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THE SELEUCID EMPIRE. 358-251 BC. HOUSE OF SELEUCUS

CHAPTER 5.

SELEUCUS CONQUERS THE EAST

Seven years had passed since the death of Alexander, and Seleucus found himself at the end of them a landless fugitive. As a whole, these years had served to reduce the situation to a much simpler form. The old royal house of Macedonia was become a practically negligible quantity, although the boy Alexander still lived with the name of King. For in the West also, the years 317 and 316 had sealed the fate of the royalist cause. First, as a consequence of the disastrous battle in the Bosphorus, Greece had been for the most part in 317 wrested from the Regent Polyperchon by Cassander. Then came a split in the royalist party itself, a natural result of the double kingship. The Kings, the child and the simpleton, were cyphers, but Olympias, the grandmother of the little Alexander, and Eurydice, the wife of Philip, stood in fierce opposition. The Regent had lent himself to the designs of Olympias, and in 317 Philip and Eurydice were both made away with. The nominal kingship was now vested in Alexander alone. Before 317 was out Cassander attacked Macedonia itself. The murder of Philip and Eurydice had made the country hostile to Olympias and Polyperchon. When the winter fell, the Regent was pinned by Cassander’s forces in Azorus, and Cassander was besieging the royal family in Pydna. In the spring of 316 Pydna fell. Cassander held the King in his hands. He soon made himself master of Macedonia. Olympias was put to death.

It was not only through the suppression of the royal house that the situation was simplified. Out of the struggle of the Macedonian chiefs four now emerged as the fittest or the most fortunate. The rest had either disappeared, like Perdiccas and Eumenes, Pithon and Peucestas, or had acquiesced in subordination to one of the four, as the new satraps in the East to Antigonus, and Seleucus to Ptolemy. And of these four, Antigonus held a position which overshadowed all the rest. His power extended over all Asia from the Mediterranean to Khorasan, whilst of the other three Ptolemy held only Egypt and Southern Syria, Cassander had a newly-grounded and precarious power in Macedonia, and Lysimachus maintained his independence in the semi-barbarous country of Thrace.

It was a curious revolution in the position of Antigonus that he now found himself practically the successor of Perdiccas. So long as the principle of one central government for the Empire had meant an authority over his head, his ambition had set him among its opponents; his ambition, mounting higher, now made him the champion of that principle, but with the difference that the central government should be his own. Accordingly he found himself before long at war with his old allies, and allied with many of his old enemies, the wreck of the royalist party. The history of the next fourteen years (315-301) is the long fight of Antigonus for Macedonia.

Before Antigonus returned to the West in 315 common action had been determined on by Ptolemy, Cassander and Lysimachus. Our authority assigns a great part to Seleucus in prompting this alliance, but the other three chiefs probably needed little instruction to be on their guard against Antigonus. Their ambassadors met Antigonus in the spring of 315 in Northern Syria, and laid before him the demands which they made as his allies in the late war against the royalists. These included a partition of the conquered territory in Asia, Seleucus being restored to Babylonia, and of the captured treasure. Antigonus repulsed these demands with scorn. Then either side got ready for the battle. The peoples of Asia saw the evidence of their monarch’s resolution along all their highways, the posts fixed at intervals for rapid communication, the heights crowned with beacons.

The war with Antigonus, as far as Seleucus was concerned, falls into two phases. In the first, 315-312, Seleucus was merely a subordinate, ‘one of the captains’ of Ptolemy, as the book of Daniel describes him. We hear of him in command of the Ptolemaic fleet, which in 315 menaces the coast of Ionia, when Antigonus is set on gaining mastery of the sea as a preliminary to an attack on Macedonia. Shortly afterwards Seleucus is in Cyprus with Ptolemy’s brother Menelaus, combating the partizans of Antigonus in the island. He is again in the Aegean the following year (314). These operations, which form part of a plan of campaign, in which Seleucus is not a principal, do not concern us farther.

