Battle of the Hellespont

This article deals with the battle of 320 BC. For the battle of the year 324 AD see Battle of Kallipolis

Battle of the Hellespont

Part of: Diadoch Wars

date	Spring 320 BC Chr.
place	on the Hellespont / Asia Minor
output	Victory of Eumenes

Parties to the conflict
Representative of royalty	Opponents
Commander
Eumenes Pharnabazos Phoinix	Krateros † Neoptolemos †
Troop strength
according to Diodor:20,000 infantrymen 5,000 cavalrymen	according to Diodor:20,000 infantrymen, 2,000 cavalrymen
losses
unknown	according to Diodor:several dead and over 4,000 prisoners

The Battle of the Hellespont was a military clash in the spring of 320 BC. In northwestern Asia Minor , today's Turkey .

As the first battle of the Diadochi among themselves, it heralded the age of the Diadoch Wars, which had followed the death of Alexander the Great .

background

In 323 BC Alexander the great died in Babylon . Because he only has a mentally handicapped brother Philip III. Arrhidaios and an underage son Alexander IV. Aigos on the throne of the world empire he had conquered , the companions and generals who had committed the Asian campaign with him and are known as his "Diadochi" (successors) began to fight for the reign. General Perdiccas , who also received Alexander's signet ring , had finally established himself as regent in the imperial order of Babylon . His authority was challenged early on, however, by ignoring or contravening his orders.

In particular Ptolemy , governor of Egypt , and Antigonos Monophthalmos , governor of western Asia Minor, openly turned against him. Above all, Perdiccas himself strained his relationship with the governor in Europe, Antipater , who was older than him and enjoyed a high reputation, by first becoming engaged to his daughter, but then rejecting her in favor of a sister of Alexander. When Antigonus met Antipater in the winter of 321 BC When he announced the marriage plans and the ambitions of Perdiccas for the throne, which were probably connected with them, there was a break between the two men and thus war. Factions immediately formed among the former comrades-in-arms, each trying to make a profit from the looming conflict in their own way. On the one hand stood the legitimate representatives of the kingship around Perdiccas and his loyal follower Eumenes , who wanted to preserve the unity of the empire. On the other side stood the generation of older officers around Antipater and Krateros , who claimed reign over the Alexander empire on the basis of their age- old authority, especially as they suspected Perdiccas of selfish efforts in his office. They were also joined by supporters of particular interests who worked towards a division of the empire in their favor, of which Ptolemy was the most prominent.

Troop movements and leaders

As Imperial Regent, Perdiccas was also the Commander-in-Chief of the united Imperial Army, the army that Alexander had formed during his ten-year campaign in Asia and left behind for his successor when he died in Babylon. At its core, this army consisted of the phalanx of Macedonian warriors and Greek mercenaries who had once set out with Alexander, but had now joined Indigenous Asian contingents, including a large number of war elephants from India. Perdiccas had the army in the spring of 322 BC. Led from Babylon to eastern Asia Minor, there to conquer the independent province of Cappadocia and subdue the rebellious Pisidians , which was carried out by the summer of 321 BC at the latest. BC had been successfully completed. At the beginning of the hostilities among the Diadochi in the late year 321 BC. BC Perdiccas decided to turn with the imperial army against Ptolemy in Egypt. He appointed Eumenes as strategos (military commander in chief) in Asia Minor, whom he entrusted with the fight against Antipater and Krateros.

As strategos , Eumenes had formal authority over the provincial governors (satraps) of Asia Minor, whom he could summon to a campaign with their troop contingents. However, he had a decisive handicap; he was neither a trained general nor was he a Macedonian . As a citizen of the miletic colony of Kardia , he once moved to the Macedonian royal court to serve as secretary to Kings Philip II and Alexander. He had enjoyed the latter's favor and had friendships with some high-ranking officers. With the death of Alexander, however, the era of the Macedonian warrior caste had dawned, the companions and compatriots of Philip II and Alexander, who had successfully fought alongside them for decades for hegemony over the Hellenes and against the Persians. Although the Macedonians had maintained their affiliation to the Hellenic world , especially encouraged by their royal family and nobility, they claimed a pronounced mentality of independence from other Hellenes, which was primarily nourished by their military superiority with which they exercised the hegemony over Hellas and had conquered an empire. And according to this self-image, a non-Macedonian could not exercise any lordly or military power over them.

