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Successors of Alexander the Great

The Ancients

Sun May 25 2025

Summary

The Successors of Alexander the Great: A Detailed Exploration

Podcast: The Ancients
Host: Tristan Hughes
Guest: Dr. Graham Wrightson, Associate Professor of History at South Dakota State University
Release Date: May 25, 2025

Introduction

In this riveting episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes delves deep into the tumultuous period following the untimely death of Alexander the Great. Joined by Dr. Graham Wrightson, an expert on ancient warfare and the successors of Alexander, the discussion unravels the intricate power struggles that fragmented Alexander's vast empire into the Hellenistic kingdoms we study today.

The Death of Alexander the Great

The episode begins with a recount of Alexander's enigmatic last words:

"To the strongest." ([02:32])

These words, whether factual or embellished over time, symbolize the ensuing chaos as Alexander's empire lacked a clear heir. Alexander died in Babylon at the age of 32, leaving behind an illegitimate son and a pregnant wife, Roxana. His elder half-brother, Arridaeus, was deemed incapable of ruling independently due to a debilitating condition, further complicating the succession crisis.

Key Points:

Alexander's vast empire stretched from Greece to the Indian subcontinent.
The absence of a designated successor led to immediate power vacuums.
The legitimate heir, Alexander’s newborn son, would be too young to rule initially.

Immediate Chaos and Power Vacuum

Upon Alexander's death, his empire was thrust into disorder. The three most senior generals—Perdiccas, Antipater, and Craterus—attempted to maintain control, but internal strife quickly undermined their efforts.

"Immediately after Alexander dies, we get this sort of mini rebellion..." ([02:39])

Key Events:

Perdiccas: Attempted to centralize power but faced opposition from other generals and his own troops.
Antipater: Governed Macedonia but was unable to assert dominance over the other generals.
Craterus: A revered infantry general whose ambition ultimately led to his downfall.

The generals divided the empire's regions among themselves, but Macedonian control remained fragile, with rebellions erupting from various regions, notably the Lamian War in Greece.

The First Wars Among the Successors

The Lamian War, sparked by Greek city-states seeking independence, marked the beginning of prolonged conflicts among Alexander's heirs.

"The Lamian War is this... changes the presentation and propaganda ability of the generals who are involved." ([29:55])

Key Figures Involved:

Perdiccas: Launched an invasion of Egypt to seize the country and retrieve Alexander's body.
Ptolemy: Seized control of Egypt, leveraging Alexander's legacy to legitimize his rule.
Antigonus and Seleucus: Continued to vie for dominance in Asia Minor and Babylon respectively.

The initial triumvirate between Perdiccas, Antipater, and Craterus was short-lived, as personal ambitions and mistrust led to their downfall within a few years of Alexander's death.

Royal Connections and Alliances

Marriages became strategic tools for generals to align themselves with Alexander's royal lineage.

"They are all trying to connect themselves to Alexander, right?... through marriage to his relatives." ([43:12])

Notable Alliances:

Perdiccas married Cleopatra, Alexander's sister, to strengthen his claim.
Olympias, Alexander's mother, played a pivotal role in manipulating alliances to secure power for her grandson.

These alliances, however, were double-edged swords, as intertwining with the royal family also made generals targets during power struggles.

Decline of the Royal Family and Rise of Independent Kingdoms

As the wars intensified, the royal family members were systematically eliminated, paving the way for generals to declare themselves kings.

"Once the entire family is done, then it shifts away from Alexander's memory." ([43:12])

Outcomes:

Generals like Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Antigonus established their own dynasties—the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt, the Seleucid Empire in Asia, and the Antigonid Dynasty in Macedonia.
The elimination of royal heirs removed the immediate ties to Alexander, allowing these successors to forge independent identities.

Military Structures of the Successor Armies

Dr. Wrightson provides an in-depth analysis of the military compositions of the successor kingdoms.

"Most of our armies throughout the Hellenistic world... are built on the sarissa phalanx." ([49:52])

Key Components:

Phalanx Infantry: Dominated by the sarissa, a long pike essential for Macedonian warfare tactics.
Cavalry Units: Included both light and heavy cavalry, crucial for flanking maneuvers.
Auxiliary Forces: Archers, javelin throwers, and specialized units like scythe chariots and war elephants.

Despite similarities, each successor kingdom tailored its military to its unique strategic needs and resources.

Naval Warfare and Demetrius's Massive Ships

The naval arms race among the successors introduced unprecedented ship sizes and siege technologies.

"He builds what's called the Helepolis, the city besieger... but he never manages to capture the city because of his uselessness." ([58:34])

Highlights:

Demetrius: Known for constructing colossal ships like heptaremes and octaremes, equipped with catapults and underwater rams.
Innovations: Introduction of siege towers and heavy artillery onboard ships to breach fortified cities.

These advancements, while impressive, often proved ineffective in actual combat scenarios, leading to ironic nicknames among the generals.

Conclusion of the Successor Wars: Battle of Ipsus and the Establishment of Hellenistic Kingdoms

The protracted conflicts culminated in decisive battles that solidified the fragmentation of Alexander's empire.

