Seleucus was of course extremely vulnerable in Babylon. His ally Ptolemy had withdrawn to Egypt, and Antigonid forces could have swept in from Syria if they had not been occupied in their futile attempts against the Nabataeans. Above all, Seleucus needed more men. He recruited a few Macedonian veterans, the remnants of those dispersed by Antigonus in 315, but he found his main opportunity when, despite being hugely outnumbered, in the autumn of 311 he beat off an attack by two of Antigonus’s eastern satraps. His victory, in a surprise night attack, was so complete that he was able to add ten thousand foot and seven thousand horse to his forces. By the end of 311 he had taken over the neighboring province of Susiana, and was making no attempt to disguise the fact that Media and then the satrapies farther east were his next targets.

Late in 311, fresh from his failure in Nabataea, Demetrius invaded Babylonia. Elsewhere, his father’s representative was signing the Peace of the Dynasts. The governor Seleucus had left in charge of Babylon while he was campaigning farther east evacuated the civilian population in order to concentrate on defending the two citadels, but half of the city, which was divided by the Euphrates, fell to Demetrius’s army. Demetrius left Babylon in competent hands and returned to Syria, but if he thought he had won the war, he was mistaken. Seleucus’s governor waged a guerrilla campaign in the countryside to impede the passage of supplies to the city, and Seleucus was already on his way back. After his arrival, it took him only a few days to recover the second half of the city.

In the summer of 310 Antigonus counterattacked from the west with a full-scale invasion, but although he came to occupy large areas of Babylonia for some months, Seleucus held him at bay. There was “panic in the land,” according to an astronomical diary for September 310, ⁶perhaps referring to the initial reaction to Antigonus’s invasion; a few months later, there was still “weeping and mourning in the land.” ⁷The cuneiform texts also bear witness to galloping inflation, as even the bare necessities of life became scarce and expensive.

The war seems to have seesawed. Antigonus had the early successes; his troops broke into Babylon and drove Seleucus out after fierce street fighting, and at another point he captured a nearby town and allowed his troops to plunder freely. At the end of August 309, Seleucus met Antigonus in an indecisive pitched battle, but surprised his troops in their camp at dawn the next day and inflicted a defeat on them. It must have been a decisive defeat, because Antigonus withdrew to Syria and refocused his energies on more peaceful pursuits, such as building his new capital city, Antigonea. Apart from anything else, he was now over seventy years old, and his great weight, we may guess, was putting a strain on his heart. ⁸

Even in the absence of evidence, it seems safe to say that Antigonus and Seleucus must have entered into a treaty, because for a while afterward they each went about their separate businesses without infringing on each other’s territories. Antigonus abandoned the eastern satrapies, and over the next few years Seleucus gained control of them one by one, by conquest or by reaching a modus vivendi with the incumbent ruler. The troublesome Indian satrapies and some satellite territories were ceded to Chandragupta, as we have seen, probably in 304. Given the enormous size of the territories involved, and how few troops Seleucus had started with, this is a truly astonishing beginning for a kingdom that was to last, in some form or another, for 250 years. What is not surprising is that he was pleased to be invested with the honorific name that he bore for the rest of his life—Nicator, the bringer of victory, the only one to have successfully challenged Antigonus’s rulership of Asia.

Warfare in Greece

THE PEACE WAS never stable; it only gave the contenders the opportunity to rally. Even while the treaty was being negotiated, Antigonus and Demetrius were already involved in the lengthy business of trying to evict Seleucus from Babylonia and prevent him from taking over the eastern satrapies. That in itself did not transgress the peace, because Seleucus was not included in it. But no more than weeks elapsed before Ptolemy helped his friend Seleucus by sending him fresh troops and by invading Antigonid Cilicia on the pretext that Antigonus had installed garrisons in Greek cities there and so had broken the terms of the peace agreement. As it happened, Demetrius was able to repulse Ptolemy’s general, but the fragility of the situation was already clear.

Cassander had the best reasons for relief. He had been on the ropes, but the peace gave him a respite, and then his recovery was enormously helped by the defection in 310 of Polemaeus from the Antigonid cause. Polemaeus was simply disgruntled. Perhaps he had expected the peace conference to name him as satrap of central Greece or something; perhaps he felt that Antigonus’s preference of Demetrius underrated the invaluable service he had provided in Greece and Asia Minor. At any rate, he declared his central Greek enclave independent, made Euboea his headquarters, and expanded his sway into Hellespontine Phrygia as well, thanks to his friendship with the governor there. Worst of all, he safeguarded his position by entering into an alliance with Cassander, thus depriving Antigonus of access to much of central Greece and opening it up for his enemy. Antigonus immediately sent an army to Hellespontine Phrygia to recover the province and its control of the easiest crossing to Europe, but for the time being ignored Greece.

The upshot of these partial enterprises was a slide to war. The Fourth War of the Successors has a dramatic ending in 301, but no clear beginning. It was to be the decisive war, or, rather, the decisive phase of the war that had in effect been going on since 320.

THE END OF THE ARGEADS

There was still a major obstacle to the Successors’ increasingly obvious ambitions. The Peace of the Dynasts had proclaimed, as had all previous general agreements, that the current administrations were temporary, and had named the expiration date: in five or six years’ time, Alexander IV would come of age and inherit the lot. Already there were murmurs in some quarters of Macedon that it was time for the boy to be brought out of seclusion and taught to rule. But of course in reality none of the Successors wanted to cede power to Alexander, now or in the future. They read the treaty clause “when Alexander comes of age” as “if Alexander should come of age.” They had risked everything to get where they were; they had not the slightest intention of handing it all over to the new king in a few years’ time. For years Cassander had kept him and his mother in comfortable custody in Amphipolis; in 310 or 309 he had the teenager poisoned, along with his mother Rhoxane.

There was a telling lack of protest or reaction from the others. Surely this, if anything, should have triggered war. From time to time, when it had made practical sense, they had all professed themselves loyal to the Argead line. Where was the Antigonus of 315, who had condemned Cassander for killing Olympias? Had he and the others given Cassander the nod at the 311 conference? Probably nothing needed to be said openly; they would all benefit from the freedom of no longer being constrained by the existence of a royal family to whom they owed nominal allegiance. “Since there was no longer an heir for the empire,” Diodorus observed, “all those who held nations or cities began to hope for royal power, and began to regard their subordinate territories as a spear-won kingdoms.” ¹From now on, the Successors made less use of the magic of the Argead name to legitimate their positions; they were in effect kings in their own right, with kingdoms consisting of what they could gain and hold by force of arms. And, before long, they would all begin to style themselves kings.