Eumenes was authorized by the Imperial Regent and received from him his brother Alketas and Neoptolemus as officers and a force to take up the fight with Antipater. Aware of his low acceptance among the Macedonians, he had already trained a personal riding troop in Cappadocia the year before, which he recruited from native Asians and which were much more loyal to him than the Macedonians under him. This should soon pay off for Eumenes. Because when he was in the spring of 320 BC BC moved to the Hellespont, over which Antipater and his army had just set foot on Asian soil, Neoptolemus rose against him and tried to murder him. The assassination attempt was foiled after a fight by indigenous troops loyal to Eumenes against the Macedonian supporters of Neoptolemus, who with them (more than 300 cavalrymen) withdrew to the side of Antipater. This decided to split up his force; while he wanted to turn to Perdiccas himself, going across Cilicia , Krateros was supposed to turn to Cappadocia to face Eumenes.

Krateros had been one of Alexander's most glorious and best generals, a well-deserved veteran of the Asian campaign, and adored by the Macedonians as their idol. While he could come up with the experience of a whole warrior's life, Eumenes had nothing to oppose but a reputation as a royal historiographer. According to Cornelius Nepos , Eumenes had withheld his troops if they were to fight, fearing that they would otherwise go over to him or flee.

The battle

The armies met at an unspecified location in the Hellespontian Phrygia region (today northwestern Turkey ). Both lined up in the same battle formation, in the center the Macedonian phalanx, which were flanked left and right by cavalry units. Both Eumenes and Krateros took command of their respective right wing so they would not face each other on the battlefield. Instead, Eumenes placed the cavalry on his left wing under the command of Pharnabazos , a Persian, and Phoinix , who came from Tenedos . On the other side, Neoptolemus held the leadership of the left wing, so that Eumenes was facing his traitor and assassin.

Knowing that he could not rely on his own phalanx, which consisted mainly of Macedonians, Eumenes set his fate entirely on the penetration of his cavalry, the majority of which consisted of loyal Asian riders. Following a fragment from Arrian's diadochi story , Eumenes had even agreed a non-aggression pact with the opposing phalanx, so that the fight should only be carried out by the cavalry on both sides. As his negotiator he had sent a Macedonian from his retinue named Xennias, who spoke both high Greek and the Macedonian dialect , which the Macedonian warriors of simple origin understood only. Evidently Eumenes had achieved his will, for both Diodorus and Plutarch described the battle that followed as a pure cavalry battle and made no mention of the use of infantry.

Following Diodor’s description, the Battle of the Hellespont was decided relatively quickly after Krateros, soon after opening it with an attack on his wing, fell from his stumbling horse and was trampled to death under the hooves of the riders who followed him. Plutarch, on the other hand, portrayed his end more heroically, as he was fatally wounded by a Thracian at his side after a grueling fight that would have done an Alexander credit . On the other side of the battlefield, Eumenes and Neoptolemus, meanwhile, fought a duel, inflicting serious wounds on each other, but Eumenes ultimately got the upper hand and killed his enemy. In general, the battle turned out to be a real massacre, but after the death of Krateros and Neoptolemus had spread among their men, they took flight behind their phalanx, and Eumenes then declared the fight over.

consequences

The victory of Eumenes was as surprising as it was meaningless for everyone involved. The defeated troops of the Krateros surrendered to him and vowed to serve him from now on; but as soon as the next opportunity presented itself they withdrew unnoticed and joined Antipater. This had meanwhile arrived in Cilicia . But instead of turning to face Eumenes, he continued his march to support Ptolemy against Perdiccas. After arranging the honorable burial of the Krateros, with whom he was friends in Alexander's time, Eumenes moved to Sardis to have his army camped there and to await the further course of events. His victory had given the cause of the "Perdiccans" a great strategic advantage, since he had cut off Antipater from his power base Macedonia. And yet it was fought for in vain, since Perdiccas failed at about the same time at the crossing of the Nile at Pelusium and was soon murdered by his own officers. For the first representatives of the monarchy, the first Diadoch war ended with their defeat. Antipater, Ptolemy and their allies met at the Triparadeisus Conference , at which Antipater was promoted to the position of the new Imperial Regent and Commander-in-Chief. The surviving followers of Perdiccas were declared enemies of the empire and sentenced to death in absentia. Eumenes and Alketas were thus declared outlaws by defenders of the kingdom, and the fight against them was entrusted to Antigonus Monophthalmos, who was appointed strategos of Asia.