"The death of Antigonus and the exile of Demetrius... establishes the status quo." ([60:42])

Key Battles:

Battle of Ipsus (301 BC): Marked the definitive end of Antigonus's ambitions to reunify the empire, resulting in his death and the rise of new dominant powers.
Battle of Corypedium: Seleucus's victory over Lysimachus paved the way for the Seleucid Empire's dominance in Asia.

By the mid-270s BC, with the death of Pyrrhus, the Hellenistic period was firmly established, characterized by independent kingdoms focused on cultural development rather than imperial unification.

Historiographical Challenges

Dr. Wrightson emphasizes the scarcity and complexity of sources pertaining to the Successor Wars.

"For modern historians... when you have only modern sources talking about the American Revolution, that there's no contemporary documents from the event..." ([33:51])

Primary Sources:

Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curtius Rufus, and Justin: Provide accounts but were written centuries later, often with Roman biases.
Archaeological Evidence: Inscriptions, papyri, and artifacts offer supplementary insights but leave many gaps.

This paucity of reliable contemporary sources makes reconstructing the precise sequence of events and motivations of the Successors a challenging endeavor.

Final Thoughts

The episode concludes with an appreciation for the complexity and significance of the Successor Wars in shaping the ancient world.

"There's so much going on, it's surprising that we don't know so much..." ([65:56])

Tristan Hughes and Dr. Wrightson reflect on the unparalleled nature of this period, highlighting its blend of political intrigue, military innovation, and cultural transformation.

Notable Quotes

Tristan Hughes ([02:32]): "Those were the immortalized, fabled last words of Alexander the Great when he died in Babylon after a short and sudden illness."
Dr. Graham Wrightson ([15:17]): "These are some of the most extraordinary yet brutal in history."
Dr. Wrightson ([33:51]): "It's like studying American history. You have to read primary sources that are not directly connected to their period."

Conclusion

The episode provides a comprehensive overview of the Successor Wars, illustrating how Alexander's grand empire was swiftly dismantled by the very leaders who once served him. Through strategic marriages, military innovations, and relentless ambition, these generals carved out the Hellenistic kingdoms that would dominate the Mediterranean and Near East for centuries. Despite the challenges posed by limited and fragmented sources, the narrative remains a testament to the enduring complexity and intrigue of ancient history.

Note: This summary excludes advertisements, intros, and outros to focus solely on the substantive content of the podcast episode.

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Transcript

Tristan Hughes (0:00)

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes and if you.

Graham Wrightson (0:02)

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To the strongest.

Tristan Hughes (2:32)

