Perdiccas had won out at the army assembly at Babylon, ending as regent and guardian of Alexander’s heir, and now it would be him and his erstwhile comrades who would come to blows. For, though now apparently confidently seated at the centre of the Macedonian Empire, cracks were showing elsewhere. As a companion bookend in the east to the Greek rebellion in the Balkans, the mercenary garrisons in Bactria and Sogdia had decided they had had enough of being ordered around by men from Macedonia. Pithon, the new satrap of Media, who had stood shoulder to shoulder with Perdiccas at Babylon, sorted this problem out. But this was only the first of many troubles that built up in the new regent’s ‘in tray’. Anatolia proved a can of worms which even his extraordinary lieutenant Eumenes could not handle alone. The regent came himself but, by drawing closer to the other power brokers in Europe, his actions only increased the temperature between men who had not long since been comrades under Alexander. Perdiccas campaigned against the king of Cappadocia and cities in Isauria but success in those places soon became marginal as he realized he would have to go to war with the other great Macedonian powers. It was the bodysnatching of Alexander’s remains by the ruler from Alexandria, Ptolemy, that provided the final straw, but events anyway had been driving relentlessly towards the First Macedonian Civil War.
The exact sites of the battles of the western campaign of the first Macedonian Civil War are somewhat in dispute. Much suggests they took place near the Hellespont. Logic would urge that Eumenes, commanded to defend in the west, would deploy himself there; this crossing was a choke point, where an invading army might be held up or even destroyed. Diodorus specifically states Eumenes was sent by Perdiccas to defend the Hellespont, and that he had to send to some distance to his own satrapy of Cappadocia for horsemen, as the army the regent left him was deficient in that arm, which suggests he was near the Hellespont.1 Plutarch, however, places a different emphasis. He describes Craterus and Antipater as planning an invasion of Cappadocia and Eumenes is specifically detailed as the commander with plenary powers over the armies in Armenia and Cappadocia. Perdiccas, in this analysis, seems to have expected Eumenes to defend deep, the regent sending letters to Neoptolemus and to Alcetas, off in Pisidia, to support the Cardian.
This position is given some credence when, at the battle with Craterus’ army, it is mentioned that Eumenes persuaded his own men that they were facing just Neoptolemus and some Paphlagonian and Cappadocian horse.2 This makes more sense if they were in that locality; if not it is difficult to see how it would be believable to Eumenes’ followers that Neoptolemus, who had recently ran off with just a few supporters after defeat in battle, could recruit cavalry from so far away. But that he might have enlisted them locally would be eminently plausible. Plutarch also states that there were ten days between the two battles but this does not help at all, as how much distance was covered in this time period we have no way of knowing. A modern commentator certainly holds to the battle on the border of Cappadocia, and nothing intrinsic in the evidence bars the events occurring in either locality.3 Cornelius Nepos offers no help as he merely says Eumenes was left to defend territory from the Taurus to the Hellespont.4 But it is necessary to jump one way or the other, as to try and describe events hedging one’s bets on the locality would be clumsy in the extreme. We have taken the view that the action unrolled near the waters of the Propontis where, so often over the centuries, the incumbent in Asia has stood fast to defy invaders from the west.
The manoeuvring that led to the two battles we are now describing certainly began where Europe met Asia at the Hellespont, a place that would figure much in the Diadochi story as both barrier and highway. The rest of this particular conflict played out in Egypt but on that front no major battles were fought and it was intrigue and treachery that decided the day, not military confrontation. Eumenes was left by Perdiccas as supreme commander in Anatolia on the western front of the coming world war. His responsibilities were huge, to counter what was bound to be the most potent thrust of the enemy coalition and guard a region that was far from easily defensible, but was rich and advanced, a part of the heartland of the Perdiccan realm whose loss could not be contemplated.
It is difficult to emphasise too much what major figures the people who Eumenes had to contend with were. Certainly he had, himself, been a senior bureaucrat who went back to Philip’s reign but these, his two adversaries, were by far the greatest figures in the post-Alexandrine world. Compared with them even Perdiccas was almost a second division figure. Unlike what was to happen with the regent in the heart of Egypt, it is difficult to imagine either Craterus or Antipater struck down by a cabal of ambitious officers so early in the Diadochi epoch; their standing and repute would have made it unthinkable. Certainly Perdiccas would not be the only one to suffer, Seleucus would fall under the knife of a murderous follower at the height of his success, but that was after forty years of chaos, bloodshed and fracture that changed the balance of men’s loyalty in a world far gone in disintegration.
