Apart from the giant tussling that shaped the world of Hellenistic kings, there were also smaller dramas played out; smaller but none the less interesting for that. As with much concerning the Diadochi, what we have to go on is of mixed quality. Inevitably, the centrist bias of our root sources is pretty profound but there are conflicts on the edges where we find a considerable amount on the record. None get the attention or have their details passed down in the way the great Antigonus-Eumenes battles or some of Demetrius’ campaigns do, yet still there is plenty of interest. Also, impinging as these events do on folk of the wider world, it is often different and introduces peoples who are not encountered in the main story. North, west, east and south of the Successor realms we are told about border wars where the dynasts faced very different problems from the ones they were used to when warring with each other. And what is also apparent in these encounters is how often they came up short.
All of the Diadochi had their encounters with peoples of the periphery, whether it was Seleucus with Indians from the Punjab and steppe tribes of central Asia, Ptolemy in Cyrenaica with Greek settlers or indigenous Libyan tribesmen, or Cassander who spent much of his efforts shoring up his Illyrian, Epirote and Arcananian marches. Then there was Lysimachus, who had to fight for the right to survive, against first the indigenous kings of Thrace and then the Getae and Scythians who frequently threatened his borders. Even Antigonus and Demetrius involved themselves in campaigns against the Nabataean Arabs and the peoples round the Dead Sea that are quite well documented.1
The earliest of these conflicts occurred in an area well known to the Classical world but involving some peoples who were regarded as the most uncivilized of the neighbours of the Hellenistic states, events taking place in some tough terrain where warriors from as far afield as Carthage would, on occasions, feel they had an interest.
Ptolemy, who was the man involved, did nothing to instigate what developed in his very dusty backyard, but when others had brewed the stew he showed he was not averse to expanding the frontiers of his new satrapy. The direction his interest was drawn was westwards towards Cyrene, almost halfway to Carthage, 500 miles west of the delta where the desert coast begins to turn south and a fist of land was fertile between the highlands and the sea. In 631 BC, the city of Cyrene itself had been founded by settlers from the Aegean island of Thera, driven by drought from their homeland. Many who came later were Peloponnesians, people tough and warlike enough to beat off at least one invasion from Egypt in 570 BC. They lived well, growing grain and rearing sheep and horses, but internal tension between the colonists was enough to ensure that groups soon left to found other communities, like Barca, which was inland and 60 miles further west.
The independent communities in this region had not been conquered by Alexander (though they had certainly accepted his tutelage and perhaps paid a tribute) and before Ptolemy’s arrival as their neighbour, no salutary foreign oppression had suppressed those tendencies to communal squabbling they had brought with them from mainland Greece. The years before Ptolemy came to Egypt had been particularly riven with internal strife, a situation aggravated by the arrival of a rootless warlord eager to profit from the political vacuum attendant on Alexander’s death.
Thibron was a Spartan mercenary captain, who had accompanied the dishonest treasurer Harpalus when he fled from Alexander to Athens in 324 BC. After they had been refused entry there, these fugitives took themselves, and the 5,000 veteran mercenaries they had picked up in Asia, on to Crete via the Peloponnese. During their stay on the island, Thibron and his brother officers decided that Harpalus was an albatross around their necks. He would never be forgiven by Alexander, whom he had cheated twice over, and nobody was likely to befriend them for fear of reprisals from the man who effectively ruled the world. Harpalus was assassinated by the very men he had hired to protect him, while the ruthless Spartan took control of both the army, now totalling 7,000 men, and the remaining fortune of his victim.
Amongst the army on Crete were a number of Cyrenean exiles who persuaded their comrades that their old homeland on the North African coast would be an ideal spot for this rootless band to establish themselves. In 324/323 BC, these freebooters landed on the coast near Cyrene city and, guided by local men, approached the place. The citizen soldiers (presumably hoplites bearing aspis and spear but also including war chariots, the use of which they must have learned from the local Libyan tribes) proved no match for Thibron’s men and the Cyrenean army was defeated outside the walls. Many were cut down or made prisoner but the rump managed to get back and man the defences before their enemy could enter the town gates. In the scramble, control of the harbour was lost. Cut off from the sea and badly shaken by defeat, the city fathers were quickly forced to come to terms and pay off these pirates.