Those were the immortalized, fabled last words of Alexander the Great when he died in Babylon after a short and sudden illness on 11 June 323 BC, aged just 32 in his 13 year reign, he had conquered the mighty Persian empire and forged one of the largest empires the world had yet seen. Stretching from Greece to the Indian subcontinent, his achievements had been the talk of countless books and podcast episodes. But the story of the chaos that erupted after his death is even more fascinating. This chaos is epitomized by those fabled last words themselves. To the strongest, these words were an answer. An answer by Alexander to one of his generals who had approached his deathbed the general had asked to whom Alexander left his empire. Alexander had simply replied to cratis do to the strongest. Now, unfortunately, it's very likely that Alexander did not pass from this world. With those legendary final words, however fictional or not, they have come to epitomise the titanic struggle for power that followed his death. Alexander's death was unexpected. Aged just 32, he left no clear heir to the throne. His only son was illegitimate. His wife, a Batrian princess called Roxana, was pregnant at the time of Alexander's death and she would ultimately give birth to a son. But that son, although Alexander's sole legitimate heir, would be incapable of ruling for years. Alexander also had a brother, an elder half brother in fact, called Arridaeus. But Arridaeus had a condition that meant that he was incapable of ruling without help. It had also saved his life. Alexander therefore had not considered Aridaeus as a threat to his rule. It would ultimately be the incapable Larodaeus and Roxana's newborn son who the Macedonians would name as Alexander's regal successors, joint kings. But everyone knew that their actual power was non existent. Real power lay with Alexander's former generals. Experienced commanders who had served with Alexander throughout his campaigns had been critical to the king's many narratives, military successes. It was these generals, all larger than life figures, who would decide the fate of Alexander's empire and help forge the Hellenistic world that emerged from it. These were the successors and it's their story that we are covering today. After putting down a soldier mutiny almost immediately after Alexander died, the generals who had outlived their king in Babylon divided the spoils of Alexander's empire amongst themselves. Regions were given out to these generals almost as prizes for their senior positions and and for outliving Alexander. But Macedonian control over many of these regions was incredibly fragile. These generals would have to deal with rebellions and revolts that quickly broke out across the empire stretching from Bulgaria to Afghanistan. The biggest rebellion broke out in Greece, where a number of city states spearheaded by Athens launched a massive revolt. It was called the Lamian War, after a city in northern Greece where the central siege of this revolt took place. This revolt would ultimately be put down. Athens would surrender, but only after several battles on land and sea and over a year of fighting. In the initial years after Alexander the Great's death, his fracturing empire was effectively ruled by his three most senior surviving generals. The two kings were totemic figureheads. Real power lay with these commanders. These three generals were Perdiccas, Antipater and Craterus Perdikkas ruled in Asia east of the Aegean and controlled what had been Alexander's all conquering army. Antipater ruled in Europe, in Alexander's home region of Macedonia. He was the eldest of the three, a wily old statesman in his 70s who had served Alexander as governor of Macedonia for more than a decade. Supporting Antipater was Craterus, the most revered general that had served Alexander the Great. The idea was that all three would rule Alexander's empire until Alexander's son, the boy king, confusingly also called Alexander, came of age. All three were united through marriages. Both Perdiccas and Craterus married daughters of Antipater. Think of this almost as a Macedonian triumvirate. But despite this apparent closeness, the relations between these three were strained from the beginning and they were unable to contain the desires of equally ambitious generals that supposedly served them. These were generals like Antigonus, governor of an important province in Asia Minor, present day Anatolia, who became an enemy of Perdiccas. There was also Ptolemy, arguably the man who triggered the first great war between these successors barely two years after Alexander the Great's death. Almost as soon as Alexander the Great died, Ptolemy had seized control of the wealthy province of Egypt. Over the following years he strengthened up his power base in the region, determined to oppose Perdiccas and his supremacy. In 321 BC, Ptolemy made his move. At that time Alexander the Great's body was being transported from Babylon to be buried in Macedonia. On Perdiccas orders, Alexander's body had been placed in a beautiful carriage adorned with gold and shaped like a temple. It had taken two years to build. Whilst this elaborate temple on wheels was slowly making its way through Syria, Ptolemy hijacked it. He had already bribed the soldiers guarding the carriage and then proceeded to escort it back to Egypt where he oversaw Alexander's burial, an incredibly symbolic and prestigious event. The die was cast. Perdikkas reacted by launching a full scale invasion of Egypt with his army more than 50,000 strong, determined to depose Ptolemy and retrieve Alexander's body. But Perdikkas soon found himself fighting on two fronts. In the meantime, his alliance with Antipater and Craterus had broken down. The triumvirate had shattered Antipater and Craterus had become convinced that Perdikkas was plotting against them. And to be fair, Perdikkas hadn't helped matters because in the meantime he had aligned himself with another faction, a royal one. Alexander the Great's male relatives might have been weak and controllable, but the women in his family were a different story. Olympias, the formidable mother of Alexander the Great and adored matriarch of the Macedonian empire, teamed up with her sole surviving child. Her name was Cleopatra, the full sister of Alexander the Great. Both Olympias and Cleopatra hated Antipater. In their efforts to survive in this turbulent post Alexander world they made an irresistible offer to Perdiccas. An offer of marriage to the Princess Cleopatra. Perdiccas agreed to it. It was an offer that this ambitious general simply could not turn down. By doing this he married into the royal family. But he also shunned his current wife, Antipater's daughter and made his desires for the throne clear. To see such overt imperial desires threatened Antipater and Craterus and force them to act. And so at the same time that Perdikkas invaded Egypt hundreds of miles to the north, Antipater and Craterus crossed into Asia with their own army to battle Perdikkas forces increasing the size and scale of this first great civil war war, the first successor war. Perdiccas and Craterus would both perish during this civil war. One murdered by his own officers, the other trampled underfoot and falling from his horse in a cavalry clash. Antipater would survive, but not for long. Within a year he too was dead, dying of old age. He attempted to create a new imperial order after the war at a place called Triparadasus, keeping Alexander's empire together. But it proved a forlorn hope. Within a year of Antipater's death, civil war had broken out once more. The empire would permanently fracture as various generals rose to the fore and attempted to carve out their own territories. Antigonus, Eumenes and Seleucus in Asia, Kassander and Polyperchon in Greece and Macedonia, Ptolemy in Egypt, and so on. The following years would be marked by unrivalled chaos. In ancient history, generals who had once served alongside each other under Alexander the Great as brothers in arms would now lead armies tens of thousands strong over thousands of kilometers to fight each other. From the plains of Persia to the narrow strait of the Dardanelles, titanic battles occurred on land and at sea alongside sieges of cities with monumental new contraptions, think catapults and iron plated towers. The wars of these successors are some of the most extraordinary yet brutal in history. Within a decade these successors had murdered almost all surviving members of Alexander the Great's royal family. And the winners of this chaotic struggle became kings in their own range, right forging the famous kingdoms of the Hellenistic world. The Ptolemaic kingdom in Egypt, the Antigonid kingdom in Macedonia, and the Seleucid empire in Asia. Alexander the Great may have forged a massive empire, but the legacy of his conquests were determined by his successors, some of the most remarkable military figures in ancient history. The historian Justin, writing much later, famously.

