtius, and Arrian after them, were employing the phraseology associated with the ‘class orders’ at the Hellenistic courts and command structure of the Roman armies of their day.⁴⁴ The frequent use of the almost interchangeable titles of strategos, prostates (protector), epimeletes and epitropos (guardian or steward) that are peppered through the accounts of the Macedonian campaigns, still pose a challenge to definitive judgments on hierarchy.⁴⁵

The ‘Macedonian revolution’ was perhaps the most comprehensive modernisation and development of Hellenic warfare since Mycenaean times. The archaic soldiers of Homeric days, who wore boar-teeth-and-tusk helmets and loose bronze panoply as exhibited in the Dendra find, were protected by the body-sized ox-hide figure-of-eight shields, or the later dipylon that adorned the pottery from the period – that is, when warriors were not depicted in ‘heroic nudity’.⁴⁷ Shaft-grave finds at Mycenae dating to the so-called ‘Palace period’ (roughly 1450-1350 BCE) reveal elaborate Minoan-influenced weaponry with flint and obsidian blades from Egypt and Cycladian Melos; this represented an attempt to improve on softer bronze when iron was still rare and its production a Hittite monopoly.⁴⁸

Defensive armour plating was found in a single warrior chamber tomb in May 1960 at Dendra close to Mycenae. It dates to the Mycenaean Palace period (1450-1350 BCE). The elaborate cuirass consisted of front and rear plate with neck guard, shoulder and arm guards. The plates are strung together with the widest at the bottom to facilitate leg movement. It has been compared to armour made for Louis XIV over 3,000 years late. A boar-tooth-and-tusk helmet is partially intact.⁴⁹

At Mycenae we see the first signs of the armour of the Late Helladic period (1550-1050 BCE) including the heavy ‘bell’ corselet or the cuirasses of bronze plates joined at the sides, out of which would eventually emerge the classical hoplites.

The advances in Greek metalworking that enabled the more widespread production of hammered bronze helmets, which were increasingly lightened towards the pilos type, also led to the ‘mass production’ of bronze for facing the protective hopla. As a result, on the battlefield individual duels were superseded by the phalanx in which warriors advanced as an almost impenetrable wall of shields and spears. Hoplite warfare followed an extraordinary rigid framework that lasted for more than 300 years during which cavalry were never used as a shock weapon but were largely marginalised to guarding flanks and for harassing manoeuvres.

A Greek hoplite fighting a Persian on an Attic terracotta amphora dating to ca. 480-470 BCE. The porpax and antilabe of the Argive shield are clearly visible. Spears were thrust both underhand and overhand at shoulder height when in phalanx formation. The hoplite wears a thorax rather than a muscle cuirass, bronze greaves and horsehair-crested helmet with brim suggesting some Thracian or Phrygian influence. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund 1906, online collection. www.metmuseum.org.

A Corinthian bronze hoplite helmet dating to ca. 700-500 BCE. The nose-guard and cheekpieces of the undecorated crestless helmet left only the eyes and mouth of its wearer exposed. The small holes around the edge anchored a leather lining that would have been sewn inside. Each close-fitting helmet of this type had to be custom made. Some finds have been ‘killed’ or rendered unusable by bending the cheekpieces outward, a distortion common among helmets found dedicated in sanctuaries, including those at Aegae.

Thucydides and Xenophon provided a picture of the early composition of the Macedonian army in the reign of Perdiccas II (which overlapped with the years of the Peloponnesian War, a conflict which had itself shaken up tactical thought) and in the era of Amyntas III: it comprised a small accomplished corps of heavy cavalry (who were nevertheless principally used as skirmishers, not in shock tactics), a modest number of hoplites, and a more numerous force of light troops from domestic tribes or client princes, and still organised by tribe as Nestor advised in the Iliad.⁵⁴ Between their reigns, King Archelaus I had intensified the reforms by building strongholds, defensive walls and new roads that carried both cavalry and infantry across an increasingly urbanised state.⁵⁵

Philip’s innovation saw a major change in the tactics of both foot soldiers and horsemen, lethal when working in unison, with the cavalry contingent increased five-fold compared to its strength under his predecessors.56 His understanding of the techne of war had created a new cohesion that linked all parts of Iphicrates’ ‘body’ together; the result was that the sum of the whole assaulting army was greater than the sum of those specialist parts. This became the ‘blueprint’ of Hellenistic warfare, which, together with his particular style of metis, his martial savvy and military cunning, was irrepressible.⁵⁷

Philip’s brigades of ‘upper class’ Companion Cavalry, perhaps originally some 600 in number, were later organised into eight territorially identified squadrons (ilai) of usually 200 horsemen, the most prestigious of which was the purple-cloaked and double-strength king’s royal squadron (later capped at 300), the ile basilike; this was the vanguard agema which held a position of honour in the battle formation; the 1,800 cavalry that Alexander crossed to Asia with are thought to have been sectioned more or less this way, though Alexander later employed a command rotation that saw relative positions move.⁵⁸

The unit numbers increased in Asia when two or more ilai, each commanded by an ilarches, formed a hipparchiai under the command of a hipparchos, with the larger squadrons later divided into two lochoi (companies) as new recruits arrived and units were amalgamated. However, vaguer references to ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ cavalry and to unit depth makes definitive cavalry assessments tricky, when, for example, the administrative infantry unit of one hundred, the hekatostyes, became interchangeable with lochoi after Darius fell in 331 BCE; it was a term Arrian seems to have used for an ‘undifferentiated mass’ that included non-Macedonians as well. Anaximenes’ Philippika used a similar identification for unspecified infantry units.⁵⁹

The Companion Cavalry and their manoeuvrable spear (xyston), and no doubt the sarissophoroi – the mounted lancers with longer thrusting spears – were by now practising flying wedges; Aelian Tacticus (2^nd century CE) suggested a 200-man ile was comprised of four forty-nine-men tetrarchiai that rode in these formations, each under the command of a tetrarchos.⁶⁰ The Thessalian cavalry’s versatile diamond (rhomboid) developed by Jason of Pherae may have played a part in its refinement, though Thracian and Scythian horsemen also reportedly deployed in wedges.⁶¹ The wedged front (embolon) was a disposition which, according to Arrian, could uniquely penetrate a hoplite phalanx, defying the belief that cavalry were unable to attack organised infantry head on; Alexander may have spearheaded such a charge to penetrate the Theban Sacred Band at Chaeronea. But despite Arrian’s claims, it remains more reasonable that wedges exploited weak points or gaps in an infantry line.⁶²

The early development of the sarissa (literally a ‘hafted weapon’) is poorly documented. Diodorus claimed Philip had been inspired by the pyknosis – compact order – of the phalanx Homer alluded to at Troy, though this could equally have portrayed a traditional hoplite synaspismos,⁶⁴ the ultra-tight formation with overlapping shields, though much of the Homeric fighting was either peltast-styled or single combat rather than in disciplined ranks. But in the Iliad Hector’s spear was described as being sufficiently long and ‘far-shadowing’ to be wielded with both hands.⁶⁵ Iphicrates had already lengthened the spears and swords of his men considerably (perhaps a necessity when he fought in Egypt), creating the lighter crescent-shaped-shield-bearing peltasts (named after the lighter shield, pelta) who defeated the shorter-sworded Spartans. Evidence suggests Thracians had also carried longer thrusting spears.⁶⁶

The seeds of an idea to neutralise the traditional hoplite phalanx may have even been planted when Philip was a hostage at Thebes in his teens; he was in the hallowed company of the great generals Pammenes, Epaminondas and Pelopidas, themselves military innovators (of the infantry wedge) as well as accomplished philosophers. Alexander II, Philip’s brother, had also been acquainted with Pelopidas (who had arbitrated for his mother in the regency, or kingship, of Ptolemy of Alorus, and assisted in ridding the kingdom of the pretender, Pausanias) and ideas may have filtered down. But ‘when Epaminondas and Pelopidas prevailed, they did not kill anyone, nor did they enslave cities’, claimed Plutarch.⁶⁷ Philip had innovated differently; thousands fell at Chaeronea and cities were later garrisoned.⁶⁸

The period spent at Thebes was in fact Philip’s second hostage term due to the immediate pressures on his older brothers, and it stood him in good stead. Given a regional command by Perdiccas III when he was just eighteen, he had Antipater and Parmenio drill the regiments with a precision never witnessed before when he himself became king. Philip hardened his men with forced marches over 300 stades (approximately 34 miles) during which they carried their own panoply and rations for thirty days; this still-waggonless army (and chariotless after Philip’s run-in with the oracle of Trophonius) could out-range any opposition, while punishments of flogging and execution were levied on the undisciplined and any deserters.⁶⁹ Philip would have used the equivalent of hoplomachoi, seasoned hoplite tutors, but now trained in the new arts of the sarissa phalanx and its supporting parts.⁷⁰

According to Theopompus, the tallest and strongest infantrymen had been originally enrolled in the king’s elite agema of the pezhetaroi (‘foot Companions’) who were once more generally referred to as the king’s doryphoroi (‘spear bearers’), though they later developed into the hypaspistai (‘shield bearers’).⁷² Hypaspists were used on special missions that required a fast response and potentially hand-to-hand combat, but when involved in set-piece battles, led by an archihypaspistes with unit commanders below him, they were positioned closest to the king.

Like the Companion Cavalry they were retained all year round as the nucleus of a professional army. As instigated by his elder brother, Philip was now inviting the infantry into the former cavalry-dominated ‘friendship’ with the king in the form of elite personal brigades (generically, epilektoi) recognised by their privileged position on the right of the line in battle.⁷³ The king and his ‘Companionate’ would worship Zeus Hetairos and their status as ‘friends’ was reaffirmed at a festival of the Hetairideia. Hypaspist numbers grew from perhaps 800 initially under Philip to a corps of some 3,000 from which the king’s personal infantry guard of 1,000 had been selected, though their panoply and weapons remain much disputed.⁷⁴

Hypaspists were likely equipped as mobile hoplites (possibly carrying smaller shields) with laminated linen corselets worn since Homeric times (linothorakes, perhaps now with iron plates inside, as Pausanias thought linen was only good for hunting) and traditional 8-foot spears (if not also extended).⁷⁵ Their outfitting would again emulate elements of Iphicrates’ reforms, and the association with the great Athenian general is fully understandable; Philip’s father had ca. 386 BCE adopted Iphicrates, who was later to come to the aid of his mother Eurydice (ca. 367 BCE); according to the claim of Aeschines, Philip had known the innovating general since, literally, a babe in his arms.⁷⁶

Under Alexander, either by the battle of Gaugamela in 331 BCE, or after the Macedonians returned from India (if not early in the Successor Wars, again, sources are ambiguous), an elite hypaspist brigade emerged – the Silver Shields (Argyraspides) – and they played a central role in the balance of power in the first eight years after Alexander’s death.⁷⁷ Certainly Alexander’s campaigning in the mountainous upper and eastern satrapies required a new mobile type of fighting; Diodorus mentioned a reorganisation of the army after the defeat of Darius III at Gaugamela, and this followed restructuring at Sittacene earlier in the year.78 It is possible that an ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ canton mix was wisely being maintained when incorporating the new recruits, though the depopulation of the former by this overseas enlistment reduced the threat of a domestic uprising at home. Philip had himself initiated a programme of integration (and forced exchange) of the citizens of Lower and Upper Macedonia, and surely for similar reasons.

The foot-Companions, pezhetairoi, now re-emerged as the pike-bearers, the 9,000 strong heart of the infantry at the centre of the Macedonian battle line.⁷⁹ It was these phalangites who had been armed with sarissai and they initially formed up in manoeuvrable ten-by-ten boxed formations under Philip in what replicated Achaemenid order, with the ten-deep files (dekades) under the command of dekadarches. The unit depth was later increased to sixteen more in line with deepest traditional Greek phalanx formation (a doubling of its traditional eight).⁸⁰ In the sarissa ranks, sixteen files formed a syntagma of 256 men under a lochagos, and in turn, six syntagmata formed a taxis of 1,536 regionally-distinct infantrymen commanded by taxiarchoi originally selected from their local aristocrats (Perdiccas the Orestians and Lyncestians, Coenus the Elimeans, and Polyperchon the Tymphaeans, for example). Once again, ‘taxis’ appears to have become a general term used for a major infantry command.⁸¹ Later, in the Asian campaign, chiliarchiai of 1,024 men were frequently referred to, half of which had been a lochoi (or pentakosiarchia) of 512, charge of which represented a new intermediary command.⁸²

Arrian’s unique references to the so-called infantry ranks of asthetairoi, often interpreted as ‘Close Companions’, who would have occupied a position of honour and who seemed to hail from the cantons of Upper Macedonia, have sparked enormous debate: the prefix, ‘ast’, has been variously interpreted as stemming from ‘aristoi’, ‘astoi’, ‘asth’ or ‘assista’, suggesting either ‘best’, ‘townsman’, ‘star’ or ‘renowned’, and here thought to refer to their geographical origins, shield adornment, or reputation. But were they the elite brigades of pezhetairoi – pike-bearers – or part of the more mobile hypaspistai and as lightly clad as the figures depicted on the Alexander Sarcophagus?⁸³ The term employed by Arrian, the ‘so-called’ asthetairoi, may suggest a non-contemporary tag or an earlier less-formal epithet. If the latter, these unique brigades may have been multi-role versatile units designed to form flying columns and protect pezhetairoi flanks (linking up with cavalry) and rear in set-piece battles; mercenary thureophoroi were employed in similar roles in the later Hellenistic armies.⁸⁴ Moreover, under this interpretation they could double, with other hypaspists, as fast mobile infantry on special missions where slow, inflexible pike-bearing brigades could not be usefully deployed.

What is surprising is the lack of any reference to shield-bearing cavalrymen, who, for practical reasons, would have been equipped with a smaller, lighter aspis (‘asphippoi’?); certainly carrying a shield would have been a distinction, as it appears (again from images, as well as texts) that the cavalry units depicted were generally not equipped with such protection, though the melees in which Alexander and his Companion Cavalry found themselves, with archers and missile-throwers concentrating on them, indicate he and his royal squadron must have had more protection than linothorakes. Scythian horsemen did carry small pelta-styled shields, as had the legendary Amazons.⁸⁶ Furthermore, we do still need some equipment identifier for the elusive ‘heavy’ cavalry, and in this light it is perhaps noteworthy that the sarissophoroi, cavalry equipped with the longer and heavier lance – the obvious contenders – disappeared from texts around 329 BCE.⁸⁷

At Philip’s death, Alexander became the commander-in-chief of a force that included some 1,800 Macedonian cavalry and a similar number of Thessalian horsemen with mounted auxiliaries, with 24,000 infantrymen, as well as engineers, speciality troops and mercenaries in pay; by the time he crossed to Asia he had under arms a total of some 32,000 infantry and 4,500 cavalry.⁸⁸ At the heart of this conglomerate army was the sarissa-bearing phalanx. What does remain clear amongst the varied weaponry and brigades listed on both sides of the Hellespont, is that the sarissa had developed into a deadly two-handed pike that outreached any hafted weapon in the Graeco-Persian world; its leaf-shaped blade could penetrate both shield and armour and nothing could withstand a phalanx frontal assault. The Macedonians now had a ‘first-strike’ capability that would become decisive.⁸⁹

Fittingly, as the symbol of Alexander’s ambition, the length of the sarissa is still controversially debated, though it is clear it was far longer than the traditional spear, dory, with its bronze ‘lizard-killer’ butt, sauroter, we first read of in the Iliad.⁹⁰ Depending upon whether ancient writers had adopted the attic cubit (cubit stems from the Latin cubitum, elbow, possibly pechys in Greek) or the bematistes’ (map-makers’) Macedonian cubit, the cornel (male cherrywood) shaft, or more likely a pike made of ash (Achilles’ spear was of Pelion ash), may have been as long as 18 feet in Alexander’s ranks, and it might have even varied in length to ensure sufficient blades protruded. A pike-head lodged in the wall of Tomb II at Vergina (after its wood shaft rotted away) suggests it had been at least 16.5 feet long.91

Evidence points to the sarissa being practically assembled in two halves and joined by an iron-coupling device; it was tapered towards the blade to balance it and reduce its overall weight, resulting in a gripping position closer to the butt.⁹² In the hands of strictly drilled pezhetairoi, sarissai created an impenetrable ‘porcupine’ of blades (Curtius termed it an ‘immovable wedge’) that effectively rendered the classic othismos aspidoon, the traditional Greek shield-shoving tactic of the hoplite phalanx, redundant.⁹³

Assuming the blades from a maximum of five ranks protruded through the Macedonian front, a disciplined system must have been developed whereby the exhausted front lines, which presented pikes horizontally, and the fresher rear lines with sarissai held vertically, could interchange during battle. Polybius, following Callisthenes, described how Alexander’s phalanx formations reduced from thirty-two, to sixteen, to eight ranks deep as they approached enemy lines. The three rear ranks (whose blades would not reach past the front) were either on stand-by to relieve the front – it has been suggested that they possibly threw javelins using a free hand, but this seems impractical – or they were ready to extend the line in the way the deep-order pezhetairoi fanned out for battle at Issus; Arrian’s Tactics suggested the rear ranks could manoeuvre through the intervals (the gaps between each man were perhaps 6 feet in ‘open order’ – though less than 2 feet in close order) to double the length of the front.⁹⁴

With both hands employed in wielding the long pike, an eye had to be kept by the rear on possible infiltration, and this would have required agile lightly armed auxiliaries to dispatch any interlopers. Demosthenes confirmed the presence of epikouroi (‘fighters alongside’), including archers, mercenaries and other auxiliary troops in the army’s composition, making it very clear this was no longer one-dimensional warfare.⁹⁵

The penetrative result of the sarissa ranks must have been devastating against soldiers sporting a leather or linen cuirass, though pike-bearers were themselves relatively unprotected; they carried the smaller shield, the pelta or aspis, likely slung over their shoulder, then to the chest when engaging the enemy, and held in place by a telamon, a neck strap. In addition, pezhetairoi were issued a short sword (kopis or curved machaira), possibly to deal with any of the still dangerous wounded they were walking over or in case the line should break. There is mixed evidence for their protective corselets; the lighter (and cooler) linothorax seems to have been initially worn, though later in the campaign a hemithorakion (half-cuirass) was mentioned, suggesting backs were no longer protected.

Depictions we have show phalangites arrayed in Phrygian-styled and lighter pilos helmets, and Polybius additionally (and curiously) claimed that sarissai in upright position were effective in deflect incoming missiles.⁹⁷ The pike-bearers, then, were not ‘heavy infantry’ as such (as hoplites had been ‘heavy’ in shield and armour), except in the scale of the pike, and yet the king’s confidence in their formation was never betrayed.⁹⁸ The bristling Macedonian phalanx became the proverbial ‘anvil’ on which the exelasis, the charge by Alexander’s ‘heavy’ cavalry, dealt the decisive hammer-blow.

The Persian Great Kings still relied on intimidation and their 10,000 famed Immortals to cow the empire’s satraps into submission. Yet Xenophon’s Anabasis had already exposed Persian weakness in the face of well-organised Greek hoplites despite vastly superior Asiatic numbers, and this must have encouraged the Macedonian-led coalition when crossing the Hellespont. Persian satraps had hired Greeks as crack regiments and as bodyguards for just this reason, as Cyrus the Younger had in Xenophon’s day.⁹⁹ But if the Greeks’ heavy hoplon was unable to parry a sarissa assault, then the gerrhon-bearing (wicker-shielded), felt-capped, shorter-speared Persians, or even the Cardaces present at Issus and likened by Arrian to ‘hoplites’, did not stand a chance; this was akin to warfare against the unshielded (anhoploi).100 As the Athenian general, Charidemus, had fatally warned a doubting Great King at Susa when in exile following the fall of Thebes, Darius’ host might be ‘glittering with gold and silver’ but it now faced the iron and bronze of real soldiers; ‘the hardiest and most warlike of Europe against the laziest and effeminate of Asia’.¹⁰¹

A Bronze Phrygian helmet ca. 350-300 BCE typical of those worn by the Macedonian sarissa bearers, the pezhetairoi, though the Thracian type is also mentioned. The helmet was formed from two sections with a riveted horizontal seam where the crown joins the bowl. The high crown afforded some shock protection against downward blows. This example has additional ear and jaw protection from the hinged face guards, with a neck guard at the rear.

