Chapter Four
If the two great regional carve-ups at Babylon and Triparadisus had solved nothing, the bloody denouement at Ipsus in 301 was almost immediately understood as a game-changer. King Antigonus, a man so old he was almost a contemporary of Alexander’s father and so powerful that no single other ruler could have hoped to contend with him, was dead and the destiny of his demesne that stretched from the Hellespont to the Euphrates and beyond was bound to be up for grabs. This had not been a minor affair like Gaza in 312 where in hardly a campaigning season the defeated Demetrius had bounced back to confront Ptolemy again or some complication in Mesopotamia around the same time where Seleucus regained a local ascendency which, even if portentous for the future, had little immediate impact. It had been a conclusive event and the military might of Macedonian Europe directed by the kings from Pella and Lysimachia had been decisive, with these two emerging to relish in their triumph over an Imperial family who for a decade and a half had looked like the only candidate capable of consolidating the whole empire that Alexander had left as the prize for funeral games that commenced by the river of Babylon before covering regions inhabited by men from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River. It had not been these two alone. Seleucus had done his bit after an epic march from the borders of Afghanistan with elephants and chariots in tow and, if Plutarch can be believed, the great beasts from India had been critical in keeping Demetrius from returning after a dramatic and victorious cavalry charge to save a father who fell in the centre where the masses of infantry contested the field. There it had been the heavy warriors of the phalanx, provided by Cassander and Lysimachus, that were the core of the victorious army and without which no Hellenistic military could take the field with any hope of success.
Yet for all that had changed, after the awful butchery perpetrated in clouds of dust on a plain in the centre of Anatolia, King Demetrius remained alive and free. Scarred he might be, but resisting any excess of despair and accompanied by a young and fiery Pyrrhus, whose name will soon figure gloriously in our story, he had made his way to Ephesus where he joined up with a fleet that remained stoutly loyal to the man who had led them to such triumph at Salamis only five years earlier. Nor was this by any means all that was left to him: the Antigonid realm that remained loyal still stretched from strongholds in Greece to the great Aegean cities of Anatolia, down to the maritime communities of Phoenicia as well as over to Cyprus, with plenty of members from the league of islanders in between. However, as the rump of the Antigonid leadership assessed their new situation, news arrived of another body blow both to their power and prestige. The wheels of the Athenian democracy had not ground slowly at all, as almost in a heartbeat they abandoned the cause of men they had six short years before hailed as saviour gods. The tension between the monarchic and democratic principles had inevitably caused problems during Demetrius’ sojourn in Greece with his behaviour when headquartered in the Parthenon under the disapproving gaze of Athena’s huge ivory and gold-plated statue fashioned by the great Phidias lovingly detailed for our censure.1 Should we actually believe that Demetrius turned his accommodation in Athena’s temple into a brothel? Probably not, but that he allowed himself to be treated like a god and was a sucker for much of the sycophantic stuff Stratocles is claimed to have orchestrated, very possibly yes. The idea of great dynasts and warriors joining the demigods went deep and the kind of success these Macedonian warlords achieved is very likely to have gone to their heads just in the way it is suggested it did with Alexander himself. Certainly there was exaggeration, particularly as some of the most salacious reports probably originated from the playwright Philippides who, as a friend of Lysimachus, hated Demetrius with a vengeance.
When the reports of Ipsus hit the streets in early autumn there had been enough people oppressed by all too human resentment of Demetrius’ ascendency to provoke joy in many hearts. In the years since he had arrived offering freedom and autonomy on the end of his sword, they had learned what this really meant with sufficient resentment engendered to ensure that the Antigonid honeymoon was a long time over. Now excitement about the possibility of getting out from under was palpable, it could almost be tasted. These Athenians were far from always truly admirable but still there was an impressive core, a desire for real sovereignty that meant the likes of Stratocles were bound to be under threat once it was clear his sponsor was no longer the foremost ruler of the Hellenistic world. The administration would have been careful; the first news could be unreliable but eventually repeated reports from credible folk, traders first, then perhaps Athenian soldiers who had fought in the battle and emissaries from the other powers. When the evidence was overwhelming, all those except the few totally committed to Demetrius acted. The assembly was convened and the posture of the majority was clear when they voted never to allow another king to enter through the city gates again. In the past an Athenian need to get rid of anybody too powerful, too popular or too grand had contrived the mechanism of ostracism and the sentiment remained. The Antigonid king was just too much in every way for many and they wanted him gone.
How the king’s wife, the sister of Pyrrhus, felt at this turn of events can be imagined as stuffy civic officials arrived to unceremoniously arrange for her departure. They might have been polite enough, organizing an escort for her as far as Megara, but for both her and her husband it was a slap in the face. Perhaps of more moment for Demetrius based at Ephesus was what would happen to that part of his fleet and treasury still in the city. He was far from prepared to write off these vital resources, nor indeed to accept as any kind of fait accompli being ejected from where he had lorded for so many years. The man who had lived in deified state in the Parthenon was in no mood to accept this as just another aspect of the fall-out of the great battle in Anatolia. However, for the moment the young Antigonid, regretting no doubt that he had not at least left a garrison in the Piraeus, realized he was in no position to make demands but would have to negotiate. A meeting took place somewhere in the Cyclades where the defeated king was able to restrain any resentment at his treatment and the Athenian envoys, who did not want this still formidable man as an enemy, not only agreed to hand over his ships but also to remain neutral in a situation where Demetrius would be bound to try to reassert control in the other places in Greece that had repudiated his hegemony. Neither side was playing straight here. Demetrius had far from given up his designs in Attica, and the Athenians soon showed their concept of neutrality was very elastic indeed where their self-interest was concerned. Within two years a delegation had been dispatched to formalize relations with Cassander, while the Athenians’ attachment to Lysimachus was highlighted when the playwright Philippides facilitated a considerable gift of grain from the Thracian monarch. Yet immediately Demetrius, having at least had the ships that were moored at the Piraeus returned, including thirteen of one of the deadliest, most up-to-date warships, moved in considerable might to his great stronghold of Corinth.
While most of the evidence we have about events in Greece relates to what happened in Athens – after all, it had been Demetrius’ headquarters for so many years in the 310s as well as being a key cultural centre of the Hellenic world – this does not mean that strains did not surface elsewhere. He discovered ‘everywhere his garrisons were being expelled from the towns in which he had stationed them and the whole region was going over to his enemies.’2 It is only possible to interpret this to mean places in the Peloponnese that he had taken from Cassander’s officers now returned to the adherence of a king whose armies had played such a part in the victory at Ipsus. What is extraordinary is that instead of taking action against this pressing threat, Demetrius scratched a different itch that had become unbearable. He decided to take a swipe at Lysimachus. The bitterness between these two was proverbial and best expressed by the derogatory nickname that he gave to his rival. Not that this name-calling was so unusual in the group of rival Macedonian aristocrats who ruled the world as the Antigonid described Seleucus as ‘master of the elephants’, but designating Lysimachus ‘the treasurer’ was scarifying indeed. It not only highlighted a perceived parsimony, damning him as a tightwad who did not properly reward his followers, it also cast aspersions on his manhood as this was a post frequently occupied by eunuchs.
So, leaving Pyrrhus of Epirus to hold tight in Greece, he took most of his navy and as many soldiers as he could spare from his garrisons and sailed along the eastern coast towards the Hellespont. There was some fighting near Lampsacus,3 situated on the southern shore as the straits broaden out into the Propontis, where Lysimachus decided he had to massacre 5,000 of his Autariatae mercenaries because Demetrius had captured their baggage and he was afraid they would go over to his enemy just as the Silver Shields had done a deal with Antigonus to betray Eumenes after the Battle of Gabiene. Once ashore on the Thracian Chersonese, Demetrius had the satisfaction of not only plundering the heartland of his hated rival and utilizing the spoils he had won to sustain his men, but was able to threaten the city of Lysimachia as well. That he could terrify the inhabitants of the capital and throw the court itself into confusion must have been of huge satisfaction, highlighting as it did that despite Ipsus, his enemies could still not begin to confront him at sea. That none of the Thracian king’s old allies showed any inclination to come to his aid must have been a delight, though if he was conscious of it the general opinion that after Ipsus, with the gains made in Anatolia, Lysimachus was now ‘more to be feared’ than Demetrius would have been much less gratifying.
If one monarch had been left dishevelled and anxious in his capital, another had been establishing a headquarters that would end as a very much greater city than Lysimachia. On the left bank of the Orontes River below the soaring crest of Mount Silpios, where there was a spring whose waters it was claimed brought back memories for Alexander of his mother’s milk and with beautiful Daphne to the south, a chequerboard foundation had emerged, orientated to get the best of each season’s winds and shade. Originally peopled with the denizens of Antigonus’ old capital of Antigonia, many of whom had themselves been incomers from Athens, these now enjoyed the bounties of nature from land and sea while providing a node for caravan routes from the interior. All of this should have been enough, but there were omens too, with eagles flying off with sacrificial meat and co-operatively dropping it on the site of the new city of Antioch. It was in the direction of this foundation of Seleucus that Demetrius discovered opportunities in a new century.
