ANTIGONUS ON THE OFFENSIVE: EGYPT

Victory was an essential part of the ideology of the early Hellenistic kings. Victory proved that a king was indeed the right man for the job. But the gods signally failed to smile on the Antigonids’ next venture. Just a few months after their capture of Cyprus, taking advantage of the cooler weather and intending to catch Ptolemy still reeling, Antigonus and Demetrius launched an all-out attack on Egypt, by land and sea, with a monstrous army. Ninety thousand men and eighty-three elephants marched south from Syria by land, while 150 warships with their crews of forty thousand shadowed the army’s route. From Gaza onward, every man in the land army was required to carry his own provisions for ten days, which was sufficient for crossing the northern Sinai desert, while a huge camel train supplied by friendly Arabs bore fodder for the animals, water, and extra grain. Ptolemy had made his headquarters at Pelusium, where he waited.

Despite poor weather at sea, most of the fleet, and all of the Antigonid land army, managed to rendezvous at the Nile early in November, with Ptolemy’s forces on the other bank. The navy had suffered, however: they had found few places to put to land, and had become short of water and food. Antigonus well knew, especially from the example of Perdiccas, how hard it was to force the Nile. The plan was that Demetrius was to sail beyond the Nile, to get behind Ptolemy and create the opportunity for the land army to cross the river. But Ptolemy’s defenses along the coast on the far side of the river were just too good, and Demetrius was again unable to land.

On his way back to rejoin the land army, another storm sank a few more ships. As his fleet commander stressed, the weather was unlikely to improve this late in the year, and Antigonus could not maintain his troops for long in the desert. He decided to withdraw. He may have been ill as well as dispirited, and he was certainly feeling his advanced age. It should have been his last campaign; he no longer belonged on the battlefield.

DEMETRIUS ON THE OFFENSIVE: RHODES

The original plan was to make another attempt on Egypt in 305. But first there was the question of Rhodes. Its links with Egypt, both formal and informal, were firmly founded on the fact that the Rhodians acted as brokers for the export of Egyptian grain to Greece. But Antigonus too was now an exporter of grain, and it is quite likely that one of his main reasons for wanting to take the island was to force it to deal only in his grain, not Ptolemy’s. In any case, it was spoiling Antigonid control of the eastern Mediterranean and it had refused to support the invasion of Cyprus. But the last straw was that, during the Egyptian invasion, Rhodian ships had repulsed an Antigonid attempt to interrupt the transport of grain from Egypt. In a blatant attempt at self-justification, Antigonus chose to interpret this as an act of war. He wanted Rhodian wealth for himself, and he wanted to interrupt one of Ptolemy’s main sources of income; the islanders appealed in vain to the clause in the 311 peace that guaranteed autonomy for Greek states.

Taking the island was supposed to be easy; it would all be over in a matter of weeks, and then the Antigonids could turn their attention back to Egypt. In the event, however, Rhodes held out for over a year, and absorbed so much energy that the invasion of Egypt became an impossibility. By the time it was all over, Ptolemy had been able to regroup. It was one of the turning points of the war.

Demetrius appeared off the island in the summer of 305 with a huge fleet. The Rhodians hastily agreed to break off their alliance with Ptolemy and enter into one with Antigonus, but Demetrius now added unrealistic further demands. The Rhodians prepared for a siege. As well as strengthening their defenses, they wrote to Antigonus’s enemies for help. All three responded, but Ptolemy above all: he wanted the siege to go on for as long as possible, to give him time to recover, and over the course of the siege his blockade-runners brought in troops as well as supplies and money, often just in the nick of time. It was impossible for the Antigonid fleet to entirely surround the large island, especially at night, so that blockade-running was relatively easy. Demetrius even hired pirates—often some of the best sailors in the Mediterranean—to increase his naval strength, but supplies still got through.

Demetrius began from the sea, making use of the technology perfected at Salamis to bring up ship-mounted siege engines, and before long also managed to occupy and fortify a spit of land. Repeated assaults were thwarted by Rhodian bravery and naval skill; on one occasion, their ships managed to sink two of Demetrius’s floating siege engines—only to find, a few weeks later, that Demetrius had built an even larger monster. But this was destroyed in a storm, and the Rhodians seized the opportunity also to drive the Antigonid troops off their beachhead.

By the beginning of 304, Demetrius had gained little, and the Rhodians had good reasons to congratulate themselves for their heroic resistance. But it was not over yet. Demetrius decided to switch directions and attack from the land. For this purpose, he had an even larger siege tower constructed than he had used at Salamis. It was forty meters (130 feet) high, armored and bristling with artillery, some of which was capable of firing missiles weighing up to eighty kilograms (175 pounds) almost two hundred meters (650 feet). The moat was being filled, and numerous battering rams and catapults were built. The artillery would strafe the battlements while the rams pounded the towers and sappers undermined the walls. Attempts by neutral states to arbitrate an end to the fighting came to nothing. As Lawrence Durrell once wrote, Demetrius gave the would-be arbitrators his answer precisely by building this enormous siege tower. ¹¹

The Rhodians resorted to extreme measures, and while Demetrius’s engineers were busy, they constructed an entire second wall inside the one that was under threat, tearing down the marble walls of public buildings to supplement their supply of stone. Meanwhile, their ships continued to achieve extraordinary successes at sea, despite their small numbers. Above all, Demetrius was never able finally to secure the harbor mouth.

Demetrius began his assault. Rhodian countermines foiled his sappers, and although they were eventually driven back onto their newly built interior wall, they counterattacked and damaged the monster siege tower. This bought them enough time to repair their defenses and prepare new ones. The assault was renewed, and it all seemed to be going Demetrius’s way. He planned to bring things to an end with a night attack through the breaches his engines had made. His men penetrated well into the city, but were bloodily repulsed. Demetrius began to prepare another assault, which would surely be the final one—but his father called him off. It was costing them too many men; besides the situation in Greece was rapidly getting worse, and he was needed there. Rhodes had survived.

In gratitude to Ptolemy for keeping them supplied with men and food, the Rhodians instituted his cult as a savior god. Demetrius gained a new title too: Poliorcetes, the Besieger. Despite his failure, the title was not ironic. The siege technology he had applied was truly impressive and innovative. As always, warfare accelerated the rate of technological advances—though for the time being only warfare benefited from man’s ingenuity. Archimedes’ screw, accurate water clocks, the rotary olive press, amazing gadgets for entertainment—all the remarkable, peaceful developments of later decades lay in the future, with the notable exception of the mechanical snail that by the command of Demetrius of Phalerum had led a procession in Athens in 308, exc reting slime. ¹²