It cost the Cyreneans dear to ransom a temporary security: 500 talents and half the chariots they possessed were promised, but, for the moment, their tormentors left and Thibron led his mercenaries, as a sort of mobile protection racket, in a tour of the other major towns in the region. This descent on Africa brought some considerable profits but then the newcomers fell out over the division of spoils and one of Thibron’s Cretan officers, called Mnasicles, deserted the ranks. He returned to Cyrene city and stirred up the citizens against his old commander. A call to arms against the men who had recently humiliated them touched an eager chord amongst the Cyreneans, especially as the ransom had only been partly paid; 440 talents were still due, and reneging on the agreement meant the townsfolk could keep what was still owed.
A considerable war developed between Thibron, his friends at Barca and Hesperis on one side (they were eager to support any enemy of their local rival) and on the other the Cyreneans, Libyan tribesmen and even Carthaginian elements who they had called to their assistance. Thibron hoped that the professional experience of his hard core of mercenaries would quickly win the war for him. He first marched back to the port of Cyrene to establish his headquarters from where he could sort out these treacherous backsliders. Then he moved to besiege the city itself. But he could not encircle the place before the Cyreneans sent out a considerable force to ravage the lands of Barca and Hesperis. The mercenary general responded and marched off to save his new friends but in so doing left the port undefended, so Mnasicles was able to lead the garrison in Cyrene city against it and recaptured the harbour. The Cretan was making himself popular in the city as his enterprise meant the citizens retrieved the goods which had been thought to be lost when it was captured.
After a small crisis of confidence, the hard man Thibron recovered his nerve and went back on the offensive. He besieged and took a city called Tauchira, a community something under 100 miles west down the coast from Cyrene and presumably their ally. But he was far from having it all his own way; because he had lost his port facilities at Cyrene, his fleet had had to be beached on the open strand. Then the crews, who could not get food from their stores, went off to forage and were ambushed by Libyans. More than this, those who escaped capture departed in their ships but were caught in a storm that either sank them or left them high and dry on shores as far apart as Cyprus and Egypt.
Thibron sent back to the Peloponnese for more mercenaries. There his recruiting sergeants found many who had heard what good pickings were to be had in North Africa. Approximately 2,500 unemployed soldiers were picked up but before these reinforcements had arrived the Cyreneans had acted. They had trounced the men Thibron had with him and driven them away from the city. But the newcomers were eager and their enthusiasm reinvigorated the dispirited gangsters they found when they arrived. Thibron determined to renew the campaign against targets whose riches made them still very tempting.
With his reinforced army, Thibron again approached Cyrene city to find his enemies had not been idle during the meantime, but had recruited allies and mercenaries from the local Libyans and from Carthage. A huge battle was fought outside the walls with 30,000 claimed on the Cyrenean side, but they were not enough and Thibron’s men cut through the enemy’s massed ranks, dispersed them all and set about besieging both the port and the city itself. Mnasicles still had the citizens’ confidence and he and some others were swiftly elected to replace the generals who had died in the battle. Up to this point, the Cyrenean war had been a local affair but events were now to involve the wider world. The struggle with Thibron had exacerbated stress in Cyrene’s social fabric and this, intensified by the shortage of food due to the siege, meant a coup occurred that deprived the wealthy citizens of the control they previously exercised. Many of these opulent Cyreneans slipped out of the city, fearing their lives as well as their political power and property might be at risk. Some found refuge with Thibron while others made a longer journey into exile in Egypt where they implored their powerful neighbour to intervene.
These events found Ptolemy well established in his new satrapy and also very flush having taken 8,000 talents from his deputy, Cleomenes, who he had just eliminated. He was not currently threatened by any rivals, all of whom had plenty to do in establishing themselves in their several domains. No one else had much of an interest in these western regions, so, if he could overcome the local factions he could expect to enjoy exploitation of the area uncontested. A force was sent west under Ophellas, a Macedonian general, who the future would show harboured unchecked ambitions of his own.
