READING HALL

THE DOORSOF WISDOM

ANTIGONUS GONATAS

CHAPTER V.

ANTIGONUS AS PRETENDER

Demetrios’ first act after his surrender was to send off messages to his commanders in Corinth, Piraeus, and Demetrias, telling them to trust no orders that purported to come from him, even if sealed with his ring, but to treat him as dead and to hold the fortresses for Antigonus. He was under no delusions as to what Seleucos would do. Seleucus was not a cruel man; but in fact he had no choice. He treated his prisoner, indeed, as a king, assigning him a royal residence with pleasure gardens and chases; but he kept him too strongly guarded for escape to be possible. Passionately Antigonus offered to put every fortress he still held into Seleucos’ hands, and to come himself as hostage, if Seleucus would free his father; but he offered in vain; the king could not take the responsibility of again loosing Demetrios upon a troubled world. On the other hand, Lysimachus, whose hatred mastered his accustomed miserliness, offered Seleucus an immense sum of money to put Demetrios to death. The king of Syria rejected the bribe with scorn; and the ‘dirty piece of savagery’, as he called it, merely deepened the distrust which he already felt for the king of Thrace. It was evident indeed already that at no distant date Asia would not be large enough to hold both kings.

The surrender of Demetrios made large alterations in the balance of power and in the relations of the several states to one another. Lysimachus was now secure in his half of Macedonia, and had gained important accessions of territory in Asia Minor; Pyrrhus was little less secure, it seemed, in the other half of Macedonia. Ptolemy, without a struggle, had added to his empire the best part of Phoenicia, the Islands of the League, and the command of the Eastern Mediterranean. Alone of the kings, Seleucos, on whom the brunt of the fighting had fallen, had gained nothing by Demetrios’ captivity.

Pyrrhus, in possessions of his house in Greece and of most of Thessaly, in addition to his own greatly enlarged kingdom of Epirus, must have appeared to the Greek cities to be the most powerful prince of the peninsula; for the centre of gravity of Lysimachus’ kingdom lay far away on the Hellespont, and his real strength was not so much in men's eyes. Pyrrhus' friends the Aetolians had, in consequence, to consider their position. Their consistent policy, as already explained, was to support the second state of the peninsula against the first. Recently they had been supporting Pyrrhus against Demetrios; but now that Epirus had become the first power, they were careful to reinsure themselves by offering their friendship to him whom they considered the second, Lysimachus : and two towns, called respectively Lysimacheia and Arsinoe, were founded by them in the heart of Aetolia, in honour of Lysimachus and his consort Arsinoe; the queen may even have been given the honorary title of founder of her name-city.

But if, to Aetolia, Pyrrhus appeared threatening, Pyrrhus himself took a very different view. He knew the real strength of Lysimachus; he knew the old man’s consummate ability in the field; he knew that nothing but fear of Demetrios had kept him in check. With Demetrios a captive, and Aetolia at the best uncertain, he looked round for a make-weight, and thought to find one in Antigonus. Demetrios’ message to his captains in Greece had been, to all intents and purposes, his abdication; and Antigonus had thenceforth to act as though he were sole king of the possessions of his house in Greece and as though Demetrios were dead, though he did not call himself king as long as his father lived. His position was far from an easy one in the spring of 285. To rule Greek cities with any success, a king required an assured kingdom of his own at his back: and more than ever did he require it if he refused or was unable to find a place in such cities as their god. For, (apart from some fiction of divinity), the king had no place at all in the city state, and no standing in regard to it save such, as his own kingdom might give him; if he had no other kingdom, he had no standing at all. It was not possible for any kingdom to absorb the city state; the city remained an enclave, an island in the kingdom, however cordial its relations with the king. The kingdom could no more assimilate the autonomous city than the constitution of the autonomous city could assimilate a king. The oil and the water might lie very comfortably in the same vessel, but they could not mix. But a king whose kingdom consisted only of enclaves, of cities in which he had no place, would have been no real king at all; he would have been an anomaly, theoretically unthinkable and practically impossible.

Antigonus could not have maintained himself for a moment as king in Greece without some kingdom of his own to fall back on. His kingdom, in fact, at this time was his army of mercenaries, and nothing else, and what he had really inherited was a number of garrisons posted in different Greek cities. Probably they were none too large for their work; Demetrios must have taken with him all the available floating supply of troops. More mercenaries could be raised; but the supply of Greek mercenaries was no more unlimited than were Antigonus’ pecuniary resources. Mercenaries had to be fed and paid; and Antigonus, with no revenue of his own to draw on, had to tax the city states under his rule, as Demetrios had done. He started with a burden of unpopularity due to the heavy taxation imposed by Demetrios for his expedition to Asia. His own taxation must have been resented, and caused unrest; unrest necessitated enrolling more mercenaries, which in turn entailed heavier taxation; Antigonus was held in a vicious circle from which there seemed no escape. It was not exactly a brilliant opening for the reign of a philosopher.