Then comes the year 312, the great year of Seleucus, the starting-point of the era, which was established by the kings of his line in the East, and was still used as the ‘year of the Greeks’ long after his line had passed away. The spring of that year found Antigonus in Asia Minor, believing that the way to Europe was at last open. To secure himself against a flank attack from Egypt, his son Demetrius, the brilliant, dissolute man to whose career the rather hackneyed metaphor of a meteor can be applied with peculiar appropriateness, had been left with an army to hold Cilicia and Syria. Southern Syria (Palestine), as well as Northern, was occupied at this moment by the forces of Antigonus, the troops of Ptolemy having been expelled in 315 at the outbreak of the war. It was determined in the council of Ptolemy that the time was ripe for a forward movement. Seleucus, according to our account, was the main advocate of this step. A large army, led by Ptolemy and Seleucus, moved across the desert upon Palestine. They were met at the threshold of the country, near Gaza, by Demetrius. A decisive battle—one of the great battles of the time—took place. Demetrius was completely beaten. Syria was lost for the time to Antigonus. His movement upon Macedonia was arrested; his whole scheme of operations had to be modified. It was the severest blow that had been dealt him since the beginning of the war.

But its ultimate consequences were to prove more momentous than its immediate effect. The opportunity of Seleucus was now come, and he sprang swiftly. Immediately after the battle he had received from Ptolemy, who favored his enterprise, a body of 800 foot and 200 horse, and with these he set out to recover his old province of Babylonia. The little company moved along the road which struck the Euphrates in Northern Syria. Even for the recovery of one province the force seemed ridiculously small. We are told of the companions of Seleucus that on the way their hearts misgave them. They contrasted themselves with the great power against which they were going. But Seleucus was not to be discouraged. The history of those eventful days, as it stood in the author followed by Diodorus, narrated by those who looked back upon them in the light of subsequent triumphs, is transfigured by a prophetic halo. Seleucus was sure of his destiny. He reminded his followers of the fall of the Persian power before the superior science of Alexander; and indeed he was right if he saw upon how insecure founda­tions these monarchies maintained by military force alone, without the cement of nationality, of which the East has seen so many, do really rest. The narrator makes him further sustain his followers’ courage by an oracle of the Didymaean Apollo, which had hailed him King, and by a vision of Alexander. “He also set before them how all that is held in honor and admiration among men is achieved by labors and hazards”. It is an occasion when some idealizing touches are justified. In this form, indeed, did those days actually live in the minds of men.

The party of Seleucus crossed the Euphrates into Mesopotamia and appeared at Carrhae, an old town on the high road between Syria and Babylon where a colony of Macedonian soldiers was settled. Some of these were ready at once to join a commander of the reputation of Seleucus, and the rest were not numerous enough to offer resistance. With these reinforcements Seleucus traversed the length of Mesopotamia and entered Babylonia. The hopes he had cherished, that the work of his previous four years there still stood in the disposition of the people, were not found vain. The satrap appointed by Antigonus, Pithon the son of Agenor, had been with Demetrius at Gaza and fallen on the field. The natives flocked to the standards of their old governor. One of the Macedonian officials came over to him with more than 1000 men. The partisans of Antigonus were overborne by the popular movement, and shut themselves up under a commander called Diphilus in one of the palace-citadels of Babylon. Here they still held as hostages those who had formed the adherents and retinue of Seleucus in his governorship. But Seleucus carried the place by assault and rescued all who belonged to him.

This was the moment which the Seleucid kings regarded as the birthday of their Empire.

Seleucus ruled once more in Babylon. But he must expect ere long to have his possession challenged; and he set earnestly to work to form a force of both arms and to confirm his influence with the natives and resident Macedonians. Antigonus personally was busy in the West, but he left the command of all the eastern provinces in the hands of the satrap of Media, Nicanor, who had succeeded the Mede Orontobates. Nicanor was soon on his way to Babylon with an imposing force, drawn from different regions of Iran, of more than 10,000 foot and 7000 horse. To set against him Seleucus had no more than 3000 foot and 400 horse. But making up for this by mobility, he crossed the Tigris before Nicanor had reached it, took him completely by surprise, and routed him. Euager, the satrap of Persis, was among those who fell in the affray. The army of Nicanor came over in a body to Seleucus. Nicanor himself barely made good his escape into the deserts with a handful of his staff, and thence reached his satrapy.

The effect of the battle was immediately to open the East to Seleucus. It was seen how insubstantial the hold of Antigonus upon the East really was. The Greek and Macedonian garrisons by which his nominees had held Media, Persis, Susiana, and Babylon were quite ready, if it appeared profitable, to exchange his service for that of Seleucus. The natives, no doubt, remembered the old governors he had taken from them with regret. The satraps of the further provinces he had never really subdued. Seleucus seems to have annexed Susiana almost immediately, and perhaps Persis, whose satrap had fallen. Then he advanced upon Media itself, to attack Nicanor in his own province.