Hardly a year after Ipsus, not content with just setting his personal enemies’ assets in ashes, he also determined to look for new friends in an altered world. Seleucus had found himself heir to considerable new regions after the Antigonid realm crumbled, but with fresh advantage came new dangers. He found himself not only with Lysimachus, still allied to Cassander, as a neighbour but that the latter’s brother Pleistarchus as his reward for leading the Macedonian troops at Ipsus was now ensconced in strategic Cilicia, no distance from his own Syrian border. So his western frontier was abutted by rulers who no longer had need of him now that Antigonus was overthrown and apart from this, some of the most prime real estate that had come his way as part of victory had been annexed by another ex-ally. Coele-Syria had been occupied by Ptolemy and despite any post-Ipsus settlement he was hanging on to it and as Lysimachus and Cassander both hoped to remain on good terms with him, as a naval counterweight to Demetrius, Seleucus could have little expectation of receiving anything but more grief from their direction. Such circumstances meant that Demetrius soon discovered envoys at his court from the new master of anti-Taurine Asia asking for an alliance that he hoped would be cemented by marriage between the two families. So it was settled that the man who provided the elephants that had been so crucial in destroying his father in battle would befriend the loser of that climactic encounter and faintly the sound of old Antigonus turning in his grave must have been heard as Demetrius led his daughter Stratonice on board his great flagship to transport her to a new husband waiting at his western headquarters in Syria.
It turned out to be a happy and lucrative cruise, particularly when they alighted on the coast of Cilicia where the mint new ruler found himself in no position to make any military defence against the intruder and instead went to Seleucus to complain of his putative father-in-law’s incursions. In his absence Demetrius dashed to the town of Cyinda where 1,200 talents was still being banked from his father’s time and after loading the treasure on his ships and leaving a garrison to hold this key stronghold, sailed on to Rhosus where he had arranged to meet with Seleucus. After travelling miles around the Amanos Mountains from his just-founded capital to reach this seaport on the Gulf of Issus, Seleucus had come in sufficient style to treat his visitor and his followers to a sumptuous feast in his camp on the coast. The Antigonid, not to be outdone, reciprocated this hospitality the next day on his own element when both monarchs foregathered on the deck of the great thirteener he had so recently received back from the Athenians. The laid-back pair seemed happy to enjoy themselves where they could and the image transmitted is that ‘the two rulers conversed at leisure and spent the whole day in one another’s company without either guards or arms.’4
If nothing very stable proceeded from this junketing, one by-blow would have a major impact on Macedonian Europe. Seleucus had over this period made friends not only with Demetrius but with the royal tenant at Alexandria too and, acting as intermediary, he managed the trick of reconciling him to Demetrius, the same man who had invaded his country hardly five years before and the one power who had a navy that could compare favourably with his own. Part of these arrangements involved Pyrrhus of Epirus travelling to Egypt as a hostage for the surety of Demetrius’ good intentions. The new Seleucid-Antigonid pact in fact had little internal logic and began to show signs of fraying almost as soon as it had been established when the former began pressing to have not only Cilicia but then Tyre and Sidon handed over to him. Demetrius would never have countenanced this and rejected his son-in-law’s representation, although with a new project filling his thoughts, he would have welcomed a settled situation on this front. That he had allowed his trusted lieutenant in Greece to depart for Alexandria in no sense meant that he had forgotten his European ambitions. Much had happened at Athens since they had ejected their saviour god from his palace in the Parthenon and keeping the flame of autonomy and democracy alive in a complex world was never going to prove easy. So events in 298 showed as famine had driven the people hard despite some hand-outs from the likes of Lysimachus and after something like a civil war, only discovered from an Oxyrhynchus Papyri, the leaders of the city’s mercenaries took control. Yet this coup by a character called Lachares was far from complete as Piraeus was detached from municipal authority in spring 297 when news of Cassander’s death spread abroad, and a party of resistance against the impious tyrant who had filched the gold sheeting from Athena’s great statue to pay his mercenaries had established a base there. So when Demetrius decided again to target the city he might reasonably have expected to encounter only a ragged and divided defence.
From the time of his matrimonial excursion east the exact whereabouts of the Antigonid king is something of a mystery, but he may well have based himself in Cilicia. This country was provided with good timber to repair and build his warships and was not far from Phoenicia that was home to some of his most expert mariners and their craft, and it is difficult to place an incident when he is reported clashing with Lysimachus at Soli in Cilicia5 at any other time. His presence to some extent might also explain why Seleucus, worried by his continued proximity, had decided to cosy up to Ptolemy despite bitter contention over ownership of Coele-Syria. Wherever he had been, 296 or 295 saw him move to re-establish himself where he had so recently cavorted with the goddess Athena. Initially his efforts were attended by unfortunate results. An attempt to surprise the Athenians started well enough until ‘along the coast of Attica’ his armada was hit by a terrific storm; screaming wind and rain lashed low-lying galleys for hours until vessels just not made for these conditions broke apart and foundered. The havoc-wrecked fleet was almost smashed to pieces with thousands of soldiers and sailors perishing, though numbers could only be conjectured from the litter of oars, spars and bloated corpses. What was not in doubt was that Demetrius’ arms might have been considerably diminished, his military personnel shaved to such an extent that if the whole enterprise was not chasteningly aborted, all he could achieve with curtailed resources was to try to overrun the outlying forts and undefended villages in the Attic countryside. Yet despite this incapacity to make decisive headway around the city itself, while his officers were busy rebuilding his navy, the ever-active man decided to try to regain ground further south.
This was the dashing Demetrius all over. Gathering the remnants of his army at Corinth, he resolved to pounce on the other defensive horn of the Peloponnese, Mount Ithome above Messene. This very defensible place appealed as a meaningful challenge to the great besieger and soon his engines in spectacular demonstration were closing in and an assault was prepared with himself at the head. However, before he could mount the walls, Demetrius suffered an awful wound when a catapult bolt penetrated through his jaw far into his mouth. When his followers saw their dazzling leader felled with a 2-metre-long lance in his head they must have believed him dead and themselves left rudderless, but it turned out not at all the case. Somehow he not only survived this terrible wound but recuperated in a remarkably short time, an almost miraculous recovery that perhaps explains why a number of places that had overturned Antigonid rule returned to the fold, though there is little evidence regarding whether he actually took Messene in the end.
The irrepressible man now revisited his earlier undertaking. Returning to the fighting in Attica, it was the usual stuff to begin with, trashing the countryside and driving the farmers and their families inside the city walls while his soldiers overran the forts at Eleusis and Rhamnus, the latter north of Marathon with its sanctuary to the goddess Nemesis above the sea looking out over to Euboea. These two places positioned him strategically both west and north-east of the city while he clearly still had sufficient warships left to institute a blockade. This policy, with Demetrius paying attention to detail, turned out particularly effective when disincentives were viciously enforced after a grain ship bound for Athens was captured by his captains who had the pilot and owner hung from their own masts. With potential importers frightened off, the suffering city experienced one last wellspring of hope when a fleet of 150 ships from Alexandria was sighted ‘off the coast of Aegina’ looking set to break Demetrius’ cordon, but by now the weather-beaten vestige of his navy had been reinforced with the reserves from the Peloponnese, Cyprus and no doubt his Phoenician strongholds where for months from sun-up to sun-down the air had rung with the clamour of hammers and saws, filling their slipways with replacement warships. His naval establishment had managed to scrape together a fleet of 300 vessels, enough to see off the danger without even a fight, so ‘Ptolemy’s ships hoisted sail, abandoned the city and made their escape’,6 cutting their losses and scurrying for home at the sight of the Saronic Gulf black with Antigonid shipping.
Initially the Athenians, snug behind their walls, had shown brave, skating over the implication of even these setbacks and decreeing death for anybody passing a resolution to treat with Demetrius, but it soon became clear that the long walls were in poor shape and the city was easily cut off by experienced engineers, many of whom had served apprenticeships under the great besieger himself. When the strength of these forces became clear, consternation swept the citizen body as the forebodings that had gripped the more realistic proved well-grounded. How bad things soon got for a people ruined by war is well illustrated by an ominous story of a father and son living in the city. These two, sitting despondent in their house and having no expectation except death, noticed a dead mouse falling out of their ceiling and despite hardly having any energy left they still fell to fighting over this morsel of food. Alarmingly, even initiates of Epicurus could not be sustained by their philosophy and their leader is reported keeping tabs on his store of beans and doling out a meagre ration to his disciples each day. Finally, with famine biting hard, collaborators came out of the woodwork pointing out that there was no alternative to sending envoys to their tormentors.