Of the three possible ways of ruling Greek states, he was absolutely committed by inheritance to the system of garrisons. Demetrios had begun his career in Greece with a programme of freedom and union of hearts; he had been completely disillusioned, and it must have been an axiom with his son that a union of hearts was of no use as practical politics. The third way, that of ruling through some party or individual in the city without a garrison, was to be Antigonus’ own choice; but once the garrison was there, it could not be withdrawn. The only strong points about his position were, that his army, being entirely composed of mercenaries, was competent; that the Greek mercenary was usually loyal to his oath; and that he commanded the services of a few men of capacity and experience, such as Hieronymus, and Phila’s son Krateros, his own half-brother. No policy worth the name, beyond attempting to keep his Greek possessions together, can have commended itself to him. It is true that he still held everything in Greece that Demetrios had held, except Athens; in his hands were the great fortresses of Demetrias, Chaklis, Piraeus, and Corinth, while doubtless Corinth brought him in a certain amount of revenue from duties on its trade and harbour dues. But elsewhere there must have been already beginning that change in Greek temper which was to show itself openly five years later. Boeotia was of course entirely uncertain, and so were many of the smaller cities; and if Argos and Megalopolis were of necessity loyal to the northern power, as against Sparta, it did not follow that they considered Antigonus, rather than (say) Pyrrhus, as the prince who could claim their loyalty. In addition to this he was definitely, if not very energetically, at war with Athens, with the initial disadvantage of possessing no fleet till some time later in the year, when the loyal ships returned to him from Kaunos. And his kingdom, such even as it was, without Athens was merely a kingdom of disjected fragments. All that it seemed in his power to do was to wait and to hope for one of those turns of Fortune’s wheel of which he had already had such plentiful experience. His intimate friends knew that he looked on the kingship of Macedonia as his; and his conduct yon a later occasion seems to show that he had little doubt of his ultimate destiny.

This was the position in 285 when Pyrrhus, the consistent enemy of Antigonus’ house,  who had attacked and broken faith with that house on every opportunity, and who had just deprived Antigonus of nearly the whole of Thessaly, veered round and made overtures to Antigonus for an alliance. The attraction to Pyrrhus was the army of mercenaries, many of them doubtless veterans, and a fleet in being which might act as a make-weight against that of Lysimachus.

Antigonus was really between the hammer and the anvil. He was unpopular in Greece on account of the taxation, and the world probably regarded him as untried: and he was no match, in strength, for Pyrrhus, who had just been threatening his Greek possessions. On the other hand, Athens, was to him the point of greatest importance; he was at war with her, and the nationalist government were on very good terms with Lysimachus. It might suit Lysimachus, at any moment, to interfere in the affairs of Greece, and avenge himself on the son of his ancient enemy; and in Athens he had a pretext ready to hand. And as between Pyrrhus and Lysimachus, Antigonus can have had no doubt as to which would prove the more dangerous antagonist; indeed he seems to have felt a natural contempt for Pyrrhus and his methods. It was inevitable, therefore, (no accommodation with Lysimachus being possible), that when Pyrrhus proposed to him a bargain of mutual insurance against Lysimachus he should accept; and probably his first act as an independent ruler was the negotiation with Pyrrhus of the famous ‘secret treaty’. It owed both its origin and its secrecy to a common fear of Lysimachus. Naturally we are no better informed of its contents than were contemporaries. It may have been essentially a treaty of defence against Lysimachus on the basis of the status quo, each party respecting the possessions of the other; but it is obvious, from the course of events, that it bound Antigonus to aid Pyrrhus if attacked, and that it gave Antigonus a free hand as regarded Athens. Pyrrhus, of course was more or less in a position to insert his own terms.

The need of the treaty, from Pyrrhus’ point of view, was quickly enough seen. Once the immediate fear of Demetrios was removed, Lysimachus, who had but recently prevailed on Pyrrhus to break his treaty with Demetrios, showed no hesitation in tearing up his own treaty with Pyrrhus and in invading Pyrrhus’ half of Macedonia. Antigonus sent troops to support Pyrrhus, according to the treaty; and Pyrrhus and his allies took up a strong position near Edessa, the old capital, perhaps too strong to be openly attacked. Anyhow, Lysimachus did not attack him; but he reduced him to such straits, on the one hand by cutting off his supplies, and on the other by tampering with all the leading men of his party, that Pyrrhus abandoned the contest, and went home with his Epirot’s and Antigonus’ mercenaries, having lost Macedonia as quickly as he had won it. That country, which had recently conquered half the world, was now being tossed from one prince to another at the careless arbitrament of the sword; the fate of Alexander’s kingdom seemed as unhappy as had been the fate of Alexander’s son.