Mnesimachus, a comic poet of Philip II’s day, had already spread effective propaganda: Macedonians dined on honed-up swords and swallowed blazing torches, they desserted on broken arrowheads and splintered spear-shafts; for pillows they used shields and breastplates and they wreathed their brows with catapults.¹⁰² His lyrical description captured their formidability, for the sarissa phalanx of Philip, and then Alexander, would deal out death in victor-vanquished ratios still unheard of, if we are to trust even the most conservative of our sources’ conflicting estimates. The total enemy numbers are of course questionable, but if Xerxes had brought ‘millions’ of troops to face the Greeks at Thermopylae, then ‘interested’ historians, those present at the battles or at the courts of participants, could hardly credit Alexander with facing less. Curtius pondered: ‘Who counts troops at the moment of victory or flight?’ This was perhaps stated with some irony, for a few paragraphs earlier he had listed the casualty numbers at Issus.¹⁰³ But following his second defeat in Cilicia in 333 BCE and noting the devastating effect of the sarissa, Darius apparently ordered an increase in the length of Persian swords and spears as well.¹⁰⁴

Above any other feature of Alexander’s army, the sarissa came to represent the indomitable face of Macedonian might. National unity was now significantly lubricated by the goldmines of Crestonia, Mygdonia (formerly occupied by the Thracian Edones), Damastion and Thrace, as well as silver from Mount Pangaeum now flowing into the state coffers at 1,000 talents a year (equivalent in value to 300,000 gold pieces) since Crenides, renamed Philippi, fell to Philip in 356 BCE. With the dissolution of the Chalcidian League after Olynthus fell in 348 BCE, new mineral deposits were won.105 Iron ore, lead, molybdenum, magnetite, huntite, chrome and copper were mined for income and to pay for the accessories of war; this was an essential resource, because in the absence of any significant middle class, the infantry had to be armed, outfitted, housed and fed by the state. Although there is no firm evidence that Philip had formally remunerated his infantrymen, Curtius and Diodorus suggested 2-3 drachmas per day were paid to state levies, but when this commenced is unclear; of course the king additionally had the spoils of war to call upon to reward his men.¹⁰⁶

Philip’s new phalanx design was, in any case, a cheaper option than units of fully panoplied hoplites, enabling him to outfit a greater percentage of the recruiting pool of perhaps 30,000 men of fighting age in his consolidated Macedonia. Indeed, a spear butt-spike has been unearthed inscribed with the letters MAK suggesting the weapon was Macedonian government issue; comparison can be made with Athens where the state issued a hoplite shield and spear at the completion of the ephebia, the compulsory military training of eighteen to twenty-year-old citizens in garrison at the Piraeus.¹⁰⁷

The Macedonian sarissa worked its way inexorably through the Persian heartlands and in the set-piece battles with Darius III. Yet the upper satrapy revolts, which saw increasing mountain warfare, were a different affair altogether, and it was here that Alexander suffered his first setbacks, conspiracies and the resulting trials. But it was in India that the slackening tide finally turned and where the campaign bordered on disaster for both him and his battle-weary men. The king’s popularity was in retrograde motion by which time the stature of Alexander’s own Bodyguards – ‘autocrats within their own armies long before the assumption of royal title’ – along with the most prominent of his pan-provincial strategoi and the generals under them, were hugely influential, both regionally and amongst their own men.¹⁰⁸

The one-eyed Antigonus had governed much of Asia Minor for over a decade by the time Alexander returned to Babylon, with talented satraps and officers about him. Parmenio had been vested with a pivotal administrative role at Ecbatana in Media, guarding the royal treasury and keeping communication and supply routes open between Asia Minor and the Near East. If he had survived the banquet at which Alexander ran him through, Black Cleitus might have assumed a similar role from Bactra (the capital of Bactria, modern Balkh) to govern the upper satrapies. And in Alexander’s vanguard the voice of Craterus resounded loudly with the veterans.109 These top-tier commanders, along with the Silver Shields veterans and their popular infantry officers, remained the conservative face of a Macedonian authority, which, for many of the rank and file, represented a far more coherent and attractive order than Alexander’s increasingly indecipherable behaviour and erratic policy towards those he conquered.

As Macedonian regent and hegemon in Pella, Antipater had ably governed Greece, Thessaly, Illyria, Epirus, the upper cantons and neighbouring tribes for more than a decade in Alexander’s absence, and his ‘home army’ may well have preserved a nationalist spirit that Alexander’s troops in Asia were to lose, for in Macedonia it was still Philip II the army nostalgically recalled, and it was probably his heroon, not Alexander’s, they saw standing at Aegae.¹¹⁰

In 331 BCE Antipater had crushed King Agis III of Sparta at Megalopolis, the city founded by the Arcadian League with Epaminondas’ support; it was here that the ‘prestige of old reflected upon the prestige of the present’. In the wake of defeat at Issus and following Alexander’s rejection of his peace terms, Darius III had been trying to rouse Greece into an uprising against Macedonia; his envoy, Pharnabazus, was courting King Agis who had to sail to Halicarnassus in a single trireme to raise his money for a war that was ever more reliant upon mercenaries, in this case 8,000 escapees from Issus who had later seen action in Egypt. Lycurgan law prohibited Sparta’s free citizens from engaging in moneymaking activity, whilst its xenalasia barred foreigners from entering the state (also denying its citizens the right to exit), so the reliance on Persian gold is not difficult to understand. Antipater received 3,000 talents from Alexander in Asia with which to equip a force to meet the threat, though whether it arrived in time has been questioned.¹¹¹

Megalopolis was a significant victory, though Alexander deprecatingly labelled it a ‘battle between mice’ when he heard the outcome in Ecbatana in Media.¹¹² Antipater had been faced with a revolt by Memnon in Thrace at the same time, probably not coincidentally, and a substantial Macedonian army under Corrhagus, his strategos in the Peloponnese, had recently been annihilated.¹¹³ If that threat was not enough, Alexander had just stripped his regent of more new recruits. The ‘never more violent conflict’ with Sparta took the lives of 5,300 of the 22,000 arrayed in their ranks, half of which were mercenaries; Curtius claimed hardly anyone returned to the Spartan camp without a wound. Some 3,500 of Antipater’s 40,000 troops fell; this was a death toll larger than the Macedonian casualty numbers provided at the three major battles Alexander fought against Darius in Asia.¹¹⁴

Curtius alleged: ‘Alexander was often heard to say that Antipater took upon himself the state of a king, that he was more powerful than a prefect ought to be, and that he was puffed up by the rich spoil and fame of his Spartan victory while he claimed as his own all that the king had given him.’¹¹⁸ Although this may be polemical material added later by anti-Macedonian, or more targeted anti-Antipatrid hostility, it clearly suggests the extent of the regent’s influence at home.¹¹⁹

Antipater’s influence would increase following Alexander’s death and the challenge that came when Greece tested his resolve in the Lamian War. Following a setback when initially outnumbered whilst waiting for reinforcements from Asia, and after a siege in the town of Lamia some 6.25 miles north of Thermopylae – where the Greek commander Leosthenes was nevertheless killed – Antipater finally met the Greek allied forces at Crannon in 322 BCE; supporting them were elements of the Thessalian cavalry, originally Antipater’s allies by virtue of the legacy of Alexander’s giving each of them a talent bonus when he dismissed them at Ecbatana. Their experience had already taken its toll; their recent defeat of the newly returned Leonnatus, who fought bravely in the region’s swampy terrain, saw ‘… the first major defeat for Macedonian cavalry in over thirty years.’¹²⁰

Although the Thessalian brigade bettered their Macedonian counterparts at Crannon, Antipater’s overwhelming numbers, which had been boosted by the arrival of Craterus and 1,500 cavalry with 11,000 mixed infantry including 6,000 veterans who left Macedonia with Alexander twelve years before, saw the Greeks treating for peace. Their terms were initially refused, and the Thessalian cities were stormed one by one as Antipater and Craterus made their way south towards Athens.¹²¹

Ploutos and penia, wealth and poverty, were once again at war. Those who were ostracised either emigrated or fled to Thrace with Antipater’s encouragement, though they too were summarily branded ‘warmongers and disturbers of the peace’.¹²⁴ The principal beneficiaries were the incorruptible Phocion ho chrestos (‘do good’; he had turned down Leosthenes’ military post) and the highly purchasable Demades, who, until he was implicated in plotting with the royalist Perdiccas in Asia, enjoyed Antipater’s support; he managed to convince the Athenian Assembly to sentence the newly reconciled Hyperides and Demosthenes to death.¹²⁵ Demosthenes had once warned Phocion that he might be killed some day if the people became irrational. Phocion responded with: ‘Yes, however, they would kill you if they came to their senses’; it seems they did.¹²⁶

The Macedonian garrison entered the city while the celebration of mysteries was in progress and while the gods ‘… looked down with indifference upon the most grievous woes of Hellas.’¹²⁷ Although Antipater’s son, Cassander, would halve the voting qualification in 318/317 BCE (to those possessing more than 10 minae, 1,000 drachmas) when garrisoning Munychia in the face of Polyperchon’s promise of freedom, a democracy that had lasted in various guises from 507 BCE to 322 BCE, was now dead.¹²⁸ The panel of 6,000 male citizens over the age of thirty who had taken the solemn Heliastic Oath (which pledged impartiality), so providing the city with annual jurors (diskastai) at the People’s Court with its annual magistrates and legislators (nomothetai), were subordinated to the law of the Macedonian pike. Eisangelia, denunciation, and the resulting charges of treason, now hovered over any loose recalcitrant tongues.¹²⁹

A famous Roman aphorism was used well by Tacitus: ‘They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal; this they falsely name Empire, and when they create a desert, then they call it peace’;¹³⁰ it is a disillusioned speech that could have been written in hindsight of the Macedonian campaign in Asia. Few men in history were ever universally loved to the point where they could rule out assassination, and as Demosthenes’ opening oration declared, fewer still could have been as widely resented, feared and hated, outside his own campaign headquarters as Alexander by 323 BCE.¹³¹ With Alexander’s passing, ‘… the civilised world, which had never before known only one master, now found itself in a novel situation, that of knowing no master at all.’132 Momentum was lost and his fragile sarissa-enforced statecraft began to implode. The vacuum united everyone who had suffered his policies in quiet dissent, including the pezhetairoi who had carried the pikes on their shoulders for some 170,000 stades.¹³³

The theme of the years either side of Alexander’s death was uncertainty, both in Greece and Asia. The Persian Empire at its height had enjoyed an annual income of 30,000 talents, and sources suggest Alexander and his hubristic new order spent over 50,000 talents, equivalent to fifty years of Athenian total revenue, in his extravagant last two years.¹³⁴ Some 10,000 had repaid soldiers’ personal debts, gold crowns were handed out at Susa (though surely not the 15,000 talents-worth claimed by Chares) and a further 10,000 talents paid off veterans, with a similar sum destined for temple restoration in Greece; presents, weddings dowries and a research grant of 800 talents to Aristotle added to the bill, as well as payments to orphaned children and their promised education.¹³⁵

The compliant rajah of Taxila had even been given 1,000 talents and Harpalus had fled to Athens with a further 5,000 from the treasury, equating to some 140 tons in silver or 14 tons of gold, which alone (if in gold) would have required a minimum of thirty ships to transport it.¹³⁶ In comparison, the sacking of ancient Thebes in 336/5 BCE had apparently only yielded 440 talents, though this number probably related to the sale of prisoners alone.¹³⁷ Some 180,000 talents had reportedly been captured from Persian treasuries (estimated by Engels at some 7,290 tons of gold and silver) during Alexander’s campaign, possibly the equivalent of one hundred billion dollars today; it would have been sufficient to run Athens and the Aegean for two centuries. Justin suggested 50,000 talents remained at Alexander’s death.¹³⁸

By summer 323 BCE and through the months preceding it, projects had been underway for an ornate funeral pyre for Hephaestion costing a further 12,000 talents, gargantuan Babylonian dockyards and the construction of 700 warships.¹³⁹ Opulent dinners with 600 to 700 Companions allegedly ran to 100 minae, if Ephippus is to be believed; that is 10,000 drachmas or well over a talent per meal. Once again, this appears an emulation of the Great King’s dining arrangements, though these negative images painted by Ephippus might have been written to reinforce Greek bitterness during the Lamian War.¹⁴⁰ Alexander had appointed a Rhodian, Antimenes, to upkeep the roads in the region and he had already imposed a previously unenforced ancient duty of ten per cent on imported goods, a levy that must have been hugely unpopular; it was no doubt required to fund these heady projects in the face of a waning treasury.¹⁴¹ This points to the collapse of the Achaemenid tax-raising network, which saw serfs paying great landowners, who in turn paid satraps who collected for the Great King; it was clear that the treasuries across the empire would soon be bled dry.142

The regional strategoi, and the king’s Bodyguards above them who were impatient to administer a chunk of the new empire, knew it, and a confrontation was inevitable, though whether that was resolved with a poisoned cup we may never establish. Evidence suggests the common Macedonian would have considered the state treasury as a wealth safeguarded by the kings for the people, and that their tax revenues were similarly the property of a state they had a voice in through their representative landlords and nobles at the Common Assembly of Macedones. If so, Alexander’s continued extravagance would have increased the resentment at Babylon from the men who had not yet been provided bonuses or anything more then a soldier’s basic remuneration.¹⁴³

In Alexander’s wake, manpower drains, commodity price rises and famines resurfaced. The early years of the campaign saw little new coinage issued, for Philip II’s gold staters, Philippeioi, and his silver tetradrachms had already become an international medium used from what is now Romania and Italy in the West, to Syria in the East, while bronze coinage was used for local transactions, the latter only possible under a stable and established monetary regime. But Alexander struck enormous quantities of what was expected to become the new reference currency in the late campaign. It is estimated that from 330 BCE onwards, after raiding the Persian treasuries, Alexander minted some 4,680 tons of silver in the form of to basileion nomisma, the king’s coinage; this was an enormous circulation increase, with some coins remaining in use for up to a century. Unsurprisingly, an unusually large issue was minted in 324/323 BCE. But as time would show, the economies of his successors were no less ambitious, and they too needed trading platforms based on nomisma, metal-based money.¹⁴⁴

By 301 BCE and the ‘Battle of the Kings’ at Ipsus, the cost of living had tripled over the previous century; wheat prices had risen from 2 drachmas per artaba (27 litres, a dry measure used in Persian and Egypt) in 404 BCE to 10 drachmas around 300 BCE, and oil prices had trebled.¹⁴⁵ The dramatist, Menander, suggested that any man whose land was mortgage-free was ‘lucky’, and overbearing loans at Ephesus, a city ruined by its continued support for Demetrius Poliorketes against Lysimachus in the Diadokhoi Wars, led to a suspension of ordinary law, so that palliative measures were invoked to stop the collapse of interest payments and other property obligations.¹⁴⁶

Some 30,000 ‘campaign’ talents, discounting gifts and bonuses, are reckoned to have re-crossed the Hellespont. The tombs at Emathia, Pieria and the ‘Great Tomb’ at Lefkadia display the extraordinary resources of even the undistinguished officer who made it home alive, despite the claims by Curtius that: ‘The army which had defeated so many rich nations took from Asia more prestige than booty.’147 This was, nevertheless, private wealth and not a state resource that could have more positively contributed to the nation’s infrastructure. We have evidence that the quantity of ‘unearned’ wealth dumped on Macedonia had been hugely inflationary too, destabilising and devastating the rural markets that saw gold-to-silver ratios drop from (approximately) 15:1 to 10:1, when supply of manufactured goods could often not meet the demand. Philip’s expansion of the mines at Mount Pangaeum, which had once provided the Athenian Peisistratus (died ca. 527 BCE) with much of his wealth, and the associated argyrokopeion, the gold mint at Amphipolis, had already contributed to the inflationary trend.¹⁴⁸

A more obvious cause of upheaval in Macedonia itself was the ongoing recruitment campaigns that saw some 33,800 or more men-in-arms shipped to Asia, besides the 14,000 Macedonians Alexander had originally departed with; in total this may have equated to something like one in eight of every adult eligible for military service.¹⁴⁹ And we should not forget that in 334 BCE Alexander Molossus of Epirus, Alexander’s uncle (and brother-in-law through his marriage to Cleopatra), simultaneously invaded Italy with an army that further depleted regional manpower. Little of this economic upheaval was ever recorded in the mainstream narratives; the fate of men and battles took precedent from Homer and Herodotus onwards, when the social causes that led to war were marginalised by all but Thucydides.¹⁵⁰ Yet a whole world order was changing and the Argead regime of the generation of Philip and Alexander was to blame.

Alexander’s absence in Asia had been a mixed blessing for Athens. The city-state, paradoxically, enjoyed something of a pax makedonika with some prosperity returning between 330-324 BCE under the stewardship of Lycurgus who implemented prudent financial restraints, and who by 330 BCE had replaced the previous temporary structures that held the plays performed at the Great Dionysia with an enlarged stone theatre; it was the city’s new ‘tragic’ heart that may have held as many as 17,000 spectators overlooking its three bronze statues of Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus (ca. 525-455 BCE). Most likely with the help of the newly pro-Macedonian statesman Phocion, Lycurgus does appear to have silenced Demosthenes, whose ‘good luck’ motto on his shield at Chaeronea had clearly not performed.¹⁵¹

But trade routes had opened up, wider-spread Greek law rationalised and harmonised transactions, piracy was suppressed by the Diadokhoi navies and Macedonians spent coin on Greek expertise and luxury goods; ‘capitalism’ flourished at both state and private enterprise level though it would also lure Greeks overseas, and with it there appears to have been widespread emigration from Greece in the half century after the fall of the Archaemenid regime.¹⁵⁵ This was no doubt accelerated by the drop in local mercenary rates of pay that had steadily fallen from as much as 8 obols per day ca. 400 BCE when fewer soldiers of fortune were for hire, to perhaps as little as 4 obols at Alexander’s death. The remuneration was never extravagant even in cheaper non-inflationary times; paupers on state benefit in Athens received 2 obols per day, and the stipend for jury duty paid twice this, or more.¹⁵⁶ It was a clear example of supply and demand and now better employment opportunities were beginning to present themselves in the newly Hellenised lands of the Diadokhoi.

CITY-TAKERS WITH BRONZE-BEAKED SHIPS, AND NO ORDINANCES OF JUSTICE: THE RISE OF THE MYRMIDONS¹⁵⁷

At Alexander’s death in 323 BCE his Bodyguards and leading generals had to pick up the pieces. They, alongside the foremost infantry battalion officers at Babylon, had voiced their opinions, in one form or another, in the Assembly of Macedones convened to decide on the fate of empire governance and Alexander’s last wishes and instructions. But by now, as events were to prove, the Somatophylakes were too authoritative in their own right to be subservient to their peers, and though alliances of necessity pockmark the Successor Wars, they were forged only to preserve the independence they had by then achieved and to bring down a mutual threat.

Any persisting veneer of Agread loyalty vanished following the short-lived treaty known as the ‘Peace of the Dynasts’ of 311 BCE:

Cassander abandoned his ‘plausible excuses’ when he had Alexander IV and Roxane executed in spring 310 BCE, ‘a move welcomed by all the successors who had aspired to the kingship’. Alexander IV was, after all, pledged in marriage to Deidameia, the daughter of the Molossian Aeacides and the sister of Pyrrhus of Epirus. This could have revived an Epirote-Macedonian dynastic superpower like that of Philip II through Olympias, and one promised by the marriage of their daughter, Cleopatra, to Alexander Molossus.¹⁵⁹

Soon after, Cassander orchestrated the murder of Alexander’s elder son, Heracles, by his mistress Barsine, reportedly the half-Greek daughter of the renowned Artabazus (son of the Achaemenid princess Apame) and his Rhodian bride. Some five or six years before the mighty clash of powers at Ipsus, these super-governors – Cassander, Lysimachus, Ptolemy, Seleucus and Antigonus – who by now were reporting to no one but themselves, began to declare themselves kings, or to behave as such.¹⁶⁰ Thereafter, the new dynasts would be raising and retaining what became their own revenues, rather than nominally collecting them for the Pellan regime.¹⁶¹ As it has been poignantly noted, Ptolemy’s early rejection of epimeletia to the kings following Perdiccas’ death in Egypt (320 BCE) was, ‘in a quiet way, an early declaration of independence’.¹⁶²

Cornelius Nepos provided a suitable summation of this first generation of the successors:

… nor did they care to perform what they had originally promised, namely, to guard the throne for Alexander’s children; but, as soon as the only defender of the children was removed [Eumenes], they disclosed what their real views were. In this iniquity the leaders were Antigonus, Ptolemy, Seleucus, Lysimachus, and Cassander.¹⁶³

Seleucus declared himself a king when he heard the news, and Ptolemy and Lysimachus (who, along with his son, married two of Ptolemy’s daughters) were not slow to follow with their royal declarations, though it is highly likely that they were addressed as kings some years before in their own domains.¹⁶⁶ Agathocles, the tyrant of Sicily, who started life as a mercenary solder, followed suit, proving that anyone can wear purple; a few years on he was offering his daughter, Lanassa (the name of Heracles’ granddaughter), to Pyrrhus to safeguard his regal future along with a dowry of Corfu (Korkyra). King of Epirus intermittently from 306 BCE, Pyrrhus would marry the daughters of both Illyrian and Paeonian kings.¹⁶⁷

The title ‘basileus’ was soon to be emphasised by a newly manifested festival, the basileia.¹⁶⁸ These kingships had unique connotations when attached to the early Diadokhoi; it was more a ‘term of office’ than ‘head of state’, for the ‘state’ was – as epitomised by Demetrius’ tidal career ‘now waxing, now waning’ – a notional region with ever-shifting borders and displaced campaign headquarters.¹⁶⁹ Demetrius was, uniquely, a king without a country for much of his career until the six years following 294 BCE when he finally ascended the throne of Macedonia as King Demetrius I and reunited the previously divided state once more. By then, however, he was not unanimously popular and had to defend his intriguing in a Common Assembly, whose attendees only agreed to his kingship ‘due to their lack of a better man…’¹⁷⁰ But even the royal women were now being referred to as basilissa, koine Greek for ‘queen’, once married to the new Hellenistic kings who were ‘officially monogamous’ (a view which is challenged) despite the ‘many mistresses they might maintain’.¹⁷¹

Demetrius Poliorketes, the charismatic son of Antigonus Monophthalmos, delighted in hearing revellers propose that only he and his putative father were true kings (though Plutarch recorded that he was, in fact, Antigonus’ adopted nephew), whereas Ptolemy was merely an admiral, Lysimachus a treasurer and Seleucus nothing more than ‘a commander of a squadron of elephants’, thus an elephantarchos.¹⁷² Seleucus’ beasts had been a widely publicised gift from Chandragupta (probably in 303 BCE), but that appears to have been a face-saving initiative to camouflage his failed invasion of India, following which he had been forced to cede his easternmost provinces to the Indian dynast.¹⁷³ All laughed at their new titles except Lysimachus, for treasurers were traditionally eunuchs, though Seleucus’ own ‘spectacularly successful’ naval operations with the Ptolemaic fleet were being marginalised with his new epithet.174

The Diadokhoi were, however, walking a tightrope of acceptance, but being adept politicians who could have shown Cicero a thing or two, they continued to milk their association to the dead conqueror, even the hostile Cassander, who, though was never destined to acquire any of Asia (apart from an expeditionary force to Cappadocia and, arguably, some authority in Cilicia, briefly governed by his brother Pleistarchus), managed to control Macedonia for almost twenty years.¹⁷⁵ After he had orchestrated the execution of Olympias at Pydna in 316/315 BCE, irreverently ‘throwing her body out without burial’ (he possibly also removed her statue from the Philippeion at Olympia), Cassander took Alexander’s half-sister, Thessalonice, as his bride.¹⁷⁶

Next came Diadokhoi associations to Alexander in literature and art. Apelles’ paintings had captured the gradual divinity in the Macedonian king’s profile from youthful victor, to hero, and then to god.¹⁷⁷ And if the Pellan poet, Poseidippus, accurately described Lysippus’ sculpting skill, itself a poetic mimesis in bronze, there did indeed exist a powerful imagery at work:

Alexander’s approved team – the painter Apelles, the sculptor Lysippus and the gem engraver and goldsmith Pyrgoteles – had been effective for the Argeads and now they would be newly employed.¹⁷⁹ Lysippus, who had criticised Apelles for painting Alexander wielding a thunderbolt rather than a spear (that being the more glorious), was commissioned to sculpt King Seleucus.¹⁸⁰ Ptolemy hired Antiphilus, an alleged hostile rival of Apelles, to paint him in a hunt; Antiphilus’ canvas of a youthful Alexander and Philip with Minerva, also painted at Ptolemy’s court, reinforced the suggestion of ‘a family unit’ and would have supported the rumours of Ptolemy’s parentage; the appearance of the Ptolemaic eagle symbol may also have been designed to signify Argead roots.¹⁸¹ Philoxenus of Eretria even painted a battle scene at either Issus or Gaugamela for Cassander who had been absent from both conflicts; this was possibly the model for the famous Pompeii mosaic (unearthed in 1831) that now resides in the National Museum of Archaeology in Naples.¹⁸²

Ptolemy erected a bronze equestrian statue to Alexander, symbolising alexikakos the national protector, and it remained a landmark in Alexandria for a thousand years, reminding the population that the ‘saviour’, Soter, had been his true heir.¹⁸⁶ Sometime later he constructed the Tychaion, dedicated to the goddess of fortune; it adjoined the Mouseion (the home of the Muses) that housed additional Argead portraits. Seleucus commissioned a statue to the goddess Tyche in his new capital of Antioch; in this both successors had possibly been stimulated by Demetrius of Phalerum’s Peri Tyches, published sometime around 310 BCE.¹⁸⁷ In the shadows of these living gods, the poetic Idylls of Theocritus (floruit ca. 270 BCE) and the mimiamboi (mimes) of Herodas (a younger contemporary, both 3^rd century BCE), felt duty-bound to remind their audience in verse that the common man (and now more prominently, woman) and the challenges and routines of commonplace life, did still, in fact, exist.