During this period, before the city fell, the rapacious tyrant Lachares left the scene initiating some wonderful stories by Polyaenus about him escaping to Boeotia disguised as a slave with a blackened face, carrying a basket of illicit gold hidden beneath stinking faeces. Not that this was the end of his adventures that included hiding in the sewers at Thebes for days to escape when it fell to Demetrius and similarly lurking in a pit at Sestus and escaping disguised as a female mourner when that town was taken. An exile’s billet at Lysimachus’ court eventually lay in store for this man who had absconded from Athens before a surrender was arranged in April 295 or 294 when the Athenians opened their gates again to their old saviour god. It must have been with huge trepidation that the crowds, racked with dreadful imaginings, moved along nervous streets to gather in the theatre to hear what their new ruler had to say. Their concerns would not have been alleviated as they saw the back and sides of the auditorium surrounded by menacing armed men but when after what must have seemed a perilously long time Demetrius entered with all the drama of a practised actor it was to everybody’s relief that his tenor was gentle and friendly. Their city was not going to be sacked, their citizens would not suffer mass execution or exile, but if his words said forgiveness and trust, not all his actions did. He might promise 100,000 bushels of wheat so the people could eat again, but he also posted garrisons of his soldiers in not just the Munychia at Piraeus but at the fort on a Hill of the Muses just across south-west from the Acropolis where the long walls joined the defences of Athens itself and the Philopappos Monument now stands. It was clear that it was no longer the votes of the assembly that really counted; no longer formal debates at the hollowed-out auditorium of the Pnyx across the valley from the mighty Acropolis rock where key decisions would be arrived at. Once again the one voice that mattered was that of Demetrius and next time he left town he would leave enough of his hard and efficient mercenaries to ensure that it stayed so.
This time, however, there was no question of gadding about in impious debauchery in the confines of Athena’s quarters; the conqueror was determined to reinforce his earlier success in the south. Having suppressed probably the most celebrated of the cities of Greece, he determined to deal with the next most illustrious. Sparta was the only power in the Peloponnese that had the resources and will to really contest his hegemony of the peninsula, so he resolved to try to eliminate them as a threat. In this campaign to quash the hallowed old place, Demetrius again showed genuine elan and flair, intending to arrive in their midst like a thunderbolt. Marching hard from the isthmus, he encountered at the familiar battlefield of Mantinea the Spartan army under Archidamus IV, nephew of Agis III, the king who had died in battle fighting Antipater at Megalopolis in 331. Between the fifth and third centuries there were four or five significant encounters in the country around this town involving Spartans, Thebans, Athenians, Achaeans and plenty more. Sitting foursquare at the head of what is now the plain of Tripoli in north-east Arcadia, it was well situated to defend against those attacking south towards Tegea and Sparta or to oppose incursions over the mountains north-east into the Argolid.
This time it was a rout and Demetrius pursued the beaten enemy over the Parnon hills and into Laconia itself. Now Sparta was in danger and fine words about the city needing no defences because her soldiers were her walls must have rung very hollow; still, they were the only option available and while the invader drew his army up in the Eurotas valley outside the precincts of town, the locals prepared to put their faith in the warriors of ancient tradition. Yet the venerated place had changed, the numbers of full Spartan citizen fighters had been declining for years and if a form of the Agoge military education still existed it was non-citizen, periochae warriors and even unfree helots that filled out most of the ranks on their side. The Spartan hoplite army had shown an incapacity to face proper Macedonian-style phalangites back when King Agis had been defeated and it could hardly be different now with the number of veterans Demetrius was fielding against them. They were overthrown again with 200 killed and 500 captured when the day’s fighting ended, with the odds now looking like ancient Sparta, the home of Leonidas, would finally fall to outside invaders as it had never done before, not even after defeats by the great Theban commander Epaminondas.
Yet the legendary home of Helen and Menelaus was not destined to fall; something intervened that had long been the great business of so many of Alexander’s successors, the throne of Macedon itself. Cassander had passed away in his bed sometime in 297, apparently rotting from the inside as appropriate penalty for his treatment of Alexander’s family, while his eldest son Philip was crowned without challenge in a smooth-as-silk succession. However, the best-laid plans of this competent dynast determined to embed his family on the Macedonian throne were scuppered by lethal fate. Philip, who must have still been a young man, after four months on the throne succumbed to a wasting disease while campaigning near Elateia in Phocis. With this child of Cassander’s queen Thessalonike dead, there were two more left: Antipater who was around 16 years of age and Alexander even younger. Despite the youth of these claimants, their line had such legitimacy that the Macedonians did not consider looking outside the family but acclaimed both as kings, expecting that their highly-respected mother and half-sister of the great Alexander would hold the reins until they reached maturity. However, an apprehensive court and political establishment found that dividing the realm did not guarantee stability. The claim is that Thessalonike favoured Alexander and was determined not to see him disinherited, despite Antipater’s prerogatives as the elder son. Indeed, she ensured that in the division Alexander took the west part of the country that included the capital and the most prime real estate while Antipater, who was married to Lysimachus’ daughter, was given the eastern portion of the kingdom that abutted the Thracian realm of his father-in-law. Like Cassander, when he was not given what he felt was his due on his father’s death, he kicked. The east was not without its attractions, it was where the mineral mines were and significant cities like Amphipolis and Philippi, but it was not enough: he wanted the lot and was prepared to act.
The arrangement had lasted a couple of years when by 294 Antipater, having probably now come of age, showed restive under his mother’s tutelage. Having only received a share of an inheritance he regarded as all his own and convinced she preferred her younger son, he moved against an authority whose partiality meant danger for himself. This desperate prince showed himself astonishingly ruthless when, before being packed off to his allotted division, he had his mother murdered and claimed the whole kingdom for himself. We know nothing of the details of the conspiracy. Antipater would no doubt have tried to canvass support among the court elite before taking such desperate and decisive action, but the indisputable facts are that he killed his mother. Whether it was by assassin’s knife or subtle poison we have no way of knowing, but the murderer compounded this awful disposal by driving out his brother while the capital was riven with clamour and uproar.
Matricide was an horrific crime in the face of men and gods and the perpetrator did not long easily enjoy the benefits of his crime. Macedonia with two minors as kings from the start must have looked like easy pickings to anybody with a claim and an army to enforce it, and if this was not bad enough this dysfunctional family did not help themselves. Self-destructive divisiveness was apparent from Cassander’s death and before three years were out all hell had broken loose. If it was no surprise that the murderer faced retribution for his profane and bloody act, the nemesis who would make him pay had already been noticed in the past few years. He was a young prince last remarked kicking his heels in pampered exile in the great palace of Ptolemy in Alexandria who, sent by Demetrius as hostage, had made himself friends at the highest level, enjoying sufficient favour that he was wed to Antigone, the child of Ptolemy’s queen and the king’s stepdaughter. In the web-close world of Macedonian politics, having well-disposed placemen was an inclination of all the great power-players and Ptolemy had always kept some skin in the game in mainland Greece. His officers had not long since controlled important cities in the Peloponnese and he would soon risk his navy to try to bring succour to Athens in her hour of need. If this would finally be abortive the inclination was always there and not long before this he had made a move to establish a confederate in a different part of the mainland. In 297–96 Lagid troops and ships had brought Pyrrhus back to his homeland intent on restabilizing him on a throne from which he had been twice ejected, first in 317 when only 2 years old and later in 302 when Cassander had driven him out.
That this coup was accomplished just after Cassander had died was no coincidence, as Ptolemy would not have risked the displeasure of this steady ally by interfering so near Macedonia while he was still alive. The restoration had initially involved a compromise that saw Pyrrhus ruling in tandem with Neoptolemus who had come to the throne when he had last been kicked out. This cousin was the grandson of Philip and Olympias and nephew of Alexander the Great, but this pedigree did little to secure his future. In his 30s by this time, he had been around for a sufficient period to alienate many of his subjects by his violent and tyrannical temper; indeed it was only this reality, indicated by local uprisings, that ensured he agreed to the power-sharing arrangement in the first place. However, his position was inherently weak with many of the warrior class preferring the sole rule of the well-reputed young soldier Pyrrhus from the start. Only months after the new king’s arrival the dual monarchy was dissolved and that the removal of Neoptolemus is so reminiscent of what would soon happen between Demetrius and another ineffectual king does not mean it is not accurate. Interfamilial bloodletting was just as common a phenomenon in these mountain cantons as in the greater courts to the east. The incident occurred at the ancient Molossian capital 5 miles up the valley north-west from modern-day Ioannina where in 2,000 years Ali Pasha would nest on a mounting pile of glistening treasure and enemy bones. Passaron was more than a century old by this time and already a tradition of a springtime swapping of oaths to maintain laws and customs between the prostates of the assembled people and their kings had been established. Here the co-rulers staged a lethal gavotte: after the formal ceremonial in front of an audience of representatives of the people, when sacrifices to Zeus were being performed, there was a banquet riven by bickering over gifts of oxen and amorous intrigues that encouraged friends of Neoptolemus to approach an apparently disaffected member of Pyrrhus’ entourage to poison his master. In fact this wine-bearer, if disgruntled, was still loyal and warned the intended victim, who encouraged him to appear to co-operate to entrap his co-ruler. A buoyant Neoptolemus even bragged of his murderous intentions when in his cups which determined Pyrrhus on a pre-emptive strike, doing away with him at another banquet where Neoptolemus had imprudently failed to retain a sufficient bodyguard and which he had only attended so as not to raise suspicions about his own intentions.