Alarmed as news filtered in that Ophellas was fast marching down to Cyrene, Thibron raised his siege, sent in ambassadors and made common cause with the ‘democratic’ leadership of Cyrene. This rapprochement was facilitated when the mercenary general murdered all the Cyrenean exiles in his camp, who represented the only substantial domestic opposition still in the area. Those now in power at Cyrene understood Egyptian interference represented a threat far more fundamental than that posed by Thibron’s followers. There would be little room for mercy if the oligarchs who came in the train of the Egyptian army regained control of their city. The popular government had already shown it was capable of mobilizing considerable forces, but Ophellas also had a powerful army and, perhaps, now some who had sent aid before were reluctant to be seen to be opposing the powerful ruler of Egypt. Whatever, Ophellas overthrew Thibron’s mercenaries and local allies with some ease. The Spartan adventurer was captured and crucified while Cyrene and the other towns were taken or came to terms.
After his general’s success, Ptolemy made the long journey west in person. And, when he got there, what is significant is that his handling of Cyrenean affairs showed great sensitivity to world opinion. The cities he had conquered had long been independent and overtly advertising their subjection would dent his reputation in Greece where he sought to make friends. The public relations conundrum was overcome with some panache by Ptolemy’s (still extant) new constitution.2 At first glance it seems an unexceptional polis form of government with citizen bodies, councils of elders and some election by lot. In the shattered and unpredictable world at the turn of 322/321 BC it was well worth an appearance of appeasing the sensibilities of potential allies. However, the Lagid reserved certain vital functions for himself. He was to be permanent strategos, control the election of elders and whether exiles should be re-admitted to the citizen body. And, crucially, though there is no mention in the constitution, Ophellas was left with a garrison to ensure Ptolemaic rule.
Ptolemy’s interfering on his western march was never central to his foreign policy, indeed, in some senses, it caused him more trouble than it was worth, involving him in both the stress of an ambitious viceroy intriguing, and it rubbed him up against the interests of the great city of Carthage. But, for Cassander, his marcher lands were far more central to his thinking. For the man at Pella, his relations with Illyrians, Epirotes and Acarnanians were central to the direction of his whole political strategy.
In the years since Cassander grasped the reins of power in Philip and Alexander’s old kingdom, activity to the south and east had been incessant. Often his involvement there had been a forced policy, proactive in response to the conduct of his mighty rivals. But, while his efforts had been largely directed to building security on the shifting sands of Peloponnesian, Euboean and Boeotian politics (which had been far from universally successful), survival and retention had been the keynote, not expansion and construction. The Aegean and Mediterranean fronts were fraught with danger but in another direction Cassander had seen opportunity beckon. To the west, along the Ionian littoral, Macedonia’s neighbours were, by and large, weak, culturally ‘backward’ and politically divided.
The coast that looked across the straits of Otranto to the heel of the Italian peninsular made a harsh rampart with few of the easy entrances or the tolerable hinterlands of the Aegean flank of Greece. The islands that lie off this coast, though, are large and by nature destined as important staging posts of trade and power. Most notably Corfu (Corcyra), though now a holiday playground, had been, in a past that was recent to Cassander’s contemporaries, the spark that ignited the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC. The main interruption in this stern coastline was the bay of Ambracia (better known by its Roman name, Actium) directly across from the Malian Gulf on the eastern side, indenting like a belt pulled in tight around the waist of central Greece. A natural base with a small but fertile hinterland, this place would have its greatest day in history when Agrippa won the Roman Empire for his seasick commander in 31 BC. The Gulf marked the northern frontier of the Acarnanians who, in 314 BC, Cassander had visited to organize resistance against Aetolia. With these people firm allies, he was able to intervene further in the west. He ferried his army over to Leucas, the large island that flanked the coast of Acarnania. The islanders had little option but to join the cause of the powerful intruder. Directly north of the Gulf of Actium lay Epirus and there, since the war with Olympias (when Aeacides, her cousin, was deposed) a faction favourable to Cassander had been in power. Further up were the lands of the Illyrians, historic enemies of the Macedonians. Along the coastline, where geography had allowed, the Greeks had planted cities but this was only a thin crust over a ‘barbarian’ interior where tribal kings tolerated the benefits this presence brought. It was towards these towns that the Macedonians now sailed on a fleet quickly recruited from Cassander’s allies.