Cicero knew that ‘endless money formed the sinews of war’ and it was never truer than now.¹⁸⁸ For a time, Alexander’s image was retained on the head of the Diadokhoi coins and the major denominations minted by Seleucus, including gold staters and silver tetradrachms that maintained Alexander’s imperial currency type. These personal likenesses still carried the clean-shaven and leonine-maned look of the conqueror and they were often adorned with bulls’ and rams’ horns recalling Dionysus and Ammon, or struck with Heracles wearing a lion’s scalp.¹⁸⁹ These were mythological and divine associations that Alexander perpetuated himself at the court symposia, imagery that was likely reenergised once Cleitarchus’ colourful campaign account entered circulation a generation on.¹⁹⁰ As Olga Palagia argues: ‘The Successors used lion hunt imagery as a means of underlying and legitimising their share in his empire’; it represented their part in that subjugation of Persia and was perhaps a gesture to Heracles Kynagidas, the tutelary deity of the hunt.¹⁹¹

From the Diadokhoi there soon emerged an inevitable image-fusion of ‘the king they had served’, and ‘the king they had themselves become’, for they and their epigonoi had to relate to the mixed ethnicities now under their regal wings. Seleucus in particular had to appeal to veteran Macedonian campaigners – the Greek garrison troops he inherited from Antigonus after the battle of Ipsus – and yet he also needed to connect psychologically with his multi-ethnic Asiatic ranks. They included the half-caste sons of the campaigners whose education Alexander planned to fund when envisioning them as future replacements for their veteran fathers.192 Seleucus, who retained an Achaemenid-style administration, went on to portray Alexander in an elephant-scalp headdress as a symbol of his hybrid army.

Lysimachus, once reportedly blundering into Alexander’s spear – a wound staunched by the king’s bloody diadem which, according to Aristander, portended a troubled future reign¹⁹³ – justified his association as a ‘treasurer’ by minting at his new capital, Lysimachia, built on the site of the demolished Cardia; it was itself greatly damaged by an earthquake twenty-two years later.¹⁹⁴ As the new king of Thrace and its bordering lands, Lysimachus also churned out coins from Sestus, Lampsacus, Abydus, Sardis and from other new mints established across the Asia Minor satrapies he acquired from Antigonus after Ipsus, with most denominations showing the winged goddess Nike, Lysimachus’ well-earned victory motif.

But once their own dynasties were securely established following the uncertainties preceding kingships, the Diadokhoi had their own likenesses minted in addition to Alexander’s to propagate their cults and to lure Hellenic trade and Greek settlers eastward.¹⁹⁵ True Ptolemaic numismatic independence came with the legend Alexandreion Ptolemaiou (the Alexandrine of Ptolemy) on which the dynast’s own heavy-set jaw entered circulation sometime around 304 BCE in his ‘dual kingship’ of Egypt, though gold staters still carried Alexander in a chariot pulled by four elephants.¹⁹⁶ Ptolemy had established a Graeco-Macedonian administration in Alexandria but maintained a traditional Egyptian model in the Nile valley and delta. Outside these regions metal commerce was revolutionary, as coinage was not used in rural Egypt where raw commodities, manufactured goods, or metal exchanged by weight (uncoined), were traded instead. The exceptions were the Greek trading posts and their prostatai, the administrators in charge of the ports, but even then coin was predominantly used for the payment of foreign mercenaries.¹⁹⁷

Lysimachus announced his independence by striking his own lion’s forepart device in 303 BCE, and Seleucus added the anchor symbol at his new mints at Susa, Ecbatana and Seleucia-on-Tigris; the anchor, said to be visible on Seleucus’ thigh, was allegedly a divine birthmark carried through the generations.¹⁹⁸ It has been argued that the strategic positioning of his new cities in otherwise rural areas was to propagate a coined monetary economy as quickly as possible where commodity-based trading was still the norm, rather than for any military initiative. This was especially true of the Seleucid East where tax rates on agriculture soon rose to fifty per cent in order to restock the treasuries that had been pillaged in the earlier campaigns. The greatest advantage, however, was that coin struck in gold and silver, often referred to as chrysion and argyrion, was non-perishable, it could be hoarded, and it was more stable than commodities (as Aristotle observed), so in universal demand.199

The new legal tender being introduced by the Diadokhoi soon saved 2 grams of silver in negotiations; the 17.62-gram tetradrachm was now reduced to the Rhodian weight of 15.50 grams to cover the manufacture cost; Ptolemy was the first to adopt the new standard in 310 BCE when it seems he banned foreign money from circulating in Egypt. Thus imports became cheaper where exports were taxed as usual. Electrum coins, like the early Lydian currency and later the staters from Cyzicus, Phocaea and Mytilene, were cautiously traded as they could not be assayed until Archimedes’ discovery of specific gravity, causing much head scratching for the metronomoi, the inspector of weights and measures, the daneistes (moneylenders), the trapezitai, the official bankers and their kollybistikai trapezai, exchange banks.²⁰⁰

Greeks were wary of coins being traded at a higher nominal than intrinsic (bullion) value, especially when bronze was being minted, and today it is still possible to see bankers’ ‘test cuts’ on the edges to reveal the inner material, as forgers were known to cover copper with silver plate. Ptolemy II Philadelphos introduced bronze in Egypt around 260 BCE, and later copper drachmas appeared with Roman domination of the Mediterranean, though its exchange rate to a silver equivalent was to plummet from 60:1 to as low as 625:1, until Roman annexation of Egypt stopped the inflationary crisis.²⁰¹

Herodotus believed that hard gold and silver currency had originated in Lydia with Gyges or his son, probably in the 7th century BCE; once again this most likely stemmed from the king’s need to pay mercenaries, whereafter its usage gradually spread.²⁰² But now, in the new Diadokhoi kingdoms, currency was overlaid with propaganda that carried motifs fashioned to humiliate opponents. Short on land-based success, and too young to have exploited his own association with Alexander, Demetrius depicted Poseidon with a trident and a ship’s prow to recall his victory at Salamis, a motif that suggested his thalassocracy. So even the successor coins, each displacing the popular Persian gold daric in Asia, were not free from what has been termed ‘antique spin’.²⁰³

Over the 250 years that stretched from Alexander’s accession in 336 BCE through to the close of the Hellenistic era, some ninety-one mints produced ‘Alexander’s coinage’ (twenty-six in his own lifetime); a Roman quaestor of Macedonia even reintroduced his image on new coins struck sometime around 90 BCE, though possibly this was specifically to pay the local population to fight against the mutual Pontic threat. The last Alexander-styled coin of the Hellenistic era was churned out at Mesembria (on the Thracian coast, now Bulgaria) around 65 BCE.²⁰⁴

A Seleucus I Nikator tetradrachm minted at Seleucia-on-Tigris ca. 296-281 BCE showing the strength of his elephant corps. The laureate head of Zeus and Athena brandishing a spear with shield in a quadriga of elephants on the obverse.

A Demetrius Poliorketes tetradrachm minted at Salamis ca. 306-285 BCE celebrating his naval victory over Ptolemy. It displays Nike with a trumpet and stylus on a ship’s prow, with Poseidon with trident and arms in a mantle on the obverse.

The trireme (‘three’, Greek trieres, Roman triremis), probably the first ship to be pulled by oars at three levels, had been the mainstay of Mediterranean navies; they were generally increased in size to what the Romans later termed quadriremes (‘fours’), and quinqueremes (‘fives’) in the Syracusian and Carthaginian styles, though larger denominations may refer to the rower per oar (a system later termed alla scaloccio) rather than to the number of decks of oarsmen.²⁰⁷ The positioning of oarsmen to avoid the clashing of strokes was aided by a parexeiresia, an overhanging outrigger, though the exact configuration of even the ubiquitous trireme is still debated; some scholars believe a trieres refers to three men seated on a single bench, each pulling an independent oar (a system later known as alla sensile).²⁰⁸

The cost of maintaining a fleet of the magnitudes we read of in the Diadokhoi Wars would have been a huge undertaking: ships were manned by conscripted citizens, not slaves, who were in any case expensive to upkeep. Powering them would have been the thranitai, zygitai, and thalamitai (or thalamioi), the upper, middle, and lower deck rowers in a three-tiered design. An Athenian trireme would have required over 10,000 drachmas per year (1.5 to 2 talents) to run, before accounting for the wages of its fighting contingent at something like 4 to 6 obols per man per day.²⁰⁹

Possibly as a response to Ptolemy sending Antigonus a package containing a large fish and green figs (‘master the sea, or eat these’),²¹⁰ each now commissioned kataphraktos (armoured) polyremes: the ‘eights’ (okteres), ‘nines’ (enneres) and finally the ‘tens’ (dekeres) that were soon seen floating around the Eastern Mediterranean. Alexander had shown them the way, for he had ordered wood for 700 ‘sevens’ (hepteres), and according to the Naturalis Historia of Pliny (‘The Elder’, 23-79 CE), he had once built a ‘ten’ from trees cut from the forests of Lebanon.211 By 314 BCE Antigonus commanded 240 warships which included ninety that allegedly had four banks of oars, ten of them ‘fives’, three with nine ‘orders’ of oarsmen, and ten ships housing ten.²¹² To repel them, and as described in the accounts of Demetrius’ famous siege of Rhodes (305-304 BCE), thick floating booms of squared logs with iron plates and spikes, the phragma or kleithron, were often deployed to block their path into harbours, whilst more elaborate pontoon barriers, zeugmata, were constructed from vessels planked together.²¹³

The showman in Demetrius commissioned more ambitious ships still, the megista skaphe: ‘fourteens’, ‘fifteens’ and ‘sixteens’ (hekkaidekereis), some of them catapult-prowed and shooting arrows or stones.²¹⁴ They were ‘much admired by his enemies as they sailed past’, though historians are, once again, still at odds over the intricate rowing arrangement these titans must have employed.²¹⁵ Plutarch attempted to describe them:

… up until this time, no man had seen a ship of fifteen or sixteen banks of oars … However, in the ships of Demetrius their beauty did not mar their fighting qualities, nor did the magnificence of their equipment rob them of their usefulness, but they had a speed and effectiveness which was more remarkable than their great size.²¹⁶

Following the defeat of Antigonus at Ipsus in 301 BCE, and after Asia Minor and Syria had been torn apart by those vying for the pieces, the treasury at Cyinda still yielded 1,200 talents to Demetrius, throwing him a fleet-building lifeline in well-forested Cilicia.²¹⁷ Here he celebrated his new family ties with Seleucus who married his daughter, Stratonice, aboard a ship with thirteen banks of oars, and Demetrius soon occupied Cilicia, possibly with Seleucus’ consent. According to Plutarch, the marriage was prompted by the alliance formed between Lysimachus and Ptolemy (from the aforementioned marriages to Ptolemy’s daughters).²¹⁸

The Cilician aggression earned Demetrius the denunciation of the provincial governor, Cassander’s brother Pleistarchus, who then took refuge with Lysimachus who now controlled all of Asia Minor north of the Taurus range. Having already seen the Chersonese ravaged by Demetrius, Lysimachus invaded Cilicia by land, but he cordially asked Demetrius to give him a demonstration of his naval power and Demetrius obliged; this is just one of the episodes that captures the mercurial and perplexing relationships between the warring Diadokhoi.²¹⁹

The recruiting numbers still sound incredible today, though we know Greek league cities were fined if they did not produce their levy of soldiers, and surviving details of those fines suggest Demetrius was prepared to pay well above the average for a Greek hoplite.²²² Even pirates were being employed for their naval experience, though notably this was principally for action against Rhodes, ‘their special enemy’.²²³ Yet a fleet of 500 ships would have required thousands of talents per year if crews were to be retained throughout winter; this was an impossible undertaking for even the former dominant naval powers of Athens and Rhodes, restricting these ambitious navies to the former-Persian-Empire-coffered Diadokhoi alone.

Commissioned sometime after 289 BCE, Lysimachus built a mammoth ship at Heraclea, the Leontophoros (‘Lion Bearer’, denoting his new symbol); it was possibly a catamaran that required 1,600 rowers and its construction may have been funded by the hidden Thracian treasure hoard revealed to him ca. 285 BCE.²²⁴ Detail of the ‘super dreadnought’ was recorded in Photius’ epitome of Memnon’s History of Heraclea:

… in this fleet were some ships, which had been sent from Heraclea, six-bankers and five-bankers and transports, and one eight-banker called the Lion-Bearer, of extraordinary size and beauty. It had one hundred rowers on each line, so there were eight hundred men on each side, making a total of sixteen hundred rowers. There were also twelve hundred soldiers on the decks, and two steersmen.²²⁵

Demetrius’ son, Antigonus II Gonatas (ca. 319-239 BCE), under threat from all sides and by then unsurprisingly short on funds, needed twenty-four years to build a riposte, his ‘sacred triremos’, a ship possibly larger still and built at Corinth. It secured victory at Kos (ca. 258 BCE) over Ptolemy II Philadelphos who was now assisting Athens after the Chremonidean War (ca. 267-261 BCE). He had himself been busy constructing a ‘twenty’ and two ‘thirties’ in a fleet comprising four ‘thirteens’, two ‘twelves’, fourteen ‘elevens’, thirty ‘nines’, thirty-seven ‘sevens’, five ‘sixes’ and seventeen ‘fives’.226 A surviving papyrus detailed Ptolemy II’s instructions to fell 500 acacia, tamarisk and willow trees to provide the breastwork of his ‘long ships’. The fleet included twice as many smaller ships, with more than 4,000 in total in the Aegean.²²⁷ The bloated nautical appetites culminated in Ptolemy IV Philopatros (reigned 221-204 BCE) building a tessarakonteres, a giant 280 cubit-long (perhaps 410 feet) ‘forty’, allegedly requiring 4,000 rowers and 400 additional crew to ferry a further 2,850 armed men to war.²²⁸

Despite Plutarch’s enthusiasm for the performance of Demetrius’ fleet, there is little evidence that these later huge and unwieldy warships remained dominant at sea, and smaller agile vessels were more practical for most naval operations: the fast lembos and the light hemiolia and myoparones of the pirates, for example, or the trihemioliai the Rhodians used to counter them, because their nimble shallower-draughted ships could usefully navigate up rivers.²²⁹ The behemoths were probably also too slow to catch opponents in ramming or close-quarter manoeuvres, in which a dorudrepanon (‘spear-sickle’) might be used to cut enemy rigging, and they would have been vulnerable to the 2-metre long Athlit-style ram (embolos) sheathed in bronze that typically featured on the bows of triremes.²³⁰ Certainly the tactical manoeuvres used effectively by the Rhodians such as the diekplous, periplous and anastrophe, designed to shear away oars and punch a hole in enemy lines, outflank and expose vulnerable sterns with a quick avoidance turn, must have fallen by the wayside when two giants met.²³¹ The Hellenistic naval arms race was about prestige above functionality; this was floating court propaganda.

The construction techniques were soon applied to pleasure barges; Athenaeus described the Syracusia launched ca. 240 BCE and which had been designed by Archimedes for Hieron II (ca. 308-215 BCE) the Greek king of Syracuse who was his friend and possibly his cousin. It came complete with eight armed towers and catapults, gardens, a bathhouse, gymnasium and a temple to Aphrodite: the summit of Hellenistic extravagance. To construct the Syracusia, wood sufficient for sixty quadriremes was cut from Mount Etna and it took 300 craftsmen over a year to build it. A folly too large to dock anywhere but Alexandria, the unwieldy giant was gifted to Ptolemy III Euergetes (‘Benefactor’, reigned 246-222 BCE) and renamed ‘Alexandris’.²³² Guiding the ship to her final resting place was the Pharos, the lofty lighthouse that had been designed by Sostratus of Cnidus and which took twelve years to build on Pharos Island; standing for over sixteen hundred years, it has been aptly described as nothing short of more Ptolemaic ‘propaganda in stone’.²³³

A reconstruction of the Pharos in Alexandria. Engraving by F Adler, 1901.

Alongside the Diadokhoi coinage, portraits and naval power, emerged the encouragement of cult worship, a development termed a ‘… servile, despicable flattery, the product, not of any religious feeling, but of scepticism.’²³⁵ By the end of the 4^th BCE ‘the heroisation of living men was no longer a paradox’ and liturgies proliferated.²³⁶ In November 311 BCE, officially the seventh year of the reign of King Alexander IV, Ptolemy erected the Satrap Stele commemorating the victory by the ‘Great Viceroy’ (himself) over Demetrius at Gaza the previous year (though the never-mentioned Seleucus was at Ptolemy’s side); it described the Egyptian satrap-soon-to-be-king as ‘… strong in two arms, wise in spirit, mighty among men, of stout courage, of firm foot and resisting the furious.’²³⁷ It went on to eulogise his fighting ability, his restoration of Egyptian statues and temples, and it firmly placed Ptolemy in the pantheon of Egyptian gods and beside Alexander himself. The rhetoric must have recalled the eulogies he would have read on the Babylonian royal cylinders, or the inscription Onesicritus claimed to have seen on the tomb of Darius I; indeed, the descendants of Seleucus did have stone cylinders carved to tell their stories in the tradition of the Persian Great Kings.²³⁸

Demetrius, who modelled himself on Dionysus, and who now sported a many-coloured cloak depicting the heavens, was described by Plutarch as ‘… amorous, bibulous, warlike, munificent, extravagant, and domineering.’239 Upon entering Athens by chariot in 307 BCE, he turned the rooms of the Parthenon behind the statue of Athena into his lodging and became legendary for his womanising; he was ‘not a very suitable guest for the virgin goddess’, counselled the devout Plutarch.²⁴⁰ But the Hellenistic kings no longer feared impiety for they were becoming demi-gods themselves; when Demetrius returned ‘democracy’ to the Athenians, he and his father were hailed as God Saviours. Plutarch captured the moment: ‘They decreed Demetrius and Antigonus should be woven into the sacred robe, along with those of the gods; and the spot where Demetrius first alighted from his chariot they consecrated and covered with an altar, which they styled the altar of Demetrius Alighter.’²⁴¹

Enthused by the delivery of 150,000 medimnoi of grain – possibly from Antigonus’ grain-producing estates in Asia in an attempt to bypass the Ptolemaic monopoly – and now that Athens had sufficient timber for one hundred new ships, the city set about naming games, hymns and even a month, Demetrion, after the liberator (at the expense of the Athenian month of Munychion).²⁴² The city extended its traditional ten tribes to include two new orders: the Antigonis and the Demetrias, with the extravagant and fawning Stratocles proposing many of the obsequies that included golden statues.²⁴³ By ‘championing the case of the Greek cities’, the League of Islanders and then Scepsis erected altars and a cult statue to Antigonus from 311/310 BCE onwards; Samos, Delos and Sicyon followed with cults and games thrown in honour of both father and son.²⁴⁴ By 307/6 BCE the tide of approbation saw them attempt to unite Greeks under a new coalition, and by 302 BCE Antigonus and Demetrius, exploiting the anthem of ‘freedom’ once more, drafted their charter of a new Hellenic League (we have it in fragments) that would conveniently continue waging war against Cassander.²⁴⁵

Even philosophy did not escape their control; the historian Hieronymus (ca. 350s-250s BCE) who wrote a unique eyewitness account of these Diadokhoi Wars, now a long-time client of the Antigonids, witnessed the suppression of the Lyceum and its Peripatus as well as the competing Academy under a decree from Demetrius requiring all such schools to have a licence; the Lyceum had previously been supported (and no doubt milked for philosophical approbation) by Cassander’s regime, and this recalls Aristotle’s friendship with his father. It was Demosthenes’ nephew, Demochares, who was involved in the proposal to expel all philosophers from Attica, preferring oratorical eloquence over dangerous ideas that might undermine any continued veneer of Athenian democracy; it was a stance that seems to have been threaded through his own ‘rhetorical and combative’ writing.