So by 295 Pyrrhus was securely in the driving seat in his mountain kingdom. Still in his early 20s, he was determined to make a splash; after all, had not the great Antigonus the One-Eyed said of him that he would become the greatest general of all if he lived long enough. Now Alexander, the worried younger brother of the murderous Antipater, showing spirit even in the absence of his mother’s support, cast around to find helpers in his dispossessed predicament. He was married to a daughter of Ptolemy of Egypt, but that ruler was just not proximate enough to make a difference so he considered nearer neighbours who might lend a hand. He first looked south where a great king with a reputation and army looked well-placed to provide assistance, but the response of Demetrius was insufficiently punctual for a prince on the run and who was afraid that if he didn’t get a powerful backer immediately he would end up like his mother. We do not hear that Antipater had actually set the dogs on him, but it would be reasonable to assume that once he had established himself, his first priority would be to extinguish this fraternal inconvenience. So next Alexander turned to Pyrrhus, who received missives from his menaced neighbour with considerable interest. He did not have his hands full at that moment and could take up the dispossessed prince’s cause with alacrity, although to enter a relationship with this young man, who seemed to have few of the rugged qualities of his father and none of the charisma of his mother, would only be done with a considerable shopping list. He demanded and received great chunks of upper Macedonia as well as Acarnania, Amphilochia and Ambracia so his Epirot people, eagerly appreciative of the benefits of these arrangements with the Macedonian prince, happily mobilized and, having occupied the newly-bequeathed territories, pressed forward to drive Antipater out of Pella.
There Pyrrhus found he was pushing at an open door as his foe had squandered any possibility of support from most of the Macedonian people by his awful act of matricide, so the bloody-handed prince fled east without a fight, hoping to find succour in the direction of the kingdom ruled by his father-in-law. Alexander was swiftly established in the capital, a switch that was probably made easier by the fact that these had been his lands when the country was divided under Thessalonike. How far Pyrrhus’ protégé’s remit stretched is unclear, although as the Epirot army did not press on in hot pursuit of his brother it is reasonable to assume that Antipater held on in the east of the country where there might have been some sort of administration at least nominally committed to his cause. To be able to do much more would surely have been impossible as Lysimachus, heavily involved in a Getic war or busy in Anatolia could not spare the military support he would have needed to take on Alexander and his Epirot backer. Yet with the future of Antipater’s rump realm in the balance, Lysimachus at least tried what he could to help his son-inlaw by diplomacy, aiming to neutralize Pyrrhus by intrigue if he could not do so militarily. He was bound to see the benefits of midwifing an accommodation between Cassander’s sons as soon as possible to avoid Demetrius having an excuse to intervene and to influence Pyrrhus in favour of such an agreement he proposed a sweetener of 300 talents while forwarding a letter, purporting to be from Ptolemy, urging Pyrrhus to press Alexander to come to terms with his brother. It was probably easy enough to counterfeit missives from another Macedonian chancery and the benefits could be considerable as the Epirot king’s relationship with the man who had put him on his throne was famously close. His christening his first-born son Ptolemy and naming a new town built ‘on the peninsula of Epirus’ to control the entrance to the Ambracian Gulf near modern-day Preveza, Berenice after the Egyptian queen was perhaps a reflection of real affection rather than just genuflection in the direction of an important backer. However, the ploy failed to work as the bluff was called as a forgery when the message began ‘king Ptolemy to king Pyrrhus greetings’ rather than the usual ‘the father to the son greetings’ that Ptolemy perennially used in all his communications with the Epirot ruler. Yet despite this duplicity Pyrrhus was looking to deal, needing peace to digest his considerable gains, so when Lysimachus, Alexander and he met to confirm a peace he was not looking for trouble, even when according to one account a sacrificial ram fell dead of its own accord, causing the diviner to warn of the death of one of the three participants. It is even possible that when the religious rigmarole went wrong, it may have given a convenient excuse to slide out of a commitment to Alexander that was becoming dangerous with another predator clearly on the move.
Pyrrhus had with apparently little trouble massively increased the size and potential of his realm and now the imperative was to consolidate this Greater Epirus, and to be on hand to exploit these new opportunities he returned to Epirus in autumn 294. His had been a meagre, stony terrain with few natural resources, certainly set in magnificent mountain country but without the means to sustain much but marginal hardscrabble agriculture with the only real wealth being in cattle. Pyrrhus himself was claimed as being adept at stock-rearing and a particularly tall specimen of steer was named after him. The kingdom of Epirus was itself a complicated entity of no venerable age and seems to have been unusual in combining both federal and monarchical principles that emerged after an admixture of Greeks arrived early to mingle with an indigenous folk before being overrun by Illyrians who, going by many of the names, provided much of the ruling aristocracy as the country emerged into history. This was an elite who became rapidly Hellenized, particularly under the influence of Corinthian colonies along the coast and on the island of Corcyra lying just over the water. The resulting amalgam of peoples was organized into tribes of which by far the most significant were the Molossians and who by the late fourth century had become the dominant force in a local Epirot alliance. This was not a place of cities, much more of clans, villages and cantons, although there was a popular assembly based on the people in arms gathering to make key decisions about war and peace, a republican strain exemplified by the annual covenant that took place at Passaron, that on occasions could considerably constrain the power of the monarchs. As so often in such pre-modern entities, the personality of the incumbent often played a decisive part in this play of interests and Pyrrhus soon showed that in a world of great Hellenistic monarchs this was the role, rather than anything like a constitutional monarch, that he intended to play. Yet even for him, with an agenda of near-constant adventure, achievement would always be the litmus paper when it came to testing domestic support.
Now he had provided success in spades, intervention in the wider Balkan world had won a massive increase in real estate that would ensure that at least for a few years his creation of a Greater Epirus would turn a country that had previously been a backwater into a real player on the world stage. From an impoverished boondocks comprising small villages and a sparse population where small-scale stock-rearing was all most of its people could aspire to, it became the political powerhouse of the Balkan peninsula. The newly-secured Macedonian cantons of Tymphaea and Parauaea that ran along Mount Boius and Mount Tymphe west of Orestis and Elimea acted as a convenient defensive barrier, while the Aous River running north-west to south-east through both regions provided a useful corridor leading into the Pindus range and over into Thessaly. Yet if these places were essentially more of the same kind of territory that made up the Epirot core – indeed much of it had been Epirot country before Philip II incorporated it into his expanding Macedonia – the other additions of Acarnania, Amphilochia and Ambracia were something different. These places had long been part of the Greek world where proper towns and cities flourished, so it is no surprise that when it was decided to found a new capital, it was to these new provinces he looked.
He intended a centrepiece for his new kingdom to be inaugurated where an already established wealthy and civilized population could provide a suitable home for his court and he found this in the old Corinthian colony of Ambracia that Philip of Macedon had taken over in the 330s and had now fallen into his lap. The commissioning of a new capital joyously proclaimed that Greater Epirus had now arrived as one of the heavyweights in the Hellenistic world and little time passed before he registered this in stone, extending the acropolis defences and much more. Little enough remains now at modern Arta, just some samples of defensive walls, temples and a theatre, but Pyrrhus still remains the local hero, although there is something very disappointing in the modern characterless equestrian statue completely devoid of the man’s boiling energy. Yet at the time Ambracia was a showcase for the new country fully entering the world of urbane Greeks and attempting to obliterate their lingering reputation as barbarian pastoralists who followed their herds in nomadic transhumance rather than putting down proper metropolitan roots like the condescending Greeks who had so long looked down on them as riff-raff. Come to power through familial bloodletting, Pyrrhus intended to give his countrymen from the western margins a future of greatness on a world stage that Alexander’s conquests had so recently expanded.
Marriage was often the diplomatic strategy of choice for these dynasts and the new king of Epirus now looked like a very good connection to many, particularly in the western Greek world where these Balkan players had long looked like potentially useful allies. This latest addition to the panoply of Hellenistic kings was looking particularly hot stuff so that Agathocles, a well-established strongman at Syracuse in Sicily, was not only happy to give his daughter Lanassa to win a new friend but even prepared to hand over the island of Corcyra as a dowry, perhaps with Leucas thrown in too. The former place was not just an economic dynamo but was well-placed to act as not just a defensive barbican to protect against any threat from the Adriatic side but, as had been shown in the past, a good jumping-off place for those interested in making waves in the Italian world. Hellenistic kings might boast Greek pedigrees and refinement, but their barbarian roots were never more illustrated than in their marital histories: plenty of women was their motto and Pyrrhus was bent on acquiring a bevy of useful ones, marrying around this time a daughter of the king of Paeonia, while also wedding into the family of the Illyrian monarch Bardylis whose people were, if not kept on board, forever threatening to burst out in plundering energy from the mountains beyond the Apsus River.
Yet on the new stage he was strutting there was no disregarding his old constituency. His Molossians craved reassurance that was amply given by their warrior king who had more than a little of the barbarian warlord about him. There was nothing very subtle about their big, bone-mouthed boy7 who recalled an antique world of heroes that was more Homeric than Periclean. Pyrrhus might have been intent on bequeathing a future sprung from symposiums decorously fuelled by watered wine and dialectic debate in the agora, but still he knew his countrymen well, that the people at the core of his kingdom were closer to the god Pan, with the ingrained wildness of shepherds lashing slingshot at bare-teeth wolves, natural warriors rather than philosophers. If he did not let them down in offering warfare and profitable rapine aplenty, there would also have been expectations in respect of national prestige and reputation and there he did not fail either.