Meanwhile in the West, Antigonus, warned by the battle of Gaza, had determined to leave Ptolemy unassailed no longer. He had reoccupied Palestine, and, as a preliminary to the invasion of Egypt, had attempted to reduce the Nabataean Arabs, who controlled the road through the desert (311). He had met in this with indifferent success, and had just come to terms when a dispatch from Nicanor, explaining the desperate position of affairs in the East, reached him. Antigonus, even with the risk of losing the East, could ill spare troops for any long time in view of the complications in the West. But he determined to try the effect of one sudden blow at the seat of Seleucus’ power. He gave 15,000 foot and 4000 horse to Demetrius, ordered him to make a flying excursion into Babylonia, recover the province, and return as soon as possible. Demetrius assembled this force at Damascus, and moved rapidly upon Babylonia by way of Mesopotamia.

Seleucus had left in Babylon, to hold command during his absence, an officer called Patrocles, no doubt the same person of whom we hear later on as his foremost counselor and the explorer of Central Asia. Patrocles learnt that Demetrius was coming down on him from Mesopotamia. He knew that his forces were too small to risk a battle. But at any rate he meant to save them from defeat or seduction, and ordering a considerable part of them to take refuge in the deserts to the west of the Euphrates or the swamps of the Susian coast, he himself moved with a small body about the province to observe the enemy. At the same time he kept Seleucus in Media continually informed of what took place.

Demetrius found the city of Babylon evacuated, except the two royal palaces which confronted each other across the river. Of these he took and looted one, but the other held out for some days, and the time allowed him was at an end. He was obliged to return with this incomplete result, but he left one of his friends with a quarter of his force to go on with the siege and hold the province. Before leaving he pillaged the country, an act which only served to injure his own cause, so that, as Plutarch says, he ‘left the power of Seleucus firmer than ever’.

The incursion of Demetrius was a mere momentary inter­ruption in Seleucus’ conquest of the East. Nicanor was unable to make head against him in Media. Appian says that Seleucus “killed the satrap Nicator (sic) in the battle”. It may be that Appian had the battle on the Tigris in his mind when Nicanor was defeated and fled; or, of course, Nicanor may have given battle again in Media with his remaining troops and fallen.

The ancient authors have allowed us to follow up to this point with tolerable completeness the progress of Seleucus, the son of Antiochus, towards empire. If the material were before us, we should now have to narrate the actual formation of the Empire in the East with a fullness proportionate to its importance. The observance of such proportions in his narrative is, however, impossible to a historian of the Seleucid house. He has to take his information as he can get it, and it is not always the passages he would most like to know about which are lit up for him by the capricious chances of the records. On an incident which, according to its relative importance, should be disposed of in a sentence he is obliged, in order to make his work complete, to spend a page; about a development, to which he would wish to give a chapter, he can only get enough information to fill a sentence. We have at the point to which we are now come an example of this disability. After the return of Demetrius from Babylon in 311 Seleucus once more repossessed himself of the province, and during the following nine years (311-302) made his authority supreme in Iran as well as in the Euphrates valley, or, in other words, over all the eastern part of the Empire to the Jaxartes and the Indus. This bare fact is almost all that can be elicited from the documents.

It is the war with Antigonus in the West which once more draws Seleucus, as king of the East, into the field of vision. There the situation was still very much in 302 as Seleucus had left it in 312. The most important modification was the total extinction of the old royal family of Macedonia in the male line. The child Alexander had been murdered by Cassander in 311, and Heracles, the illegitimate son of the great Alexander, by Polyperchon in 309. Cassander might claim to inherit its rights by his wife, Thessalonice, who was the sister of Alexander the Great. In 306 Antigonus assumed the title of King. In the following year the other dynasts, Ptolemy, Cassander, Lysimachus and Seleucus, followed suit. Seleucus had already been “King” to his native subjects. Now the Macedonians and Greeks admitted to his presence saw him wearing the linen band, the diadem, which had been with the old Persian kings the symbol of royalty, and the official Greek documents ran in the name of King Seleucus.