Apollonia had been originally founded by the Corinthians and it had prospered on commerce with the Illyrian hinterland and from its position on the trade route into the Adriatic. The citizenry were ill-prepared for the sudden arrival of a Macedonian warlord and the city, whose defences were more geared to repel Illyrian raids than an attack by a modern Hellenistic army, fell at the first assault. Cassander pressed on eastwards into the heart of Illyria, along the route the Via Egnatia would follow in Roman times. The king in this part of the country was Glaucias, who had had a rough experience of Macedonian arms two decades before, when he had been part of the Illyrian coalition that a young Alexander had routed in preparation for the invasion of Asia. Time had not dimmed his belligerence and he mobilized his army to face this new intruder. The Illyrian reaction shows that, since the death of Antipater, internecine Macedonian strife had allowed an assertion of independence that had been largely suppressed in the days of Philip and Alexander.
Glaucias fielded numerous skirmishers, javelineers, slingers and bowmen as well as the spear-and-shield-bearing core of the national army. But none of these wore anything but the lightest armour and even the nobles would have sported only a helmet and fought as javelin-armed light cavalry. This essentially-tribal agglomeration of warriors was sufficiently organized for the raiding parties that were their normal tool of aggression both on land and sea, but were incapable of the steady and disciplined fighting that characterized the Hellenic army they now had to face. The outcome was the same as almost every contest between Illyrians and Macedonians since the defeat and death of Perdiccas III in 359 BC, with Glaucias beaten and forced to come to terms with Cassander.
Aspects of this agreement throw light on Cassander’s long term policy in the west, ‘he made a treaty with the king according to which Glaucias was not to wage war on Cassander’s allies’, a clause that primarily concerned Epirus.3 Though Neoptolemus II was on the throne (initially under the tutelage of Cassander’s general Lyciscus) the situation was by no means stable.4 The deposed Aeacides still had substantial support, but if his faction was to have any chance of success it would be to Illyria they would look for aid. Glaucias had already shown a preparedness to become involved when he gave refuge to the infant Pyrrhus, Aeacides’ son; and it was against just this that Cassander hoped to insure. Binding oaths were not all the Macedonian ruler utilized in his campaign to curb the Illyrian threat. He garrisoned Epidamnus (another Greek city on the coast) as he had Apollonia before.5 From the straits of Otranto to the Gulf of Corinth, Cassander had planted strongholds or ensured his friends were in power and as he marched east to Pella at the end of the campaigning season of 314 BC, he reasserted Macedonian control of the direct land route from Pella to the Adriatic.
If the Antigonids frustrated Cassander’s ambitions to the east, on the western march distance and terrain was almost as great a hindrance. Macedonian viceroys might prop up the governments of his friends in Acarnania and Epirus and isolated garrisons occupy key stations, but limited means dogged efforts to defend what had been achieved. In the very next year, a minor power was able to make a great dent in Macedonia’s western wall. The rulers of Corfu had deeply resented the intrusion of a new power into their backyard. They had previously sustained a local prominence that, though occasionally threatened by Greek or Italian navies, had been durable. King Glaucias was contacted to isolate Cassander’s Illyrian garrisons from the landward side while forces from Corfu landed from the sea. At both Apollonia and Epidamnus the Macedonian garrisons were ejected.
