The greatest winners were the two oldest men present: Antipater, of course, and Antigonus the One-Eyed. Antipater did not really want anything to do with Asia, and had been happy with the prospect of Craterus’s taking Asia while he retained Europe. Now, with Craterus dead, Antipater effectively replaced him with Antigonus. Apart from retaining his long-held satrapy of Phrygia and subordinate territories (though at the time they were in Eumenes’ hands), he was also, at his own request, made “Royal General of Asia,” in the same way that Antipater was “Royal General of Europe.” Perhaps this was meant to be a temporary position, because the conference also gave him the job of dealing with the remnants of the enemy forces.

The spontaneous condemnation of the surviving Perdiccan leaders by the army in Egypt was now confirmed and ratified. Antigonus would have right on his side, even though right, as granted by possession of the kings, had been on the other side a few weeks earlier. Antigonus, then, for so long just outside the very center, had found his way right to the heart of matters. At an age when many of us are thinking of retirement, he was entertaining dreams of world dominion. His commission to mop up the remaining Perdiccans was just the instrument he needed.

Antigonus gained the bulk of Perdiccas’s former army, but not the three thousand unruly veterans. In what looks very much like a punishment for their near lynching of Antipater, they were sent off, under Antigenes’ command as usual, to Susa, to escort the bullion stored there west to Cyinda in Cilicia. Antipater’s son, Cassander, became Antigonus’s second-in-command. Cassander had argued against the appointment, on the grounds that he and Antigonus did not get on. Besides, with his father’s health beginning to fail, he did not want to be away from the center. But Antipater overrode his objections. He had taken the precaution of surrounding Antigonus in Phrygia with satraps who were loyal to himself, but he still felt he needed someone reliable on Antigonus’s staff. The relationship between the two most powerful men in the world was based on mutual distrust.

For the present, both the kings were alive and safe. The summit meeting at Triparadeisus carefully preserved the pretense that there was a single empire, the empire of Philip III and Alexander IV. But under the surface, the meeting had also come close to recognizing Ptolemy as a wholly independent agent in Egypt, and had, at least temporarily, abandoned all Asia to Antigonus. The broad outcome of the conference at the triple paradeisoswas a foreshadowing of the future triple division of the empire.

Polyperchon’s Moment

CIVIL WAR HAD followed hard on the heels of the Babylon compromise. The Triparadeisus settlement was not destined to bring peace either. Even in the short term, there was a lot for the new authorities to do. In the summer of 320, Eumenes held central and eastern Asia Minor with a formidable and experienced army. Alcetas was entrenched on the other side of the Taurus Mountains in southern Pisidia. Attalus had a sizable fleet and thousands more troops at Tyre. If the Perdiccans united, they might prove unstoppable. Eumenes wrote to the others, urging them to make a joint effort against the new regime and insisting that legitimate authority was still theirs, not Antipater’s. But the logical conclusion of this way of thinking was that they would have to fight to regain the kings, even if it meant taking the war to Macedon itself.

Perhaps in response to his pleas, but more probably in response to Ptolemy’s imminent invasion of the region, Attalus left Tyre in the late summer with all his forces and tried to take the strategic island of Rhodes, which commands the sea routes between the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean. The plan may have been to make this a stronghold for all the Perdiccans and a base from which to carve out and maintain their own corner of the still plastic empire. But Attalus was defeated at sea by the experienced Rhodian navy. He withdrew to Pisidia and joined Alcetas.

Alcetas would be hard to dislodge from Pisidia, especially after he was joined by other Perdiccans, though not all of them brought reinforcements as valuable as Attalus’s men and ships. One was Laomedon, the satrap of Syria, who had been sheltering Attalus. In the autumn of 320, Ptolemy took advantage of the fluid situation, and the virtual immunity granted him by his part in Perdiccas’s death, to take over the coastal towns of Palestine and Phoenicia. Ptolemy’s intention was, as always, to create a Greater Egypt, in which the heartland was protected by buffer zones. Moreover, his possession of the Phoenician ports, which he garrisoned, gained him the raw materials and the expertise with which he could develop a modern fleet. He also recruited mercenaries in the region, as well as settlers for Alexandria, especially among the Jews of Palestine.

The takeover was an act of blatant aggression, in contravention of the Triparadeisus summit, which had warned Ptolemy off such action. Laomedon had been appointed at Babylon and confirmed at Triparadeisus. There was no justification for Ptolemy’s invasion, but he clearly felt that the advantages it brought him outweighed the possibility that he might attract the antagonism of his erstwhile allies. As it turned out, his occupation was more or less overlooked for five long years.

Of the two Perdiccan strongholds, Pisidia seemed the more formidable. As Antipater prepared to leave Syria for Asia Minor in the late summer of 320, after the conclusion of the Triparadeisus conference, he had Asander probe Alcetas’s position on his way to taking up his governorship of Caria. The attack was repulsed. But could the Perdiccans build on this first success?

Eumenes had been taking steps to win the loyalty of his men, a task that his killing of the popular Craterus had made particularly urgent. First, he made no attempt to disguise the fact that, as a result of the new dispensation, they were no longer the loyalists but the rebels. He even went so far as to give any man who felt impelled to leave permission to do so. Second, he treated Craterus’s body with respect, and in due course of time returned the bones to Phila. Third, he tried to get his friend Cleopatra to give her Argead blessing to his ventures. But Sardis, where Cleopatra resided, was within enemy territory, and there was little she could do. When Antipater reached Sardis, he told her off most severely for her inappropriate friends. Cleopatra appears to have taken little notice.

Most importantly, however, Eumenes continued to demonstrate his prowess as a military commander. Ancient generals were expected to enrich the men under their command, and they made it one of their priorities, since it was, naturally, the best way to win loyalty. He even divided Antigonus’s satrapy of Phrygia into lots, which he auctioned to his senior officers as fields for plunder. His position became so secure that, despite the enormous price his enemies put on his head, none of his men betrayed him—though he also took the precaution of strengthening his bodyguard. He might be able to enrich his officers, but there were always those who could offer them more.

Attempting to defeat Eumenes by treachery was the main thrust of the new authorities’ efforts during the opening months of this phase of the war. Apart from Asander’s failed attempt against Alcetas, no concerted military action was taken. This was partly due to Eumenes’ strategy of sudden raids from a secure base, but the royal army was also suffering from internal troubles. At one point a considerable number of them, mainly Macedonian veterans, set themselves up as brigands in Lycaonia until they were brought to heel and repatriated to Macedon.

Action against the Perdiccans was Antigonus’s job. Antipater returned to Macedon with the kings in the spring of 319. His health was failing, and he still felt that Macedon was the center, where the kings belonged. He probably also incorporated Barsine and Heracles into his court at this time; Cassander was warning him against leaving the kings and other Argeads too long within Antigonus’s reach. It was clear that the relationship between Cassander and Antigonus was never going to work, so Antipater withdrew his son from Antigonus’s staff and took him back to Macedon as well. In his last illness, he wanted his son by his side. If that seemed to Cassander to be an indication that he was the heir apparent, he was soon to be disabused of the notion.