Although Plutarch reported ‘the government was called an oligarchy, but in fact, was monarchical, for the power of Demetrius of Phalerum met with no restraint’, Strabo suggested Demetrius ‘did not put an end to democracy but even restored its former power’ during his tenure of Athens. Once a student of Theophrastus, Demetrius certainly supported the Peripatetics (and they reciprocated) and Cicero, Diodorus and Diogenes Laertius spoke positively of him.²⁵⁰ Peter Green more soberly concluded that the years of his rule ‘… are chiefly remarkable as evidence for what was liable to happen when a philosopher-king got a hand in real life.’²⁵¹ Demetrius was, nevertheless, sentenced to death in absentia.²⁵²

The eventual reinvasion of Asia Minor by Demetrius Poliorketes in 287/6 BCE, after being ousted from Macedonia, saw the city of Priene devastated when it held out for Lysimachus; when he finally managed to relieve it a cult was established and a bronze statue erected in Lysimachus’ image following Samothrace’s lead.²⁵³ As for the heroisation of Seleucus, in Syria where he tried to breed elephants, and in the deeper regions of his empire, Seleucus’ own cult came to hail him as Zeus Nikator (‘Victor’). It was here that his propaganda team claimed his mother, Laodice, conceived him with Apollo; his aforementioned anchor device allegedly depicted the carving on the ring gifted to her by the god for her compliance in the union.²⁵⁴ It may well have been at this point that the story of his retrieving Alexander’s diadem in the marshes of Babylon was spread, for that augured in his ‘vast kingdom’.²⁵⁵ Seleucus’ son, Antiochus I, gained a cult at Ilion after having come to terms with the Ionian League,²⁵⁶ and toasts were now being drunk from drinking vessels named the ‘Seleucis’ and (previously) the ‘Antigonis’; divine honours, sacrifices and even the linen headband ‘diadems’ were overshadowed as stephanephoria adorned the wreath-clad heads of the Diadokhoi.²⁵⁷

An artist’s impression of the siege of Rhodes by Demetrius Poliorketes in 305-304 BCE showing his famed Helepolis (‘city-taker’), the nine story armoured siege tower. The year-long siege failed to take the city and the left behind siege engine helped fund the construction of the bronze-plated Colossus built close to the harbour entrance. The strategic importance of Rhodes’ harbours, navy and ship building facilities saw the island courted and invaded through the Successor Wars.

How regally sanctioned were the epithets ‘city-taker’ (poliorketes), ‘saviour’ (soter), ‘benefactor’ (euergetes) that became attached to the Hellenistic kings, and whether they were simply popular sobriquets that stuck or were home-grown Ptolemaic devices (in the case of the latter two), remains open to debate, but few of them made it to their coinage; this is perhaps indicative that the kings themselves held loftier pretensions.²⁶⁰ In this environment it is likely the isegoria that saw common infantryman slap the king on the back, or even take him to task, probably disappeared, though Polybius suggested it resurfaced in the leaner days in Macedonia before its eventual fall to Rome.²⁶¹

If conservative Macedonia had not itself been ready for the oriental-style godhead, Cassander didn’t hesitate in joining the other Diadokhoi in the establishment of their eponymous cities and those of their wives and sons.²⁶³ So there emerged Thessalonica, a synoikismos of twenty-six smaller (and no doubt unwilling) towns, and Cassandreia. The perennially ill Cassander had expediently named two of his sons (by Thessalonice) Philip and Alexander ‘to establish a connection with the royal house’, for, as Carney points out, he was the ‘first non-Argead to attempt the permanent rule of Macedonia rather than maintaining an existing hereditary role’.²⁶⁴

Ironically, though somewhat symbolically in the context of Cassander’s role in the Pamphlet (T1, T2), their third son, Antipater (married to a daughter of Lysimachus), murdered Thessalonice for the favour she showed to the younger Alexander (married to a daughter of Ptolemy), though not before she had seen the two of them become kings (297-294 BCE) who fought over what soon became a Macedonia divided at the River Axius, care of Pyrrhus’ annexation of the western cantons closest to Epirus.²⁶⁵ Both of Cassander’s remaining sons were to eventually die at the hands of Demetrius Poliorketes and Lysimachus when advancing their own designs on the throne. It brought the first conflict to Macedonian soil since Cassander consolidated his position some twenty years before; by 294 BCE the power once wielded by the house of Alexander’s former regent, Antipater, was finally spent.²⁶⁶ Demetrius lasted on the throne until Lysimachus and Pyrrhus invaded from east and west in 288 BCE; once more the nation that had ruled from Epirus to India was domestically cut in two.

In Asia there emerged the eponymous successor cities of Ptolemais, the various Lysimachias, Apameas, an Arsinoea (at Ephesus’ expense), the Antigoneas, Seleucias, Laodiceas and others which formed part of the Seleucid Syrian stronghold. Seleucus would eventually found more than fifty settlements, naming nine of them after himself, three after his wife and Antiochia was named after his father; even ancient Achaemenid Susa was renamed Seleucia-on-the-Euleaus.²⁶⁷ Some were synoecisms, others katoikiai, military colonies like Alexander’s earlier settlements. Antigonus had destroyed much of Seleucus’ former capital at Babylon in the brutal Mesopotamian campaign of 310-309 BCE, so the sweetest moment for his heirs must have been transferring the population of Antigonus’ former capital, Celaenae (along with a Jewish population), to the close-by Apamea (often referred to with the epithet Kibotos, chest or coffer, suggesting its wealth) established by his son, Antiochus I.²⁶⁸

This was not the first major post-Alexander resettlement in the empire: Seleucus had already dismantled Antigonea in Upper Syria with its seventy-stade perimeter to found Antiochia, now full of resettled veterans.269 The site is probably identifiable with Thapsacus, the principal Euphrates River crossing of antiquity, a settlement that was possibly renamed Zeugma in the Roman period.²⁷⁰ Additionally, around 304 BCE, Antigonus had been planning to synoecise the Ionian League cities of Lebedos and Teos as part of his grand infrastructure plan (Lysimachus later moved the population of Lebedos to Ephesus in 292 BCE). In fact, Antigonus had ironically furrowed the hard-tilled ground in which Seleucus planted his own empire, a point often overlooked by history. Antigonus’ Hellenisation of Asia Minor and Syria formed what has been termed a ‘bridge between Philip and the Achaemenids’ in which his administrative reforms, city building, and colonisation had achieved far more than Alexander had managed in his tenure of Persia.²⁷¹

Only Egypt remained untrampled by the Diadokhoi Wars although its overseas possessions were tugged at from all sides. Of all the original generals who governed a fragment of Alexander’s empire, only Ptolemy and the old regent Antipater (and possibly Polyperchon who followed him) died in bed of what appear to be natural causes.²⁷² Arguably, Demetrius Poliorketes joined them, though in somewhat different circumstances; after one reversal of fortune too many, he submitted himself to Seleucus’ mercy and requested ‘… a petty empire among the barbarians in which he might end his days.’²⁷³ His son, Antigonus II Gonatas, pleaded for his life, while Lysimachus offered 2,000 talents for his immediate execution; a supposedly indignant Seleucus (now Demetrius’ elder son-in-law) had him quarantined in luxury in the Syrian Chersonese until he drank himself to death in 283 BCE.²⁷⁴ As with his father before him, and as perhaps for all the Diadokhoi who had accompanied Alexander on campaign, a kingdom in Asia was irresistible and more attractive than Macedonia itself.

‘O CHILD OF BLIND AND AGED ANTIGONUS, WHAT ARE THESE REGIONS WHITHER WE ARE COME?’

Demetrius is said to have reflected upon his greatest reversals of fortune with, ‘my flame thou fannest, indeed, and thou seemest to quench me, too’, recalling a tragic line from Aeschylus. He should have stuck to the sea where his power was unmatched: as an ancient proverb warned, ‘For useless is a dolphin’s might upon dry ground.’²⁷⁵

Viewed from afar, Demetrius’ efforts to re-establish himself across the Aegean look ill-conceived and futile; his disgruntled troops, being dragged to the East in one last bid for supremacy, are said to have confronted him with lines adapted from Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus: ‘O child of blind and aged Antigonus, what are these regions whither we are come?’276 And yet there must have been a core of lingering support for him through his father’s veterans in Asia Minor, moreover, he partook of a generation that knew it took no more than a lucky javelin strike, a penetrating cavalry charge or a defecting crack regiment to alter the fate of an empire. Demetrius was buried in his eponymous city in Thessaly and his five, or possibly six children, took his line down to King Perseus (reigned 179-168 BCE) who was finally subdued by Rome.²⁷⁷

Ptolemy I Soter passed away in the same year as Demetrius, 283 BCE, when his own Will was surely read out; Alexander’s general, biographer and rumoured half-brother knew full well that no king leaves his life’s work with a quip ‘to the strongest’, and that no father quoted the curse of Oedipus to sons holding sharpened swords.²⁷⁸ He nominated power not to his eldest son, Ptolemy Keraunos (‘Thunderbolt’), who was conceived with Cassander’s sister, Eurydice, but to his already co-regent second son, Ptolemy II Philadelphos, who had been co-ruler since 285 BCE. Some years earlier, Philadelphos had murdered another half-brother (again born to Eurydice), who may well have been in league with Keraunos, for inciting the Cypriots to revolt.²⁷⁹

Ptolemy I Soter may have married Eurydice as early as 322 BCE, and he appears to have had repudiated her (or sidelined her, if not formally divorced her) by 316 BCE in favour of Berenice, Eurydice’s lady-in-waiting who ‘had the greatest influence and was foremost in virtue and understanding’; Pyrrhus had cunningly singled her out for his affections when he was a hostage in Egypt, knowing she held sway with Ptolemy.²⁸⁰ Berenice was, nevertheless, still from the Antipatrid house; her paternal grandfather was the brother of Antipater. The displaced Eurydice, who was based at Miletus in Caria by 287 BCE, had brokered a useful alliance with Demetrius Poliorketes by offering him her daughter, Ptolemais; she had been pledged to him as early as in 298 BCE, supposedly on the instigation of Seleucus when he married Demetrius’ daughter, Stratonice.²⁸¹

Following the accession of Ptolemy II Philadelphos in 282 BCE, the rebuffed Keraunos was forced to seek a career with Lysimachus, then married to Philadelphos’ sister, Arsinoe; with the alliance came the use of his navy which was later put to good use against Antigonus II Gonatas in 280 BCE. After a series of dynastic intrigues in Thrace that saw Lysimachus execute his own son – the popular heir apparent Agathocles (Keraunos’ brother-in-law) – Keraunos next sought employ with the still ambitious though aged Seleucus, a position from which he could potentially launch his bid for Macedonia or Egypt.²⁸²

Seleucus saw an opportunity to intervene in Thracian politics, perhaps noting the recent defeats Lysimachus had suffered at the hands of the Getae, as well as the waning support for his regime after Agathocles’ death; Seleucus was, no doubt, also influenced by the pleas of assistance from Agathocles’ widow, Lysandra, a daughter of Ptolemy I Soter and Eurydice.283 Seleucus and Lysimachus, the former Bodyguards of Alexander and once colleagues in arms, faced off at Curopedion near Sardis in 281 BCE in the ‘last major battle of the Diadokhoi’. The Thracian dynast, once married himself to a sister of Cassander (Nicaea), and who had by then tragically lost fifteen children, was by now seventy-four, and Seleucus was seventy-seven, though both still ‘had the fire of youth and the insatiable desire for power’.²⁸⁴ Lysimachus was felled by a javelin and left to rot on the battlefield until a Pharsalian, curiously named Thorax, saw to his burial. The identification is curious because a same-named Thessalian (from Larissa) is said to have stood over Antigonus at Ipsus twenty years before.²⁸⁵

The temporary vacuum in Asia Minor allowed Philetaerus, Lysimachus’ resourceful eunuch general, to establish the Attalid dynasty at Pergamum on the cone-shaped mountain peak that had acted as a treasury for 9,000 of Lysimachus’ talents. Destined to build a great library and enter into isopolity with strategically aligned cities, Pergamum was now watched over by Athena, Demeter, Heracles and son, and no doubt by the heirs of Seleucus with whom Philetaerus had intrigued.²⁸⁶

Lysimachus’ widow, Arsinoe, encouraged to marry her half-brother, Ptolemy Keraunos, following Persian and Phaoronic custom, was clearly dissatisfied at his growing power; she conspired against him and it precipitated his retaliatory murder of her two youngest sons. She fled to Egypt and married her own full-brother, Ptolemy II, becoming Queen Arsinoe II and triggering the use of his epithet, Philadelphos.

Ptolemy Keraunos, then based at Lysimachia, showed his gratitude to Seleucus by murdering him and having the army pronounce him King of Macedonia based at the new capital, Cassandreia. He lasted two years and was decapitated in the Gallic invasions in 279 BCE; Eurydice’s second son, Meleager, lasted two months until he was forced to relinquish the crown. Antipater Etesias, the son of Cassander’s brother, soon followed them with a reign lasting just forty-five days – ‘as long as the Etesian Winds blew’. There followed an interregnum in which Sosthenes become strategos and de facto ruler of Macedonia from 279-277 BCE (he was possibly a former general of Lysimachus with no ancestral or dynastic claim to the throne) until he was overwhelmed by the still-at-large Gauls under Brennus. The next few years saw an ‘independent’ Cassandreia fall to the ‘bloody’ tyrant Apollodorus (through 279-276 BCE) the leader of a local proletariat revolt.²⁸⁷

Antigonus was, nevertheless, temporarily displaced by Pyrrhus who defeated him at the Aous River in 274 BCE, at which point his authority was restricted to the coastal cities whilst Pyrrhus controlled Aegae, a lamentable period that witnessed the plundering of the royal tombs by his Gallic mercenaries. The Epirote, who died at Argos in 272 BCE, was surely paying for their services with the promise of royal loot, a sad state of affairs when considering that he had fought alongside Antigonus’ father (Demetrius Poliorketes, by then Pyrrhus’ brother-in-law) at Ipsus.²⁸⁹ Notably, Gonatas had previously retained a significant Gallic contingent himself and he was to rely on their services again; this was the precursor for Pyrrhus hiring his own Gauls.²⁹⁰ Allegedly making little attempt to stop the plundering at Aegae, Pyrrhus was perhaps testing King Perdiccas I’s prophecy that held: ‘As long as the relics of his posterity should be buried there, the crown would remain in the family.’²⁹¹

This extremely compressed and necessarily simplified summary of the intrigues within intrigues of the Macedonian royal lines through the two decades between the ‘Battle of the Dynasts’ at Ipsus in 301 BCE, and the national divisions following the final gasp of the first generation Successor Wars at Curopedion in 281 BCE (‘the plain of Cyrus’), portrays a period ‘lacking none in dishonorable comparison’, and yet it was a period in which all the heads of the Diadokhoi kingdoms became related to one another.²⁹² Plutarch’s Life of Demetrius and Life of Pyrrhus paint a vivid picture of the Hellenenistic world as one extended family at war, when fathers were challenged by jealous sons and intriguing daughters whose internecine rivalries and alliances were secured by a ‘labyrinthine’ series of intermarriages. The era that followed was just as dynastically toxic as the epigonoi of the Successors commenced their bids to become primi inter pares, with much of its early detail neatly captured in Nepos’ De regibus Exterarum Gentium.²⁹³

Plutarch soberly reflected on the extraordinary state of affairs, possibly following the sentiment of Duris who was likely responsible for much of the scandaleuse attached to the period:

Euripides had forewarned: ‘There is a something terrible and past all cure, when quarrels arise ‘twixt those who are near and dear’;²⁹⁵ this had truly become what Hesiod and Ovid (43 BCE-ca.18 CE) described as the bloody ‘age of iron’, when ‘loyalty, truth and conscience went into exile’.²⁹⁶

In The Prince, Machiavelli titled his fourth chapter Why the Kingdom of Darius, conquered by Alexander, did not rebel against his successors after his death. It supposedly illustrated how a principality, once conquered, is easily held if all are subservient to the monarch. He was, however, unconsciously arguing that Alexander’s successors, those who ‘ruled securely’, represented his second of two scenarios: nobles whose authority was already established independent of their king’s. Machiavelli may have been inspired by Polybius who first voiced the suspicion that an ‘Alexandro-centric’ universe was in fact contrived, for he too considered much of the credit for Alexander’s success was due to Philip II and that retinue of ‘helpers and friends’:²⁹⁷

… one could scarcely find terms adequate to characterise the bravery, industry and in general, the virtue of these men who indisputably by their energy and daring raised Macedonia from the rank of petty kingdom to that of the greatest and most glorious monarchy in the world.²⁹⁸

Polybius, influencing (or influenced by) the Stoic Panaetius (ca. 185-110 BCE),²⁹⁹ appears to have inspired Trogus too, for between brooding images of Macedonian dissent, his epitomiser, Justin, retains an otherwise unlikely encomium to the Diadokhoi:

Justin also captured the resulting conundrum: ‘Their very equality inflamed their discord, no one being so far superior to the rest, that any other would submit to him.’

Despite the remarkable Diadokhoi and their ambitious offspring, Macedonian superiority did pass irrevocably west in 190 BCE when the brothers Scipio Asiaticus and Africanus, along with their ally, Eumenes II of Pergamum (ruled 197-154 BCE, Polybius would later delicately argue his cause), defeated Antiochus III of the Seleucid line at the Battle of Magnesia in Lydia.³⁰¹ Some believe that Hannibal, seeking sanctuary from a common foe, was present at the conflict that would, just a decade after the conclusion to the Second Punic War (ended 201 BCE), give Rome passage to Alexander’s former empire. If Hannibal was in Lydia it didn’t affect the outcome: the 15,000-talent war indemnity levied on Antiochus was crippling, as was the loss of much of Asia Minor. The Seleucids never recovered and Rome soon became the undisputed power in the Near East.

As the Seleucid Empire fragmented, the legacy of Alexander’s conquest did manage to hold out in the former eastern and upper satrapies in the form of Graeco-Bactrian kingdoms in the dynasties of Diodotus Soter, Euthydemus and Eucratides ‘the Great’ (broadly spanning 250-125 BCE). These principalities were centred in Bactria-Sogdia, Margiana and Arachosia, and in the Graeco-Indian kingdoms they fought to the east, extending into the Punjab until the close of the Hellenistic era. No doubt the descendants of the less rebellious Greek mercenaries settled by Alexander had participated in their founding, providing a cohesion that saw an uninterrupted arrival of Silk Road traders in the Levant.

Ai Khanoum on the Oxus River at the northern border of Afghanistan (possibly the site of ‘Alexandria on the Oxus’ or perhaps the later city of Eucratidia established ca. 280 BCE), and other recently excavated sites, have revealed Corinthian columns and tiles, huge Greek theatres, amphorae and sculptures, inscriptions and coin hoards with striking images, as well as textual evidence of Platonist philosophical doctrines. They paint a picture of remarkable Hellenic tenacity in the face of Parthian expansion and nomadic hoards, the southward migrations of the Scythians and the tribes of the Yuezhi from Central Asia (modern northwestern China).³⁰² In 1909 inscriptions on the Heliodorus Column in central India, dating to ca. 113 BCE and Graeco-Indian rule of King Antialcidas Nikephoros (‘victorious’), were fully deciphered; Heliodorus had been a Greek ambassador to Taxila in the modern Punjab.³⁰³

Rome was looking formidable; Hannibal had been defeated in 202 BCE and the young charismatic Philip V, likened to Alexander but loved throughout Greece (before turning into ‘a savage tyrant’, according to Polybius),³⁰⁶ was forced into the Second Macedonian War (200-197 BCE) which concluded at Cynoscephalae in Thessaly in 197 BCE, when the sarissa ranks finally broke. Thessaly was lost to the Senate’s legions espousing a familiar refrain: ‘the protection of Greek freedom’. The ratio of Macedonian cavalry to infantry had also decreased from its employment in Alexander’s early campaign army, perhaps again due to financial restraints, though this reduction in numbers exposed the vulnerable flanks of the pike phalanx. The Macedonian defeat, which included a 1,000-talent indemnity, had been portentously ‘predicted’ by an earthquake the year before.³⁰⁷

King Perseus faced Rome in the Third Macedonian War twenty-six years later (171-168 BCE), but like Philip V before him, he could only muster a modest core of stratiotai politikoi, home-grown citizen soldiers, so that Gallic, Thracian and Illyrian mercenaries were to be found in greater proportions in the ranks. The eclectic composition was not unique; Gauls even made it into the Ptolemaic armies of Egypt, some surely coming from the kingdom of Galatia formed after Gallic marauders made their way to Asia Minor in the wake of their earlier invasion of Thrace and Macedonia. With them had come the wider use of lighter and cooler chainmail, which replaced breastplates in hotter climes, and there arrived the infantry regiments of thureophoroi who fought with far larger oval shields that may have been inspired by Celtic or even Italian design.308

After successes in Thessaly in 171 BCE and inconclusive campaigning after, came the battle at Pydna on 22^nd June 168 BCE announced by a further prodigy.³⁰⁹ To raise support for an invasion, Rome had lodged complaints against Perseus with the Delphic Amphictionic League. The date of the battle at Pydna (and the city’s exact location) is once again disputed following controversy over a lunar eclipse, a sine qua non when reinforcing how formative a clash of arms had been.³¹⁰

Plutarch recorded that: ‘Taking command of the [Roman] forces in Macedonia, and finding them talkative and impertinently busy, as though they were all in command, Aemilius Paullus issued out his orders that they should have only ready hands and keen swords, and leave the rest to him.’³¹¹ Their trust was well placed; according to Livy, the general had wisely employed the lettered tribune, Gaius Sulpicius Gallus, to explain the celestial phenomenon in scientific terms to the troops who had been clashing bronze utensils and waving firebrands at the heavens ‘to avert fear’.³¹² Gallus’ speech must have been well received for he was inspired to write a book on eclipses which no doubt came to reside in the first ever library in Rome, stocked with scrolls from Perseus’ collection that would soon be liberated from Pella.