If this erosion of his power was galling enough for Cassander, it was not the greatest threat his western policy was subject to in 313 BC. Epirus, the keystone of the regional alliances, wobbled in its Macedonian allegiance. The context of these events was that Ptolemaeus, Antigonus’ nephew, was rampant in Euboea and Macedonia was under threat from a direct invasion by Antigonus. Able to give little personal attention to events in the west, Cassander at least had good fortune in his lieutenant on the spot. The histories of these Macedonian potentates were very much family affairs. It was from the extended family that dependable senior officers were drawn, that counsel was taken and wholehearted support expected. Alexander’s generals were establishing dynasties long before they took on the diadem of monarchy. They might wrap themselves in the ideological trappings of the sophisticated politics of the Greek cities but at heart they remained familial heads whose trust and ambition rested in sons, daughters, close relatives and established retainers. Antigonus had his talented sons and nephews, Lysimachus and Seleucus became dependent on their sons while Cassander, though he gave independent commands to talented supporters on a number of occasions, relied on his brothers to share the responsibilities of campaigning.6
One of these siblings was called Philip and had served in Asia as a royal page (Justin claims him as an accomplice in the king’s poisoning). He is interesting not just for his activities in 313 BC but for the fact that his son, Antipater, ended up as king of Macedonia for forty-five days in 279 BC, immediately after the last of the Successors had perished. Philip had been given a command against the Aetolians whose antipathy to the Macedonians had only been fuelled by the arrival of Ptolemaeus and his formidable force. Philip had not been granted many troops by Cassander and it was expected that the Acarnanians would help remedy the shortfall; a test of the solidity of the alliance that Cassander had so recently forged. They were instructed to march out from their new cities and join Philip in the push east against Aetolia. However, news from Epirus forestalled these plans. Aeacides had returned to try and reclaim his throne. It is not clear where he had been during his exile but it is known that he had linked up with Polyperchon when they were both at their lowest ebb and had sought refuge in Aetolia. It is probable that he remained there fighting with his hosts and planning his eventual return. Years of border warfare would have bound adventurous Aetolians to him to supplement his loyal band of Epirote retainers. With these followers, he entered Epirus where time had been a great healer of his reputation.
Large numbers of Epirotes flocked to his standard eager to oust their pro-Macedonian rulers. Prospects seemed extremely favourable, as also an army from Aetolia was on its way to support their protégé. Aid given in the calculation that an alliance between Aetolia and Epirus would be sufficient to defeat Cassander; an objective neither could hope to achieve independently. Philip was well aware of this danger and forced-marched north to catch Aeacides before the full Aetolian army could reinforce him. In this, he succeeded and in the battle that followed he defeated Aeacides who fled with as many of his men as he could rally. He was able to fall back on the Aetolian forces which had arrived just in time to see their candidate lose. Philip, showing energy and enterprise, allowed Aeacides no respite and attacked the Aetolians’ position almost immediately. In open battle, the Macedonians again showed their marked superiority and Philip won his second victory where Aeacides perished. Whatever judgements might be made about the political and military abilities of this member of the Molossian line, there was no doubting his valour and spirit; qualities his son, Pyrrhus, would inherit in full measure.
Philip was not content to rest on his laurels but pushed on in pursuit, driving the enemy back into Aetolia itself. He was now in a position to fulfil his original aim of invading Aetolia. The inhabitants, shaken by their recent reverses, had reverted to their traditional tactics to which their mountainous country and unsettled life was so suited. They fled (as they had before Craterus in 321 BC) from their undefended villages and hid with families and flocks in inaccessible mountain caves and forest retreats while Philip wreaked havoc and destruction on the rest of the countryside before the end of the campaigning season forced his retreat. What is puzzling is that after this outstanding campaign Philip is never heard of again. The usual speculation is that Cassander had him killed as Philip’s successes aroused his jealousy, like Nicanor before him. Yet Cassander, in his present precarious position, needed all the capable commanders he could muster and the demise of Philip almost certainly has a more prosaic explanation. Whatever happened to him, he had done his brother a fine service in an otherwise bleak year.