Crossing many high ridges east from the Adriatic coast to reach below Mount Tomaros, an ancient traveller would have found himself at possibly the oldest Greek oracle, sacred to the king of the gods, situated in the lands of the Molossians and though well off the beaten track, for most of the big names in the Hellenic world it still retained a kudos hardly less considerable than that of Delphi. There are claims it had originally been devoted to the mother goddess before she was supplanted by Zeus. Swampy Dodona was also associated with Achelous, a water deity and a holy spring where the rustling of oak or beech leaves and the whistling of wind chimes was interpreted by the priests and priestesses of the sacred grove to advise those who came looking for enlightenment. Its roots were maintained to reach back to Egypt8 from a date in the second millennium BC, it is referenced in the Iliad9 and it was said that Jason’s boat the Argos had prophetic gifts because the oak from which it was made came from Dodona. Artifacts from Mycenaean times confirm this antiquity, while inscriptions from the sixth century show an increasing reputation among the southern Greeks from the 650s. There was no more ancient or potent place for Pyrrhus to pray for his country’s future and he did a lot more than carry out the appropriate ritual here, spending mightily to refurbish the sanctuary, to make it fit to be Greater Epirus’ spiritual centre. Here his masons worked on a theatre dramatically sited against a mountain backdrop that would eventually seat 18,000 people, a monument worthy of the eminence to which the young monarch aspired. The oracle itself and the temple to Zeus were beautified and an infrastructure added to allow the holding of those festivals of athletics, music and drama that were at the core of being Hellenes.
While the favourite of Dodona had just started enjoying the fruits of his enterprise, two threads of news had been reaching Demetrius’ camp outside Sparta in the summer of 294. The first was the depressing indication that vital parts of his realm were under threat, with many strongholds on the Aegean coast of Asia feeling the gravitational pull of wealth and power represented by the menacing proximity of Lysimachus, while Ptolemy had descended on Cyprus, which had been solid for the Antigonids since his triumph there in 306. However, with this discouraging intelligence came an invitation to exploit opportunities opening to the north. Alexander’s cry for help dispatched some time before instigated an appearance in arms that was going to spell even further trouble for the fragile arrangements that had fallen out in the wake of the death of that long-standing man Cassander. His youngest son had had a brutal introduction to the world of power politics, yet he remained a tyro who worried deeply when he heard news that Demetrius, having left the Peloponnese, had marched through central Greece and was approaching his borders. He had good cause to be concerned about this second dynast arriving hotfoot purporting to answer his call for help. The bill he had disbursed to the last man who had brought such a calling card had amounted to much of his western provinces and nothing in Demetrius’ reputation would suggest his charges would be cheaper. With Pyrrhus gone and his reign hardly started, he could not but worry about the contacts that could be forged between the new arrival’s entourage and key Macedonian bigwigs if he was allowed to cross the border. So in these circumstances where a charismatic rival was bound to have attractions for any but his closest friends, he had little option but to try to keep his now redundant and deeply unwelcome visitor out of the country. He rushed with what state his just found administration could conjure down the road to the border town of Dium. This city sacred to the Macedonians, strategically placed to both defend the homeland and allow access to the world of Greece to the south, lay a few miles from the sea, squatting under snow-capped Mount Olympus that rose over 8,000ft high with boars roaming its wild and forested ravines.
Here the young king, still raw from his bruising dealings with Pyrrhus, hoped to emerge better in negotiations with the second wolf he had asked to help him get his share of the family flock from his brother Antipater. The air was electric with intrigue and distrust as Alexander prepared a banquet in one of Dium’s civic buildings for his guests, though the jittery Antigonid, fearful of putting himself in the other’s power, declined the invitation to the dinner party, suggesting they leave for Larissa in Thessaly to celebrate their new-found friendship there. Getting his problematic new friend further away from Macedonia was just what the incumbent had desired in the first place, so he readily agreed and it was after everybody foregathered at that Thessalian city, after threading the route between Mount Olympus and the sea, where the dramatic events fell out that led to a sensational change in the dynastic arrangements in Philip and Alexander’s old realm. The story is that Alexander prepared to attend what was intended as a parting celebration without an effective bodyguard, wishing to reassure Demetrius that he never intended him harm, whatever rumours had been circulating at Dium. It was a fatal move as his host had hard men armed and ready guarding the door to the banqueting hall. These knew what to do and needed only the prompting of Demetrius putting down his wine cup and leaving his couch. Then while exiting the room, he spoke softly to their officer, saying ‘Kill him who follows me.’ So Alexander, shadowing his host, fell beneath the swords of these killers. With slick ruthlessness Demetrius had disposed of a novice contestant on the chess board of Hellenistic power-play and now he intended to take over the unfortunate young man’s possessions. After partial despoliation by Pyrrhus, the Antigonid had come with a sucker punch.
The meeting with the members of the Macedonians’ court with the dead body of their monarch at their feet ought to have been difficult, but for Demetrius it was not. He was confident he had the whip hand and intended to play it for all it was worth. Most of the officials and courtiers would have been terrified, spending the intervening night contemplating a future that looked bleak indeed considering what they had just seen happen to their leader. Yet if he found no opposition here, the key was how he would be received when he pushed north over the border and onto the road to Pella. In fact, as autumn shadows lengthened in 294 he found few problems, being smoothly acclaimed as king10 after a cursory explanation to the swiftly-mustered Macedonian army assembly that as Alexander had tried to kill him, he had no option but to instigate his removal. The reality was that he was now really the only game in town and even the grandest of Pella’s society were content to accept his accession as a fait accompli, particularly as he freighted considerable credibility as the husband of the venerated Antipater’s daughter Phila and that he was accompanied by his son Antigonus Gonatus, an heir with Antipatrid blood running in his veins did not hurt. The pleasure the great adventurer must have felt at taking control of the country where his family had originated must have been considerable; a kind of high point the family’s fortunes had not reached since the terrible day at Ipsus. Decked out in the purple and gold both he and Pyrrhus favoured, he would have enjoyed sitting in golden splendour in the royal halls that like the abodes of the elite generally were becoming grander, with large peristyle courts and two-storeyed colonnades where the occupants perambulated along fine pebble mosaics in a capital that had been enormously aggrandized by followers of Alexander returning home with pockets full of eastern gold. Finally sitting on the national throne, it might not be the richest or even the mightiest of the great successor kingdoms, but it had the kudos. If there was such a thing as seniority in this world, there was no question that it was held by the occupant of the royal seat of Macedon. The cherry on top was that Lysimachus, tied up in his Gepid wars, could neither oppose his power grab nor indeed even protect his protégé Antipater who soon found himself bundled out of his portion of the kingdom by Demetrius’ officers.
Yet there can be no question that Demetrius’ joy was not unadulterated as word kept arriving from far-flung parts of his old domain that his patrimony was continuing to crumble at the edges. The crucial island of Cyprus had finally succumbed to years of consistent pressure by the Lagid navy and only Salamis town itself was holding out where his mother and some of his children had been living since he had transferred them there from Cilicia for safety soon after Ipsus. More than this, Cilicia, that he had so recently filched from Cassander’s brother, had in his absence been taken over by Seleucus, a place rich enough and the key to controlling what was the most direct route west through the Taurus Mountain passes. The slippery ruler of inner Asia might have married Demetrius’ daughter, but self-interest was the mantra of an aging king who wanted to package up a well-protected realm to hand onto his son. He had already made Antiochus ruler of the eastern divisions of his realm and would soon add a wife to the deal.11 Worst of all, the hated man Lysimachus had been successfully rounding out his control of the Greek cities on the west Anatolian coast and it would not be long before even the metropolis Miletus would be lost to the Sea King who had just become monarch of Macedonia.
Demetrius now found himself firmly tied to dry land with all the concomitant advantages and problems. He might now rule a major kingdom with a military population and tax base to be exploited, but he also had to deal with potentially threatening neighbours, particularly as an old friend now emerged in a new guise. Pyrrhus had been his comrade and chief lieutenant in the years after Ipsus and later had been useful as a high-ranking hostage from the Antigonid court to Alexandria. Family ties had bound them too after Demetrius had married Deidamia, sister of the Epirot king, a considerable coup at the time to be matched with this woman who had once been betrothed to Alexander the Great’s son. However, on being thrown out of Athens in 301 she had only briefly joined Demetrius in Cilicia before dying around 300 after producing a son who seems to have spent his life in Egypt.12 Now that this family connection was sundered, reality had forced a different interface as two powerful kings eyeballed each other across a dangerous border. Particularly with his prestige now directly at stake, the man on the Macedonian side was bound to harbour revanchist intentions against a ruler who had clipped off so much of the western part of his new realm from a predecessor’s weak hands. Fear of the new man at Pella was undoubtedly part of what pushed Pyrrhus into the arms of the Aetolians, only one of many peoples who had deep concerns about the new Macedonian incumbent. Demetrius had striven to achieve hegemony over the Greeks even under his old guise as Antigonid Sea King; how much more might this project be expected to be developed when he was emboldened by the possession of the resources of the northern kingdom that under Philip, Alexander and Antipater had kept so many of the Hellenic communities in an iron grip? If the stranglehold had slipped a little under Cassander and his sons, this was a situation that was unlikely to be acceptable to the latest man in power at Pella. So the applause that greeted Demetrius sitting down on the Macedonian throne had been very far from unanimous. The new king had all sorts of glamour, recalling to some the greatest Macedonian conqueror of them all, even if by now he was well into his 40s, ten years older than Alexander when he died, but this certainly did not cut any ice with two peoples who were deeply worried that the man who already controlled Attica, Chalcis, Megara, Corinth, much of the Peloponnese and the coast around Demetrias was now also master of Macedon and suzerain of Thessaly. He was handsome and gracious but also powerful and menacing to the Boeotians who, like the Aetolians, saw what looked like a man who had once been a friend and ally now in a position to put the real squeeze on them.