Eumenes had until the autumn of 320 BC. To vacate his position at Sardis, on which Antipater, who led half of the imperial army and the royal family with him, marched. He wintered to the year 319 BC. In Kelainai , but also had to withdraw from there soon when Antipater followed him. During this time, several troops deserted from Eumenes, but 20,000 Macedonians experienced in combat remained loyal to him, and thanks to his mobile cavalry and his superiority in strategic planning he was able to escape his pursuers to Cappadocia, which served him as a safe base. His escape forced respect from the militarily superior Antipater, to his disgrace to his own men, who refrained from further pursuit and began the march to Macedonia.

After that Eumenes had to deal with Antigonus, who defeated him with the other half of the imperial army in a battle near Orkynia and then besieged him in the mountain fortress of Nora until the fall of 319 BC. BC Antipater hardly arrived in Macedonia died, which led to the outbreak of the Second Diadoch War. Eumenes was appointed by the new regent Polyperchon to defend the kingship against the now opponents Cassander and Antigonus, with whom he exchanged blows all over Asia.

literature

• Karl Julius Beloch : Greek History . Vol. 4.1. 2nd edition, Berlin-Leipzig 1925, pp. 89f.
• V. Bartoletti: Papiri greci e latini. Pubblicaziono della Società italiana (PSI) XII (1951), No. 1284, pp. 158-168
• G. Wirth : On the great battle of Eumenes 322 (PSI 1284) , in: Klio Vol. 46 (1965), pp. 283-288
• AB Bosworth: Eumenes, Neoptolemus and PSI 1284 , in: Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studis (GRBS) Vol. 19 (1978), pp. 227-237
• WE Thompson: PSI 1284: Eumenes of Kardia vs. the Phalanx , in: Chronique d'Egypte (CE) Vol. 59, No. 117: 113-115 (1984)
• B. Dreyer: About the first diadoch war. The Gothenburg Arrian-Palimpsest (ms Graec 1) , in: Zeitschriften für Papyrologie und Epigraphik Vol. 125 (1999), pp. 39-60, lines 15-27
• RM Errington : From Babylon to Triparadeisos: 323-320 BC , in: The Journal of Hellenic Studies (JHS) Vol. 90 (1970), pp. 49-77
• EM Anson: Diodorus and the Date of Triparadeisos , in: The American Journal of Philology (AJPh) Vol. 107 (1986), pp. 208-217

Individual evidence

1. ↑ In historical research, the battle of the Hellespont is different for both the year 321 and 320 BC. Dated. Diodorus attributed three years of reign to Perdiccas, with which his death and the battle in 320 BC. Can be dated BC. This view is represented, among other things, in the essays on the chronology of the early Diadoch period by Anson and Errington (p. 65).
2. ↑ Diodorus 18:29 , 1; Cornelius Nepos, Eumenes 3, 2.
3. ↑ Diodorus 18, 29, 2.
4. ↑ Diodor 18, 29, 4-6; Plutarch, Eumenes 5, 2-4.
5. ↑ Cornelius Nepos, Eumenes 3, 5.
6. ↑ Plutarch, Eumenes 7, 1-2.
7. ↑ Diodor 18, 30, 1-2.
8. ↑ on the Arrian fragment see PSI XII, No. 1284, line 6
9. ↑ Diodorus 18, 30, 5.
10. ↑ Plutarch, Eumenes 7: 3-4.
11. ↑ Diodor 18, 31, 1-5; Plutarch, Eumenes 7, 7.
12. ↑ Diodorus 18, 32, 1.
13. ↑ Diodor 18, 32, 2-3.
14. ↑ The news of the victory on the Hellespont reached the field camp of Perdiccas only a few days after his murder, see Diodor 18, 37, 1 and Plutarch, Eumenes 8, 2.
15. ↑ Diodorus 18, 39, 7.
16. ↑ Arrian, Göteborg fragment ms Graec 1 , lines 15-27, see Dreyer p. 59.