Success in Epirus seemed inevitably ephemeral. While an active Macedonian ruler was too powerful to enable a hostile dynasty to take hold of the Molossian throne, the corollary was that an Epirote monarch who was too pliant to the administration in Pella could expect local resistance around an anti-Macedonian theme. The government that Philip had saved from Aeacides now felt the iron grip of this imperative. Far from being able to take advantage of his death, they contrived to lose control to Aeacides’ elder brother, Alcetas. This man had been exiled years earlier by his father for his uncontrollable temper and events were to show that the father knew the son for Alcetas appears to have been mentally unbalanced. His psychological state did not concern Cassander but the fact that he shared his dead brother’s hatred of Macedon certainly did. It looked like Philip’s impressive military achievements of the previous year would be in vain.
Lyciscus, the ex-viceroy of Epirus, had since been acting for Cassander in Acarnania but now he was ordered to return. Marching rapidly with his own army and Arcananian allies he reached Cassopia in southern Epirus and set up his headquarters. From there, he encouraged the opponents of Alcetas, offering a refuge and rallying point. The new Epirote monarch immediately responded with all the armed might at his disposal. The royal guards and household troops were alerted and led out on the road to Cassopia, while Alcetas’ two sons were left behind to call out the national levy. This precipitate and risky offensive with a skeleton force was typical of the mercurial and unstable nature of the man but there was also policy in it. He felt himself strong enough, if not to overwhelm Lyciscus, at least to bottle him up until the arrival of reinforcements gave him decisive numerical superiority. In this he may have been right had it not been for the temper of his troops. Their monarch’s aberrant cruelty during his short reign had already alienated the loyalty of many of his men and when he neared Cassopia the army suffered wholesale desertion. Humiliated, Alcetas could only flee to find refuge in the mountains. Lyciscus followed up and trapped his quarry in the lakeside city of Eurymenae and began a siege. But the tables turned when the Macedonians heard the Epirote levy led by the king’s sons was nearby. A bloody battle followed, the siege was raised and Alcetas from a fugitive became again a force to be reckoned with at the head of a victorious army. However, these combatants were tenacious characters and Lyciscus, though beaten off, only paused to send for reinforcements before returning to the fray and eventually managed to drive the king, his sons and the battered Epirote army out of Eurymenae and deeper into the mountains.
Cassander, on hearing of Lyciscus’ initial defeat, intervened personally, leading the rest of the Macedonian army into this troublesome state but he soon became aware that his general had turned the situation around. Assessing at first hand, Cassander felt that the time and effort required to subdue Epirus would not be well-spent and decided to come to terms. The army was needed elsewhere and Cassander calculated that Alcetas would cause so many internal problems that he would pose no real threat to Macedonia.
Cassander now turned his attention to Illyria again but he seems to have been unusually lacklustre at this time, having even less luck than he had enjoyed against the Epirotes. Indeed, he suffered the indignity of being driven off by the citizens of Apollonia, after hard fighting, and, with winter drawing on, was forced to withdraw to Macedonia. His army was patently neither strong nor numerous enough, indicative of the severe manpower shortage he was suffering. The final insult came when he was safely back at home and heard that his garrison on the island of Leucas had also been evicted by the Corcyraeans who had taken advantage of a local insurrection to prise out the Macedonian interlopers.
In two years, the son of Antipater had seen the edifice he had constructed so painstakingly on this flank of his kingdom crumble in front of his eyes. His western policy was in tatters; Ptolemaeus and his Aetolian and Boeotian allies were rampant in central Greece. So, when peace proposals arrived from Antigonus in 311 BC, Cassander grabbed at them with both hands. The years after the peace of 311 BC did not see any major campaigns on Cassander’s western quarter. Epirus seemed quiet, he never tried to involve himself in the Adriatic islands again and the Illyrians are not mentioned apart from one of their tribes, the Autariatae. Cassander apparently resettled them after a dispute with the Paeonians; an act not repaid with any great loyalty, as nine years later they deserted to the Antigonid side at the Battle of Ipsus! There are also elusive hints in our sources about a Celtic raiding party he had to rebuff near the Haemus mountains; a harbinger of things to come after he was long dead.7 But, for the main part, Cassander had plenty on his plate dealing with the Antigonids on his doorstep and he did not live long enough after Ipsus (he died in 297 BC) to push any ambitions he might have had over his barbarian borders. Even though this kind of involvement would for Macedonian rulers, both before and after him, be just as much of a historic imperative as any need to interfere in mainland Greece itself.