The immediate effect of this change, which took place in the campaigning season of 285, was to make Lysimachus in his turn much the strongest of the kings. His power was now very great. He held Macedonia and most of Thessaly; parts of Thrace, and its coasts as far north as the Danube; and a large part of Asia Minor, including practically all the great coast cities from the Hellespont down to Seleucos’ westernmost province of Cilicia. Only in the north of Asia Minor and on the Bosphorus did any independent states exist to vex him. Byzantion was free; and Byzantion had always been friendly to the house of Antigonus. The half­barbarian Bithynians had successfully defied him; and in their little territory at the mouth of the Sangarios their tribesmen maintained a fierce independence. Further to the east, the beginnings of the kingdom of Pontus intervened between Lysimachus’ territory and the Black Sea. But even here he had strengthened his position enormously by the acquisition, in 289, of the great maritime city of Herakleia, with its dependencies and its territory. Its territory lay along the Black Sea, a wedge thrust in between Bithynia and Pontus; and Herakleia gave Lysimachus free access to that sea. From his capital Lysimacheia, in the Thracian Chersonese, he kept guard over the Hellespont, watching the traders from the Euxine pay his tolls and help to fill his well-managed treasury; and if Byzantion was still independent and wealthy, he had her in a vice of which the jaws were Lysimacheia and Herakleia. The strength of his empire, with its great number of Greek cities, must have been far superior to that of the loosely knit and unwieldy collection of kingdoms that formed the realm of Seleucus.

It would seem too as if Lysimachus had ambitions in the Aegean. With the acquisition of Macedonia he may have looked on himself as Demetrios’ heir; and he grudged that a slice of the inheritance should have fallen to Ptolemy without that astute monarch having had to strike a single blow. Lysimachus had now a fair navy; Herakleia supplied him with an efficient nucleus; he had secured some portion of Demetrios’ fleet, at any rate the ships at Pella if nothing else; and he could draw on a number of towns in Asia. While Demetrios was flying before Agathocles, Lysimachus’ fleet had made haste to annex what it could in the Aegean; and Lemnos, Imbros, and Samothrace had fallen into his hands. He already ruled on both sides of the North Aegean, and he may have looked forward to the day when he should oust Ptolemy from the Cyclades; for he had already begun to turn his attention to Delos.

The effects of the campaign of 285 on Antigonus’ position were speedily apparent. In order to send a force to aid Pyrrhus, he had had to weaken his garrisons; and Athens was not slow to profit by the opportunity for a fresh attempt on the Piraeus. As Antigonus stood with Pyrrhus, Athens took occasion, in September 285, to pass a decree in honour of Lysimachus’ friend Philippides, and, by implication, of Lysimachus himself. The decree refers to Philippides’ continuous requests to the king for aid to recover Piraeus and the forts as soon as possible. Whether Lysimachus spared any aid for Athens is not known; but the city received the help of a force from the island of Tenos, help that can hardly have been given without the countenance of Ptolemy. This time the work was entrusted to the right hands, those of the veteran Olympiodorus; and he crowned his many services to Athens by expelling Antigonus’ garrison from Mounychia and recovering the Piraeus.

It must, too, have been at the same time that another veteran, Xanthippos of Elateia, supported by the friendship and gold of Lysimachus, succeeded in expelling Antigonus’ garrison from his native city and freeing Phocis, or so much of it as was not Aetolian. The coincidence in time with Olympiodorus’ recovery of the Piraeus is noteworthy, and no doubt points to concerted action. For sixteen years before, Xanthippos and Olympiodorus, acting in Demetrios’ interest, had together saved Elateia from Kassandros; and their joint action against Demetrios’ son is but one instance the more—we have seen many such—of the manner in which Demetrios’ friends had had to change their attitude as soon as he sat on Kassandros’ throne. As some make weight to these losses, however, Aetolia, true to her consistent policy and alarmed by the recent exhibition of Lysimachus’ strength, ceased to court the king of Macedonia and, formally or informally, joined Pyrrhus and Antigonus.

The loss of Piraeus, joined to that of Athens, cut Antigonus’ realm, such as it was, in half awhile the loss of Elateia left his Boeotian garrisons isolated. His position in the spring of 284 was certainly far from brilliant. He was committed to an alliance with the unstable Pyrrhus, which so far had merely provoked Lysimachus to no purpose; and the latter, as the friend of Athens, might be expected to attack him in overwhelming force whenever it should please him to do so. Even at sea Lysimachus was probably more than his match. The expected attack, however, did not take place. Lysimachus, with an old man’s caution, decided first to make all safe in his rear, and spent the campaigning season of 284 in reducing Paionia. Audoleon was dead, and his son Ariston exiled, for what reason is unknown; Lysimachus brought the young man back to his kingdom, and he was duly installed after undergoing the ‘royal bath’ in the river Astibos. Perhaps he was not a sufficiently docile puppet; anyhow Lysimachus turned him out again and annexed Paionia, while Ariston escaped to what became henceforth the common refuge of kings in misfortune, the Dardanian court. It is recorded that the treasure of the Paionian kings had been buried in the bed of a diverted river, the water then being let back and all the workmen put to death; Audoleon’s trusted friend Xermodigestos betrayed the place to Lysimachus.

