"Woe to thee, o land, when thy king is a child". Although the culture and time were very different, the quote from Ecclesiastes is apt; even more apt when the child is as yet unborn. When the greatest conqueror the world had seen, Alexander III of Macedon, died in Babylon in 323 BC his heir was still under construction. The reason for "woe to thee... " is of course that without a legitimate heir any number of self-styled heirs appear promoting their claims against each other. Between 323 and 281 the wolfpack of Alexander's generals and guardsmen fought for the position of top dog; given the value of the prize, and the resources it contained, the series of wars was bound to be both vicious and long. In the end, when the dust settled the winner turned out to be someone not even entered in the contest, namely Rome. All that was in the future; nobody in their senses would have wagered an obol against a talent on that outcome.

Reverse of gold stater of Alexander showing Nike -- Lot 3

     For the career of Alexander we are reasonably well informed. That he roamed from Macedon to India is documented well enough; even without Arrian and Curtius we would have been able to tell quite a lot. The sudden infusion of Greek art and forms into Baktria, for example, with the Indo-Greek art reaching its zenith in the Gandhara style of sculpture, for example, or the flood of Near Eastern Alexander tales such as the Iskandernamah or the Shahnamah chapters show influence far beyond Greece. Nonetheless we are mainly dependent on Roman Imperial sources, particularly Arrian, Justin, Plutarch and Curtius for the details. For the careers of the Successors we have problems; with detail preserved in Diodorus to 301 BC; from there to well after the dust settles, when Polybius picks up the tale, we have mainly fragments of Diodoros and some narratives in Plutarch. Justin continues through the period, but he is valuable faut de mieux rather than because he is very good.

     Of the pretenders who emerged from Alexander's shadow Lysimachos is one of the more intriguing and at the same time more obscure figures. From his first appearance in history as one of the favored guardsmen and commanders of Alexander to his death in battle against Seleukos at age 80 in 281 we see him a glimpse at a time. As a man he is inscrutable. Neither loyal to his patrons, like Eumenes, nor particularly greedy of empire, like the first Antigonos, he often held the balance of power but rarely a preponderance. He ruled in Thrace, the last really effective king; on his death it reverted to its wild state until brought to heel by Rome. As Thracian cavalry was held in esteem, especially against Greek hoplite infantry, his relegation to this backwater kingdom left him a good deal stronger than might be apparent at first.

     From Justin, whose "Universal History" is an epitome of Pompeius Trogus, we learn that he came from "a distinguished Macedonian family". He had a brother named Philip, who was also one of Alexander's attendants; he died in the desert in India in 328. Lysimachos is said to have been renowned for great physical strength and endurance. Other than that, not much is said about him before the death of Alexander. There is, of course, the usual sort of legend: that when Lysimachos had angered Alexander by his plea for mercy in the case of one condemned to death, Alexander had him thrown to a lion, which Lysimachos then proceeded to kill bare-handed. Like all legends of the period this one is entertaining but hardly history; it does, however, show for what Lysimachos was famous.

     On Alexander's untimely demise his Successors split up his empire. These commanders soon separated into three natural groups: those who, like Perdiccas, supported the Macedonian royal house (for their own ends, of course); those like Antigonos "One-Eye", who wanted it all according to the old Macedonian custom of proclamation by the (Macedonian) army; and those like Ptolemy and Lysimachos who, whatever they may have wanted, realized that a part of the empire in security was better than a slim chance at it all. Thus when Ptolemy received Egypt he decided to keep it, only waging war against those who were a threat to his position there. He left most of the fighting to those whose ambition was boundless.

     Lysimachos himself was assigned Thrace, most of which had to be wrested from its tribes. As a means of providing resources he also wound up with a portion of Pontos, on the European side of Asia Minor. Like Ptolemy he had little interest in distant adventures; like him he allied himself with whoever the would-be Alexanders were attacking. First, however, he had to pacify Thrace itself; that was not an especially easy task.

     Thrace had one complication: a king by the name of Seuthes, who had no desire to remain under the Macedonians. On the death of Alexander he decided to join the general trend toward what passed for liberty in those parts. Lysimachos advanced into Thrace and, after a hard-fought battle, convinced Seuthes that it was not such a bright idea.

     Thus Lysimachos gained control of his territories. He appears to have done his best to remain neutral in the wars which followed. Thus when Perdiccas attempted to bring the rebellious Successors back into line, going after Ptolemy himself and sending Eumenes after Antigonos, with the result that he was defeated and killed and Eumenes outlawed, Lysimachos stayed in Thrace. Kassander set himself up as regent for the infant Alexander IV, and Antigonos, with his ego running rampant, turned on his former allies.