The bristling ranks of the sarissa bearers were still kataplektikos (broadly, ‘awe inspiringly intimidating’) and the most terrifying ever seen by the highly educated and Greek-speaking Lucius Aemilius Paullus ‘Macedonicus’ whose father had died at Cannae fighting Hannibal, for even now the Macedonian two-handed pike and its leaf-shaped blade could still (Plutarch believed) pierce Roman shields and armour. How the battle commenced is not clear though it is said Paullus waited for the sun to shine in enemy eyes, or he provoked the Macedonians to attack when entrails were not sufficiently propitious for him to do so himself; Livy blamed a skirmish over an escaped horse for the start of full-scale fighting.³¹³

Although the Macedonians initially had the better of it on level ground, the pike-bearers’ tight formation, essential to success, was eventually prised open by uneven terrain they unwisely advanced on, by Roman flanking maniples, and by elephants; Macedonian morale finally fell once Perseus and his cavalry fled the field on the pretext of sacrificing to Heracles within the city walls.³¹⁴ After the Macedonian king made good his escape with his ally, King Cotys (and his Odrisaeans on his tail), there was little to stop Rome marching on the capital. According to Livy’s unique description, the site for Pella’s fortifications had been chosen well:

Strabo reported that the lake-fronted city, already the largest in Macedonia in Xenophon’s day, lay some 120 stades (approximately 14 miles) from the Thermaic Gulf up the still navigable Ludias River fed by an offshoot of the River Axius.³¹⁶ But centuries before, when King Archelaus first surveyed the site, it was probably rather closer to being a seaport: sufficiently maritime for trade (and loading timber and pitch for Athenian ships) and yet protected from an invading fleet.³¹⁷ But despite Livy stating ‘it can be guarded with great ease’, the stone capital at Pella, and the spiritual capital at Aegae (some 19 miles from Pydna as the crow flies) were pillaged and largely destroyed.³¹⁸

Perseus fled from Pella to Amphipolis and then on to Galepsus in Thrace by sea. But at Amphipolis, ‘lacerated by his misfortunes’ and having slain his two treasurers in Pella, he initially let his badly needed Cretan supporters take riches worth 60 talents; he subsequently demanded the return of ‘certain objects made from the spoils captured by Alexander’. Perseus ‘… lamented to his friends that through ignorance he had suffered some of the gold plate of Alexander the Great to fall into the hands of the Cretans, and with tearful supplications he besought those who had it to exchange it for money.’

An extraordinary passage in Justin dealing with Antigonus II Gonatas’ seduction of the Gauls (who were ‘struck with the vast quantity of gold and silver set before them’) before battle near Lysimachia in 277 BCE, and those in Diodorus and Plutarch detailing the aftermath of Perseus’ defeat, provide evidence that a still substantial hoard of riches from Alexander’s campaigns must have remained in the Pellan vaults; astoundingly, it appears that even in the ruinously expensive Successor Wars the Macedonian kings dared not coin the conqueror’s gold and silver campaign spoils from Persia.

Whilst Livy stated that Macedonia was (initially) to remain ‘free’ and with her mines unexploited, the country was divided into four civic regions (merides) and half of the royal tribute was now directed to Rome; in addition, all nobles and their children over fifteen years of age were to be shipped to Italy.³²² Cicero was clearer on the consequences: mines were confiscated and over 5,600 talents, equivalent to some fifty-six years of tribute now set at 100 talents per year, ended up in Rome; the riches, he claimed, ‘did away with the need for a tax on property… for all time to come’. Although Diodorus focused on Aemilius’ lenient treatment of the defeated, Polybius captured the more calamitous detail: some 150,000 of the inhabitants of allied Epirus were sold into slavery and seventy cities were destroyed.³²³

The remaining Macedonian-governed domains of the Ptolemies and Seleucids were under the threat of direct occupation too. As blades met at Pydna, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (‘god manifest’, though Polybius used Epimanes, ‘the mad one’, due to his eccentric behaviour) proclaimed himself king of Egypt to conclude the Sixth Syrian War; Polybius had been chosen as part of the Achaean embassy to Antiochus a decade before when in his early twenties.³²⁴ Alexandria, surrounded by hostile troops, appealed to Rome which sent no army but the solitary Gaius Popilius Laenas as ambassador to demand the Seleucid withdrawal; standing alone in Antiochus’ path, he drew his famous line in the sand about the Seleucid king standing outside the besieged city. Antiochus requested time to consider his position, but Popilius demanded an answer on withdrawal before he stepped over the line, or he would deem it a declaration of war on a ‘friend’ of Rome.

Surely recalling that his predecessor, Antiochus III (then an ally of the Greek Achaean League), had been defeated at Magnesia twenty-two years before, Epiphanes quickly withdrew, allowing the previously hostaged Ptolemy VI Philometor (his nephew who had previously asked for help from the Achaean League) and his wife Cleopatra II (Ptolemy’s sister in Pharaonic style), along with his younger brother Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II (nicknamed Physkon, ‘potbelly’ or ‘sausage’ for his obesity, ca. 182-116 BCE), to jointly rule. Even Greek cities like Lampsacus, close to the ruins of Troy, appealed to their ‘kinsmen’ in ‘the Rome of Aeneas’ for protection against their Seleucid overlords. Clearly, all including the ‘indolent’ Egyptian pharaohs, now knew the consequences of facing the legions of Rome.³²⁵

By 146 BCE Macedonia finally became an official Roman province and Lucian would later describe Pella (ca. 180 CE) as ‘insignificant, with very few inhabitants’.³²⁷ The Koinon Makedonon, the nation’s traditional Common Assembly, became a Roman-supervised concilium although the new masters did learn the Greek language to administer their spoils, whereas the Greeks showed little interest in Latin.³²⁸ As one scholar put it, the Hellenes had given the world a culture, now Rome would establish a civilisation.³²⁹ Greece would not see her freedom again until 1832.³³⁰

Aemilius Paullus, the architect of the victory at Pydna, was the father of the also-present seventeen-year-old Scipio Aemilianus, blood stained and ‘carried away by the uncontrollable pleasure of the victory…’ He would oversee the fall of Carthage in 146 BCE, the same year wealthy Corinth was plundered, by which time Rome had become something of a museum of Greek art and antiquities; even the twenty-five bronze equestrian statues Alexander had Lysippus fashion in memory of the Companions who fell at the Granicus River battle would be collected from Dion by Quintus Caecilius Metellus ‘Macedonicus’.³³¹

Escorted back to Rome after victory at Pydna were 250 waggons of booty, a chained King Perseus, and Metrodorus the Athenian philosopher as a tutor for Aemilius Paullus’ sons.³³² Also taken were 1,000 notable Achaeans as good-behaviour hostages;³³³ they included Polybius, the politically-connected cavalry commander (hipparchos) from Megalopolis in Arcadia, and who, as a member of the Achaean League (in fact second-in-command), was technically in league with the Italians (since 198 BCE when the league abandoned Philip V, a former ally), though he was on the wrong side of the equally hostile Callicrates and his policy of ‘abject subservience and obsequiousness to Rome’.³³⁴ For Polybius’ father had advocated strict neutrality in the Roman war with Macedonia and he was a victim of that political divide, thus deemed of suspect loyalty.³³⁵

Recalling the battle at Pydna when he later penned his Histories, and summing a fate that saw King Perseus die in prison in Rome, Polybius claimed the last ever dynastic Macedonian king recalled a prophecy that the goddess Fortuna favoured the Macedones only until she favoured others:

So then often and bitterly did Perseus call to mind the words of Demetrius of Phalerum. For he, in his treatise on Fortuna, wishing to give men a striking instance of her mutability asks them to remember the times when Alexander overthrew the Persian Empire, and speak as follows: ‘For if you consider not countless years or many generations, but merely these last fifty years, you will read in them the cruelty of Fortune. I ask you, do you think that fifty years ago either the Persians and the Persian king or the Macedonians and the king of Macedon, if some god had foretold the future to them, would ever have believed that at the time when we live, the very name of the Persians would have perished utterly – the Persians who were masters of almost the whole world – and that the Macedonians, whose name was formerly almost unknown, would now be the lords of it all? But nevertheless this Fortune, who never compacts with life, who always defeats our reckoning by some novel stroke; she who ever demonstrates her power by foiling our expectations, now also, as it seems to me, makes it clear to all men, by endowing the Macedonians with the whole wealth of Persia, that she has but lent them these blessings until she decides to deal differently with them.’ And this now happened in the time of Perseus. Surely Demetrius, as if by the mouth of some god, uttered these prophetic words.³³⁷

Demetrius’ words were repeated almost word for word by Diodorus and also précised by Livy.³³⁸ So no one in Rome could fail to acknowledge Alexander’s part in its own conquest of the East, but as Polybius sensed, and as Diodorus, Nepos, and Plutarch knew from their own research of the era, the remarkable Diadokhoi who became the first Hellenistic kings, had inherited more than a knowledge of sarissa drills and flying wedges from their Argead mentors: they had learned Macedonian statecraft.

What is beyond doubt is the ambition, ruthlessness and tenacity of Alexander’s successors. If their king’s last words in Babylon had truly rejected a continuation of his line and had cynically invited them to slug it out for the throne, diadems would have adorned the Diadokhoi and their coins more than a decade before they did.

The Tyche of Antioch, a Roman copy of a bronze by Eutychides, a pupil of Lysippus, dating to ca. 300 BCE and the founding of the city of Antioch by the Seleucids. The goddess of fortune is portrayed in mural crown sitting on a rock by the Orontes River represented by a swimming boy, while holding stalks of grain signifying prosperity. The depiction proved so popular that it was copied by a number of cities and on coins. Her divine roots were however obscure: Hesiod related Tyche to Tethys and Oceanus, whereas Pindar claimed she was the most powerful sister of the Three Fates. Now in the Galleria dei Candelabri, Vatican Museum.

5.Diodorus 19.1 for the saying. ‘Slay the tallest stalks to protect the crop’ is rooted in Aristotle Politics 3.1284a, and also Herodotus 5.92 ff; in Herodotos’ version it is Thrasybulus giving the advice to Periander, and the reverse in Aristotle’s rendering. Livy 1.54.

6.Aristotle Politics 3.1284a; the text continued ‘… indeed a man would be ridiculous if he tried to legislate for them, for probably they would say what in the story of Antisthenes the lions said when the hares made speeches in the assembly and demanded that all should have equality.’

7.The dating of the Constitution of the Athenians is uncertain as themes relating to the 330s and 320s BCE appear to be present; the work may even have been a later student compilation. Aristotle’s Politics appeared sometime between his return to Athens in 335 BCE when he founded the Lyceum, and before 323 BCE.

8.Quoting Justin 8.1.1-3 on Philip’s oppression of Greek liberty. The prytaneion was the room in which the central hearth housing sacred fire was kept. Each city-state, or even town, had one and it came to represent the town hall or magistrates’ office. Thucydides 2.15 and Aristotle’s Politics referred to the prytaneion of Athens where the archons resided, though its location is uncertain and may have changed through time.

10.Demosthenes Second Olynthiac 8.11, 9.50 and 18.235 for Philip’s campaigning ability. As the Spartans used enslaved helots to farm their land, they were free to campaign throughout the year, religious festivals aside.

12.The Myrmidons were a legendary race commanded by Achilles and renowned as skilled warriors. Iliad 1.179-180 for the Myrmidons being referred to as Achilles’ hetairoi.

13.Justin 13.1-4 commented that after Alexander’s death the Bodyguards became princes instead of prefects.

14.A loose translation of the sentiment in Cicero Laelius De Amicitia 17.64, for example the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1923, translates this as ‘When Fortune’s fickle the faithful friend is found’.

15.Lucullas became so renowned for his banqueting that we now use ‘Lucullan’ when referring to ‘lavish’ or ‘gourmet’. Plutarch Lucullus claimed be had a budget of 50,000 drachmas for nightly dining.

17.‘Kata polemon’, broadly ‘to do with war’; see I Worthington in Carney-Ogden (2010) p 171 and footnote 29 for a discussion of its use.

18.Demosthenes First Olynthiac 1.4; discussed in Anson (2013) p 19. The list of Macedonian kings traditionally includes legendary names such as Caranus, but additional uncertainty exists over whether Philip’s nephew, Amyntas IV, briefly came to the throne or whether Ptolemy of Alorus had, or simply acted as regent.

20.Cicero De Officiis 1: Moral Goodness 90.26, translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1913.

21.Musgrave-Prag-Neave-Lane Fox (2010) section 9.1.3 for Amyntas IV’s possible reign. Justin 7.5.9 for the people demanding Philip take on the kingship.

24.Iphicrates (in 368-365 BCE) and Timotheus (in 363, 360 and 359 BCE) had both tried to take the city without success. Carney-Ogden (2010) p 74 for Heracles’ former possession of the city, according to Speusippus. Hatzopoulos (1996) p 184 argues Amphipolis remained ‘theoretically independent’ after the siege; epigraphic evidence suggests a high Ionic Greek population remained. See chapter titled The Rebirth of the Wrath of Peleus’ Son for more on Heraclid origins of the Argeads.

27.Plutarch 9.4, Athenaeus 13.557d declared it a love match. Anson (2013) p 53 for discussion. Athenaeus 13.557b-e for a rundown of Philip’s wives and the political motivation behind the marriages.

29.Diodorus 16.95.2-5 suggested that Philip was more proud of his strategy and diplomatic successes then his valour in actual battle. For Philip’s guile see discussion in Thomas (2007) p 83. Justin 8.2.3-5 for Philip leading a coalition of Macedonians, Thessalians and Thebans. The Amphyctionic Council represented thirteen Greek peoples; Anson (2013) p 71. Flower (1994) pp 36-37 for Theopompus’ book on the Sacred War stolen artifacts.

30.Diodorus 16.60.1-4 for Philip and the Amphyctionic League. Hammond (1994) pp 168-169 for Philip’s expeditionary force and its treatment of cities.

32.Hatzopoulos (1996) p 476 for the expansions under Philip. According to Thucydides 2.99.2 these Upper Macedonian regions were self-governing previously; detail in Anson (2004) p 214 and p 221 for ongoing autonomy.

34.‘Everything north of Hellas’ was an observation by Justin 7.2.13-14 and quoting Hammond (1994) p 137.

35.Justin 9.7.2-7 for the hostility between Olympias and Philip and him painting a picture that Philip’s assassination was contrived by Olympias. See chapter titled The Reborn Wrath of Peleus’ Son for fuller discussion of the intrigues of Olympias and Alexander in the final years of Philip’s reign.

36.Diodorus 16.92.5 for the display of wealth in the procession of statues of the twelve Olympian gods and a thirteenth of Philip that preceded the wedding; following the conclusion of Anson (2013) p 91. Hatzopoulos (1996) p 272 for the wedding coinciding with the panegyris. Aelian 8.15 for the slave calls. Carney (2006) pp 1001-101 and footnote 131 for varying views on Philip’s quest for divinity.

37.Discussion by AB Bosworth in Carney-Ogden (2010) p 99 for the development of the foot companions under the sons of Amyntas.

38.Diodorus 17.17.5, 17.118.1, 18.12.1 for the implication that Antipater was general of Europe; presumably this meant Greece and a ‘greater’ Macedonia comprising the control of Thrace, Epirus, Illyria and adjacent conquered regions; see Blackwell (1999) p 36 footnote 10 for discussion.

39.Diodorus 17.17.3-5 for the total troop numbers accompanying Alexander to Asia and left in Macedonia, some 12,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry; Anson (2013) p 44 for discussion.

40.Discussed in Carney (1995) pp 370-371 quoting Diodorus 17.118.1 for strategos and 17.17.5 for hegemonia. Plutarch 9.1 for the kurios role Alexander held under Philip II and 68.3 for suggesting a non-exclusive power of Antipater in Alexander’s own absence. Fuller discussion in Anson (1992).

41.Full discussion of Olympias’ role and her relationship with Antipater in Blackwell (1999) pp 81-131.

43.Quoting the definition in Arrian 3.16.10, Penguin Books edition, 1971, p 174, editor’s footnote 42.

44.Hornblower (1981) pp 34-35 and pp 76-80 on the Hellenistic use of terms associated with Alexander’s army and general staff. Livy 44.41.2 for Livy’s confusing use of caertracti for peltasts; discussed in Snodgrass (1967) p 123. Also see Sekunda (2012) pp 11-12 for Livy’s military terminologies.

45.The various titles are presented and discussed in Carney (1995) p 373 and fuller discussion in Anson (1992) pp 39-41.

47.The armour was discovered in a chamber tomb at Dendra near Mycenae in May 1960. This shield design was termed dipylon after the group of vases depicting them found at the Dipylon Cemetery in Athens. Similarly the Corinthian helmet is found on Corinthian pottery and mentioned at Herodotus 4.180.

48.Snodgrass (1967) p 14 ff for Mycenaean shaft-grave funds, armour and weaponry. The Hittite monopoly on iron production discussed in Snodgrass (1967) p 36.

49.The comparison made in Snodgrass (1967) p 24. The Louis XIV armour is exhibited in the Musée D’Artillerie in Paris.

50.Hoplites were frequently depicted as holding two spears in 7^th century works of art, perhaps for throwing and for thrusting; discussed in Hanson (1991) p 16; p 65 for the ‘codification’. The cuirass would have been worn over a chitiniskos, a linen tunic to stop chaffing; Anderson (1970) p 25.

51.Snodgrass (1967) p 48 ff for the development of the hoplite and p 67 for shield designs.

52.Quoting Plutarch Pelopidas 2.1 for the analogy to the body and Snodgrass (1967) p 49 for ‘rigid framework’.

53.For the respective formations of the Thebans and Spartans at Leuctra, see Plutarch Pelopidas 22-23, Xenophon Hellenika 6.4.12 (6.4.14 for their shoving the Spartans back), 6.4.17; Spartan manoeuvres at 4.2.20, 4.3.18, 6.5.18-19 and discussed in Hanson (1991) p 104. There is some confusion on where the Sacred Band hit the Spartan line as they appear to have run ahead of the Theban advance to catch the Spartans off-guard; some scholars suggest they hit the Spartan flank. Devine (1983) p 204 for the infantry wedge. The traditional phalanx face-off arrangement disappeared in favour of oblique advance, refusals and deliberate retreats, as later employed by Philip and Alexander. The death toll in battle also rose from such strategies where ‘shock assaults’ were used. Diodorus 15.52-56 detailed the battle at Leuctra but did not mention the Sacred Band, curious when he referenced the Carthaginian Sacred Battalion in the same book.

55.Thucydides 2.100.5, Xenophon Hellenika 5.2.38-5.3.6 for cavalry use in the Macedonian state and following the summation of Hatzopoulos (1996) p 267. Thucydides 2.100.2 for Archelaus’ reforms; discussed in Hatzopoulos (1996) p 469.

58.Tarn (1948) pp 138-139 for the origins of the Companion Cavalry. Sekunda (1984) p 5 for 600 in number originally. Arrian 6.21.3 seems to have used the term Close Companion as the elite corps of the Companion Cavalry, thus the royal agema as per Arrian 4.24.1. The numbers given by Diodorus 17.17.4 and Arrian 6.14.4 suggest the royal squadron was doubled in size and later possibly trimmed at 300; Eumenes and Antigonus had units of 300 with them at Paraetacenae; Diodorus 19.29.5, 19.28.3. The purple cloaks suggested by the Alexander Sarcophagus and Diodorus 17.77.5; discussed in Sekunda (1984) p 17. Arrian 1.14.6, 1.28.3, 5.13.4 for the suggestion of ‘daily’ positions of command; following Hatzopoulos (1996) p 244 for the observation. ‘Upper class’ was a term attached to cavalry under Alexander by Anaximenes of Lampsacus; FGrH 72 F 4.

59.Arrian 4.24.1 and 4.24.2 for ilai making 1 hipparchaia. Arrian 6.27.6 and 7.24.4 for hekatostyes. Sekunda (1984) p 31 for the infantry reforms in Asia and B Bosworth in Carney-Ogden (2010) pp 94-102 for hekatostyes and lochoi. Anaximenes FGrH 72 F4 from Harpocration’s Lexikon.