Once sure of Paionia, Lysimachus, probably in the campaigning season of 283, followed up his attack upon Pyrrhus; he must have thought him more dangerous than Antigonus, and he was evidently working on a methodical plan. He took advantage of Pyrrhus’ absence, perhaps in Illyria, to invade Epirus. It does not appear that he recovered the border provinces of Parauaia and Tymphaia, for this could hardly have escaped mention; he merely overran part of the country and perhaps secured his own frontier, while some of his Thracians brought discredit on him by plundering the tombs of Pyrrhus’ ancestors, a deed which Pyrrhus was one day to repay in kind. But Lysimachus had a definite purpose in his raid, and inflicted on both Pyrrhus and Aetolia a severe blow, for, following Kassandros’ precedent, he freed Akarnania, and set it up again, with Leukas restored to it, as an independent state. Pyrrhus made no attempt to reconquer Akarnania while Lysimachus lived, and by 281 he had plans in view compared with which that country was of small importance; it suited him better to be on good terms with her, so that he might recruit mercenaries for his Italian expedition in her territory.

The overwhelming nature of Lysimachus’ power was now plain to everyone, while it could to be foreseen that domestic tragedy was to prevent the further realization of his ambitions.  But so far, he had given no sign of what his intentions were with regard to Greece proper, or whether he had any intentions at all; and Antigonus, relieved of danger from the north-west, and bound to find employment for his mercenaries, was able to throw himself with more earnestness into his war with Athens. He had settled that the most important matter for himself was the recovery of Piraeus; and perhaps already by the autumn of 284 he had brought his fleet up and formed the siege of that fortress.

In the spring of 283 Demetrios’ long imprisonment drew to its close. Seleucus, who had realized that the threat of his liberation might be a very useful weapon to employ, if necessary, against Lysimachus, had held out to his captive a prospect of release when Antiochus and Stratonice should come from the eastern satrapies; his freedom should be a gift to his daughter and his daughter’s husband. But Antiochus had tarried, perhaps on purpose; and at the end of two years the most brilliant figure of the age, unable to support enforced idleness and hope deferred, had drunk himself to death in his captivity. His stormy life had shaken the world; but he left nothing behind him save some improvements in siege-trains and shipbuilding, and a son.

The world had already discounted his death; and the only person affected was Antigonus. Seleucus sent back the remains, and Antigonus, letting the siege be, put to sea with his whole fleet and met the funeral-ship in mid-Aegean. There he received the casket containing the ashes of the great sea-king, and turned his prows homeward. Plutarch has left a picture of the fleet entering the harbour of Corinth; the mourners swollen by contingents from every city they had passed; the golden casket set high on the flagship’s poop, covered with Demetrios’ purple robe and crowned with his diadem; the huge oars of the warships beating time to the sacred melody of the flute-player Xenophantos; the wailing crowds answering from the shore; and Antigonus, plain to see, standing by the ashes with bowed head and streaming eyes. From Corinth the fleet sailed to Demetrias; there they buried Demetrios, in the city which he had founded to bear his name.

The death of Demetrios heralded the passing of the generation that had known Alexander. That winter died Ptolemy I in Egypt, having seen his son firmly seated on the throne. It was perhaps the just reward of his prudence and foresight that he, in contradistinction to the majority of the Successors, died quietly in his bed. Only two men of the age of giants now remained; would they perhaps, after all, die quietly also? Fate was to fall otherwise.

Lysimachus in advanced years had married a young girl, Arsinoe, eldest daughter of Ptolemy I and Berenice, and full sister of Ptolemy II, who was to be the most extraordinary woman of her time; and Demetrios had once declared that she was not exactly the old man’s Penelope. But on any matter connected with Lysimachus a statement made by Demetrios is as valueless as may be; and though scandal was busy enough with Arsinoe’s name, the story it had to tell—that she made advances to her step-son Agathocles, which were repulsed—is every bit as worthless as most of the other court gossip of antiquity. The flow in Arsinoe was not perhaps immorality but ambition, an over­mastering ambition to which she was ready to sacrifice most things; and it is not necessary to suppose her a bad woman merely because she became a great ruler. Even her ambition was as much for her children as for herself; she had in fact something very like a fixed idea, to get the crown of Macedonia for her eldest son Ptolemaios. The numerous coin­portraits that remain of her, many of them struck some time after her death, give her handsome features, sometimes with prominent eyes; but there is one, differing slightly from the usual type though resembling it in the general lines, which we would gladly believe to be her true likeness. It shows a finely chiselled face of purest Greek type, pensive, remote, and austere, the nun-like effect only enhanced by the usual long, heavy veil: nothing can be less like the Arsinoe of tradition, and no lovelier face has come down to us from the Greek world. No doubt it is idealized; but it may serve to remind us that Arsinoe was not only a political intriguer, but the close friend of the devout and religious Stratonice.