     Lysimachos himself was allied with Kassander; as they had a common enemy. Ptolemy, realizing that none of them was a match for Antigonos, made common cause with them. This three-way alliance was bolstered during the preparations for war which followed by the entry of a fourth ally, Seleukos. The war commenced favorably enough for Antigonos; his forces stormed a number of cities in Phoenicia and Coele-Syria. Antigonos concentrated his efforts against Ptolemy, which he rightly judged his toughest foe, leaving proxies to fight elsewhere.

Gold stater of Lysimachos with the head of Alexander -- Lot 1

     Against Lysimachos his proxy was Seuthes, who had been waiting for his opportunity. In 313 the Thracians rose in revolt. The general signal for the rising was the expulsion by the city of Kallantia of Lysimachos's garrison, and that city did its best to stir up allies. The Thracians, and Scythian barbarian tribes came to the conclusion that the opportunity was too good to pass up.

     Lysimachos took immediate measures to quell the rebellions. Taking Odessos and Istros by little more than a show of force, he met the armies of the Thracians and Scythinas, hurrying to the assistance of Kallantia. The Thracians yielded to threats; the Scythians, to force of arms, and Lysimachos was free to settle accounts at Kallantia. The siege lasted at least until 310.

     Meanwhile Antigonos sent two armies to assist Kallantia. Lysimachos immediately marched out to destroy them before they could combine. First, however, he had to cross the river Haemus; Seuthes, deciding to fight after all, disputed the crossing. Once again, the battle was hard-fought, and once again Lysimachos defeated the Thracians, this time inflicting heavy losses. Not stopping to mop up, he pushed on after Pausanias, Antigonos's general. Storming the enemy's position, he inflicted a crushing defeat, capturing Pausanias along with his army. This secured Lysimachos's position, at least for the time being.

     Lysimachos was not idle on the diplomatic front, either. The city of Byzantium, which was a powerful city in a commanding position - Constantine must have read his history books when he selected the site for his new capitol, unless his strategic genius fully appreciated the site's advantages - and it could cause a great deal of trouble. Lysimachos and Kassander accordingly outfoxed Antigonos, who tried to gain its alliance. By careful diplomatic maneuvering the allies managed to persuade the Byzantines to remain neutral, which profited them greatly.

     Antigonos, having been defeated in his assaults on Lysimachos, continued his activities elsewhere, judging rightly that, for the moment anyway, Lysimachos would have enough to handle with his own affairs, especially regarding the siege of Kallantia, to keep him busy, spent the next year (312) in operations against Ptolemy, with varying success. In 311, as the situation had involved a lot of fighting in which everybody lost, and nobody benefited, the enemies agreed to a treaty based on the status quo. Theoretically the Successors were guarding their respective territories for the heir of Alexander; of course none of that crew had the least intention of surrendering the least scrap.

     Kassander decided that he would rather be king than regent, accordingly the young Alexander IV and his mother soon disappeared. With no legitimate heir surviving each of the former great satraps assumed a crown. The first to claim a crown was Antigonos, and he intended to rule more than his former satrapy. His son Demetrios, later to be called "Besieger of Cities" - not, one should note, "taker" - he crowned as well. Ptolemy, Kassander and Lysimachos followed suit in their respective satrapies.

     With even the theoretical cause for agreement now removed, the charges and counter-charges soon flew everywhere. Ptolemy opened the round by attacking some of Antigonos's cities in Cilicia; he won them easily, then lost them just as easily. The only other notable event at this time was the appearance of a supposed illegitimate son of Alexander, one Herakles, set up by Polyperchon, another of the Successors in opposition to Kassander. Polyperchon was no great general, and Herakles no great king, and neither was much more than a nuisance. In fact, at the first attempt of Polyperchon to bring Kassander to battle, Kassander persuaded him to kill Herakles and join him against Antigonos. Lysimachos, meanwhile, in the same year did little more than found a city, named Lysimachea.