Antipater had grown old in service to Macedonia under Philip, even before the previous fourteen years when, with an absentee monarch, he had governed all of Macedonian Europe. He had taken on all-comers during that time, from Alexander’s mother to the king of Sparta, and overcome them all. Despite this, and the fact that he had just gained a hard-fought victory in the Lamian War, it would be true to say that he was more of a politician than a military man, but this could not be said of his co-commander. Craterus was without doubt the greatest soldier of his day and had held that place after Alexander from halfway through that king’s reign. After Parmenion was rubbed out in Ecbatana, there was no question that Craterus had expanded to fill his place. The extent of his services to his king were legend, whether from leading the main army forward at the Persian Gates as Alexander turned the enemy flank or holding the crossing at the Hydaspes River while Alexander took his strike force down river to cross and bring on battle with Porus. And since Alexander’s death it had been his contribution that had decided against the Greeks in the Lamian War. And, at the time he was dragged away to this first Macedonian civil war, he looked on the brink of decisively dealing with the Aetolians (an achievement no one else came near in these years) despite their unorthodox strategy of defence, where they declined to fight in the open but took to the hills and fought a guerrilla campaign.
Apart from the calibre of the opposition, another drawback for the man from Cardia was that for subordinates he had a group of officers who were about as fractious as they could be. It would soon become clear that one of them was completely treacherous while the others, it seems, wanted Eumenes to fail in his efforts rather more than they ever desired victory for their own side. Neoptolemus was in central Anatolia, on the road from his satrapy of Armenia. This was the man who had twice fallen foul of Eumenes in the few years since the Babylon settlement. Neoptolemus had been made satrap of Armenia, but had found the task of imposing his rule very difficult indeed. A relative of Olympias, he had been little noticed in Alexander’s wars except that he was at the forefront of the assault on the fortress of Gaza in 332 BC. He had also taken over the hypaspists after the Philotas affair, meaning he was Seleucus’ direct superior for a time. Command of these foot guards was a prestigious office and an arduous one, as these veteran infantry frequently spearheaded Alexander’s campaigns in Iran and India. He is not recorded as taking any part in the Babylon debates but as a royally-born, highly-experienced officer he was granted Armenia by Perdiccas, when the carve-up of the imperial satrapies took place.
This was no easy posting. Alexander had never been near Armenia in his great campaigns and it is unclear to what extent it was ever under Macedonian control. In 331 BC, Mithrines, a Persian officer who had surrendered the citadel of Sardis to Alexander, had been sent to take possession of the province, but whatever success he had did not last. By 323 BC Orontes, its original Persian satrap, had re-established himself, though whether as an Alexandrian protégé is not clear. There was no doubt this large province with considerable mineral resources had great potential, but governing it was always a dangerous business. How deep Persian control had ever gone is also open to question; the mountain tribesmen and baronial aristocrats of Armenia throughout the centuries had a deep reluctance to accept any foreign overlord.
The task that confronted Neoptolemus when he arrived had been further compounded by the fact that refugees from the king of Cappadocia, Ariarathes, just defeated and killed by Perdiccas, had fled to Armenia where they intended to fight on. Eumenes was despatched by Perdiccas to support Neoptolemus but, instead of this team approach making the difference in the real pacification of the area, all that happened was that a very deep personal antipathy arose between the two men. Eumenes offered his services to Neoptolemus on a second occasion after he had raised a large cavalry force in his own satrapy of Cappadocia. But again he was rebuffed by the Molossian and his officers, who resented deeply this intrusion by a man who, as a civilian foreigner, failed to tick the key boxes for these hoary Macedonian sweats on at least two counts.