What really took place at Lysimachus’ court is unknown. Perhaps it never was known. The court had always been a refuge for other states’ exiles, who had their uses; and at this time it sheltered an important fugitive, Ptolemy, eldest son of Ptolemy I and Eurydice, disinherited by his father in favour of Berenice’s son, but for all that lawful claimant to the crown of Egypt. When first exiled he had gone to Seleucus, who had promised to seat him on the throne of Egypt when his father died; but his father was dead and Seleucus had done nothing, so he had left Seleucus and gone to Lysimachus. This violent and unscrupulous man was one storm-centre; Arsinoe may have been another. There was intrigue and counter-intrigue; we seem to see Arsinoe and Agathocles’ wife Lysandra working against each other, each for her own children; while Ptolemy probably acted on the view that any form of trouble could hardly fail to advantage himself, and it is quite uncertain if he sided with his sister or his half-sister, or with either. But it was clear that there was no opening for him so long as Agathocles lived. Here we lose the thread entirely, and only emerge at length upon a fact, that Lysimachus had Agathocles put to death for supposed treason. It was whispered that Ptolemy had executed the sentence with his own hand; but however that may be, the popular voice threw the blame on Arsinoe.

Lysimachus’ power leant and tottered forthwith. An earthquake that shook his capital shortly before Agathocles’ death had terrified the superstitious of his subjects; they had now better cause for alarm in the execution of all who were suspected of sympathizing with the dead prince. Those who could escape fled to Seleucus and sought his intervention; among them was Lysandra with her children. But Ptolemy stayed with Lysimachus; it is probable, from what happened later, that he held a command in the army, and was seeking to make himself indispensable, perhaps to the old king, deserted by so many of his friends, certainly to the troops.

While Lysimachus’ action abroad was thus paralysed by domestic troubles, Antigonus had been besieging the Piraeus. It seems certain that the Long Walls were already, if not in ruins, at any rate useless for military purposes, and that Athens and Piraeus were already two separate fortresses, though it cannot be said exactly when this first took place. Athens had taken into her service the mercenaries under Strombichos, and she evidently made a good fight; and Antigonus does not seem to have had force enough both to carry on the siege and to capture the outlying Attic forts for in 283/2 Eleusis was still in Athenian hands. It was probably in 282 that Antigonus put to sea to bring home Demetrios’ ashes; and it is possible that this was the occasion on which he made the truce with Athens to which we have reference made, supposing the story to be true. Certainly war was going on during some part of the year 283/2; and in February 282 sacrifice was offered in the Little Mysteries at Eleusis for the safety of the people of Athens and their friends. How the truce ended we do not know; but hunger ended the war. Antigonus at sometime during the struggle captured Piraeus, garrisoned Mounychia, and gave his mind to starving out the city; to his commander in Mounychia, who had been strengthening its defences, he wrote that he must not only make the dog-collar strong, but the dog lean. Military operations had laid waste the country, while Antigonus’ fleet and the loss of Piraeus prevented the entry of corn. The Athenians might offer sacrifice for their friends; but none of their friends were going to help them. Lysimachus’ hands were tied; Pyrrhus was Antigonus’ ally; Ptolemy II was not fond of war, and was too intent on what would happen in the north to move. Seleucus was making what friends he could in view of the now inevitable struggle with Lysimachus, and had earned Antigonus’ gratitude by sending back Demetrios’ ashes; Antigonus was a natural enemy of Lysimachus in any case, and the civility cost nothing but the price of a casket. Athens decided to make peace while terms could still be had; and peace was made some time in 282/1, probably in early spring. At the Great Dionysia, celebrated in March, sacrifice was offered for the safety of the crops in the field, an event unique in Athenian history and eloquent of the straits to which hunger must have reduced the city.

But if Athens was exhausted by hunger, Antigonus, too, greatly desired to be quit of the war. Though some months; yet were to pass before the decision of Lysimachus’ fate should fall at Kouroupedion, it must have been evident already to shrewd observers that things were not well with him; and Antigonus, with his eyes always set upon Macedonia, must have desired a free hand for eventualities. For whatever might happen in the north, he had to conserve his strength; if Lysimachus pulled through, he would have a day of reckoning to face; and if Lysimachus fell, there might be chances in Macedonia. Hence the terms of peace seem to have been favourable for Athens. The nationalist government was of course removed, and was replaced by one composed of the friends of Macedonia, among them the now veteran Phaidros: and Athens had to acquiesce in the accomplished fact, the loss of . But no other changes were made; we do not even know if Athens became subject to Antigonus’ suzerainty or not.