     For the next several years the various parties made war on each other, with Lysimachos doing very little. Several notable incidents occurred, not least the siege of Rhodes by Demetrios, whose efforts earned him the title of Poliorcetes (the Besieger); he was noted because he besieged Rhodes, not for taking it. Lysimachos's part in the siege consisted in sending provisions; Diodorus described a shipment of eighty thousand bushels of grain sent by him to help the Rhodians. His assistance was well appreciated; the Rhodians set up memorials to their benefactors, Ptolemy first, then Kassander and Lysimachos. Perhaps more notably, they set up their monument to Helios, the famous Colossus, which collapsed in an earthquake less than a century later, but was only cleared away when the Arabs took the island. The Rhodians performed heroic feats in that siege, and Demetrios was only too glad to settle with them.

Left: Rhodes Didrachm, Right: Demetrios Tetradrachm -- Lots 99 and 69

     In general Lysimachos busied himself with his own affairs until 302. In that year Kassander did his best to convince him that the actions of Antigonos in "freeing" Greece were only a prelude to a general conquest by Antigonos. Kassander tried to reach some sort of agreement; Antigonos demanded unconditional surrender; Lysimachos needed little persuasion. They in turn renewed the old alliance with Ptolemy and Seleukos, and Kassander sent an army under one of his generals to assist Lysimachos. He, not waiting for Antigonos, quickly reduced most of Phrygia and Ionia, partly through capture and partly by persuading certain of Antigonos's commanders to change rulers. Thus he gained a considerable part of Greek Asia Minor, but he leaned once again that what was easily won could be just as easily lost, as Antigonos mustered an enormous force and proved himself even more persuasive.

     Lysimachos, knowing his army to be vastly outnumbered, decided to wait for assistance from Seleukos. He therefore tried to avoid battle; Antigonos tried to force him into one. Lysimachos took a fortified position; Antigonos besieged him, and just as he was on the point of taking it Lysimachos escaped. Antigonos followed, and the same actions repeated near Dyrrachium. Antigonos left off the pursuit on hearing of hostile moves by Seleukos, and the armies settled into winter quarters.

     In the spring of 301 the armies gathered for the final show-down. Antigonos had recalled Demetrios from Greece; with his departure Kassander sent many of his soldiers to assist Lysimachos. Some were shipwrecked; some were captured at sea; some made it through. Seleukos prepared for battle in his quarters. They joined forces and prepared to settle all accounts.

     The combination was too much for Antigonos, who was brought to battle at Ipsos in Phrygia in 301; he was killed. Plutarch fills us in where Diodorus falls into fragments. The army of Antigonos was described as "70,000 foot, 10,000 cavalry and 75 elephants", that of the allies as "64,000 foot, 10,500 horse, 400 elephants and 120 chariots". In the battle Demetrios attacked the allied cavalry and routed it; like others before and since, he pursued it too far, and the allies, by a mixture of force and persuasion - the elephants, it must be noted, could be very persuasive - caused the surrender of the now unsupported infantry. Accordingly Antigonos fell in the battle, Demetrios rode off with what was left of his force to Ephesos and thence to stir up trouble.

     As master of the eastern Mediterranean Demetrios did that effectively, ravaging the Thracian coast. Hitherto he had been invading Greece against Kassander; now, with his father dead, he changed his focus. Lysimachos had claimed most of Asia Minor as his share of the spoils, and stayed out of the way of the cat-fight brewing in Syria between Seleukos and Ptolemy.

     The immediate result for Lysimachos of Demetrios's raids was a closer alliance with Ptolemy. The king of Egypt persuaded him to divorce his former political wife - Amastris - for a match with Ptolemy's daughter Arsinoe. Another daughter went to Kassander. This maneuvering alarmed Seleukos, who hastily turned to an alliance with Demetrios; and managed the impossible: reconciling Demetrios to Ptolemy, if only for about the time it took for the ink to dry on the treaty. This in turn introduced Pyrrhos, of no previous importance, to Ptolemy, who recognized talent when he saw it, and lured him away from Demetrios's service.

     The next one of the Successors to fall was Kassander, who died of "consumption" in 297. His son Philip IV soon followed. Two younger sons then fought it out, with one (Alexander) appealing to Demetrios first, then to Pyrrhos; the other (Antipater) backed by Lysimachos. The upshot of it all was that Demetrios had Alexander assassinated, and seized the Macedonian throne himself in 294.