The man who should have been Eumenes’ other main support was Alcetas who, at that time, was ensconced in Pisidia. He was Perdiccas’ brother with a history of considerable achievement under Alexander, in command of a taxis of the Macedonian phalanx. When ordered by Perdiccas to support Eumenes he refused, stating his men would not fight against Antipater and Craterus, who the Macedonians admired from way back. But, there is little doubt his real motivation was fuelled by resentment that his brother had not given the office of commander-in-chief in the west to him. With both these intended props showing they were inclined to flatly refuse the regent’s orders, Eumenes was not clear what he could expect from any of the Perdiccan officers who controlled the Anatolian lands. He found himself left holding a poisoned chalice handed on by his leader, and only his extraordinary qualities allowed him to make a fist of it at all. He must have been close to despair, but it is extraordinary how loyal he stayed, despite the problems he encountered. Even when offered a very good deal by Craterus, he did not reconsider his loyalty to the Perdiccan cause. Eumenes’ qualities were very impressive and loyalty was far from the least of them. In his whole career he displayed a remarkable adherence to the legitimist cause, whoever happened at the time to be in charge. An argument could be made that his own interest usually coincided with the cause he espoused, but equally a man more committed to personal survival surely would not have declared against Antigonus after he left Nora, at a time when the old marshal looked to be by far the most powerful star in the Macedonian cosmos.
Whatever his inner soul-searching, his situation demanded effective action, so he moved to the Hellespont where he could hope to close the crossing from Europe to Asia. Here were garrisons and strongpoints that with his own army in support might even stop the enemy getting across to challenge Perdiccan control of Asia. Strengthening the defences and garrisons occupied Eumenes’ mind for the moment, in this, his first independent military campaign of any magnitude. He knew two of Macedonia’s greatest soldiers were marching through the Thracian Chersonese to test his defences, certain components of which were bound to have a loyalty to their commander which was, at best, highly questionable.
While he waited for whatever, if any, reinforcements might arrive, Eumenes received news that made him realize he could not just sit and defend where he was. He heard news that his opponents’ plans for invasion included a seaborne attack on the Aegean provinces far to the south of his position. In that region, Perdiccas’ handling of the local elite had not helped the task of defence. The regent had been allying himself with Cleopatra, Alexander the Great’s sister, and he handed overall control of the region to her, an act that alienated the officers who previously had enjoyed near-independent control of these provinces and now had to rule under her orders. In these circumstances, Eumenes would not have been so surprised that when Antigonus arrived with a small army in Caria, on ships provided by the Athenians, Asander, the local satrap, went over to him immediately and Menander of Lydia also seemed only too happy to co-operate with the one-eyed invader. Perdiccan control in the Aegean provinces looked set to be completely undermined in no time at all, and, with Alcetas well-placed in Pisidia but clearly doing nothing, Eumenes had to respond himself. Moving south by forced marches, he had not made contact with Antigonus when he heard that Antipater and Craterus with their main army had already crossed into Asia, apparently not opposed at all by the forces Eumenes had left deployed around the Hellespont. With his defensive line breached and the potential of being outflanked to north and south, Eumenes felt keenly exposed with only his own army under hand and none of his subordinates yet come up. In this predicament, he decided the only course was to withdraw into the interior of Phrygia.
Eumenes got away unscathed, but he now knew his position was such that the soldiers Neoptolemus was bringing with him were an absolutely vital ingredient if he was to have any chance of fighting the armies from Europe with any prospect of success. Eumenes’ forces were well-mounted, mobile and knew the country and, even in the vastness of Western Anatolia, his Cappadocian troopers soon found what was supposed to be an important reinforcement for the Perdiccans. Somewhere east of the Hellespont the two forces encountered each other. When Eumenes ordered Neoptolemus to join him the worst followed. Clearly, Neoptolemus was disregarding orders to put himself under Eumenes’ command, indeed his reaction showed that his plan was to join the invading army under Antipater and Craterus. This may have been because he believed the cause of opposing them was already lost but there was probably much personal enmity in it too. He hated Eumenes and the feeling was reciprocated. The Greek general at the head of his men found Neoptolemus with his army drawn up ready in battle array. It was clear this army was going to fight; Eumenes would need to clash with his own men before he even reached the main enemy. Now there were three armies ranged against him, Antipater and Craterus with one, Antigonus with another and now Neoptolemus as well.
In extraditing himself from this situation the Cardian would have to show persuasion, skill, resolution, imagination and courage and he never came up in short supply of any of them:
He had managed to render the lives of his associates cheerful, inviting them all by turns to his own table, and seasoning the meal thus shared with conversation which had charm and friendliness. For he had a pleasant face, not like that of a war-torn veteran, but delicate and youthful, and all his body had as it were artistic proportions, with limbs of astonishing symmetry; and though he was not a powerful speaker still he was insinuating and persuasive, as one may gather from his letters.5
This social paragon’s first move to resolve this difficult puzzle was enacted somewhere in Phrygia, where the terrain of that country was instrumental in the outcome of events. This was cavalry country of broad open valleys that invited the sweeping manoeuvres of skilled troopers and gave little natural protection for the vulnerable flanks and rear of ponderous infantry battalions. Eumenes was weak in the infantry he commanded: only a mixed force of mainly Asiatic foot, many of them light infantry with few Macedonians to give beef to his line. But Anatolian cavalry he had aplenty and in this undulating terrain he intended they should be the battle winner.