Lysimachus fell. His adherents went over to Seleucus in masses, till at last, about July or August 281, the two old men—Lysimachus was eighty and Seleucus seventy-seven—met on the plain of Kouros in Lydia in the last of the great battles between the Successors. All details are lost; we know only that Lysimachus died hard, as he had lived, and that, almost unsought, the whole of Alexander’s empire, save Egypt, suddenly lay at Seleucus’ feet.

Seleucus spent the autumn in gathering up the broken fragments of Lysimachus’ realm in Asia. Arsinoe with some difficulty escaped to Ephesus, and with her sons reached Kassandreia, a city where Lysimachus had been worshipped and where the feeling in his favour may have been strong; she may have attempted to take possession of Macedonia for her son. Ptolemy, who may or may not have been in the battle, came into Seleucus’ hands, but was well received by him and treated, not as a captive, but as a prince and an honoured guest. Seleucus saw that the rightful claimant to the only Macedonian throne still independent might be a very useful piece in the game. Meanwhile the crash of Lysimachus’ ruin carried far; and even among unknown Celtic clans beyond the Danube word went round that the great barrier to a further advance southward was broken.

For Antigonus, Seleucus’ success had been too complete. He was at the moment on good terms with him and bound to him in gratitude; and he could not forthwith invade a country that de iure belonged to Seleucus. He could still do nothing but watch events in the north; and they looked so hopeless that he even turned over some of his transports to Pyrrhus for his expedition to Italy.

Events in the north, however, moved quickly enough. On the old Seleucus, master of half the world, had fallen the home-longing; he would end his days as king of Macedonia, on the throne of Alexander; and in the winter of 281/0 he was preparing to enter upon his kingdom with an irresistible force. But he reckoned without Ptolemy. Ptolemy saw that with Seleucus’ decision to occupy Macedonia his chance of getting anything out of the wreck of Lysimachus’ fortunes, whether on his own account or as regent for Lysandra’s son, the rightful heir, was at an end; while as for his claim to the crown of Egypt, Seleucus might covet Egypt also—had he not once worn Alexander’s diadem?—and seek to use him as a puppet. He decided to strike quickly; he must for some time have been preparing his ground with the army. He waited till Seleucus, in defiance of the advice of Apollo of Didyma, had crossed the Hellespont and was at the gates of Lysimacheia. There Ptolemy slew him with his own hand, and escaped on a swift horse into the city. The city revered the memory of its founder; Lysimachus’ veterans welcomed one who posed as Lysimachus’ avenger; on all lay the glamour of the name of the murderer’s father, the wise and just king of Egypt. Seleucus’ forces, on the contrary, were, left without a head; his son Antiochus was far off;  and Lysimachus’ old army, captivated by Ptolemy’s fiery energy and address, hailed him king of the Macedonians by the name of Keraunos, the thunderbolt, and prepared to bring him to his kingdom.

His kingdom did not seem likely to be a bed of roses, for rival claimants were numerous and powerful. Antiochus was bound to attack him, both to assert his own pretensions and to avenge his father. Antigonus would probably attack him, in prosecution of his own hereditary rights. Pyrrhus, as ex­king, had many friends in the western provinces, and might be expected to fight. Lysandra must use all her influence for her own children; and her influence cannot have been negligible, for Agathocles had been popular, and had had many partisans. The last surviving member of Kassandros’ house, his nephew Antipatros, had a following in some part of Macedonia. Finally, there was Arsinoe, for the last seven months firmly established with her mercenaries in Kassandreia, and possibly actually governing as much of the country as she could in the name of her eldest son by Lysimachus, Ptolemaios, now about sixteen years of age.

How Keraunos dealt with Lysandra and her children we do not know, but may perhaps guess; they vanish from history. Pyrrhus was fully engaged at the moment with his preparations for crossing to Italy. But Antiochus and Antigonus at once made ready for war; whether independently or in conjunction does not appear.

Of Antiochus Keraunos probably took little heed. The new king of Asia had troubles enough of his own; for revolts had broken out in his unwieldy kingdom on the news of Seleucus’ death, and a ring of enemies cut him off from crossing to Europe, even had he so desired. Zipoites of Bithynia was the most important of them. His people had, naturally, aided Seleucus against their enemy Lysimachus; but, with Seleucus in Lysimachus’ place, they had been quick to perceive the fresh danger that threatened their independence, and now prepared to resist the new ruler of Asia Minor as they had resisted the old. The powerful city of Herakleia had recovered her freedom after Kouroupedion, and had no intention of surrendering it again to the Seleucid; she entered into a league with Byzantion and Chalcedon for the maintenance of their independence, and they were joined by the Persian prince Mithridates of Pontus, who, like the Byzantines, had been a friend of Demetrios. Seleucus had sent an army against him, which had been cut to pieces by Mithridates’ Cappadocians; and the victorious coalition was now making head against Antiochus. Probably they were well disposed towards Keraunos; anyhow Herakleia placed her excellent fleet at his disposal.