60.Markle (1977) proposed 120-men wedges and discussed in Gabriel (2010) p 219 though Sekunda (1984) p 14 refers to Aelian Tacticus for forty-nine men. Aelian Tacticus 39.2-6 credited Philip with the development of the wedge; this probably means ‘refinement’. Arrian 3.18.5 mentioned a tetrarchia of cavalry. The tetrarchia discussed in Roisman-Worthington (2010) p 453.

61.Aelian Tacticus 18.2-4, Asclepiodotus Tactics 7.2-3 and 7.6.7 for the wedge development by the Scythians and Thracians and Jason’s development of the diamond formation. Devine (1983) for the origins of the wedge infantry and cavalry formation in detail and Lenden (2005) pp 98-102 for the Rhombus formation and its advantages.

63.Hammond (1994) pp 148-150 and Gabriel 2010 pp 214-222 for in depth analysis of the battle. Green (1974) p 74 for Athens’ inactivity.

64.Pynknosis is an ‘intermediary’ compactness in which phalangites were separated by perhaps 3 feet and synaspismos represented a more closely packed order.

65.Diodorus 16.3.2 and Iliad 13.131 ff for the compacted ranks at Troy; see the discussion in Lenden (2005) p 11. Hector’s spear was described in the Iliad 6 as 11 cubits (16 feet) long and held with both hands. The Iliad’s allusion of peltast-styled fighting discussed in Lenden (2005) pp 96-97.

66.Anson (2013) p 47 for the Thracian thrusting spear. The relative shortness of the Spartan sword discussed in Anderson (1970) p 38; they carried spears of course as well. Snodgrass (1967) p 110 and p 127 for Iphicrates’ military reforms based on Diodorus 15.44.4, Nepos Iphicrates 1.3-4 where it was claimed that Iphicrates doubled the length of spears; Diodorus 15.44.3 stated they were extended by half their length. Also Anderson (1970) pp 130-131 for Iphicrates’ lengthening weapons and the rationale.

67.Plutarch Comparison of Pelopidas with Marcellus. Devine (1983) p 204 for Epaminondas’ infantry wedge used at Leuctra. Plutarch Pelopidas 26.3 for his arbitration in Macedonia. Justin 7.5 for Epaminondas being an ‘eminent’ philosopher.

68.AB Bosworth in Carney-Ogden (2010) p 99 for Alexander II’s friendship with Pelopidas. Diodorus 16.2.1-4 for Philip being handed to the Thebans by the Illyrians with whom he had been a child hostage and being schooled with Epaminondas under a Pythagorean teacher. Following Diodorus 16.2.2, Loeb Classical Library edition, 1952, footnote 4: since Philip was born ca. 383 BCE he was an infant when given to the Illyrians. Justin 7.5.1 stated that Philip was ransomed by Alexander II and later sent by him as a hostage to Thebes. However at Diodorus 15.67.4 likewise has Alexander II sending him to Thebes, as does Plutarch Pelopidas 26.4. Some modern historians agree that Ptolemy of Alorus, paramour and later husband of Eurydice, the widow of Amyntas III, was the monarch who sent Philip to Thebes, basing their account on Aeschines False Embassy, 2.26 ff, which placed Philip at the court of Ptolemy. Pelopidas who had already driven the Macedonian garrisons installed by Alexander II from Thessaly, was called in to arbitrate (Plutarch Pelopidas 26.3, Diodorus 16.67.4) and he may have demanded hostages for good behaviour, including Philip II. Philip, aged fourteen or fifteen, was probably in Thebes throughout 368‑365 BCE. See discussion by Hammond (1991) p 58 and Hammond (1980) pp 53-63. Plutarch Pelopidas 26.5 termed Philip an ‘emulator’ of Epaminondas with whom he was said to be educated by a Pythagorean; this conflicts with the claim that Philip lodged in the house of Pammenes (Plutarch Pelopidas 26.5, Diodorus 15.94.2, 16.34.1-2) and Epaminondas was surely too old to have been educated with Philip. Diodorus 15.39.2 for Epaminondas’ education. See discussion in Billows (1990) p 30. Many scholars reject this and claim Philip was too young in his hostage period to have been significantly influenced; full discussion in Hammond (1997). Justin 8.5.1-3 for Philip’s hostage time with the Illyrians. Diodorus 18.86.5 for the overall numbers of dead and captured at Chaeronea.

69.Polyaenus 4.2.10 for the forced marches of Philip and Frontinus 4.1.6 for the rations; Heckel-Jones (2006) p 12 for discussion. Frontinus 4.1.6 for the waggonless army; discussion in Gabriel (2010) pp 85-86. Frontinus 4.2.4 and Aelian 14.48 for flogging and execution; Roisman-Worthington (2010) p 451 for discussion. The oracle at Trophonius in Boeotia warned Philip to be on his guard against a chariot; he avoided them thereafter; Aelian 3.45.

70.Plato Laches 181-183d for an example of the demonstration of the hoplomachia; discussed in Hanson (1991) p 29.

71.Confusion stems from the Roman-inspired ‘cohors’ (a cohort, but here perhaps a chiliarchia). Latin sources further complicate our understanding of battle order with units and commands labelled armiger and custos, as well as corporis for the bodyguard corps of nobles (perhaps 200; royal hypaspists, or former royal pages) and the seven elite members of the hypaspistai basilikoi, the king’s Somatophylakes. Heckel Somatophylakes (1978) p 224, Sekunda (1984) p 9 for the Latin derivatives associated with the corps of perhaps 200. Curtius 3.12.3 for cohors. Curtius 4.21.9 mentioned a body of 700 bodyguards. Curtius 5.2.3-5 for nine chiliarchs being appointed. Devine (1983) p 206 for the terms relating to infantry formations. Arrian 1.11.7-8 suggested the hypaspists carried the king’s weapons, taken from Troy, into battle; as Peucestas allegedly carried the shield from Troy at Mallia, then he is credibly a former royal hypaspist of perhaps 200 elites.

73.Anson (2004) pp 227 and 229 for the possible, or misunderstood, expansion of the hetairos relationship outside of these elite units. We do not read of Philip in cavalry units and he may well have preferred an infantry position for himself. Hammond (1991) p 44 for the military reforms of Alexander II.

74.Theopompus FGRH 115 F-225 for the number at 800; discussed in Hatzopoulos (1996) p 29 and Anson (2004) p 228. The number 3,000 was possibly later raised to 4,000 (as per Berve) and as suggested in Curtius 5.1.40 and Arrian 3.16.10. Milns (1971) argues against this.

75.Pausanias 1.21.7; the limited use of linen discussed in Anderson (1970) p 23.

76.Plutarch Pelopidas 2 for Iphicrates’ hoplite reforms. Aeschines On the Embassy 2.28 claimed Eurydice placed her two surviving sons in Iphicrates’ arms when pleading for his support as her stepson.

77.Anson (1988) summarises the arguments about the origin of the Silver Shields, whether it was shortly after the Macedonians returned from India or early in the Successor Wars; at Diodorus 19.28.1 and 19.40.3 they are mentioned as distinct from hypaspist units. Curtius 8.5.4 and Justin 12.7.4 suggested Alexander’s fighting force was adorned with precious ornaments and shields plated with silver as they entered India, i.e. after capturing the Achaemenid treasuries. Also Tarn (1948) p 116 ff and pp 151-152 for the origins of the unit. Tarn’s contention was that Argyraspides, first mentioned at the battle of Gaugamela, was simply the elite agema of the hypaspists renamed by Hieronymus who misled later historians. He likewise sees this as proof that Curtius used Diodorus. Diodorus 18.57.2 stated they were distinguished because of the brilliance of their armour. Confusion is thrown in by the mention at Arrian 7.11.13 of a Persian Argyraspides regiment and earlier mention of the Silver Shields at Gaugamela at Diodorus 17.57.2 and Curtius 4.13.27, yet by then considerable wealth had already been captured from Darius’ baggage train at Issus and Damascus. The identification may have additionally been retrospective by historians, as it seems the regiment was renamed during the Indian campaign; see discussion in Roisman-Worthington (2010) p 455. Sekunda (2012) pp18-19 for varying shield sizes found dating to the period.

78.Diodorus 17.65.4 and Curtius 5.2.2-7 for the Sittacene reorganisations. E Anson in Carney-Ogden (2010) p 93 for the reorganisations at Sittacene.

79.Diodorus 17.57.2, Curtius 4.13.28 for the upper canton names attached to the infantry battalions. Hammond (1991) p 70 for the size of Philip’s army when he died. Heckel-Jones (2006) p 10 and pp 30-31 for 9,000 pezhetairoi.

80.Heckel-Jones (2006) p 43 for the arrangement of the phalangites. Curtius 5.2.3 for the suggestion of pentakosiarchos; discussion in Milns (1971) pp 188-189. Hekatostyes discussed by B Bosworth in Carney-Ogden (2010) pp 94-102. Roisman-Worthington (2010) p 448 for the increase in size of dekades and its origins, as well as lochoi used for one hundred infantry.

81.Hatzopoulos (1996) p 450 for the general use of taxis. Anson (2004) p 215 for examples of regional battalion leaders.

83.Heckel-Jones (2006) p 10 and pp 30-31 for 9,000 pezhetairoi and the distinction arguments between them and asthetairoi. Hammond (1994) p 150 along with Bosworth suggests the asthetairoi units were comprised of Upper Macedonians (derived from astya, the towns) where the pezhetairoi came from the old kingdom, i.e. the ancient heartlands. Heckel (1988) p 321 for identity discussion and differing views; Bosworth suggests the title ‘closest companions’. In Carney-Ogden (2010) pp 88-89 Anson suggests the ‘asth’ stood for ‘star’ referring to the star motif on their shields. Their mobility is convincingly argued for and applied at Arrian 4.23.1, 4.218.8. Arrian 2.23.2 and 4.23.1 for examples of ‘Close Companions’. Arrian 2.23.3-4, 3.11.9-12, 3.25.6, 4.23.1 for use and deployment. Whilst an apparent hapax legomenon, as Milns (1981) p 354 points out, six variants of asthetairoi appeared in Arrian Anabasis. Roisman-Worthington (2010) pp 457-458 for the evidence on the Alexander Sarcophagus.

85.Asthippoi (or amphippoi) appear at Diodorus 19.29.2; the suggestion was that these cavalrymen rode a pair of horses with the rider jumping from one to the other when a mount was exhausted, in the style of the Tarentines who followed Philopoemen; see Livy 35.28.8. Aelian 38.3 was clear that they were nomadic archers who exchanged mounts. Both titles, asthippoi (or amphippoi) and asthetairoi could be Hieronymus-sourced (if Arrian was back-forming names). See Milns (1981) and Hammond Cavalry (1978) for possible identifications and derivation of the name.

86.Diodorus 17.20.3 stated Alexander carried a shield, and his survival in close action at 17.60.2, Plutarch 16.4, Arrian 1.2.6, when spears were being hurled against him, suggests the same. Anderson (1970) p 113 for Amazon and Scythian cavalry shields.

87.Hammond Cavalry (1978) and Milns (1981) p 351 for the disappearance of sarissophoroi.

88.Diodorus 17.17.3-5 for troop numbers crossing to Asia. Following the Loeb Classical Library edition, (1963), 17.17.4 footnote 4: Diodorus is our only source for the detailed troop list of Alexander. Justin 11.6.2 gave 32,000 foot and 4,500 horse; Plutarch 15.1 cited 30,000-43,000 foot and 4,000-5,000 horse; Arrian 1.11.3 stated ‘not much more than’ 30,000 foot and 5,000 horse. Plutarch Moralia 327d-e (De Fortuna aut Virtute Alexandri 1.3) stated Aristobulus stated 30,000 foot and 4,000 horse, Ptolemy 30,000 foot and 5,000 horse, and Anaximenes 43,000 foot and 5,500 horse.

89.Plutarch Aemilius 19.2 and 20.2 for the ability of the sarissa to penetrate shields and armour. ‘First-strike’ capability quoting Milns (1971) p 188. Plutarch Aemilius and Diodorus 17.84.4 for the shield and armour piercing ability of the sarissa.

90.The Greek dory had a sharp point at the counterpoint known as a sauroter, literally ‘lizard killer’, or alternatively the sturax or ouricahos (see Hanson (1991) p 71), which anchored the spear securely to the ground and could be used as a secondary blade if, for example, the spear snapped in two or the enemy lay on the ground. Homer Iliad 10.153 for the first reference to the sauroter.

91.Anson (2013) and Sekunda (2012) pp 15-16 reject cherrywood in favour of the much lighter ash. Theophrastus Enquiry into Plants 3.12.1-2 reported that the male cherry tree grew up to 12 ells (or 12 cubits thus 18 feet) high, the length of the longest sarissa but did not specifically state this wood was used; in fact the shape of the trees and its low split point argues against it, unless the sarissa was assembled in two parts. The Roman Statius stated ash instead. Pliny 16.84 detailed the advantage of using ash being lighter and more pliable than cornel; a contention made by Statius; see Sekunda (2001) for discussion. Homer Iliad 19.390 and 4 47 for references to ash; discussed in Hanson (1991) p 22 ff. For the debate on the length of the sarissa see Sekunda (2012) pp 15-17; also Markle (1997) pp 323-329; Rahe (1981) pp 84-87; Mixter (1992) p 21 ff, Manti (1992) pp 77-91. Hatzopoulos (1996) p 268 states 3.5 to 4.5 metres for the sarissa length. Also see Polybius 18.28 and 31 for a description of the phalanx and lengths of pikes. See full discussion of the longest recorded sarissai in Delbrück (1920) pp 402-406. Polyaenus 2.29.2 stated that by 300 BCE the length had been increased to 16 cubits or 24 feet to 26 feet. Hammond (1991) p 7 for the Tomb II pike-head.

92.Andronikos (1970) proposed the two-part sarissa construction. Heckel-Jones (2006) p 14 for the iron coupling device.

94.Polybius 12.19.6 for a description of the thinning formation at the Battle of Issus; discussed in Sekunda (1984) p 23. Javelin throwing using the free right hand suggested by Diodorus 17.100.6-7 and Curtius 917.19-21 though this relies on the evidence in a single hand-to-hand combat; the suggestion is that all pezhetairoi bore javelins but perhaps more practically only the rear uncommitted ranks. Arrian Tactics 5 for the manoeuvre; discussed in Anderson (1970) p 101 ff.

95.Demosthenes Third Philippic 49. Epikouroi can be broadly interpreted as ‘professional auxiliaries’.

96.The terror of the sight of the advancing phalanx as reported in Plutarch Aemilius 19.2. Polybius 18.29-30 for a description of the phalanx formation. Arrian 1.1.7-10 for the operation in which carts were rolled down on the Macedonian phalanx which allegedly used shields while lying flat to let the carts pass over, if the ranks could not be parted fast enough.

97.Sekunda (2012) p 20 for the helmets of the pezhetaroi. Whilst its exact construction method is still debated, the linothorax was mentioned at Herodotus 2.182, 2.529, 2.830, 3.47, 7.63, at Livy 4.19.2-4.20.7 and at Strabo 3.3.6; 13.1.10. ‘Soft’ armour was also known as spolas and could have been a thickly woven tunic, the exomis. Sekunda (1964) p 31 for the half-cuirass. Plutarch Aemilius 19.1-2 for the suggestion (unclear) that shields were slung to the chest when the sarissa phalanx advanced. Polybius 18.30 for the sarissai deflecting missiles.

98.Snodgrass (1967) p 117 for discussion of the sarissa phalanx armour. Shields were described as 8 hands or approximately 2 feet wide. Heckel-Jones (2006) p 15 for discussion of the pezhetairoi corselets, if any. Polyaenus 4.3.13 did suggest the hemithorakion was issued to those who had fled in battle to make their backs vulnerable. Heckel-Jones (2006) p 17 for the short sword. Sekunda (2012) argues for a handle on the shield rather than a neck strap but this would have put great stress on the left arm when holding the sarissa, as well as being presented at an awkward angle.

99.Polybius 3.6-7. Agesilaus’ Spartan incursion in Persia is mentioned alongside Xenophon’s march through the Persian Empire. As an example of the Greek bodyguards, four hundred hoplites deserted to Cyrus from the army of Abrocomas, satrap of Phoenicia, as the campaign against Artaxerxes II began. Discussion in Parke (1933) p 26.

101.Curtius 3.3.26-28 for his description of the Persian army and 3.2.13-16 for Charidemus’ description of the Macedonians. Justin 11.13.11 for ‘glittering with gold and silver’. Quoting Arrian 2.7.5 for warlike Europe and lazy effeminate Asia.

103.All the extant accounts confirm otherwise unheard of battle ratios in favour of the Macedonians. Whilst this is certainly an exaggeration, light casualties are a recurring message against heavy enemy losses. As examples, for Issus see Arrian 1.16.2 for Persian cavalry losses, 1.16.4 for Macedonian cavalry losses and 2.11.8 for Persian losses where only mounted troop numbers were mentioned. Compare to Plutarch 20.11-13 and Curtius 3.11.27. For Gaugamela see Arrian 3.15.6; for losses on both sides, Diodorus 17.61.3, Curtius 4.16.26. Pearson (1969) p 156 and footnote 41 for discussion of Arrian’s statement on casualties, relating them to Companions where Aristobulus and Justin claimed these were the total killed.

104.Diodorus 17.53.1 for the lengthening of the Persian weapons. As an example of the troop numbers credited to the Persians at Thermopylae see Herodotus 7.186 and compare to Arrian 3.8.4, Diodorus 17.53.3 and Plutarch 31.1 who reported one million soldiers (or more) faced the Macedonians at Gaugamela. Only Curtius 4.12.13 gave a sensible count at 245,000. Curtius 3.11.7 for his comment on counting losses and 3.11.27 for his exact numbers of deaths on both sides.

106.See Green (2007) p 11 and Borza (1995) pp 40-43 for gold and silver production. Also Hammond-Atkinson (2013) notes to Arrian 7.9.3 p 319 for discussion of the captured mines. They were also referenced in Justin 8.3.12-13. Hammond Philip (1994) p 5 for additional goldmines, p 5 and p 31 for other mineral resources and p 39 for 1,000 talents a year. Drawing from Diodorus 16.8.7, Demosthenes First Olynthiac 18.235. Hammond (1991) p 14 for the former Edones. Heckel-Jones (2006) pp 21-22 for Macedonian soldier pay rates. Curtius 5.1.45, Diodorus 17.64.6 for the lower numbers.

107.Following Anson (2013) p 18 for state provisioning. Sekunda (1984) p 28 and Heckel-Jones (2006) p 18 for MAK inscribed on a sarissa butt. Hatzopoulos (1996) p 267 for the absence of a middle class. Hatzopoulos (1996) p 268 for the 30,000 recruit estimate. Aristotle Athenian Constitution 42.3 for the training of the ephebes.

109.For Cleitus’ appointment as strategos of Bactria and Sogdia see Curtius 8.1.19-21.

110.Following the observation by Griffiths (1935) p 39 for the nationalist spirit of Antipater’s men. See epilogue titled The Return to Aegae for more on the heroon.

111.Curtius 6.1.8 for the ‘prestige of old and present’. Agis was able to raise 30 silver talents from Persia and eight thousand Greek mercenaries from Crete; see Arrian 2.13.4-6, Curtius 4.1.38-40, Diodorus 17.48.1. Alexander sent Antipater 3,000 talents for the war, Arrian 3.16.10 for the funds. The total casualty numbers discussed in Adams (1985) p 83 and following his observation. Xenophon Spartan Constitution 7.1-5 for Lycurgus’ ban on moneymaking activity. The Spartans used mercenaries as early as the battle of Megalopolis in 331 BCE; Parke (1933) p 201 for discussion of mercenary numbers.

113.Diodorus 17.62.6-17.63 for Memnon’s revolt and the battle. Aeschines 3.165 (Against Ctesiphon) for Corrhagus’ defeat.

114.Plutarch Agesilaus 15.4 for the ‘mice’ label. Curtius 6.1.17-19 went as far as claiming Alexander resented the victory as it detracted from his own glory, perhaps supporting Plutarch’s statement. Arrian 2.13.4 for Agis’ journeying to Siphnos in a single trireme where he met Pharnabazus and Autophradates. Parke (1933) p 201 for discussion on the mercenary numbers at Megalopolis.

115.Curtius 6.1.7-16 for the violence of the conflict at Megalopolis citing losses as 3,500 Spartans and 1,000 Macedonians. Diodorus 17.63.3 for 5,300 Spartans and 3,500 of Antipater’s troops. Cleonymus advised his Spartans to grab the sarissa to neutralise its effect, Polyaenus 2.29.2. Diodorus 17.62.5 for Memnon’s revolt in Thrace. Griffiths (1935) p 318 for discussion of the widespread use of the sarissa and the Macedonian style of fighting. The statement from Polybius 18.18.1 is ambiguous whilst suggesting all Greece adopted the sarissa though it had been shortened to 14 cubits (21 feet) from an extended 16; Polybius 18.29.2; Sekunda (2012) p 13 for discussion.

116.Pausanias 1.13.6 for Sparta’s defences against Pyrrhus of Epirus. Agesilaus’ reply comes from Plutarch Spartan Sayings.

117.Plutarch Cleomenes 11.2 and Snodgrass (1967) p 127 for Cleomenes’ reforms and use of the pike; Polybius 18.18.3 for the general use of the sarissa by Sparta.