Neoptolemus’ phalanx had a core of Macedonian veterans, a combination of those sent with him when he first received his satrapy and more, no doubt, sent as part of the support package of which Eumenes himself was an unwelcome part. Perhaps some were part of the 4,000 veterans that Craterus had left behind in Cilicia when he left for Europe and the Lamian War. Whoever they were, they very quickly dispersed Eumenes’ soft infantry centre, an outcome that the Cardian surely must have expected. But he was still confident that his superiority in cavalry would tell. The cavalry left him by Perdiccas and his Cappadocian squires, born to the horse, spear and sword, had the Molossian’s few cavalry on the run in double quick time. The desperate princeling, seeing his cavaliers scattered, almost made Eumenes’ day by nearly getting himself killed in the combat. But his luck held long enough for him to escape from the melee with a few hundred horsemen, leaving his infantry leaderless after they had all but won him a victory.
The Cardian reformed his troopers and returned to confront the enemy phalanx who:
intending to make their appearance have the most fearful impact upon the cavalry, they advanced in close order; and the troops behind them, those who were cavalry, began to fire javelins where the opportunity offered in order to throw back the cavalry charge by means of the continuity of their barrage. When Eumenes saw the close-locked formation of the Macedonian phalanx at its minimum extension and the men themselves heartened to venture every hazard, he sent Xennias once more, a man whose speech was Macedonian, bidding him declare that he would not fight them frontally but would follow them with his cavalry and units of light troops and bar them from provisions.6
This makes it clear the remains of Neoptolemus’ cavalry had taken refuge behind the phalanx, which closed to locked-shield formation and were helping the infantry keep off Eumenes’ triumphant troopers, who were surrounding them. It had all the appearance of a stalemate, with Neoptolemus’ infantry impervious to the assault of enemy cavalry and, yet, not able to come to blows and defeat their more mobile adversaries. The decisive factor was that while pursuing Neoptolemus, Eumenes’ men had captured his army’s baggage train. Without supplies and unable to forage in the face of the enemy horsemen’s control of the countryside, the infantry, though victorious in battle, were faced with both starvation and the permanent loss of whatever moveable wealth and dependents had remained in the camp. In these circumstances, the leaderless warriors had no alternative but to throw in their lot with Eumenes’ army. They were an important addition but one whose loyalty was always questionable.
Only days after this action, while Eumenes was incorporating as best he could the remnants of Neoptolemus’ troops into his own army, ambassadors arrived from Antipater and Craterus. The Greek was an old enemy of Antipater. It is certainly difficult to imagine a meeting of minds between the handsome socialite and the grumpy old man of Philip’s court and they had been in that king’s entourage long enough to dislike each other. And, more than this, Eumenes was close to Antipater’s bête noir, Olympias, and even Cardian politics played a part with Antipater a partisan of an hereditary rival of Eumenes’ family in that city.7 But Craterus had always got on well with Eumenes in Alexander’s time. Both hated the king’s favourite, Hephaistion. Eumenes had most memorably fallen out with him when Hephaistion had tried to commandeer quarters set up for Eumenes, for a flute player who was part of Hephaistion’s entourage. Furious, Eumenes had confronted Alexander who at first agreed with him but then changed his mind and berated Eumenes for his insolence.8
Now, it seemed this closeness might make negotiations possible. If these tentative discussions showed a disinclination to get down to battle between old comrades, this fellow feeling did not survive the arrival of Neoptolemus in Antipater’s and Craterus’ camp. He brought little from the wreck of his army but he assured his new friends that Eumenes’ men would desert at the sight of Craterus, who the Macedonian veterans loved for articulating their deeply felt xenophobia that Alexander had so offended when he began to take on Persian ways as the heir of the Great King Darius. The two generals from Europe were easy to persuade and, with the talking over, Craterus led out his forces to confront Eumenes while Antipater took his part of the army and headed southeast towards the Taurus mountains and on to the Levant to try and bring succour to Ptolemy, who faced the brunt of the main Perdiccan army.