The upshot was a kings’ war fought in the cattle-rearing plains of Boeotia. Demetrius had friends there in the recent past, so inevitably there was something personal about the conflict. The Thebans were supporters of the Antigonid cause from 304 and it seems likely that the city received not a little largesse from the greatest kings of the world in that time to match contributions made by Lysimachus and Cassander to the rebuilding of the city that Alexander had razed to the ground. So he would have been happy with any range of relations except that of the Boeotians turning into active enemies and that is what looked like was happening when another one of the period’s dangerous and bloody men took a hand. This was Cleonymus, a member of the Agiad family of royal Spartans who had last been heard of as one of those condottieri who not infrequently made war for the Tarentines against their Italian neighbours, but by 293 he had returned to Sparta and been dispatched to Thebes to encourage the inhabitants to declare against a man his countrymen claimed as the common enemy of all Greeks. His arrival with an army coincided with a domestic movement led by Pisis of Thespiae who had persuaded a significant enough proportion of the political elite that the new king of Macedon was a real danger to their interests.
Demetrius’ policy in Greece had been buoyant even before he found himself able to access the armed might of Macedonia, so his future plans there were unlikely to be any less bold whatever had happened at Thebes. So as 293 wore on he did what he did best. Orders were dispatched to his officers to bring up the siege train while the main army marched south to settle down in front of the city’s defences. By the time they arrived Cleonymus had decided he had not come to Boeotia to be trapped like a fish in a dragnet, so before the lines of circumvallation were completed he resolved to move. The Thebans must have been angered by the decision to scuttle back to the Peloponnese as they had only challenged the might of Macedon because of the promise of Spartan muscle, even though history should have given them warning as when Cleonymus had intervened in Greek Italy he had shown very little consideration for the allies when his own welfare was involved. Or it might have been that with no other local powers rallying round conciliatory heads had won out once the besieger of cities had arrived in awful might and main and if this had been the case it is no surprise that it was thought advisable for the Spartans to exit while the locals tried to talk their way out of the trouble they had landed themselves in. The Laconians were able to slip away before the siege lines were completed and with their embarrassing presence removed, Pisis of Thespiae directed envoys to see what terms might be had from the Macedonian king threatening their homes.
With few bargaining chips the only possible upshot was surrender and the many people holed up behind the defensive walls must have worried about what their futures would be at the hands of a man who they had challenged so soon after he had taken over at Pella. Many must have expected hard-hand occupation by an enemy who was bound to have resented the trouble they had given him just when he would have wanted to concentrate on digging in on the Macedonian throne. Yet far from the only time in his career they discovered Demetrius in mellow mood, pleased by the promptness of their submission. Though he imposed fines on the Boeotian cities and installed garrisons, when the ringleader of resistance was brought before him he was not only treated ‘courteously’ and suffered them to go free but Pisis was even established as polemarch in his home town of Thespiae. Not that all his administrative adjustment in the Boeotia showed such sensitivity to local sentiment as Hieronymus of Cardia, the old Antigonid family retainer, was left as regional governor with command of the soldiers Demetrius left behind, a new controller who showed far more than just cursory interest in his new charges as the reports of local legends and Theban foundation myths channelled through Diodorus indicate.13
These garrison troops deducted from the Macedonian army roster were not numerous because the new king had immediately after his Theban triumph spotted an exploitable opportunity for which he needed all the men he could get. Intelligence had arrived from his agents in Thrace of a perfect opening that had arisen now his hated rival Lysimachus had just been captured in arms while campaigning against the Getae. This was the rival who he blamed for the ruin of his family’s earlier fortunes and against whom he directed his bile whenever he was able in the years after Ipsus. From as soon as he had been able to recuperate his strength, he had struck at him, but that maritime razzia against the Chersonese and north-west Anatolia in 300 had far from sated his wrath. He wanted more, a feeling only compounded when news filtered in that his enemy’s officers were continuing their irresistible pressure against what remained of Antigonid holdings among the Asiatic Greek cities. Calculating that his enemy’s realm must be vulnerable if not virtually undefended with the main army defeated and the leadership shackled in a Getic hut, he set his army in the direction of Thrace. It was a long, gruelling road trip from Boeotia to the Thracian border, particularly as he would have needed to stop off at Pella to raise men to flesh out the dust-covered regiments that he had just rushed across Thessaly and passed north through the Vale of Tempe. A journey of well over 300 miles would have taken several weeks and much to Demetrius chagrin, he found on arrival that he had not been quite quick enough. Instead of finding an easy prey when his army approached enemy territory, he received grim tidings, whether from spies embedded in enemy country or travellers on the road, that completely scotched his plans. The Getae, instead of killing or dragging off their royal prisoner as could have reasonably been expected, had let him go and the word was that Lysimachus and his men were already on their way home. Such an extraordinarily charitable disposal may well have been influenced by the threat of a powerful newcomer taking over in Thrace if the captive king and his army were illuminated. Better a weakened Lysimachus than a triumphant Demetrius may have been the thinking at Gepid headquarters.
Now suddenly his nerve failed him. It was not just that Demetrius’ intended quarry was no longer a headless target whose military could be expected to be tattered and terrified, not only was Lysimachus and his talented son Agathocles on the way back to confront him at the head of their main army; it appears probable at the same time he discovered the arrangements he had left in place in Boeotia had fallen apart. When the independent-minded people there, oppressed by his dominance and never reconciled to being a client state of Macedon, realized not only that most of the occupying forces had left and were a long way away but were also probably embroiled with a powerful enemy, they took action. There hardly seemed any of the usual factionalism between supporters of a quisling regime and those struggling for autonomy; it was in unison that the Thebans took shields and spears down from their walls and gathered in the agora. Their task would have seemed daunting with the citadel situated on a 700-yard-long plateau flanked on three sides by steep slopes and gullies, but they poured out from the north and east where the residential and civic districts were situated and surprising the few men Hieronymus had on hand ejected the garrison from the Cadmea.
Fires in front and behind demanded a radical rethink and in Demetrius’ command tent they felt they had little option but to turn around and trail the army back over the same route it had just travelled. In central Greece the Boeotian independence fighters were experiencing the confidence born of initial success in so almost effortlessly dumping out Hieronymus and his garrison, so when Demetrius’ son Antigonus Gonatus, needing little time to find his feet, arrived hotfoot from Demetrias to fight these fires in his bailiwick they were prepared to risk the gamble of battle in the open. However, with no Spartan help they were not up to the challenge and were swatted aside, despite the fact that the army led against them could not have been large, just the men the young Antigonid could scrape together to make a quick response. They were veterans and this made the difference; there was no ‘sacred band’ now, nor a fifty-deep phalanx led by Epaminondas to maintain the Theban cause, so the rebels went down in defeat and by the time Demetrius hove in sight with the main army the defenders were well contained within the ramparts of Thebes, with his son in charge of the open country. Now the defenders peered anxiously down from their battlements as the great besieger began to unload into the tapestry of fields below the walls those prefabricated Heliopolises, battering rams, tortoises and ballistas he loved so well.
Before he could properly settle down into the familiar routine of a siege, a new actor provided a different dimension to this Boeotian war. Pyrrhus, for one, settling in his new court at Ambracia, saw plenty to worry about at this turn of events to his south-east with Demetrius not only ensconced at Pella but also looking set to re-impose himself on most of central Greece. Opposition to this potentially dominant power was bound to gravitate around this young king who understood it could surely only be a matter of time before he demanded the return of those territories that Cassander’s son Alexander had ceded after he had provided the muscle to tear the throne from the grasp of his matricidal brother. Revanchist dreaming was almost inevitable, not just because Demetrius could be expected to stretch his prerogative as far as it would go but also there were bound to be important men in Pella who were far from happy, having lost property and influence in the transfer of territory. These would soon be found to be whispering in the ear of a very suggestible monarch once he was free of his current entanglements, circumstances that meant no past intimacy was likely to save the newly-expanded Epirot state from unwanted Macedonian attention. To forestall this menace, he had little choice but to do something for the brave Theban defenders who were looking, despite their best efforts, like they would soon succumb to the endeavours of the army surrounding their walls. The Epirot levy was called out and mercenary regiments hired in preparation to take the road over the Pindus Mountains and down into Thessaly. Encountering no opposition on the march, they pressed further south towards Thermopylae where at the historic Hot Gates they would be well positioned to block the Antigonid army’s lines of supply.