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Those who don't remember your school education? But you have the Greek city states never unified as one country of Greece. So you have Athens and Sparta and Thebes, your three main ones at the end of the, or the beginning of the three hundreds through the mid fourth century. And Alexander's father, Philip II took over, took Macedon as this little kingdom and then progressively over his long reign conquers all these different regions, mostly the Greek city states and the areas they controlled. At the battle Chaeronea in 338, he defeats the Theban Athenian alliance and then takes rule of Greece as hegemon as leader and creates the League of Corinth. And rather than necessarily conquering Greece, Macedon is the forcibly elected leader of an amalgamation of Greek states. And for Philip, the invasion of Persia, which he plans and begins is this propaganda to cement his role as leader of Greece that he's going to then invade Persia. So that's the Greek context. Rome is doing its own thing over in Italy. And you have the Greek city states in Sicily that are connected but separate. And then you have the Persian Empire that is the biggest in the world at the time, controls most of western Asia and Egypt. And Macedon have been in contact with Persia for a while, as have the Greeks, and all sorts of different background, background stuff that we won't deal with. But Alexander begins the invasion of Persia as a continuation of his father's policies to cement his new position as the forcibly elected ruler of this League of Corinth alliance of Greek states. And the Greeks are not happy to start with. So he has to put down the revolt of Thebes almost as soon as he becomes king and destroys the entire city and enslaves everybody except for Pindar's house, the poet, because he loves Pindar. And so that sort of keeps the Greeks in line and he forces them to send him 7,000 soldiers as their contribution to the campaign army. And then they go off and invade Persia. And so it's initially planned as a punishment for the Persian wars against Greece. But Alexander just keeps on going and he conquers the whole Persian Empire and refuses Darius's offer of splitting the kingdom and marriage with his daughter and all this other different stuff that goes on early on. And he conquers, and there's a split in the scholarship as to whether he chooses to turn around in India or whether he's forced to turn around by his own soldiers. I'm on the choice side because my supervisor is the main proponent of that Waldemar Haeckel. So he in my view rightfully continued the argument raised by others earlier that Alexander, if you go around the borders of all of Alexander's empire, he goes about 2km, I think it is out past the Persian army and then makes sacrifices and then changes direction. He does the same thing in India and there's various other different arguments. So Alexander conquers Persia and goes a little further to make his empire bigger. And then he turns around and has his new plans. When he comes back to Babylon, the center, the new center of his new empire as opposed to Persis, which was the center of the Persian empire, he specifically chooses Babylon as his to connect with the, the hanging ons Babylon and all the Babylonian history of Nebuchadnezzar and Hammer Rabbi and all that stuff. And then he dies when he's in there. So he dies very shortly after finishing his Indian conquests. But by the time he dies, you know, Egypt, western Asia, they've been ruled by the Macedonians for over a decade by this point.

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So they're not necessarily close to leaving. He's founded cities in all these places, he's implemented Greek settlers in all these places. So he's begun the process in his western conquests of integration of conquered peoples with the Hellenistic culture that comes around. So when he dies there's no real threat in most places anyway of separation from Alexander. Right. And part of that is his propaganda presenting himself as the savior of these places. He modeled himself on Cyrus the Great who famously freed the Babylonians from their evil Persian dominance, even though he's doing the same thing. And he, you know, you get the Cyrus cylinder where he claims that he has, he was welcomed in as a friend to Babylon without a fight and all those other propagandistic ridiculous concepts. So Alexander does the same stuff with his personal historians saying that he's the savior, freeing the people from Persian dominance. But now you have a new overlord, right. And you're just not supposed to realize that point. So in most of those areas it's fine. In India it's newly conquered, but because it's newly conquered, they still have the same loyalty to the people that Alexander put in charge for the most part. And obviously he's left garrisons and new cities in all these different places that he's been to. So when he dies in 323, it creates a vacuum, not that leads to separation of the whole empire, but a vacuum for who's going to rule the empire in his stead because his one illegitimate son is A child and his wife is pregnant still with what turns out to be his legitimate, only legitimate son. And so his generals who've been the ones fighting for him, obviously they didn't expect him to die so young and they didn't expect this power vacuum at the very top of the kingdom to appear. And in all Argead history, it's a whole history of civil war, violence, of brothers killing brothers, and all sorts of fun stuff going on in the early Macedonian history. That was when it was a small kingdom, so now it's a massive empire. It's even more to the fore as to what's going to happen. And so the cultural context is that he's begun the integration in these different places with all these cities he's founded. And that remains through the Hellenistic period, especially in Asia and Egypt. The one problem area was Greece, which we'll come back to. But his generals have to decide what are we going to do? Do we favor the illegitimate son that's already alive? Do we favor the pregnant wife? Or do we favor his brother who happens to be older but is not trusted because of his epilepsy or whatever other.