Top men from Alexander’s time were squaring up to fight: Craterus, that epitome of Macedonian military virtue; Neoptolemus, a scion of the royal house of Epirus, a noble of the highest status, who had been part of Alexander’s innermost circle in the later years; and Eumenes, as royal secretary, one of the key figures at the Macedonian court from even before the death of Philip. All had marched from Pella to Taxila and back with the greatest conqueror the ancient world had ever known and it is no surprise, now that blood was to be spilt between them, the shadow of their dead king hovered over events. Indeed, Eumenes, the night before the battle, was disturbed by dreams.9 ‘He dreamed, namely, that he saw two Alexanders ready to give each other battle, each at the head of a phalanx; then Athena came to help the one, and Demeter the other, and after a fierce struggle the one who had Athena for a helper was beaten, and Demeter, culling ears of grain, wove them into a wreath for the victor.’10
The Cardian comforted himself, somewhat, by interpreting the victory of the goddess of fertility as referring to his own corn-growing satrapy of Cappadocia, but his confidence really returned when deserters informed him that indeed the enemy password for the battle was Athena and Alexander. That this is an anachronistic confection, from the mind of Plutarch, a second century AD Roman provincial, does not detract from the reality that, in these first years of conflict, the common experience of the rivals under Alexander cannot but have affected their thinking.
True or not, Eumenes had given considerably more thought to this encounter than somebody who regarded the outcome as already decided by the machinations of fate. What he intended was that his Macedonian infantry would not hear that the general opposed to them was Craterus until he had been able to decide the fight with his horsemen. Craterus, now seconded by Neoptolemus, commanded a formidable array, of the quality that Alexander had taken over the same route fourteen years before. Of the 20,000 infantry a good proportion were Macedonian phalangites, veteran foot to be fielded at the centre of his battle line, men who had known very little defeat in their careers. They were a combination of those who had returned with Craterus, Leonnatus and Polyperchon from the eastern wars and the national levy. Some would have grown to manhood since Alexander had initially drained Macedonia of its manpower. They were an impressive combination of hardy veterans and vital youngsters, whose forest of pikes must have made a deadly show as they approached Eumenes’ position. The rest of the infantry were the usual skirmishers, most probably recruited from Thracian and Illyrian tribes, who provided a screen in front of their heavier comrades. This was a very formidable force but the invaders’ weakness was not in foot soldiers but in cavalry. Craterus had only slightly over 2,000 horse. After the Lamian War they would not have had many, if any, Thessalian or Greek horse. Such recent enemies would neither have had the inclination to join the invading army nor if they had, could they have been trusted. Interestingly, Diodorus states ‘and more than two thousand horsemen as auxiliaries’, not a designation often used for cavalry in this period.11 This may be just a stylistic device to emphasise that the army was strongest in infantry. Whatever the truth, we know the senior generals took their posts with these horse soldiers on the wings. Craterus led 1,000 or so cavalry on the right wing, the place of honour, while Neoptolemus held the other side with what was left of the troopers present.
Eumenes equally had 20,000 infantry on hand but their quality was not comparable. There were a few thousand Macedonian pikemen, lately of Neoptolemus’ defeated army, but the rest were mainly a muddle of mercenaries from the provinces of Asia Minor and light infantry from Mesopotamia and Iran, who had followed Perdiccas west from Babylon. In terms of both calibre and loyalty Eumenes was at a real disadvantage. He must have known he could not keep the identity of the enemy general permanently a secret from his Macedonians and when they did find out it was probable they would desert. This would be especially the case if some were part of the 4,000 veterans left by Craterus in Cilicia when he went to aid Antipater.12 Eumenes was now trying to lead them in battle against Craterus himself. Eumenes was banking on his 5,000 horse against the enemy’s 2,000 to win the day, well before the infantry got to grips. Yet, even his cavalry were not without their weak links. Some of them were Macedonians or others who had served in Alexander’s army and allegedly the very sight of Craterus might cause them to change sides. To counter this effect, Eumenes, seeing that Craterus led on the right, ‘arrayed against Craterus not a single Macedonian but two troops of foreign horse commanded by Pharnabazus the son of Artabazus and Phoenix of Tenedos’.13
These foreigners, non-Hellenic European and Asiatic horsemen, who would have had no link of affection to the great Macedonian marshal, formed the left of the Perdiccan array. But, it was on the right Eumenes intended to win the fight. Like Alexander, who had won his great battles with cavalry charges on the right wing, this was the pattern his old secretary intended to follow, with the best and largest body of the cavalry. To disguise the identity of the real enemy, Eumenes first gulled his followers into believing that it was not Craterus that was approaching but merely Neoptolemus with some Paphlagonian and Cappadocian cavalry he had recruited. But it was obvious this fiction could not be maintained when the armies closed and another policy was required to sustain the subterfuge. The terrain aided the Greek general as there was a hill between the two armies which masked Craterus and his army from sight. Instead of allowing his own infantry to get close before beginning the battle, he ordered the cavalry wings to attack while the main bodies of the armies were still far apart. This caused considerable consternation amongst Craterus’ forces, as they did not know what to make of the enemy charging at them so unorthodoxly with the opposing phalanxes nowhere near each other.