Even by Pyrrhus’ standards this was risky stuff, preparing to rush down to Thermopylae to confront an enemy with such huge military resources at his disposal, but if distracting Demetrius had been the aim it made sense and if chancy it certainly worked. This dynamic commander showed himself completely unprepared to accept what he knew was a dangerous opponent emerging from an unexpected quarter and disrupting his communications with his key northern bases, not just Pella but Demetrias as well. So leaving his son to hold the fort again, he led the best of his army to confront this new and present threat. However, the stormy Epirot petrel had not come for a stand-up fight this time, even with the advantage of holding the defensible pass. Everybody had long been aware of the way around taken by Xerxes in the past going the other way and it was no interest of his to endanger the scarce resources that were his Epirot warriors, trapped between the sea and the mountains, just to offer succour to the Thebans. He had created a diversion that he had intended from the start, so when plumes of dust showed Demetrius’ army approaching in intimidating numbers he pulled back. The Macedonians followed him back through the open fields of Thessaly into Dolopia, until the tail of the invader’s army was finally discovered climbing back into the Pindus Mountains from where they had so recently debouched. However much he smelled blood and was tempted, there could be no exhilarating chase into Athamania to bring the intruder to bay; he had other priorities. So leaving 10,000 infantry and 1,000 horse to keep garrison in Thessaly and with his annoyance with his old lieutenant somewhat ameliorated, the Macedonian king could return to the delights of the real set-piece siege at Thebes.
Now he was in his element and his signature move of deploying of a giant Heliopolis was soon under way. Iron-clad with multiple storeys, it was monstrous and awe-inspiring seen through the shimmering heat even if moving at a snail’s pace, though surely the claim that it only travelled two furlongs in two months is absurd. It had wheels and if it moved at all it must have gone faster than a few metres a day. This juggernaut, pushed by great teams of sweating and stooping men, who looked like they were prostrating themselves to an enormous deity, crossed the filled-in defensive ditches and finally reached the walls. With these preliminaries over and the lumbering monster in place, the order for the assault was given. Thebes, however, turned out to be a hard nut to crack: if walls were brought down, others were built inside them from the rubble of broken houses, reminding Demetrius of what had occurred at Rhodes ten years earlier. Missiles fell like rain, clattering on the shields and helmets of the assault troops as they moved up to the walls and the men crossing the bridge of the Heliopolis onto the ramparts found themselves faced with men fighting with the courage of desperation. Attacking a city was always the most dangerous of enterprises for most soldiers, desperate fighting often, unlike in a battle in the open, without the comfort of a comrade by one’s side, no shield of a neighbour to keep off the unseen blow of an enemy appearing against an unprotected flank. Demetrius’ men fell in droves as exasperation led to him being so careless with his men’s lives that it even caused comment from his own son. Yet he was not a commander to expose his men to hazards he would not face himself, and the result was that as he rushed forward at the head of his men he received a catapult bolt through the neck.
Not quite Alexandrine in his propensity to getting wounded in battle, his body already showed numerous scars even before this latest mishap. Unsurprisingly the wound, if not grievous, was extremely painful and must have laid the king up for at least a few days, even if it did not stop the siege being pressed. There are no details but eventually the bloodied men of the besieging army forced their way in, sections of the walls were secured and defence was no longer tenable as the Thebans, hungry and filthy after their ordeal but still with shields showing and weapons held firm, expected the worst: to be overrun and slaughtered with no mercy shown, even to their wives and children. It was all too reminiscent of Alexander; he too had suppressed the place once and on his departure they had rebelled again and suffered for it. Then it had been destroyed, wiped from the map, and Alexander’s reputation among the Greeks never recovered from that stain. Now Demetrius, apart from being a very different man, was not just visiting a post station on his way to faroff Asia and any reputation for exterminatory savagery, while it might have a short-term shock effect, could not finally help in re-establishing Macedonian hegemony among the Hellenes. He wanted no comparisons made with Xerxes burning Athens to the ground; suzerainty might be won by terror, but to be effective in the long run at least some hearts and minds needed to be gained. So all we hear is that after the Thebans finally agreed to surrender, ten key rebels were executed and another small group banished, while fourteen principals from the Boeotians who had been involved suffered death while the rest were pardoned, though the faithful Hieronymus was reinstated and a strong garrison reinstalled.
The autumn season of 290 was looking promising for the Antigonid monarch sitting happily in his new headquarters of Pella; the achievements in Boeotia had been considerable and few other obvious enemies seemed to be lurking, although concerns about his fellow grasping opportunist Pyrrhus were bound to remain, particularly as now the personal entered the picture. It was at about this time that Demetrius was approached by representatives from a woman of considerable interest called Lanassa who had been married to the Epirot king, bringing him the strategic island of Corcyra as her dowry. This daughter of Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily, had been incensed when she found she had to share the matrimonial bed with a barbarian princess (parvenu snobbery was the worst, as plenty of people claimed her father had originally been a tanner) and so departed for the island before touting herself to the new king of Macedon well-known for his susceptibility to marrying property. Once the nuptials were formalized, the transfer of Corcyra was completed when the bridegroom came with a fleet to not only consummate the liaison but most crucially to take over an outpost that would be very useful for pressuring Epirus from the west, a coup that was augmented on the cruise back to Athens when he also conquered the island of Leucas that up to that point had been in Pyrrhus’ possession.
It went without saying that antipathy for a rival already enhanced by the fact that he had once been an ally was now reinforced by the whisperings of an embittered ex, ensuring that remaining easy neighbours was never going to be likely. Yet despite being prepared to scoop up both his wife and his territory, Demetrius showed a disinclination to directly attack the Epirot king in his mountain stronghold. The problem was that any Macedonian army that he tried to lead against him would include many who had considerable respect and affection for this enemy associated by both blood and reputation with the line of Alexander the Great himself. If he was not able to depend on the best of his soldiers in carrying out an Epirot war, in the end his solution was typically aggressive and energetic. He decided to strike at a different enemy, taking on his antagonists’ Greek allies carried no such dangers and he had a casus belli that would give some legitimacy to his enterprise. The Aetolians had for some time controlled the roads to the sacred community of Delphi and recently they had refused to allow the Athenians to make the trip to celebrate the Pythian games. This beef resulted in Demetrius being forced to organize the celebrations at Athens and now, conveniently unearthed, this transgression allowed him to claim pious intent as he prepared to penalize them, an enterprise that had the added advantage of keeping his mercenaries occupied and if Aetolia was still not particularly wealthy, any harvest of loot could contribute to his war chest.
So when the cereal crops were ready for harvesting as spring turned to early summer 289 he marched with plenty of motivation but no warning, striking at Pyrrhus’ neighbour and ally. Pushing south, through the Vale of Tempe into Thessaly where, having crossed that country’s open plains, he entered the Campylus valley, rugged fir-dotted country leading under looming Mount Tymphrestus, towards the Agraei, a people living under Aetolian rule to the north of their core territory. Overrunning that country, he pushed further on into Ophiona where resistance was patchy at best from a people with limited military resources and who could only try to delay Demetrius’ expeditionary force by ambushes and other techniques of petite guerre (guerrilla warfare) with such men as they found rallying to the colours. Unsettling news of what was happening to the south was not long in reaching Ambracia and Pyrrhus was never likely to fail to respond to the desperate howls of anguish emanating from his closest allies. Now proceedings turned into something of a showpiece, the first big war for some time between Hellenistic kings. Not since Ipsus had there been this kind of manoeuvring by considerable armies under famous kings that would end in bloody confrontation.
As it turned out, the crucial encounter when it occurred was not between Demetrius and Pyrrhus and their main armies but with the Epirot king and the man who had been left to keep the Aetolians in check. What Demetrius’ strategic intentions had been from the beginning, whether to divide the Epirot and Aetolian forces from each other or draw his enemy out from his very defensible kingdom is not clear, but if it was the latter he succeeded. What else he had achieved by his intervention in Aetolia is uncertain. The invaders’ exact route is hard to locate with any precision and we do not know if the country had been subdued to any significant degree; certainly there is no evidence that the core round Lake Trichonis with the sacred city of Thermum was occupied, something that would not have been easy anyway for an invader coming from the north. Yet whatever he had accomplished, assuming that Pyrrhus would be marching to his allies’ aid, the Antigonid king decided to turn north with the intention of intercepting him, leaving an officer called Pantauchus with an army of occupation to keep the lid on Aetolian resistance in the territory he had subjugated.
Demetrius may have taken the thoroughfare up the wide valley leading to Amphilochian Argos which was definitely the easiest until it reached those sections that were choked in against the east side of the Ambracian Gulf. Yet if this section of the route was very defensible, sometimes gaining the appellation the Thermopylae of west Greece, the itinerary had the advantage that once past this obstacle, the wide plain surrounding the new Epirot capital would be out in front. Whichever the road taken, while Demetrius was on his way Pyrrhus had reacted, realizing the word of his enemy’s approach was not just scaremongering, he mobilized every warrior he had on hand intent on facing off the menace of a man who not so long before had been his mentor and friend. Pressing south and east to confront the invader, he managed to miss his target and the two armies passed each other on the way, something that would be little of a surprise to anyone familiar with this part of Greece where folds of mountains running north-south from Aetolia up into Amphilochia mean there are a number of routes that might be utilized.