Cassander’s long term foes, the Antigonids, were the archetypal central power of the post-Alexandrine world. Their capital of Antigonia sat on the fulcrum where the Levant hinged with Anatolia and their concerns were centred on the east Mediterranean. And, though they might head east (to campaign first against Eumenes and then to Babylonia when Seleucus took back his old realm), the coastline from Abydos to Gaza, which enclosed the seaward side of the regions, was where their real interests lay. Yet, even they, on one well attested occasion, found themselves involved in a fight on the fringes where it seemed their great projects were not crucially involved.
In 311 BC, Antigonus had been determined not to lose time in rectifying the problems raised by Demetrius’ defeat at the Battle of Gaza. His veteran army soon accomplished the recovery of his Levantine holdings and with Ptolemy refusing to face him in Phoenicia or Coele-Syria he prepared to follow into Egypt.8 Before doing so, he chose to try to subdue the inhabitants of the nearby desert country. Alexander had cast greedy eyes on the apparently-forbidding peninsula of Arabia inhabited by these people and their like, but he had not been the first. The Egyptians, nearly 2,000 years before the Macedonian’s birth, had taken copper and turquoise from the Arabians who lived near their borders. Assyrian armies had frequently campaigned against the oasis states of northern Arabia. The details of their conquests are vividly detailed on the self-aggrandizing sculpture made for their kings yet they never completely subdued them and Nineveh could not depend on controlling the spice trade that made the conquest of these desert wastes worthwhile. Two factors made the road tolls of this region one of the most lucrative sources of income in the ancient world. In what is now the Yemen, in the southwest of Arabia, great amounts of frankincense were grown. Here, a sedentary, civilized community utilized the benefits that nature had bestowed on that one corner of the arid peninsula to grow this most sought-after of balms. The caravans that took this treasure to the Mediterranean markets crossed the northern deserts and those who controlled these routes grew rich on the backs of the commerce. Nor was it just home-grown spices that came this way but also products from India and even further east. The enterprising inhabitants had controlled this sea borne trade for centuries and the exotic spices they unloaded at the quays of their ports followed the same route as the frankincense to the great markets of the west.
The nomads who had come to control the trade route southeast of the Dead Sea were known as the Nabataeans, who had migrated from the north in the early sixth century BC. At this time they were a loose federation of clans and had not yet settled at Petra, the amazing ‘red rose’ city that would be the royal seat of the Nabataean kings. The zenith of their fortunes was to be in the first century AD when their power stretched to Damascus, having received a portion of Seleucid territory in reward for being loyal clients of Rome. For them, the Nabataeans were a useful buffer against Parthia and a powerful military support in the region. In 70 AD they provided thousands of troops for Titus in the siege of Jerusalem. During this period the merchants and caravanners of Petra grew more and more prosperous through servicing the huge expanding market of the Roman Empire. Perhaps it was the very opulence of these merchant princes of the spice trade that caused their downfall when Trajan found them too attractive a prize to leave unconquered as he passed this way on his great eastern campaigns against the Parthians.
The ancestors of these rich middlemen lived on the desert flank of Antigonus’ likely route if he wanted to march directly on Egypt and he probably felt it would be useful to neutralize them to protect the communications of an army of invasion. His solution to the problem of possible attack by mobile Arab raiders against his inland flank was bellicose from the start. A swift and awesome example of his power was intended to intimidate into submission these ‘simple’, mainly-pastoral people, who were thought to only number 10,000 altogether. Good intelligence meant he knew the date when the nomads met their sedentary brethren in a commercial fair at the great rock where Petra later stood. With them they would bring the herds and spice consignments on which their livelihood depended. Three days before the event began, Antigonus despatched a strong detachment under an officer, called Athenaeus, from his camp in Idumaea. They surprised the Arabs at midnight after a secret march and rounded up huge amounts of spice, silver, sheep, goats and camels as well as 500 talents of silver. But, in response, the Nabataeans gathered all available warriors to the number of 8,000.9 They fell on the Antigonid raiders’ camp while the men were asleep, killing all, either in their beds or with javelins as they struggled to get in battle order; fifty horsemen alone managed to extricate themselves and take back news of the disaster.