Now that Eumenes should learn beforehand of his approach and get himself ready for it in advance, one might consider a mark of sober generalship, though not of superlative ability; but that he should keep his enemies from getting any knowledge that would work him harm and besides this that he should hurl his soldiers upon Craterus before they knew with whom they were fighting and conceal from them the name of the opposing general seems to me to have been an exploit peculiar to this commander.14
Plutarch clearly feels this deception, achieved by a fellow Greek when he pulled the wool over these Macedonian’s eyes, was much to be applauded. Perhaps, again, here we see a tendency for the writer to appreciate when his own compatriots outwitted people who were more powerful but regarded as less sophisticated. Only a little time later, when Antigonus had bested Eumenes in battle, the Cardian again outwitted his enemy by doubling back to the field of combat to give rites to his soldiers who had fallen there. Also, when tested by the insubordination of the Macedonian leaders of the Silver Shields, Eumenes used his brains to hoodwink them into thinking that Alexander, in a dream, had inspired him to lead them by convening strategy meetings in a royal tent dedicated to the dead king.15 Nor, if we are to believe Plutarch, was it just Eumenes who was the great manipulator. Crates, a renowned philosopher, is attested as cunningly inducing Antigonus’ son, Demetrius, to give up the siege of Athens in 288 BC and head off on what was to become his final campaign in Asia.16
But still there were problems with this ploy for if Eumenes’ horse was defeated the infantry would not be available to offer a refuge for them to rally on. On the right flank, dramatic events were soon under way. Here, Eumenes, protected by his personal guard of 300 veterans, was in command, leading his thousands of Cappadocian aristocrats and their retainers in what he intended to be the coup de grâce. Xenophon, who had encountered such cavalry in Persian service many years before, described them as having big horses, long lances and scale armour. Opposite stood Neoptolemus, a man whose personal dislike of Eumenes was matched only by the extent this antipathy was returned. Eumenes’ history showed he knew how to hold a grudge and Neoptolemus’ resentment against a man he considered an upstart bureaucrat all made this encounter a particularly vicious personal clash with few real parallels in these pages. To fight an enemy commander and strip him of his arms was a resonant achievement in most ancient societies and most certainly in the military worlds of Greece and Rome. This and the intimate loathing of the participants make a real gladiatorial combat of what is the unanimous evidence of our sources.
Eumenes and Neoptolemus charged at the head of their men:
They had long hated each other with a deadly hatred, but in two onsets neither had caught sight of the other; in the third, however, they recognised each other, and at once drew their swords and with loud cries rode to the attack. Their horses dashed together with the violence of colliding triremes, and dropping their reins they clutched one another with their hands, each trying to tear off the other’s helmet and strip the breastplates from his shoulders. While they were struggling, their horses ran from under them and they fell to the ground where they closed with one another and wrestled for the mastery. Then Eumenes, as Neoptolemus sought to rise first, gave him an undercut in the ham, and himself got to his feet before his adversary did; but Neoptolemus, supporting himself on one knee, and wounded in the other defended himself vigorously from underneath. He could not, however, inflict fatal wounds, but was himself wounded in the neck, fell to the ground and lay there prostrate.17
The wrestling match ended with the two falling off their horses and onto the ground. In this Homeric struggle both men were wounded in several places, before Eumenes dealt his opponent a fatal cut, but not before Neoptolemus had, with almost his last breath, thrust the sword he still retained in his hand into Eumenes’ groin, under the protection of his breastplate. With the death of Neoptolemus, his forces, who had previously been holding their own, as shown by the fact that at least three charges had occurred, lost much of their heart and soon were in retreat. Cavalry fights were more inclined to be affected by the loss of the commanding general than their infantry equivalents. These splendidly-armoured figures, with their bodyguards of friends and servitors, were required to give continual direction to their side of the combat; leading the squadrons in attack, reorganizing and rallying them when the impetus of the charge or enemy resistance had disordered their ranks.