What the Antigonid monarch did when he reached Epirus is a closed book. We hear of no town being taken, only a significant reaving of the fertile lowlands around Ambracia and perhaps raids deeper into the old Molossian heartland. However, we certainly do have intelligence on what occurred after Pyrrhus, marching through a region of hills and forests, had entered Aetolia, indeed it turned out to be one of the highlights of a life that was as eventful as any in the ancient world. The drama revolved around the man Pantauchus, the scion of a famous military family whose father who had commanded a warship in Nearchus’ fleet in Indian waters in 325 with a brother who may have been satrap of Bactria. A sort of goliath, physically huge, strong and regarded as the most courageous man in the Antigonid army, this character had been left with a large detachment of 10,000 men when his commander set out on his march north and when his scouts reported the approach of an Epirot army he swept out to deal with the danger. The exact location of the encounter is unknown, but it was certainly somewhere in north Aetolia in a valley where two such considerable armies might spread out over the summer-parched earth to face off.
If we know the number of the Antigonids, we are far less clear about Pyrrhus’ army moving into their proper ranks in the shimmering heat. Though marching swiftly with only those troops he had on hand and expecting to flesh out his numbers with Aetolian auxiliaries, it is improbable that he had been able to field many more than his opponent. Indeed, if he had Pantauchus he would probably not have accepted combat, but instead retreated to the many defensible positions available in rocky Aetolia. As a prequel, peltasts and other light infantry would have skirmished on the rougher ground, while the opposing phalanxes deployed to face each other; each side with the five front ranks of pike heads showing levelled with the rest held upright to deflect missiles, and as there was almost certainly little room on the flanks for cavalry, both commanders led from the front of their infantry line. The conflict was remarkable for its intensity and brutality, with leaders from both sides displaying great courage and daring. Pantauchus was a hulking swell renowned for his size and warrior skills, so it was no wonder that as the battle wore on he made every attempt to seek out the enemy chief to confront him in personal combat. In the midst of the fighting he yelled out a challenge and the brave and reckless monarch, whose lexicon would have included no more appalling word than coward, was not backward in responding. As their comrades on both sides held back to allow a space sufficiently unencumbered by mutilated corpses for the duelling pair, the two commanders without formality had at each other.
The first pass involved their spears, throwing them like Homeric heroes; indeed the suggestion is that the Epirot king very much had his legendary ancestor Achilles in mind when the match occurred. After they had deflected their opponent’s throw with their shields, it turned into close combat with swords. These two were skilful duellers with targeting swords, hacking at the muscles at the back of the other’s thigh or between helmet and shield or shield and greaves. Then it was first blood to the Antigonid general, feinting one way as Pyrrhus raised his shield and managing to strike him a savage blow. Yet despite the initial advantage going to Pantauchus, his enemy remained a tough and determined opponent and when they fell apart for a second time, those viewing the fight saw that the Macedonian strongman had been wounded twice, in the thigh and along the neck. Now the tables were clearly shown to be turned as the Epirot rushed forward, forcing his foe first backwards and then ‘on to the ground’. However, the downed hero was far from defenceless and with his shield he warded off the rain of blows from his antagonist, allowing time for his friends to act. Aides and bodyguards ran to the fallen man and as his adversary, himself almost blinded by sweat running into his eyes after the efforts of this terrible contest, drew breath they were able to drag their commander away to the safety of the Macedonian lines.
Any inclination to disbelieve the details of this encounter should be tempered by the fact that there is no question that such Homeric activity had definitely come back into fashion in the era of Philip, Alexander and the Diadochi. For centuries the Greeks had seen the man standing his ground in the ranks of the phalanx as the height of heroism, epitomized by the Spartan pattern, but since Marathon, Plataea and Leuctra there had been a change. It was part Alexander as the great model of hero commander leading from the front, but something more as well that saw Eumenes tilting with his great enemy Neoptolemus and two septuagenarians claimed as coming to blows a decade after Pantauchus and Pyrrhus met in battle. This was a world of warlords and to cut the mustard it definitely helped to be able to hold one’s own in hand-to-hand combat. This had always been the Macedonian way and now it was the rule for those who held ambitions to reign in the world their people had conquered.
Ancient battles were always about the psychological edge and there is no doubt that the sight of Pyrrhus bloody but triumphant as his opponent was dragged like a rag doll back into the protection of his army was crucial. The two sides soon violently reconnected through the swirling dust of battle as paeans were shouted while pipes whistled and trumpets blared with the earth rocking under the pressure of thousands and thousands of booted, sandaled or naked feet. The shields and other arms of both sides were no longer as bright and polished as when they had begun: now the front rank’s protection was battered, sarissas were bent or broken, while swords were gouged and dented where they had made contact with those of their foemen. Veterans on both sides were proficient and skilled locked in a pinning push of pike, but one group, drained by devitalizing tension, had seen their talisman downed and the triumph of a hero who even enemies found they could not help but admire. In such circumstances it is no surprise that the fighting was not long in the balance. Some watching their leader fall knew the battle was lost immediately and if the rest fought on for a time, they did not last long. The particulars we have suggest a devastating imbalance in casualties with considerable numbers of Macedonians killed and wounded and 5,000 or half the original army captured. We are not told, but it is reasonable to assume that these men who surrendered were mercenaries, most of whom would have immediately changed sides, so that Pyrrhus’ legendary valour and fighting ability not only proved crucial for the battle’s outcome but resulted in a considerable addition to his military rostra, more than compensating for any losses his men might have suffered in the fighting. It is therefore highly appropriate that it was on this occasion ‘when the Epirots gave him the title “the Eagle”’, with the king responding to the accolade by declaring it was his compatriots-in-arms that gave him wings.14
Word of this extraordinary turn of events reached Demetrius while he was involved in wrecking the country surrounding Ambracia and he realized at once that he might soon find himself with Pyrrhus and his victorious army, heavily bolstered by Aetolian reinforcements, coming in behind him from the south while the rest of the Epirot national army mobilized to his front. Such an unattractive prospect ensured a rethink and saw the invasion army turn in its tracks to return to Macedonia by the quickest route. In his time in enemy country Demetrius’ men ‘had wrought great destruction’, behaviour that Pyrrhus considered unprovoked, undertaken without reason or warning and that alone would have warranted payback, but beyond this the issue of Corcyra and Leucas still rankled. So after the Epirot king marched back home, his brows decked with triumphant wreaths donated by his thankful Aetolian allies, he was possessed of two particular reasons to desire to wreak his revenge on his Antigonid enemy. Not only had this old comrade trashed his homeland, he had also filched his wife and made himself master of her island dowry. Nor did he have to wait long to scratch this itch. As the summer of 289 waned, tidings seeped through to Ambracia that the Macedonian king had fallen seriously ill. Resentment still palpable, he lost no time in determining to hit back. Resolving to attack while his opponent was unprepared, he probably came through the Pelium pass into upper Macedonia, though only in raiding strength. Yet if his initial intention had been just plunder, when he experienced little opposition and even a considerable welcome from many of the local bigwigs in the upper cantons the sweep of his ambitions expanded. Ruthless and bold, how far would he be prepared to go? Strategy was always open to evolution and he may have been considering more than just a raid as he pressed on over fir-dotted slopes and through productive valleys all the way to Edessa, the gateway to the lowlands round Pella where Demetrius might be expected to have his strongest support and plenty of armed men on which to call.
What the king of Macedonia was suffering from is unclear, but if initially debilitating, his condition was not of long duration and soon enough he was capable of directing his senior generals to mobilize the home army and construct a successful defence. When the intruders got wind of the magnitude of this response, any hopes of driving out Demetrius or occupying the whole country were swiftly discarded, so when Pyrrhus’ lookouts came in with reports of myriad troops tramping the road west from Pella to Edessa for the invading monarch, it was enough. No longer interested in any perilous gamble, he gave orders to pack up their tents, gather their booty and retrace their steps back home. However, his men were slapdash and dilatory, allowing the forward units of the Antigonid army to catch them on the march and the officers in charge, familiar with the country, made them pay. Horsemen and light troops fell on the rear of the train and considerable losses were sustained, even if it seems there was never any danger of the army being cut off and eliminated. Yet it was still a tattered outfit that re-crossed the border and began to recruit reinforcements to ensure they would be prepared if Demetrius arrived with a bristling response to the recent invasion of his kingdom. However, it turned out that the mercurial monarch of Macedon was disinclined to concentrate his efforts on punishing his refractory neighbour. He had other things on his mind, and to embark on these projects he needed peace, particularly as winter was closing the passes and would make any penetration of Epirus very chancy. So envoys were dispatched, riding through the sharp autumn winds whistling through the lofty terrain that separated the two countries. Negotiations at Pyrrhus’ camp were no doubt fairly perfunctory because it seems that not much more than a guarantee of the status quo was the upshot. Whether Corcyra was on the agenda we do not know, but there is certainly no strong evidence that the island was disgorged by Demetrius at this time.