We may pause to note that the name of king had no territorial reference. These kings are never officially styled kings of Egypt or kings of Asia. If they are called so by historians, it is merely for the purpose of convenient distinction. It connoted rather a personal relation to the Macedonian people. Ideally there was one Macedonian Empire as in the Middle Ages there was one Roman Empire. But the dignity of Macedonian King was borne conjointly or concurrently by several chieftains, just as the dignity of Roman Emperor was borne concurrently by the Western and the Byzantine prince. In practice, of course, each of the rivals had to acquiesce in the others being kings within a certain territorial sphere. But their connection with that sphere was never as close and essential as that of the king of England or the king of France with his territory. Ptolemy and Seleucid were to the end Macedonian kings who happened to reign in Egypt and in Asia.

Materially, however, the situation in the West had changed little since 312. Antigonus still held Asia Minor and Syria securely. But his attempts to enlarge his dominion further had met with poor success. He had never succeeded in reaching Macedonia, and his attack on Egypt in 306 had broken down disastrously. He had wrested Cyprus from Ptolemy, and he had established a fluctuating influence in Greece, but that was the utmost he could do. And during the siege of Rhodes by Demetrius, 305-304, the war between Antigonus and the other dynasts seems to have languished.

But it was in itself a momentous change in the general situation that the rule of Antigonus beyond the Euphrates had been superseded by the rule of Seleucus. It was so much lost to Antigonus in resources, and a fourth independent power had arisen in his rear. If against his three enemies he had been unable to make advance, against four he could not even hold his own ground.

After the failure of his attempt on Rhodes he turned once more in 304 to assail Cassander in Greece. During the distractions of the last three years his hold on Greece had been almost lost. Cassander and his ally, the old Regent Polyperchon, who was now fallen to be a sort of condottiere, had restored their influence almost everywhere, except in Athens; and Athens was hard pressed. Demetrius now returned to Greece, and next year (303), in a victorious campaign, swept the hostile forces from the field. The states of Greece were federated under the presidency of Antigonus and Demetrius against Cassander.

Such victories were useless. Their immediate effect was to revive into activity the alliance of Cassander, Lysimachus and Ptolemy, to which Seleucus now added his strength. While Demetrius had been conquering Greece, Antigonus had remained on the defensive in Northern Syria. In this central region the roads which led to Asia Minor from Egypt and from Babylonia converged, so that his position gave Antigonus equal opportunities for observing Ptolemy and Seleucus. But in the spring of 302 the alliance against him came into play. Lysimachus crossed over from Thrace, and, in combination with a force sent by Cassander, overran the Western part of Asia Minor. When Antigonus marched against him he simply retired into a strong position on the coast near Heraclea and stood at bay. And in the meantime Antigonus had been obliged to leave the roads from Iran and Egypt inadequately defended behind him. In such a predicament it was of no avail that Demetrius was pressing Cassander hard in Thessaly. Antigonus was obliged to call him back to Asia and let Greece go.

During these events in the summer of 302 Seleucus was making his way from the Punjab, marching ever westward over the immense distances which separate India from the Mediterranean lands. When the winter 302-301 closed in he had reached Cappadocia, and there turned his troops into winter-quarters. His force amounted to 20,000 foot, 12,000 cavalry and mounted archers, the latter no doubt from Central Asia, 480 elephants, brought straight from the Punjab, and over 100 scythed chariots. He had with him his son Antiochus, then twenty-two or twenty-three years old.

In the spring of 301 he advanced again along the central highway of Asia Minor. Antigonus failed to prevent his junction with Lysimachus, and at Ipsus, which lay on the highway, he had to meet the united armies of the two kings. Plutarch gives an account of the battle with various picturesque details. It was preceded, he tells us, by omens which portended disaster to Antigonus. In the course of the fight Demetrius, who commanded the flower of his father's cavalry, came into collision with the young prince Antiochus, and, after a brilliant passage of arms, routed his opponents. But he pressed the pursuit too far. This spoilt the victory. The elephants of Seleucus thrust in between him and the phalanx of Antigonus. The forces of Seleucus and Lysimachus circled round that powerful but unwieldy mass, threatening attack, but trying in reality to frighten the troops of Antigonus into desertion. And in fact a large section voluntarily went over to the winning side. The rest fled. Then a body of javelin-men bore down upon the place where Antigonus himself was stationed. Someone drew his attention to them: “These men are leveling at you, 0 king”. The old man was unmoved “Let them; Demetrius will come to my support”. To the end he believed his son was at hand, and kept scanning the horizon. Then the javelins struck him and he fell, pierced with many wounds. Only Thorax of Larissa remained beside the body.