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Yeah, for sure. I mean, these generals, Alexander sort of created a somewhat level playing field amongst his commanders so that the army functions better in that context. Earlier in the army he had Parmenion, who was his father's general, who was clearly the number two. But later on it seems to be fiesta. But Feistian's not the best commander. So it's sort of Perdiccas and Craterus at the same time. And he has sort of a cavalry general and an infantry general, but it's not clear which one is superior. So that when Alexander dies, there's nerfaestion, which makes it easier for the squabbles to begin, I guess. Perdiccas claims it's him because he's there when Alexander dies. Kraterus, the infant old infantry general, has been released from service with 10,000 veterans like a year before. And he's halfway back to Macedon when he learns of Alexander's death. He's like, well, I'm just as important as Perdicas. Why is Perdiccas in charge? And so these generals, they believe strongly that they are, you know, no worse than the other person. They are their equals, and so they fight for recognition. There's two levels of generals, I guess. You get at the top, you have Craterus and Perdiccas, who fought with Alexander, as his main generals. Then you have Antipater, who has been governing Macedon previously. He worked for Philip ii, Alexander's father, and was the same level as Parmenion. He sort of views himself as the most important individual left behind because he's senior to everybody and he's the generation above all these different upstarts. But he's not fought with Alexander, right? And then below that, you have the generals who are named and had positions but weren't like senior commanders, like Ptolemy. He goes on to take Egypt and Seleucus and Lysimachus and Leonatus, the bodyguard and polyper, who comes out later, and Pucestas, the bodyguard, who's become governor of one of the satrapies. So you get up those level, people. An Antigonus, who's a governor of a satrapy, they decide that they want to strike out to better their own positions too. And so Ptolemy heads off to claim Egypt before anyone can tell him not to. And Seleucus heads off to claim Babylon before anyone can tell him not to. And Craterus declares his independence. And the complicating factor is the rebellion of the Greeks. Immediately after Alexander dies, Greece rebels, at least through Athens. And they begin what we call the Lamian War because of the main battles around the siege of the city of Lamia in northern Greece, in Thessaly. And it's headed by, you know, successful General Antipater as the governor of Macedon. And Greece has to deal with that. And he goes down and fights and loses to start with. So he calls for assistance. And Craterus is the closest, so he comes with Neoptolemus, another general, and Leonatus. And they go and they fight. Leonatus already, it seems, is aiming at kingship himself because he's put feelers out to marry Alexander's sister, who becomes a key figure in these early successor squabbles. Who gets to marry Cleopatra, Alexander's sister, because that's the closest you can get to the royal family. Right. As a man, you can't marry the sons. Right. So you've got to marry the sisters. And Alexander doesn't have a daughter. He dies in battle against the Greeks. So that gets rid of one of these upstart generals.

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Yeah, so we have five main sources for Alexander himself. So we have Arrian Plutarch's Life of Alexander. That's paired with Julius Caesar, Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curtius Rufus, and then there's Justin's summary of the history of Pompeius Trogus. But all five historians are Romans and They might be writing in Greek, some of them for a Greco Roman audience, but they're still primarily Romans writing after the Romans have taken over everything. And they're using contemporary sources of Alexander, but none of them are closer than 250 years after Alexander died. So for modern historians, for my students, when I teach them, this is hard for them to get their head around that like they're reading primary sources of a period that is very distant from what they're writing about. Right. It's like studying American history. I always say when you have only modern sources talking about the American Revolution, that there's no contemporary documents from the event that created America as the USA that is now not surviving. So it's a strange concept to think about primary sources as not being connected directly to their period. But Alexander is comparatively very well resourced that we have these five sources. After Alexander, we hardly have any sources at all that tell us what's going on with the successes. We have Diodorus and we have to rely on him because he's pretty much our only one. And we have the fragmentary history of Arian's successes and we get Plutarch's lives of a few of these famous generals like Demetrius and Eumenes, but he unfortunately doesn't give us lives of all of the generals, which would be helpful, Right. If we had a life of Perdiccas or a life of Craterus, or a life of Antipater even, or life of Cassandra, we could fit all these different people into the place. But because we have these just Diodorus who gets things wrong and misses things out, it's hard pieced together. So I became an ancient historian because I like jigsaw puzzle with history that you, you have some aspects of the knowledge and you have to piece together and interpret what it actually says in terms of where and when we put all these things together. And so that's interesting. Diodorus, for example, there's this concept of high chronology and low chronology in the successes that he might have missed an entire year of history that he's describing in his text. And that our dating for stuff is completely off because he's messed things around. So our sources for the successes in particular is very problematic and we don't really get useful sources again until the, well, 220s really, when you get into the Roman historians of the Seleucids and the Ptolemies. So we have this sort of almost a century of stuff where we don't really know what's going on. And with the successes that's an interesting aspect. So we have to. Not only those written sources, but we have to piece together inscriptions and other archaeology from areas that these people are conquering that allow us to sort of figure things out slowly or papari evidence comes in and letters and so on. So our sources are very difficult to piece together, especially when we have so many moving parts, as we've already said, with all these different names, doing all these different stuff. Some of them last like a month, some of them last six months, some last a few years. You know, they're all fighting each other. So we start off with the three at the top and everybody else underneath is nominally underneath. But then very quickly that changes and the ones at the top disappear, which is the problem, I guess, that I already mentioned. Antipater, Craterus and Perdiccas are at three at the top and they sort of remain. But then when all three of them die relatively quickly in space of time, everybody else is of the same level.