Antigonus, however, who had been watching events, was unencumbered and ready. Shipping his men on transports, spring of 280, hoping to anticipate Keraunos. But Keraunos was as quick as he; he intercepted him at sea with Lysimachus’ old navy, and in a great battle completely defeated him, a result which the patriotic historian of Herakleia attributes in chief to the bravery of the ships of his own city: the Herakleot flagship, a monstrous vessel mounting Lysimachus’ badge, the image of a lion, carried off the palm for valour in the action. It began to look as if the practical world had no use for philosophers in high places.

So men thought in Greece. Antigonus’ prestige, never high, was shattered by this the first defeat ever sustained by Demetrios’ navy; even our all but vanished tradition still echoes the disaster, and shows the impression which it made. Discontent in Greece must, too, have reached breaking point with the new exactions that Antigonus must have found necessary to equip his expedition; and on the news of his defeat Greece rose. Sparta, pursuing her consistent  seized the opportunity to put herself once more at the head of a Peloponnesian league; and even Argos and Megalopolis, whose policy and whose necessities made it impossible for them to join with Sparta, expelled Antigonus’ garrisons and proclaimed freedom and neutrality; Antigonus was not the only friend to be found in the North. Boeotia and Megara joined in the revolt. But for Corinth, Antigonus might have been swept out of the country.

Corinth saved him from irremediable disaster. It cut the revolution in two; Sparta and Boeotia could not join hands. With the remains of his fleet, Antigonus had hurried straight to Boeotia on the news that it had risen; but he was no longer a match even for Boeotia single-handed. Of the course of events we know nothing, save that in that year Boeotia regained her independence; Megara in her wake did the same; so no doubt did Eastern Locris, unless it had already become free in 285. But Antigonus saved Euboea and Piraeus from the general wreck, and with them maintained his communications between Corinth and Demetrias; had the Peloponnesian army been able to move northward, the result might have been very different.

The Peloponnesians had chosen the Spartan king Areus to lead the army of the new league. Beside Sparta, the members probably included most of Arcadia save Megalopolis, some of the towns of the Argolid,—Argos itself was neutral, and others, such as Troizen, may still have been held for Antigonus,—Elis, and the four westernmost towns of Achaea, Patrai, Dyme, Tritaia, Pharai. There is no reason to suppose that Messene departed from her accustomed neutrality. As he could not move north by the Isthmus, Areus very naturally marched to Patrai and there got shipping; but instead of making for Boeotia to aid that country against Antigonus, he invaded Aetolia. The Aetolians were friends, perhaps allies, of Antigonus, and Areus’ action may have been properly meant to draw them off from assisting the king; but the reason given in the tradition is the old religious pretext that they had occupied the Kirraean plain. Anyhow, Areus suffered the usual fate of those who thrust their hands into that hornet’s nest: the Aetolians caught his army scattered and plunder-laden, and inflicted on him a considerable defeat. Areus desired to continue the war in the spring of 279, but several states refused to follow him further; Antigonus had been brought so low that they thought Spartan ambition the greater danger to the liberties of Greece. The most important result of the campaigns of 280 had been, not the liberation of Boeotia, but a small and scarcely noticed union entered into between the four little Achaean towns; for it was the germ of the Achaean League.

Meanwhile Keraunos, fortified by his victory, had made himself master of the whole of Macedonia and Thessaly outside Demetrias. He had no difficulty in making peace with Antiochus; but before this he had disposed of yet another pretender by coming to an arrangement with Pyrrhus. He had probably already made overtures to Pyrrhus before his victory; and he found him accommodating. The Epirot king was on the eve of sailing for Italy, and had no thought for anything else; Keraunos supplied him with 5,000 Macedonian troops and some Thessalian horse, and gave him a daughter in marriage, and Pyrrhus, far from fighting for Macedonia, was content to trust his own denuded kingdom of Epirus, during his absence, to Ptolemy’s honour, whatever that might be worth. Antipatros seems to have given no trouble; and this left Ptolemy only one claimant to settle with, his half-sister Arsinoe.