Lysimachos stater showing Athena crowning the king's name -- Lot 1

     Lysimachos, meanwhile, was biding his time. He had, in fact, little choice; hard pressed by wild tribes of barbarians (Getae), he had advanced against them across the Danube, to be surrounded and forced to surrender. The story of his entertainment in captivity is worth noting. The king, Dromichaetes, decided that it would be best to try to gain Lysimachos's good will, and at the same time convince him that continued warfare wasn't worth the risk. He invited Lysimachos to a banquet, at which he set out two sets of couches with two different bills of fare. For Lysimachos the Thracians prepared a luxurious feast on fancy plate; for themselves, they served ordinary seasoned meat, with their wine in drinking-horns. Dromichaetes then asked Lysimachos which he preferred, as more fir for a king. When he answered that the luxurious fare was more appropriate, the Thracian asked him why he bothered to leave all that to come and attack a nation which consisted of frugal barbarians. The result of all this was that Lysimachos concluded a peace treaty with them which seems to have satisfied all parties.

     In the long run his best ally against Demetrios was Demetrios himself, whose un-Macedonian practices and degeneracy, as well as his overwhelming ambition, would combine to his ruin. Demetrios insisted on acting like a Persian despot; that cut no ice in Macedon. He also was his father's son, with his father's ambition, as can be seen by the bull's horns on his coin-portraits, which meant that any move he made would provoke a lot of opposition. Lysimachos waited until it became evident that Demetrios's grandeur rested on unsteady props, then moved in concert with the usual allies.

     The war opened in the spring of 288; within a few months all was over but the shouting. Demetrios once more was a king without a kingdom; Ptolemy was master of the seas, and Pyrrhos and Lysimachos divided his lands. Demetrios wasn't done yet, however, and rallied his mercenaries for another round. Once again he made peace with Ptolemy and turned on Lysimachos after securing bases in "free" Greece.

     Demetrios turned to raid Lysimachos's lands in Asia Minor. After some initial successes he found himself facing Lysimachos's main force; knowing that he was too weak for that confrontation he turned inland, to try to subvert some of Seleukos's satraps. In this he failed completely; turning south into Cilicia, possibly attempting to re-establish contact with his fleet, he was caught, surrounded and forced to surrender to Seleukos. Lysimachos, on hearing this, offered Seleukos an enormous sum of money - some two thousand talents in hard cash - to kill him. Seleukos refused; in the end the result was the same, as Demetrios, bored to insanity, drank himself to death in 283.

     Demetrios's son Antigonos Gonatos seemed doomed; but in the end it was his family which ruled Macedon until the Romans threw them out. Lysimachos made a series of blunders which indicated that imperial greed was a contagious disease; he now came down with a bad case of it. He turned on his old allies. Lysimachos first forced Pyrrhos out of Greece, back to his old kingdom of Epiros, then left him in peace there. A disinherited and disaffected son of Ptolemy - Ptolemy "Keraunos", the Thunderbolt, a thoroughly apt nickname - wanted assistance in carving some sort of kingdom out for himself, and he turned first to Seleukos, who put him off, then to Lysimachos, whose wife - Keraunos's sister - was only too glad to help.

     The first thing she did was to persuade Lysimachos that his son Agathocles - a skilled and popular general, who had led the army which chased Demetrios out of Asia Minor - was guilty of treason. According to Pausanias it was a classic case of the "Potiphar's wife" affair: she had tried to seduce him, he rejected her advances, she then plotted her revenge. Lysimachos's character had grown harsh and stubborn, and like Theseus in the well-known play "Hippolytus" he was willing to believe his wife's story, and had Agathocles executed. As the price was popular the result was widespread unrest, which Lysimachos put down with a particularly brutal purge. As this was evidently a typical reaction of his, many influential persons escaped to Seleukos asking for his help in dealing with this tyrant.

     Seleukos, always glad of an opportunity to enlarge his territory, responded quickly. He marched into Asia Minor in 282, and most of the territory surrendered without a fight. Lysimachos was forced to take action; accordingly he advanced to Corupedion in February 281. In the battle which followed Lysimachos lost his army and his life, and his dynasty collapsed with him (Agathocles was dead, and his sons by Arsenoe were too young to do much of anything.

     Seleukos himself derived very little benefit from his great victory; Keraunos struck again. Frustrated at being set aside by his new patron, who wanted to keep his conquests for himself, Keraunos stabbed Seleukos to death at Lysimacheia later the same year.

     The career of this most obscure of Alexander's Successors illustrates an interesting chapter in the history of Greece and the Greek world. The warfare was nearly constant, from Alexander's death in 323 to the death of Seleukos, and the families continued it until their squabbles were crushed beneath the iron boot of Rome. Not for nothing is Alexander supposed to have said, when on his deathbed, "I see that my funeral games will be spectacular".

Ptolemy I tetradrachms: r: head of Alexander, l: his own portrait -- Lots 141-2