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Yeah, the crocodiles eating soldiers. And so his own soldiers kill him for Having them eaten by crocodiles, basically. So he disappears from the playing field. Craterus tries to invade on behalf of Antipater, but he loses in battle against Eumenes and gets trodden under his own horse. When he's leading a cavalry charge, he falls off and gets trampled to death. And in the same battle, Neoptolemus is on the other wing, fights a personal duel with Eumenes. Apparently Eumenes kills Neoptolemus in this Homeric duel of generals. So three generals disappear very closely together. Craterus, Perdiccas, the two main ones, and Neoptolemus, leaving Eumenes behind as this non Macedonian Greek general with an army and no boss. Now the Perdikast dies elsewhere because that battle takes place in Asia Minor while Perdiccas invades Egypt. When Perdiccas dies and that news arrives to Eumenes, he's like, oh, what do I do now? So we get this whole change. We get Triparadasos trying to make this organization cementing Ptolemy in Egypt because he's now unremovable. And so they have to decide, okay, we've got to let Ptolemy keep Egypt because we can't get rid of him. So what are we going to do with the rest of you guys? And so Antipater tries to broker a peace between everybody. And then Antipater dies of old age, as he said, shortly afterwards. And then everybody's just out for themselves at that point. And so they're all off doing their own thing. They start picking up where they left off, basically fighting as they go. But Alexander's memory is a key point, right? That's why Ptolemy steals his body and takes it to Alexander in Egypt, because he knew his power in Egypt depended on Alexander as the pharaoh before him. So by creating a shrine to Alexander's memory in the city founded by Alexander as the new capital city of this new Ptolemaic Egypt. And Alexander obviously has, you know, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world with the, the Lighthouse of Pharos and stuff, right? And it becomes, well, the cultural center of the Hellenistic world with its library and university. That's all connected to Alexander's memory, right? They are specifically connected to that. And Perdiccas, his downfall often comes from his threat to execute one of Alexander's relatives and his own soldiers. And the other generals are like, no, you can't do that. And so he has to backtrack on his supposed threat and he tries to marry Alexander's sister. And at that point his soldiers aren't happy because it Seems like he's aiming for the kingship himself rather than governing for the boy that he's supposed to be doing. And so that's part of the reason why he gets killed. And then Cassandra does the same thing later in trying to marry in. And we get Alexander's mother, who we haven't mentioned yet, who's also a big power player in trying to clear the playing field for her grandson and play these generals off against each other long enough that her son can come of age. Her grandson. Sorry. And that backfires horribly. And there's Philip Paradeus, the brother's wife, Eurydice. Cleopatra. Cleopatra and Eurydice supposedly lead armies against each other and they take a battle against each other and Cleopatra's army is persuaded to switch sides. And so Eurydice gets executed and all sorts of fun stuff. And then Olympias kills Cassandra's family and Cassandra then kills Olympias and her family and all sorts of fun stuff. But for them, it's all about Alexander. Right. The whole concept of this initial period, of the successes, is how do we best connect ourselves to Alexander? Whether that's through marrying his sister, through being married to his brother, through being also descended from his father, so being one of his cousins, basically. Right. Or step siblings or half siblings, or all these different people are trying to connect themselves to Alexander in some way or other, either through control of his sons, through marriage to his relatives, or through being his relative as his mother. Right? And that's arguably why the end of the successive period when we leave and go to sort of them founding their independent kingdoms. That doesn't really happen until all these generals not only killed each other, but they've wiped out Alexander's entire family, basically.

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Yeah. So Cassandra marries Thessaloniki. He's one with his successful marriage eventually as the half sister of Alexander. So she's another daughter of Philip ii. And obviously he founds the city. Modern city of Thessalonica is named after Thessaloniki, the one survival of the Cassandrian stuff by his death. And all his brothers are killed by Olympias. And then he is eventually killed two and. And so his dynasty with Thessaloniki as connection to Alexander is ended. And Demetrius comes back and takes over kingdom of Macedon, squabbling a little bit with Pyrrhus, but eventually ends up with Demetrius successors the Antigonids, becoming kings of Macedon. Because that last connection has disappeared. But it's not until we get to these squabbles of our sort of what I call the four Main surviving successor kings. Well, you get five initially. So you have Cassander in Macedon and Greece, Antigonus and Demetrius, who rule in what is now Turkey. You have Lysimachus ruling in Thrace. Then you have Seleucus in Babylon, and Ptolemy in Egypt are your five main kings. And they rule throughout the rest of the next 20 years, basically in their little kingdoms. And they all fight with each other over who's the most powerful. And after Antigonus defeats Eumenes and takes over his army, he becomes the most powerful in Asia Minor and he starts trying to dictate to the other kings. And so we get this alliance of the other kings against Antigonus that ends with the battle of Ipsus in 301, where Antigonus is killed and Demetrius doesn't get back in time to save his father and flees and becomes the definitive pirate king for about a decade, where he's a king in name, but has no country except for his ships, and he sails around. But Antigonus is the first one to actually use the title king for the first time in the three tens, after the death of all these different family members is really when the last son is dead and Polyperchon and Olympias are dealt with, then he has himself and his son Demetrius declared kings. And then the other successors follow suit. They're like, well, if Antigonus can be king, we can be kings too. And so they declare themselves Pharaoh of Egypt and then king of Babylon. And then Lysimachus becomes king of Thrace, and Cassander makes himself king of Macedon. And so Antigonus is sort of the catalyst for these actions in thinking he has enough power now that he can stand by himself. And he's still trying to attack these other kings to reintegrate the empire of Alexander. Like Antigonus viewed himself as the reinstigator of the full empire, that although he has his. His area, he wants to conquer Egypt, which he invades a couple of times, and Babylon, which he successfully invades. And Seleucus flees to Egypt for safety on one occasion. So he is trying to reunify Alexander's empire. And when he's in his most successful period, that's when he calls himself king. He thinks he's. He's sufficiently powerful to do that. And then the others follow suit. And then of course, Antigonus dies. But Demetrius calls himself king, inherited from Antigonus, his father, even though he has no kingdom. It's only when he comes back and takes Macedon from Pyrrhus and Cassander that then he can call himself King of Macedon.