The attempt to eliminate the power of the Nabataeans had signally failed and only served to stir them up. They posted strong pickets against further inroads on the borders of this arid area, where any attempt to invade with a large body of men and animals was extremely difficult. But Antigonus was determined and prepared to wait till their guard had dropped. Disciplined observation proved impossible to sustain for a people who needed to keep on the move with their flocks and when the Macedonians thought the watchmen had withdrawn they prepared to act. Young Demetrius was sent, this time, with a mobile army of 4,000 cavalry and the same number of light infantry. He, too, tried to surprise the enemy, even providing iron rations so his men would not need to cook on the march, but they found their intended victims warned by signal fires and well-defended on the same great rock, now reinforced by man-made defences. All-out assaults failed and Antigonus’ son was persuaded into treating with them, apparently by that old chestnut of emphasizing what little the Arabs had in comparison with the men who were trying to despoil them.
He left with forage and hostages, provided by the Arabs who had nothing to gain by a continuing conflict that disrupted crucial trade. The Antigonids made their return journey almost certainly by the same route from Petra that the later Roman road followed, directly north across the desert, reaching the Dead Sea after 34 miles. There, Demetrius camped and his officers made a detailed investigation of this rich and exotic region. Asphalt had been gathered for generations from the lake by local people who traded it in Egypt for use in embalming. The palms grown in the irrigated valleys nearby were also sold for great gain in the Levantine markets. These new sources of potential revenue were all that Demetrius could offer to compensate for the second failure against the independent desert tribes on his return to the headquarters in Idumaea.
Antigonus had wasted time, men had been lost and morale shaken. But, if much had gone wrong, he intended the whole campaign should not end without profit. The bitumen harvest of the Dead Sea in his control would mean not only personal gain but the bleeding of Egyptian wealth to the detriment of his rival. Hieronymus of Cardia, Eumenes’ old confidant and future historian, was sent to organize the exploitation of this golden goose but found the task far from a lucrative sinecure. Local resistance emerged to the tune of 6,000 bowmen who shot down his followers and drove them off the lake; a third debacle that convinced Antigonus that his propensity for giving himself bloody noses in the Jordanian desert was unintelligent. His behaviour is in some ways difficult to understand, a hefty bribe would no doubt have brought round his ‘barbarous’ neighbours even after the first attack. The desire to control the spice routes explains much but there remains a suspicion that Antigonus miscalculated and, once committed, his prestige did not allow a withdrawal.
The equipment and organization of these people who gave the Antigonids such trouble is little detailed. Almost all Arab soldiers mentioned in ancient sources are described as missilemen, either javelineers or bowmen. Horses were apparently very rare amongst them and richer folk would have ridden camels, dismounting on most occasions to fight. However in 547 BC, the king of Lydia’s highly-reputed cavalry had been upset by his Persian enemies fielding soldiers on camels, so it is clear fighting aboard the beasts had its advantages. The bow they used was described by Herodotus as long and, certainly, Hieronymus could vouch for its effectiveness from close, personal experience. The Antigonids found these skirmishers very difficult to combat on ground of their own choosing.
What is noticeable in so many of these small wars is the trouble the Diadochi could have with apparently puny, ‘uncivilized’ and poverty-stricken peoples. The fact was that on the great powers’ borders there thrived communities who though thought backward were potent and indeed, in some senses, they were potent because they were ‘backward’. No military specialization prevented instant mobilization, each man, and even, on occasions, woman, was a warrior and natural skill in unconventional warfare gave some ‘Colonel Blimps’ of the established powers much to make them scratch their heads when they confronted these folk in arms.