On the other cavalry wing, Craterus (no doubt cursing his new friend, Neoptolemus, who had promised the enemy would not fight, which they now clearly intended to do) had led his outnumbered troopers forward to confront the enemy so his men might have built up some impetus when the squadrons clashed. ‘Here Craterus did not disgrace Alexander, but slew many foes, and frequently routed the opposing arrays.’18
The two opposing wings of swirling squadrons seemed for some time an even match for each other but then, in the ensuing melee, an event of great moment occurred that would have a profound effect on the succession struggle. The greatest of Alexander’s generals and veteran of most of his wars met his end. The sources are at some variance as to the exact details of Craterus’ death. One account has his horse stumbling and throwing him off to be trampled to death and, if true, it might cause a mordant observer to see it as an apposite demise for this unlucky man. On Alexander’s death, he had not found himself in the right place to go for the top job that his record and reputation undoubtedly fitted him for. But the more likely detail of his fall comes from Plutarch and has him valiantly beating down the enemy before being wounded by a Thracian warrior who came up unnoticed on his blind side. Such though was the respect that he was reputedly held in that an enemy officer called Gorgias19 recognized him and actually shielded his defenceless body from further injury, though he was not able to save the dying general.20
With both Craterus and Neoptolemus dead, the horsemen on the flanks routed and fled towards the protection of their infantry. The foot soldiers had not even begun to fight by the time this occurred and Eumenes, having achieved so much, did not intend that they should. He brought back his cavalry from pursuit, an impressive performance in any age in the midst of battle, halted the foot and set up a trophy to his victory. The leaderless infantry of Craterus had halted where they stood, as going forward would have invited attacks on the flanks and rear of the phalanx which no longer had an intact cavalry force to provide protection. The Cardian general, though wounded, was active enough to desire to reap all the benefits of victory. He wanted to recruit the extremely valuable soldiers that were now at his mercy and he sent agents over to offer them a truce. This was accepted as these formidable warriors had lost their commander-in-chief and did not know what to do. They knew they could not fight on, but equally, they were not prepared to change sides. Eumenes realized most would not actually join his army but at the very least he hoped to neutralize them for the campaign to come. While negotiations were under way, Eumenes allowed them to occupy some local villages to live off the supplies they could find there. However, these loyal warriors were determined not to abandon the cause of Antipater and after they had recuperated and got together provisions, they secretly set out on the road to find him. So, the wily Greek failed to achieve the neutralization of these constant soldiers for even one season.
This loyalty to the cause shown by these soldiers is interesting. The facility with which soldiers changed sides at a later time had not yet become the norm. These men had followed Philip and Alexander in a corporate enterprise and they saw following Craterus and Antipater as a continuation of this. But this war they were involved in and the ones that followed would soon dissolve the ties that so far were so strong. Components of any ruling elite, split against themselves, find it difficult to long retain attachment unless it pulls off the trick of continuous success. Loyalty for most people is a crude dynamic, something simple to hold to that defends their interest, gives them worth, value and profit. But when the centre of loyalty is fractured then just narrow immediate self-interest takes over. Most people want something bigger to belong to, something grand and self-affirming but when it collapses then they will revert to the tribe of just their own selves and their immediate comrades.
Whatever this quality of fidelity really consists of, little enough was found by the banks of the crocodile-infested Nile. After some bad luck, not helped by poor local knowledge, Perdiccas was assassinated in an officer coup led by Pithon. This only left the main army, and in essence the heart of the now peripatetic Macedonian state, virtually leaderless as the First Macedonian Civil War drew to a close.
As for Eumenes, his first two battles show that as a commanding general he already had it all: happy to use ruses to confound his enemies and even to keep his own followers in the dark; making sure the decisive events occurred in those sections of the battlefield where his troops were strong on the wings and ensuring that what happened in his weak centre in the end did not matter; using terrain features to aid his battle plans; and, finally, fighting as a hero at the front of his own men and personally besting one of the opposing commanders.