But  Arsinoe was his hardest problem. Kassandreia was very strong, and in feeling very independent; Arsinoe had plenty of money, and therefore plenty of men; but above and beyond this was her own personality; she had more than a man’s spirit, one of the ablest heads in the world, and the Ping of Egypt for own brother. To storm Kassandreia was out of the question; Ptolemy resorted to fair speech. To keep his brother of Egypt from interfering he sent him humble letters, abjuring all claim to the Egyptian throne; and he set himself to attack Arsinoe on her weak side, the side of her ambitions. She desired to be herself again a queen, and to see her eldest son on the throne of Macedonia. Ptolemy promised her both; he would wed her himself and adopt her children, thus securing to her the immediate possession, and to her eldest son the reversion, of the throne. He even pretended to be in love with her, so that she might believe that she would manage him as she had managed Lysimachus; and when Arsinoe, who knew him too well, still hesitated, he did not shrink from confirming his good faith by the most solemn oaths known to the Macedonian religion, swearing, among other things to have no wife but her, an oath at least which the outraged gods saw to it that he should keep. In vain Arsinoe’s eldest son Ptolemaios warned his mother that Keraunos meant treachery. Ambition finally conquered fear; Arsinoe gave her half-brother her hand, and was proclaimed queen in the presence of the army. She threw open the gates of Kassandreia; Keraunos entered as a bridegroom, occupied the citadel, and at once proceeded to slay Arsinoe’s two younger sons in her arms, while she vainly tried to shield them with her body. She herself was allowed to take sanctuary at Samothrace; her eldest son Ptolemaios escaped to the Illyrian king Monunius, with whose aid he proceeded to wage unsuccessful war on the murderer. We shall meet him again.

The one state that had gained enormously by the troubles of the last few years was Egypt. She alone of the great powers had suffered not at all; secure between the desert and the sea, she had watched the shipwreck of her rivals. But yesterday the world that ringed the Eastern Mediterranean had numbered four great empires; today those of Demetrios and Lysimachus were in ruins, and that of Seleucus was torn by internal struggles; the Egypt of Ptolemy remained untouched. Lysimachus might have interfered with Egypt’s new-found sea-power, and he was gone; Demetrios’ son might have sought to do so, and he had just been hopelessly beaten both by sea and on land. Keraunos had too much to do at home to think of the Aegean; and Ptolemy II held, for what it was worth, his half-brother’s written renunciation of the crown and dominions of Egypt. At last Egypt felt herself absolutely secure in that rule of the sea which had fallen to her by default. In this year, 200, Ptolemy II issued invitations to the League of the Islanders and the other Greek states to send theoroi to the great festival in honour of his father which he was about to institute in Alexandria, and to declare that it should be of equal standing with the Olympic games; and it was probably in this same year that he founded at Delos the festival in honour of Apollo which we call the first Ptolemaieia. For this festival (which must not be confused with the federal Ptolemaieia in which the Islanders worshipped Ptolemy Soter) Ptolemy II endowed the temple with a sum of money, from the interest on which every year a vase was to be purchased and dedicated to the gods of Delos, Apollo, Artemis, and Leto, and sacrifice and other incidents of a festival performed, the actual offering of the vase being made by the choir of young girls who are called Deliades, the maidens of Delos. Of the numerous vase festivals at Delos this, though not the earliest, was the first to be founded by a king, with a political motive; it emphasized the fact that Egypt now thought herself secure at sea. It was probably too at or about this time that the federal Ptolemaieia of the Island League was enlarged to include the worship of Ptolemy II alongside that of his father.

The early spring of 279 saw Antigonus at the lowest ebb of fortune that he ever reached. Beside Corinth and Demetrias, Piraeus and Euboea, he held nothing but a few places in the Argolid and the eastern, half of Achaea; and the movement to independence was working so strongly in the Peloponnese that he could have non certainty of been able to retain even these. Whether Athens, exhausted by the late war, had actually joined against him is uncertain; but the government of his friends had been overthrown, and the nationalists had again seized the helm. In 280/79 Demochares was again active in politics; it was in this year that he moved a decree in honour of his uncle Demosthenes. It was of course to some extent an academic matter; Demosthenes was long since dead, and the line of his opponent Philip long since extinct; but Antigonus was grandson of the regent to whom, it was thought, Demosthenes owed his death, and the decree could never have been moved under a pro-Macedonian government. But it was very carefully worded; no Antigonid was named; Athens did not want to challenge Antigonus if she could avoid it. And if any challenge was meant, Antigonus did not take it up. The amount of territory he had lost had, it is true, had the effect of throwing upon his hands a number of mercenaries who no longer garrisoned anything; and they had to be employed and fed. But it was not Athens that he was to attack; events were shaping themselves very differently.

For suddenly, in the spring of 279, news came to men in Greece before which their obscure struggles lost, for the moment, all importance. A great host of fair-haired Northerners had burst into Macedonia; Keraunos, headstrong and rash, had not waited to mobilize, but had hurried to meet them with the first troops at hand; his army had been cut to pieces, himself wounded and taken, and the victorious Gauls, with the severed head of the Macedonian king paraded on the point of a spear, were plundering far and wide through the land.

CHAPTER VI.

THE COMING OF THE CELTS

ANTIGONUS GONATAS