119.Plutarch 74.2-4 for complaints arriving from Greece and Alexander’s treatment of Cassander. Justin 12.14.4 for complaints from Olympias. As far as Pamphlet-originating allegations, complaints from Greece about the regent were linked to Alexander’s ill treatment of Cassander in Plutarch’s account. Any of this could have spawned such hostile anecdotal material.

121.Plutarch 42.3, Diodorus 17.74.1-4, Arrian 3.19.5 for the dismissal of the Thessalian cavalry. Arrian 5.27-28 for Coenus’ speech in which he allegedly claimed the Thessalians were dismissed as their heart was no longer in their work. Diodorus 18.16.4 for Craterus’ numbers. Diodorus 18.17.1-4, Plutarch Phocion 26.1 for events at Crannon.

122.Diodorus 18.18.1-6 and Plutarch Phocion 28.4 for the political reform in Athens and 24.144 for 22,000 population though Diodorus 18.8.5 and Plutarch Phocion 28.7 for 12,000 disenfranchised; discussion in Hansen (1999) p 107 and p 55 for the population of Athens.

124.Diodorus 18.18.4-5, Plutarch Phocion 28.7; discussed in Hansen (1999) p 107 and Worthington (2000) p 107. Finlay (1973) for discussion of ploutos and penia in the Greek economy.

125.Chrestos, ‘do-good’, an epithet Phocion gained. Nepos Phocion 2.2 Arrian Events After Alexander 1.13 for Demades’ call for the death of Demosthenes.

127.Quoting from Plutarch Phocion 28-29 for the arrival of the garrison; also 31.2-3, 32.4-10, Diodorus 18.64.5, Nepos Phocion 2.4-5.

129.The 6,000 were comprised of 600 from the ten tribes; Aristotle Athenian Constitution 63.2.

131.Referring to the chapter heading polemic that appeared in Demosthenes On the Crown 270.

133.It was reckoned the Macedonians had walked 12,000 miles by the time they reached the Hyphasis River; discussion in Thomas (2007) p 19. By their return to Babylon this has obviously increased by perhaps 9,000 miles to approximately 21,000 in total, thus stades. TA Dodge, cited in Heckel-Jones (2006) p 20, calculated the infantryman that had campaigned with Alexander in both Europe and Asia had marched some 20,870 miles. Engels (1978) p 12 however suggested waggons were not used and the sarissa would have been portered much of the way.

134.Justin 13.1 for 30,000 annual income. For confirmation of Athens’ annual income see Athenaeus 12.542g where it was alleged Demetrius of Phalerum spent most of Athens’ 1,200 talent income on parties rather than the army or city administration. Confirmed by Aelian 9.9. Adams (1996) p 33 argues for 600 talents.

135.Following the discussion in Adams (1996) p 33 and Tarn (1948) p 131 for the sums spent in the last two campaign years. Arrian 7.5.3, Justin 12.11.1 for the 20,000 that went to settle debts though this might be a combination of debt and veteran bonuses, each 10,000; Arrian 7.12.2 for the 1 talent bonus paid to each of the 10,000 retiring veterans. Curtius 10.2.10, Plutarch 70.3 stated that of the 10,000 talents laid out for debt repayment, only 130 remained. Diodorus 17.109.2 stated ‘a little short of 10,000’. Athenaeus 9.398e for Aristotle’s grant though when this was made is uncertain. Chares claimed the crowns were valued at 15,000 talents but this appears scandal (Athenaeus 12.538a-539b). Athenaeus 9.398e for Aristotle’s grant.

136.Blackwell (1999) pp 13-14 footnote 13 for the relative weights of Harpalus’ stolen talents. Curtius 8.12.16, Plutarch 59.5 for the gift to Taxiles (otherwise Omphis or Ambhi).

137.Athenaeus 4.148.d-f quoted Cleitarchus’ account, which gave the figure of 440 talents amassed after the sacking of Thebes, a city described as ‘mean spirited and stingy’. Diodorus 17.14.4 related that figure to the sale of prisoners but alluded to much wealth being plundered besides.

138.Justin 13.1. For the estimates of sums captured see Lane Fox (1973) p 437 and Cook (1973) p 228. For the estimate of 180,000 talents see Strabo 15.3.9. Green (2007) p 62 for the modern (1970s/80s) value calculation and Adams (1996) p 33 for the two centuries of Athenian and Aegean income. Adams (1996) p 33 for Athens’ 600 talent annual income a century before. Engels (1978) p 79 for the estimate of tonnage of bullion.

139.Arrian 7.14.8-10 and Plutarch 72.3 for the cost of Hephaestion’s funeral and Diodorus 17.115-116 for the 12,000-talent cost. Curtius 10.1.19 for warship numbers.

140.Plutarch 23.9-10 and Athenaeus 4.146c-d for the dining expenses of 100 minas. 1 mina was worth 100 drachmas according to Aristotle Constitution of the Athenians 10.2. It has been calculated that a mina was equal to approximately 1/60 of a talent. Plutarch confirmed 10,000 drachmas. According to the Persika of Ctesias or Heracleides, the Great King’s daily food supply could feed 15,000 people. Following Pearson (1960) p 16 for the link to propaganda and the Lamian War.

142.Tarn 1 (1948) p 30 for the probable working basis of the tax collecting regime.

143.Discussed in Hatzopoulos (1996) p 431 ff, and citing Arrian 7.9.9, Curtius 10.6.23, with other examples of the view that common Macedonians regarded wealth as a state commodity at Arrian 1.27.4, Diodorus 16.71.2. For the repayment of debt see Curtius 10.2.8, Diodorus 17.109.2 and quoting Justin 12.11.1-4.

144.Bellinger (1979) p 9 for the success of Philip’s currency. Archibald-Davies-Gabrielson (2005) p 59 for the new minting by Alexander, the tonnage of silver and the Diadokhoi and p 46 for the standards of Philip and p 65 for bronze coinage. Hammond (1994) p 138 for coin hoard finds. Also Wheatley (1995) pp 438-9 and following Wheatley on the ‘unusually large issue’ minted for ‘grandiose plans’. Hammond (1991) p 72 for Philip’s currency.

145.For money in circulation see Archibald-Davies-Gabrielson (2005) pp 59 and 65. Cuneiform tablets from the Esagila Temple confirm high commodity prices when Alexander’s troops were in Babylon. Commodity information was also provided by Babylonian cuneiform tablets; see Geller (1990) p 1. Tarn (1927) p 115 for the fall in the value of the drachma, pp 98, 103 and 110 for the prices of wheat and oil. For the tripling in the cost of living see Adams (1996) pp 36-37.

146.For the strife at Ephesus see Tarn (1923) p 130 according to Phylacus. Also discussed in Finlay (1973) p 143. Bagnall-Derow (2004) pp 19-23 for the surviving provisions.

147.Curtius 10.2.11 for the suggestion that the Macedonian troops left Asia with little in the way of booty.

148.Philip’s mines at Mount Pangaeum discussed in Green (2007) p 63 and the gold to silver ratio fluctuations in Bellinger (1979) p 31. Adams (1996) pp 30-37 for the estimation of 31,000 talents being ‘dumped’ on the home market during this period. Silver coins found at Amphipolis however suggest the ore came from various mines, not just Pangaeum; Roisman-Worthington (2010) p 53.

149.For the numbers of ‘home grown’ Macedonians sent to Asia for Alexander’s campaign see discussion in Anson (2013) p 160 and in Adams (1985) p 79. Anson (2013) p 70 for population discussion; some 250,000 to 375,000 Macedonians might have been eligible for service from a total population estimate of 1 to 1.5 million.

150.Discussed in Grant (1995) p 57. Momigliano (1966) pp 116-12 for the treatment of war and constitutional matters by historians.

151.Athens and the pax makedonika discussed by Worthington (2000) pp 100-101. Demosthenes was notably quiet during this period and restrained his invective against Macedonia until after Lycurgus died in 324 BCE. Plutarch Demosthenes 20.2 for the shield motto.

152.Anson (2014) p 29 for the amassed 18,000 talents at Athens; quoting Plutarch Moralia 841c.

153.Aristotle Athenian Constitution 51.3 for the corn guardians. Finlay (1973) pp 169-170 for discussion of the corn famine.

154.Arrian 3.5.4 and Curtius 4.8.5 for the famines and Pseudo-Aristotle Oikonomika 2.1352a for the duty imposed. Aristotle termed Cleomenes ‘an Alexandrian’ but this might simply relate to his residency. Heckel (2006) p 88 for Cleomenes’ responsibilities. Blackwell (1999) pp 89-91 for discussion of the grain shipments to Olympias and Cleopatra. As Blackwell (1999) pp 96-97 points out, the shipments to the Argeads may not relate to these same years. Cleomenes’ dubious commodity and financial activity is mentioned in Pseudo-Aristotle Oikonomika 2.1352a-1353 and Pseudo-Demosthenes Against Dionysodorus 56.7-8.

156.Discussed in Shipley (2000) p 39. Due to the lack of detail on whether pay included misthos – basic pay, as well as siteresion – ration allowance – makes the total remuneration comparisons uncertain. Griffiths (1935) p 356: Isocrates was clear that ca. 400 BCE there were few or no mercenaries readily available. Adams (1996) p 35 for the 2 obols cost of jury duty compensation in the 5^th century BCE rising to 6 obols by the end of the 4^th century BCE. Griffiths (1935) pp 297-316 for discussion of mercenary pay rates. Also Bellinger (1979) p 30 for the pauper and juror pay at Athens; also Miller (1996) p 35.

157.Author’s play on the lines from Homer Iliad 1.238f quoting from Plutarch Demetrius 42.5 and relating to Demetrius Poliorketes’ behaviour that offended the Greeks; translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1920. The full lines are: ‘… and Homer speaks of kings as receiving from Zeus for protection and safe-keeping, not city-takers nor bronze-beaked ships, but ordinances of justice.’

159.For Cassander’s execution of Alexander IV and Roxane see Diodorus 19.105.3, Justin 15.2.5, Pausanias 9.7.2, Heidelberg Epitome FGrH 155 F2-3. Anson (2014) p 149 for the dating of the event; also Adams (1991) p 30: Diodorus dated it to the archon year of 311/310 BCE whilst the Parian Chronicle dated its knowledge or announcement to 310/309 BCE. Plutarch Pyrrhus 4.3 for the pledge in marriage to Deidameia.

162.Diodorus 18.36.6-7 for Ptolemy’s proposal that Peithon and Arrhidaeus become guardians, or rather ‘administrators, epimeletai, of the kings rather than himself. Quoting Grainger (2007) p 104 for ‘quiet independence’; author’s italics. The date of Perdiccas’ death is backed up by the Babylonian Chronicle extract BM 34, 660 Vs 4 though still disputed; see Anson (2003) for discussion.

163.Nepos 13, translation by Rev. JS Watson, George Bell and Sons, London, 1886.

164.For the battle, Diodorus 20.47-52, Justin 15.2; discussion in Hadley (1974) pp 55-56. Griffiths (1935) p 111 for the calculation that total Ptolemaic forces might have numbered 32,000. Plutarch Demetrius 17.5 claimed 12,800 men were taken prisoner; presumably deaths accounted for the balance of 16,000 lost. Diodorus 20.52.1-2 for Demetrius’ defence of his ship.

165.Plutarch Demetrius 10.3 for the Athenians being first to pronounce Demetrius and Antigonus kings and 18.1 for the ‘multitude’ as opposed to just Athenians using the title ‘kings’. Plutarch Demetrius 17.2-18 for Aristodemus hailing Antigonus king after victory at Salamis and his flattery.

166.Plutarch Demetrius 17.2-6 and 18.2-4 for the assumption of kingships confirming they had first been addressed as kings in their own domains before the Greeks addressed them as such; also Diodorus 20.53.2, Appian Syrian Wars 54. See Bosworth-Baynham (2000) pp 229-235 for further discussion on the declarations of kingship. For discussion on the origins of basileus see Mallory (1989) p 67. It should be noted that Lysimachus was Thessalian, but his father Agathocles, along with his five brothers, had been granted Macedonian citizenship. He was educated at Pella and thus considered a Macedonian by the rank and file.

170.Following the observation in Carney (1995) p 371 and Anson (2014) p 175 for ‘king without a country.’ Anson (2014) p 178 and footnote 13 for chronological dating to 294 BCE. Justin 16.1.10-18 and Plutarch Demetrius 37.2-4 for the Assembly.

171.Quoting Carney (2000) p 227 and discussion of the use of basilissa on pp 227-228; the Attic form was basileia. Pausanias 1.6.8 seems to undermine Ptolemy’s monogamy at least by claiming he was married to Eurydice and Berenice at the same time; suggested at Plutarch Pyrrhus 4.4 too, though ‘wives’ does not necessarily require marriage in parallel.

172.Plutarch Demetrius 2.1 suggested there existed rumours that Demetrius was in fact adopted by Antigonus at an early age. Plutarch Demetrius 25.4-5 for the titles afford the Diadokhoi.

173.Scott (1928) p 150 quoting Phylarchus and Plutarch Demetrius 25. The gift of elephants from Chandragupta is recorded in Plutarch 62.4, Appian Syrian Wars 55, Strabo 15.2.9, Justin 15.4.11-21.

174.Plutarch Demetrius 25.5 for Lysimachus’ anger at the title of ‘treasurer’. See Bosworth (2002) p 215 for a discussion of Seleucus’ ‘spectacularly successful’ naval operations against Antigonus in 314/314 BCE. For Seleucus’ collusion with Ptolemy see Diodorus 19.56.1, 19.62.1-9, 19.64, 19.75.2, 19.80.3, 19.83.1 and 4, 19.85.3-19.86.4.

175.Stewart (1993) p 234 for Cassander’s coinage depicting Alexander and (or as) Heracles; also Miller (1991) pp 49-55.

176.For Thessalonice’s heritage see discussion in Heckel (2006) p 265 and for further detail Carney (1988) p 386 and p 387 for the discussion of her continued spinsterhood; also chapter titled The Silent Siegecraft of the Pamphelteers. For her forced marriage see Diodorus 19.52.1 and 19.61.2, Pausanias 8.7.7, Justin 14.6.13, Carney (2006) p 104 for the site and once fragmentary inscription marking Olympias’ tomb near Pydna; further discussion in Edson (1949). Quoting Plutarch Moralia 747f-748a. Diodorus 17.118.2 (and Porphyry FGrH 2.260 3.3) claimed Cassander ‘threw her body out without burial’. Following the proposal of O Palagia in Carney-Ogden (2010) p 41 for Cassander’s removal of Olympias’ statue from the Philippeion.

177.See Stewart (1993) pp 52-59. The three-stage elevation from youth to god was proposed by Himmelmann in 1989 in Herrsher und Athlet: Die Bronzen vom Quirinal, Milan p 57-58.

178.Quoting Poseidippus from a recently discovered epigram from the Milan Papyrus. The full title of the papyrus is Papyrus Milano Vogl. VIII 309.

179.Pliny 7.125 and 37.8 stated that only Apelles, Lysippus and Pyrgoteles were allowed to make likenesses of Alexander.

180.Discussed in Pollitt (1972) p 174. Plutarch 4 also suggested Apelles painted Alexander with too ruddy a complexion. Plutarch Moralia 335a, Plutarch 4.3 for the thunderbolt.

182.Pliny 35.110 for Cassander’s painting; Borza Tombs (1987) p 111 for discussion of its later copy. Discussed in Stewart (1993) p 30 following descriptions in Pliny books 34-36.

184.Plutarch Aemilius 12, Polybius 5.10 for the suggestion that Antigonid kings were from Alexander’s line. Herodian 1.3.3.

186.See discussion in Stewart (1993) p 230 and following Stewart (1993) p 235 for Alexikakos; p 245 for the portraits in the Tychaion.

187.For the dating of Demetrius’ Peri Tyches see discussion in Bosworth-Baynham (2000) p 299; Demetrius stated the fifty-year rise of Macedon, which would logically date from Philip II’s reign from ca. 360 BCE, suggesting it was written around 310 BCE. Polybius gave further guidance stating that Demetrius published some 150 years before the end of the Third Macedonian War culminating in the battle at Pydna in 168 BCE. It is a very loose triangulation but suggests Demetrius’ work was one of the first treatises to deal with Alexander in a meaningful philosophic way.

189.Hadley (1974) pp 50-65. Discussion by VA Troncoso in Carney-Ogden (2010) pp 21-22 on the Diadokhoi unshaven imagery and emulation of Alexander on coins.

190.Athenaeus 12.537e cited Ephippus as claiming Alexander dressed as Ammon, Artemis and Hermes. In particular the wearing of purple raiment and slit sandals with Ammon-style horns ‘just as the god’s’. Stewart (1993) p 319 for the observation that once the Vulgate template was circulating, the imagery attached to Ammon was most likely reinvigorated.

192.The epigonoi referenced here are distinct from the 30,000 Asiatic soldiers who had been trained and armed in Macedonian style. Here sons of Macedonian soldiers are being referred to under the same general heading as ‘offspring’. Diodorus 17.110.3 for their education funding, Justin 12.4.1-11 for Alexander’s payment to men with Asiatic offspring, Arrian 7.4.8 and Plutarch 70.3 for the newlyweds receiving gifts. For Alexander considering them replacements for their fathers see Arrian 7.12.3, Plutarch 71.9, and Curtius 8.5.1. Full discussion in Roisman (2012) p 58.

193.Appian Syrian Wars 64; Justin 15.3.11–14. See Heckel (2006) p 155 for opinion of these later fabrications to Lysimachus’ story.

195.For the assumption of the titles of kings and coin images see Bellinger (1979) pp 86-87.

197.Quoting Adams (1996) p 30. The appointments described in Arrian 3.5.2-3 give a hint of the complexity of the administrative structure Alexander was employing in managing Egypt. Boardman (1964) p 131 for prostatai.

198.Justin 15.4 for the origins of the Seleucid anchor symbol; compare to Appian Syriaka 56. For the anchor device see Hadley (1969) p 143.

199.Following GG Aperghis in Archibald-Davies-Gabrielson (2005) pp 27-40 and p 37 for tax rates and pp 52-53 for argyrion and chrysion; Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 5.1133b for his comment on coined money.

200.For coinage essays see Cunningham (1884) and Stewart pp 314-323. The Attic tetradrachm standard of 17.62 grams was replaced with the Rhodian weight of 15.50 grams by Ptolemy in 310 BCE and the other successors followed; see discussion in Bellinger (1979) p 2 and p 86 and Archibald-Davies-Gabrielson (2005) p 46. Also discussed in Stewart (1993) p 241; Ptolemaic coin hoards suggest few or no foreign coins were in circulation in Egypt thereafter. Hadley (1974) pp 50-65. Finlay (1973) p 167 for the electrum dilemma. Electrum was available naturally from the silt of the River Pactolus, which flowed through Sardis and which may have started the trend, though controlled gold and silver ratios became the norm.

201.Meijer-Nijf (1992) p 62 for discussion of the new bronze coinage and the associated suspicion. Bellinger (1979) p 1 for the early Lydian coinage and its bullion value. Rostovtzeff (1936) p 244 for copper drachmas in Egypt.

202.Herodotus 1.94 for the origins of Lydian currency and the resulting trade. Bellinger (1979) p 1 for the suggestion that currency commenced in Lydia with court payment to mercenaries. Aristotle however claimed coins were introduced by Damodice of Cyrme, the wife of King Midas. Julius Pollux Onomasticon 9.83 summarised the traditions; Xenophon too credited the origins to Lydia.

203.Green (2007) p XXXVII though this is disputed and arguments have been put forward that the Poseidon coins actually belonged to Antigonus Doson. See Hammond-Walbank (1988) p 594.

205.Carney-Ogden (2010) p 129 for Aelian’s version of Ptolemy’s illegitimate birth.

206.Archibald-Davies-Gabrielson (2005) pp 144-149 for royal banks and lending systems.

207.The Greek triereis stemmed from three tiers of oars though larger number-denominated ships probably corresponded to numbers of oarsmen per oar. Aristotle credited the Carthaginians with building the first quadriremes; Diodorus credited Dionysius of Syracuse with inventing the hexareis. Full discussion of ship design in the Hellenistic era in Casson (1971).

208.Full discussion of the trieres arrangement in Morrison-Coates-Rankov (2000) p 8 ff and p 131 for name derivations and p 161 ff for the outrigger.

209.Murray (2012) pp 189-190 for the cost of running a trireme. Mercenary pay was generally 4 obols per day (a drachma was 6 obols). However between 400 and 350 BCE the pay rate had fallen from possibly as much as 8 obols to 4; Griffiths (1935) p 297. Cavalry might be paid several times this sum when including provisions for their mounts. Discussion in Champion (2014) p 184.

211.Curtius 10.1.19. Murray pp 269-278 for the sources and texts referring to ‘sixes’ to ‘tens’.

213.Diodorus 20.85.2 for a description of the floating booms. Murray (2012) p 135, p 176 and p 290 ff for further description of the harbour defences and booms.

214.Diodorus 20.83.1; Murray (2012) pp 279-282 for sources and texts citing the largest ships (16s to 40s).

215.Plutarch Demetrius 20.4. Murray (2012) p 145 for description of the catapults employed.

217.Plutarch Demetrius 32.1 for his raiding the 1,200 talents from Cyinda. Xenophon Hellenika 6.1.11 and Theophrastus Enquiry into Plants 5.2.1 for Macedonian timber being sourced by Athens.

220.Plutarch Demetrius 32.2 for the ship with thirteen banks of oars and 31.4-32.3 for Pleistarchus’ activity.

222.Griffiths (1935) p 300 for discussion of the fines levied on Greek cities and p 309 for Demetrius’ pay.