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Yeah, I'm glad you asked that because that's much specialist area. So the Ptolemies in particular, we know quite a lot about Egypt because we have a lot of papyrus evidence that talks about even low level officers in terms of the grants of land they have. And we have a few papyri that tell us about musters of troops. So we get some names of people and how many soldiers and the specific titles they have and the land they own and all that different stuff. So we can reconstruct the Ptolemaic army pretty well from the Paparae. And there's a great book, he'll be annoyed if I don't mention it, by my good friend Paul Gastono. We have a lot of disagreements about stuff, but he has an awesome book on the Egyptian army through pen and sword. So it's very available, it's very good. And so we know a lot about that. And we have this one interesting text later in the period at the infamous Battle of Raphia where the Ptolemies fought the Seleucids in this huge battle in the 320s where Polybius, another Greco Roman historian who I have an ongoing dispute with, he has this whole text where he describes the Ptolemaic army completely reforming itself and they go to Greece and ask for Greek mercenaries generals to come and reform and perfect the Egyptian army because it's not as good as it used to be. And so we have names of these generals and he gives description of their training methods and how they were divided into different units and all this different stuff which we don't have for our other armies. So for the most part our knowledge comes from a few battle descriptions where they describe the sizes of the units and at the very least the type of unit that is involved. So the most part of all of these from Philip II onwards is a sarissa phalanx, which is my special area My research was involving reconstructing 48 actual sarissas and then training people to march around as a phalanx to see how easy it was to do that and how quick you could become a functioning phalanx and walk up hills and over rivers and stuff. And that book I haven't quite finished yet, but it'll be out in a couple of years. So there also is a phalanx. So the main contingent of all of these Hellenistic armies, all the way through down to even Mithridates of Pontus fighting the Romans in the first century, their main unit is their sarissa phalanx. And so most of our armies throughout the holistic world, regardless of your country, that's what they're built on. And then they add onto the side of it, you know, your light cavalry, your heavy cavalry, your archers, your javelin men, all these other different components. Right. And my book on combined arms talks about how this integration happened through the Macedonian system and then takes place in the helistic area. So almost all of the armies are very similarly constructed. We know that from their heritage and from these battles that they take place. And they also integrate elephants, and the USIDs have scythe chariots, much to their cost. And so we know sort of what the unit types are, and we can somewhat trust our sources when they give us numbers for these units. Although numbers in ancient sources are problematic in general, what we don't have is how you recruited these in all the different places, how they trained, how long they trained for, if the recruitment matches the name of the unit. Right. If we say this unit is called this region, does that mean all its soldiers come from that region, or is it just a name that they've inherited because it originally came from that region? We don't know for sure. The officer levels, that's what I work on right now is trying to piece together, if we can associate that we don't even know the size of the basic regimental unit and all these different things. There's still dispute about the size of even regiments in Alexander's army. So. So we have evidence for some stuff, and then there's very sparse evidence for other aspects of armies. Well, when you look at, say, the Roman army, for example, we know how they trained, we know how they were gathered, we know how their muster worked, we know how they were commanded, where they came from, how they camped, how many people went into each tent, and all the same different stuff. Right. We don't know any of that for the Macedonian ones. So, as you say, when it comes to marching over these Massive areas. The logistics is crazy to comprehend because we do not know really how these armies marched in these areas. And there's great books on logistics, famously by Engels on Alexander's army and for other different campaigns. We have some evidence, like the Anabasis for Xenophon of the 10,000 marching back from, from Asia Minor back to Greece and the logistics that go into that. So we know some of it and we can comparative look at other armies as I and other scholars do, to compare, you know, how much fodder does a horse need? How many camp followers are coming with you? So when we talk about armies marching, we focus later. I focus on in battle of the 70,000 soldiers and you forget that there's at least another 70,000 people in the army going with them as slaves or attendants or their families going on, right? We know the families were there because the famous battle between Eumenes and Antigonus, the two greatest generals of the successors. Eumenes wins the battle, but he gets handed over to execution by his own soldiers because Antigonus captures the baggage train and he captures the families of and humanese soldiers. And so they to get their families back, they give up their general. So we know these armies on campaign are marching with massive numbers of tag alongs, right, Whatever you want to call them. And that's not just in the ancient world. That happens throughout history. It's often not written about, but when an army is on campaign, it has a massive train of people going with it. Even the Seleucid empire in itself that goes from Jerusalem at one point out to India is the biggest of all these successor kingdoms. And it's just huge. And they start being unable to control their distant territories that become independent because it's just too big.