223.For the pirates in the employ of the Diadokhoi see Ormerod (1997) pp 12-123 citing Diodorus 20.82, 20.83, 20.97, 20.110 and Polyaenus 4.6.18. Quoting Griffiths (1935) p 52 for the pirates operating against Rhodes for Demetrius Poliorketes ‘special enemy’.

224.Lysimachus did not acquire control of Heraclea until 289 BCE. See Tarn (1910) p 211. Casson (1971) p 110 for the reference to its possible catamaran-like structure. Diodorus 21.13 for the treasure hoard.

225.Photius’ epitome of Memnon’s History of Heraclea Book 13; Murray (2012) pp 171-172 for further discussion of the ‘super-eight’ Leontophoros.

226.Murray (2012) p 8 for discussion on the naming protocol and the corresponding numbers.

227.For a discussion of the battle at Kos see Casson (1971) pp 138-139. Athenaeus 5.203d for the fleet make-up. Bagnall-Derow (2004) p 250 for the papyrus text for the felling of trees.

230.Plato Laches 183d for the use of the spear-sickle; discussed in Hanson (1991) p 24.

231.Full discussion of the seafaring warfare manoeuvres in Whitehead (1987) and Lazenby (1987). See Thucydides 2.89.8 for a description of the manoeuvres. Murray (2012) p 32 ff and p 52 for image and description of the Athlit-styled ram.

232.The ship was described in Athenaeus 5.40-44 drawing from the earlier description of Moschion of Phaselis.

233.The Moor, Idrisi visited Alexandria in 1115 and reported that the Pharos still stood; Vrettos (2001) p 33 for discussion. It probably fell in the earthquake of 1365 though by 1165 a small mosque had replaced the beacon at its summit.

234.Cassius Dio 59.10 for the financial crisis; also Suetonius Caligula 37-41 for Caligula’s fundraising schemes and expenditure; Cassius Dio 59.15 for the redirected Wills.

237.For a full transcription of the stele found in Cairo in 1871, now referred to as the Satrap Stele, see Bevan (1927). Diodorus 19.81.5,19.81.4,19.85.3, 19.75.2,19.80.3 for the suggestion that Seleucus fought beside Ptolemy in a joint command at Gaza and for events surrounding it. McKechnie (1999) pp 53-54 for discussion on Ptolemy position and recognition of year seven of King Alexander IV.

238.Dalley (2013) p 125 for an image of the cylinder inscription of Antiochus and Stratonice. Strabo 15.3.8 for Onesicritus’ wording from Darius’ tomb: ‘I was friend to my friends; as horseman and bowman I proved myself superior to all others; as hunter I prevailed: I could do everything’; translation from Pearson (1960) p 165.

240.Plutarch Demetrius 24.1 for his womanising and 1.7 for his character traits. Plutarch Demetrius 10.13-22 for the lodging.

241.Plutarch Demetrius 10.13-22 for his retaking of Athens and his honours. Plutarch Demetrius 10.4; every fifth year at the Panathenaic festival a sacred robe was carried in solemn procession and deposited with the goddess Athena on the Acropolis. On it were represented the exploits of the goddess, particularly in the Battle of the Giants; quoting footnote 8 from the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1920.

242.Plutarch Demetrius 10.13-22. Diodorus 20.46.4, 150,000 medimnoi is about 230,000 bushels of grain. Billows (1990) p 287 for Antigonus’ grain industry.

243.The extension of the Athenian tribes discussed in Habicht (1999) p 68. Plutarch Demetrius 11-12 for the activity of Stratocles.

244.Diodorus 20.102.1-4 for the divine honours from Sicyon; for the honours paid by Scepsis and the League of Islanders see Bagnall-Derow (2004) p 8; fuller discussion in Scott (1928). Quoting Bagnall-Derow (2004) pp 8-9 and for Scepsis’ reply. Kebric (1977) p 5 for Samos’ festival to the Antigonids.

245.Diodorus 20.46 for the efforts of 307/6 BCE, Diodorus 20.102 and Plutarch Demetrius 25 for the charter of the Hellenic League’s fragments in Bagnall-Derow (2004) pp 16-18.

246.Athenaeus 542b-e described the depraved behaviour of Demetrius of Phalerum who had 1,200 talents at his disposal. Quoting Momigliano (1977) p 44; pp 43-45 for discussion of Demochares. For Demetrius of Phalerum’s exile there are many sources, most fully accounted in Plutarch On Exile 7 601F-602A, Cicero On Ends 5.19.53-54, Plutarch How to tell a Flatterer from a Friend 28 69 C-D; full texts in Fortenbaugh-Schütrumpf (2000) pp 75-81. However upon taking Athens, Demetrius Poliorketes allowed Demetrius to be escorted safely to Thebes before he journeyed to Egypt; Plutarch Demetrius 9.2.

247.Pausanias 1.25.6 called him a tyrant. Athenaeus 539e-f for Diyllus’ statement that Demetrius was known as ‘gracelid’; full text in Fortenbaugh-Schütrumpf (2000) p 35.

249.Strabo 9.1.20 and also Plutarch Political Precepts 27 820E; see full citation in Fortenbaugh-Schütrumpf (2000) p 65. In contrast Pliny 34.12.27 recorded 360 statues were destroyed. Favorinus reported 1,500 statues were pulled down in one day; see Fortenbaugh-Schütrumpf (2000) p 65 for full text. For chamber pots see Plutarch Moralia 820e.

250.Plutarch Demetrius 10.2. Strabo 9.1.20 full citation in Fortenbaugh-Schütrumpf (2000) p 53. Demetrius controlled Athens from 317-307 BCE. Fortenbaugh-Schütrumpf (2000) p 333 for the positive sources.

254.Justin 15.4 for the origins of the Seleucid anchor symbol; compare to Appian Syriaka 56.

255.Arrian 7.22.5, Appian Syrian Wars 56 for Seleucus and the diadem in the marshes near Babylon.

256.Hadley (1974) p 58 and Justin 15.4.1-6 for Laodice’s union with Apollo. Bagnall-Derow (2004) pp 32-33 for Ilion’s decree and pp 41-42 for the Ionian League.

257.Plutarch Aemilius 33 for a description of the drinking bowls. Full discussion of Hellenistic deification in Scott (1928) pp 137-166.

258.Pausanias 1.8.6. There is still a debate whether he gained the epithet Soter due to his actions at the Rhodian siege. The first mention of the title comes from coins issued by Ptolemy Philadelphos in 263 BCE. See discussion in Green (2007) p 45. Details of the Helepolis in Diodorus 20.48.2; for the siege of Rhodes, see Diodorus 20.91.1-4 and Plutarch Demetrius 20.5-21.2 where it is suggested the Rhodians actually asked Demetrius to leave them some siege engines ‘to remind them of his power as well as their own bravery’.

259.Diodorus 20.100.1-4 for Rhodian honours. De Polignac (1999) p 7 for the Alexandrian festival of Ptolemaia.

260.See discussion on Hellenistic epithets in Iossif-Chankowski-Lorber (2007). Technically an epithet suggests a name ‘imposed upon’ or ‘added to’ from the Greek epithetos.

261.Polybius 5.27.5-7 suggests the Macedonians took Philip V to task over his treatment of a commander.

264.Diodorus 19.52.1-2, Justin 14.6.13, Heidelberg Epitome FGrH 155 F2.4 Diodorus 19.61.2 for Antigonus’ accusation that the marriage was forced upon Thessalonice. Quoting Diodorus 19.52.1. Quoting Carney (1991) pp 20-21.

265.A third son, Philip, was too ill to govern Macedonia for long and soon died of tuberculosis. Events well covered in Plutarch Demetrius 36.1-2.

266.For Antipater’s murder by Lysimachus and Alexander’s death by Demetrius, the principal sources are Plutarch Demetrius, 36.1-37.3, Plutarch Pyrrhus 6.2-7.1, Pausanias 9.73-4, Diodorus 21.7.1, Justin 16.1.5, Eusebius 123.1.

267.Anson (2014) p 127 for the fifty settlements of Seleucus. Strabo 12.8.15 and Livy 38.13.5 for the founding of Apamea. Appian Syrian Wars 57 stated Seleucus Nikator named three cities after her; also Strabo 16.2.4. Archibald-Davies-Gabrielson (2005) p 29 ff for other Seleucid cities; Ammianus Marcellinus 14.8.6, Appian Syrian Wars for other estimates of city numbers.

268.Hornblower (1981) pp 114-115 for Antigonus’ campaign that destroyed parts of Babylon. Josephus 12.3-4 for the relocation of the Jewish population.

269.Diodorus named Seleucus’ new city Seleucia, but it is more likely Antiochia, named after his father. See Diodorus 20.47.6 and footnote 4 in the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1954. Diodorus 20.47.5 for the size and founding of Antigonea.

271.Following observation and discussion in Billows (1990) p 323. Bagnall-Derow (2004) pp 11-15 for Antigonus’ letters to Teos.

272.Peucestas may have been active at the court of Demetrius Poliorketes and died of natural causes, but he did not play a major role in events; see Heckel (2006) p 205 for discussion and sources. Nepos 21 Of Kings 3 did claim Philadelphos killed his father but this appears hearsay and is preceded with ‘it is said’.

273.Plutarch Demetrius 47.4 for his pleas. Plutarch Demetrius 50.2 for Demetrius’ final surrender and 50-52 for his subsequent decline to death. Also Diodorus 21.20.1 for Lysimachus’ offer of 2,000 talents to have Demetrius killed.

274.Diodorus 21.20 for Lysimachus’ offer of 2,000 talents for the death of Demetrius.

275.Plutarch Demetrius 35.2, translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1920.

276.Sophocles Oedipos epi Kolono 1f, following Plutarch Demetrius 46.5, translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1920. The original lines were: ‘O child of a blind and aged sire, Antigone, what are these regions?’

277.The Syrian Chersonese may have been Apamea or not inconceivably Triparadeisus as game parks were referred to. Diodorus 21.20.1 named it Pella though that seems to have become a general term for an enclosed settlement of stone, hence the derivation of the name; in Doric Greek ‘pella’ is ‘stone’. Plutarch Demetrius 53.4 for his line extending down to Perseus. Plutarch Demosthenes 3.2 for the proverb.

278.The significance of Euripides’ lines relating to the curse of Oedipus (from Phoenician Women credited to Euripides) discussed in chapter titled Hierarchic Historians and Alexandrian Alchemy.

279.Pausanias 1.7.1 for Philadelphos’ murder of another half-brother by Eurydice.

280.Quoting Plutarch Pyrrhus 4.4. Some scholars use the term ‘repudiated’ when recognising that Ptolemy favoured Berenice; whether divorce actually took place is an open question, as, in fact, is the formal monogamy of the Diadokhoi. Pausanias 1.6.8 stated Antipater sent Eurydice to Ptolemy in Egypt; this was, it appears, sometime before his death in 319 BCE, and could have been as early as 322 BCE once Ptolemy was installed in Egypt, and not necessarily after Triparadeisus. Pausanias 1.6.8 does suggest a parallel marriage with Eurydice and Berenice, and Plutarch Pyrrhus 4.4 mentions ‘wives’ in the plural but not specifically parallel marriages.

281.Plutarch Demetrius 32.3 and with more explanation at 46.3; the chronology and who instigated the marriages at which point is unclear. It could be interpreted that only at the earlier date of the pledge did Ptolemy I Soter approve of the union. Bosworth (2002) p 263 footnote 66 for its dating.

282.Agathocles was married to another of Ptolemy’s daughters, Lysandra, hence he and Keraunos were brothers-in-law (also by virtue of Lysimachus’ marriage with Arsinoe II).

283.Diodorus 21.11-13 for Lysimachus’ defeats and capture at the hands of the Getae. For the waning support of Lysimachus after Agathocles’ death see Justin 17.1.1-4, Memnon FGrH 434 F5.7, Polyaenus 8.57. Pausanias 1.10.4-5 for Lysandra’s pleas.

285.The javelin is recorded by Memnon History of Heraclea 7-9. Appian Syrian Wars 10.64 for the reference to Thorax burying Lysimachus. Plutarch Demetrius 29.5 for the mention of Thorax at Antigonus’ death at Ipsus.

287.Apollodorus ruled an ‘independent’ Cassandreia from 278 to 276 BCE until the city was captured by Antigonus Gonatas; see Diodorus 22.5.1-2, Polyaenus 6.7.1-2.

288.Gallic numbers at the battle based on Justin 25.1, though his version of their defeat is quite different. Pausanias 10.19.9 stated 152,000 infantry and 20,400 cavalry, Diodorus 22.9.1 stated 150,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry and Justin 24.6 stated 150,000 infantry and 15,000 cavalry were under Brennus’ command.

289.Discussed in Brown (1947) pp 685-686 drawing from Tarn (1923). Plutarch Pyrrhus 4.3 for Pyrrhus’ part supporting Demetrius at Ipsus. Pausanias 1.9.7-8 for Hieronymus’ accusation that Lysimachus plundered the graves and scattered the remains of the Aeacids. Momigliano (1977) pp 41-43 for Athens through the years of the Celtic invasion. Demetrius married Pyrrhus’ sister Deidameia soon after the death of Alexander IV (ca. 309 BCE).

290.Polyaenus 4.6.17, Plutarch Pyrrhus 26.3 for the Celtic contingent under Gonatas.

293.Nepos De regibus Exterarum Gentium 3.1-3. See discussion in Shipley (2000) p 14. The original name may well have been de exellentibus ducibus exterarum gentium (The Book of the Great Generals of Foreign Nations) whilst an early manuscript attributed the work to Aemilius Probus; see Geiger (1979) for explanation.

294.Plutarch Demetrius 3.3-5. Quoting Bagnall-Derow (2004) p 101 for ‘labyrinthine’. Kebric (1977) pp 56 ff for Plutarch’s reliance on Duris.

295.Euripides Medea lines 619-620, translation by EP Coleridge, 1910, Internet Classics Archive.

296.Ovid Metamorphoses book 1 lines 128-131, Hesiod Work and Days lines 109-201 for the ages of men.

299.Cicero De Officiis 2.5 recorded that Panaetius had commented: ‘… Alexander, who he says could not have achieved so great success without the support of other men.’

300.Justin 13.1, translation based on Rev. JS Watson, published by Henry G Bohn, London, 1853.

301.Polybius 28.7.8-14 explained that he had delivered a long speech to the Achaean League in favour of restoring honours to King Eumenes II of Pergamum.

302.Polybius 10.49 for the Seleucid-Graeco-Bactrian war of 210 BCE. Polybius 11.34.2-5 for the nomadic hoards and founding of the Graeco-Bactrian dynasty. Justin 41.1-7 for the fragmentation of the Seleucid Empire and the Graeco-Bactrian Graeco-Indian wars. Justin 15.4 for Diodotus’ rule. Also Strabo 11.11.1 and 21.21.1 for the extending power of the Greeks in Bactria. For the coin hoards see Holt (1996). Boardman-Griffin Murray (1986) p 422 for the Platonist finds.

303.Originally reported in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (JRAS), London, 1909, pp 1053-1055.

305.The Macedonian opinion of Rome’s war machine discussed in Champion (2000) p 428; King Philip V was reported by Livy 31.34.8 as shocked at the brutality and organisation of Rome’s army. Polybius 7.10.7-12 for Callicrates’ activity and Polybius’ own exile. Polybius 16.30-31 for the suicide of women and children at Abydus. Bagnall-Derow (2004) pp 68-69 for the fragments of Rome’s alliance with the Aetolian League. Polybius 4.2.5 and 4.24.1-3 for Philip’s youth, repeated in chapters 2,3,5; McGing (2010) p 97 ff. See Polybius 18.28-31 and 44 for the subsequent collapse of Macedonian authority over Greece.

306.Polybius 11.7.8 and 11.12 for Greek opinion of Philip V. Polybius 4.77 for his lamenting that Philip turned into a tyrant; translation from McGing (2010) p 33 and also p 154 for a further rundown of Polybius opinions of Philip V.

307.Justin 30.4.4 for the earthquake associated with the rise of Rome. The reduction in cavalry was also apparent at the battle at Sellasia in 222 BCE when infantry-cavalry ratios had dropped from 6:1 in Alexander’s day to 25:1; E Anson in Carney-Ogden (2010) p 84.

308.Quoting Griffiths (1935) p 65 and p 78 for the status of the citizen soldier and the foreign soldiers in the 2^nd century BCE Macedonian ranks. Full discussion of dwindling Macedonian troop numbers in Adams (1996) pp 303-31. There is some evidence Etruscans were familiar with chainmail in the 3^rd century BCE. Lenden (2005) p 154 for thureophoroi.

310.For Pydna see Plutarch Aemilius and the most complete coverage is provided by Livy 44.40-42 drawing from Polybius. For the lunar eclipse see Livy 44.37.8 and Aemilius Paullus 17.7. The exact site of Pydna has not yet been discovered; Diodorus 18.49.2 claimed it was moved inland ca. 410 BCE but Olympias’ attempt to escape her siege by ship (19.50.4, Polyaenus 4.11.3) suggests it was re-established back on the coast, possibly close to modern Makriyialos.

311.Plutarch Galba 1.2, translation by J Dryden, 1683. This recalls Plutarch Phocion 25.1 in which Phocion is said to have uttered ‘how many generals I see, and how few soldiers’ when preparing for battle and receiving advice from all ranks.

312.Livy 44.7. Plutarch Aemilius 17. Also see Casson (2001) p 66 for discussion of the eclipse.

313.Plutarch Aemilius 19.2 and 20.2 for the ability of the sarissa to penetrate shields and armour. Livy 44.40-42 related that a horse or mule got loose when being watered and a clash over its recovery precipitated the start of the battle; Livy added that reports claimed Paulus deliberately let the horse loose as a provocation, as entrails proved unpropitious unless Macedonians struck the first blow.

314.Plutarch Aemilius 19 recorded many differing outcomes, cowardly and otherwise, for Perseus’ retirement to the city. Bagnall-Derow (2004) p 82 for Rome’s complaint against Perseus.

317.Strabo 7.20, 7.23; discussed in Greenwalt (1999); Theophrastus Enquiry into Plants 5.2.1 detailed the value of Macedonian wood.

318.Livy 44.46 for the description of Pella after the Romans entered and sacked it. Pella was used by the Romans as a provincial base, so the basic city structure must have remained largely intact.

319.Justin 25.1-2, Diodorus 30.21-22, with similar commentary in Plutarch Aemilius 23-24; 23.3 for ‘lacerated by misfortunes’; Plutarch claimed Perseus was carrying 50 talents of riches with him; 23.9 for his regret. Livy 45.6/7-9 for the Royal Pages.

321.‘Play had been performed’ taken from Plutarch Demetrius 53.4 as his summation of Demetrius’ career. Valerius Maximus 2.2.2 recorded that Roman magistrates across the empire refused to speak in Greek, holding that ‘they held that in all matters the Greek cloak should bow to the Roman toga’. Roisman-Worthington (2010) p 252 for the start of the provincia. Livy 44.40-42 for the battle and 44.40.8 for the fate of the Rome-allied Palignians which suggest death numbers must have been far higher.

323.Diodorus 30.22-24 for Aemilius’ lenient treatment though this is almost identical to Polybius 29.20 and Livy 45.7.4. Cicero De Officiis book 2 (Expediency) 22 and Plutarch Aemilius 38.1. Here ‘for all time to come’ meant until his own day. Polybius 30.15 reported seventy Epirote towns were sacked and 150,000 people were sold into slavery. Also Livy 45.29.4-32 for the outcome; discussed in Hatzopoulos (1996) pp 43-46 and p 222; Cicero De lege agrarian 1.2.5 for confiscation of state mines.

325.Polybius 29.27.4, Livy 45.12.4 ff for Popilius Laenas. Polybius 29.23-25 for Egyptian calls for help to the Achaean League under the command of Polybius and his father. Quoting Polybius 39.7.7 on indolence, actually attributed to Ptolemy Philometor. Boardman-Griffin-Murray (1986) p 372 for Lampsacus’ appeal to Rome’s common ties with Troy for protection.

326.Rostovtzeff (1936) p 242 for the new trading environment. Archibald-Davies-Gabrielson (2005) p 151 for the banking role of Delos.

327.Polybius 31.2.12, 31.17.2, 35.4.11 for the discord in Pella. Lucian Alexander the false Prophet 6 for Pella’s fate.

328.Rome’s abolishment or otherwise of the Assembly discussed in Hatzopoulos (1996) pp 353-355.

330.In the Greek War of Independence, the Ottoman Empire finally recognised Greek independence in 1832, though the London protocol of 1830 declared Greece free and under her protection.

331.Velleius Paterculus Historiae 1.11.3-5 for the bronzes known as the ‘Granicus Monument ‘being taken to Rome.

332.Pliny 25.135 for the appointment of Metrodorus. Plutarch Aemilianus 22.7 for Scipio’s deeds at Pydna. Plutarch Aemilius 23-24 for Perseus fleeing.

335.Polybius 28.6.9 for his Achaean command. Polybius 24.8-10 for his presence in Rome pleading his case. In contrast Polybius’ father, Lycortas, believed the Achaean League should state its case and relied on Roman common sense to be reasonable with demands. Rome wanted the Achaeans onside against Macedonia as evidenced by their embassy at Polybius 28.3-7, and 30.13 for the political motivation.

337.Polybius 29.21.1-9, translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition, volume VI, 1922-2.

338.This extract is repeated almost word for word at Diodorus 31.10.1-2 and shortened in Livy 55.9.2.

339.Perdiccas and Craterus were from Orestis, Leonnatus from Lyncestis, and Polyperchon from Tymphaea, Ptolemy from Eordaea, and Seleucus from Europus.