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In his one ship, and there's even been a suggestion that he went for a ceremonial ship up to like 18 to 20 banks of orange. Wars and stuff, these massive, like, things. And practically some of them didn't work very well, but his ships were big enough. And he gets his nickname as the besieger for his massive siege of roads that took over 18 months and failed. And so Heckel and I argue that the nickname he gets is ironic, that he's not a good besieger. That's why he's called the besieger. Ptolemy is called the Admiral because he loses a massive sea battle against Demetrius. And Seleucus is called the Elephant General because he gives up India for a bunch of elephants. So these are ironic nicknames the other kings give to each other. So he's a besieger because he's bad at besieging, but he does have massive siege weaponry. So he has huge ships. He ties these massive ships together and puts massive siege towers on the ships and then tows them to the walls of these cities to attack. And he has catapulted fire, firing catapults on his ships and underwater rams to sort of knock the wall in with this, this ram born ship and stuff. All the stuff that you can see in the new Gladiator movie, the Gladiator 2. That stuff is basically like Demetrius besieging stuff. And on land he builds what's called the Helepolis, the city besieger. There's this massive 40 story tower that is so big it needs oxen to pull it into place. And that's what he relies on taking roads with. And when the Rhodians dislodge some iron plates and set it on fire, he pulls it out of the way because he doesn't want his pet toy to be destroyed and stuff. And so he never manages to capture the city because of his uselessness. And I've written on his ineptitude before on this very subject, but for him it seems the size matters. Right. I don't know if he's compensating for something, but he is. He's certainly into the huge ships and these huge siege towers and they don't do very well, it seems, for the most part, which is ironic.

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Yeah, it's like this huge climatic battle is huge armies. Like there's 100,000, maybe even 120,000 on one side and almost 80,000 on the other, including all Seleucus's 500 elephants. Huge battle. We haven't had that in any Greek battle warfare beforehand or since. On the Greek side. Right. Obviously against the Persians they had massive armies for Alexander. But the death of Antigonus and the exile of Demetrius as his pirate king sort of establishes the status quo that these other four allied kings, Cassander in Macedon, Lysimachus in Thrace, Seleucus in Asia and Ptolemy in Egypt, once Antigonus is defeated, they sort of accept their each of their status quo for the most part, but then they go off and fight each other. Seleucus, when Cassander is got rid of, comes to take over Macedon and has to go through Thrace. And we get the battle of Corypedium where Seleucus fights Lysimachus. And you get these two octogenarians leading cavalry charges at the front of their cavalry on horseback with spears and stuff as well. I think Seleucus is 79 and Lysimachus is 81 or something. And they are fighting in the battle, right? And Lysimachus dies in the cavalry charge, supposedly personally killed by Seleucus. And then Seleucus wins in triumph. He's going to march into Macedon and reunify all of Alexander's empire. And then he's murdered by his corrupt, evil nephew, one of the great villains of the successor period, Ptolemy Karounus, who just gets around causing trouble everywhere. And so Seleucus's death is generally taken as sort of the end of the successes of the generals of Alexander. But then you could take Demetrius and Pyrrhus, as I said, who are the next generation, but they are in the same time frame. And so most people accept that it's Demetrius's reconquest of Macedon from Pyrrhus and then Pyrrhus death when he's trying to conquer Argos and Greece from Demetrius and his son Antigonus, that we really see the end of the successive period with Pyrrhus death because then we're into the established kingdoms of the Antigonids in Greece and Macedon, the Seleucids in Asia and the Ptolemies in Egypt. And by 270ish when Pyrrhus dies, that's when we get the Hellenistic period is established. No more really. Is there a realistic concept of the different kings taking over each other's kingdoms and reunifying the mythical empire of Alexander? Right. That whole concept of the propaganda of Alexander now disappears and it's no longer an idea of reunifying Alexander's empire, but of establishing your own kingdom. And that's really the big difference because Pyrrhus is still trying to theoretically reconstitute Alexander's empire as Alexander's last surviving relative, as his nephew by his death, as this sort of ADHD purist that I call him, where he fights all these campaigns and never finishes any of them because a better one comes along. His death sort of ends this era of the concept of a Greek unified empire. And we get into what we call the Hellenistic period of the kingdoms where they are independent, doing their own thing. And we get A whole bunch of other different kingdoms arrive in the 270s too, like Pergamum, Greco, Bactria, Parthia, Pontus, all these different ones sort of formulate as these kingdoms become isolated or sort of inward looking, they no longer have the power to call on to externally conquered places. And so that changes our viewpoint. And so then the Hellenistic world becomes about solidifying culture rather than reunifying Alexander.