Apollonidai of the Oikoumene: Seleukos's Assassination is Averted, 281 BC

[Dagoth Ur]

APOLLONIDAI OF THE OIKOUMENE
Averting Evil, Fall 31 Meta Seleukos to Spring 31 Meta Seleukos​

There was a stirring in the room behind him. Demetrios, no novice to guard duty, opened his eyes and stiffened to attention. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Metron across the doorway doing the same. A few moments later the heavy drapes closing off the room were thrust aside by strong brown hands. The man who emerged stood straight, vigorous, stance belying his age. His eyes were lively and bright in a heavily lined face. His hair shone silver around his silk diadem in the dim predawn torchlight. He was gnarled and solid as an oak, and just as immortal if rumor was true. He was their basileus, Seleukos Nikator.

Basileus Seleukos Nikator​

He strode forward at once, and Demetrios hopped forward to follow. He cursed Metron under his breath, not for the first time, for his height and long legs. Demetrios was of average height, like their basileus, so he had to keep up with the old man’s energetic pace. Soon they emerged from the arkhon’s mansion, to stand on the terrace surveying the town of Kallipolis below. The basileus stood breathing the fresh morning air, just chill enough to require a light robe for comfort. He seemed to think for a moment.

“What do you think, boys?” he turned to stare at Demetrios and Metron. As always Demetrios found his piercing blue eyes unnerving. “Should I summon the boy to come with me. Or leave him to rest after the excitement yesterday?”

Demetrios remembered the crossing of the Hellespontos yesterday. There was no question of whom he meant. The basileus’s grandson, also named Seleukos, had been running excitedly from one end of their ship to the other marveling at the breadth of the strait and annoying the sailors with all manner of questions. Demetrios was curious to see how the boy would react in the middle of Aigaio Pelagos or Pontos Euxeinos.

Metron spoke first. “Let him rest, sire. We will likely be traveling far today.”

Seleukos looked thoughtful, hand on his shaven chin. Though most of his army now wore beards, he still kept with the discipline of Alexandros. “And you, Demetrios?”

Demetrios smiled shyly, happy his basileus knew his name. What did he think? For a moment he agreed with Metron. Then he looked at the old man. He hated to think the basileus was old, but he was. Young Seleukos would in ten years wish he could trade any amount of sleep for another moment with his grandfather. “I shall wake him, sire. Men wake when they must, rest has little to do with it.” The basileus nodded, and Demetrios turned to jog to the boy’s chamber. [1]

He returned minutes later with the yawning boy and his sour, cursing old paidagogos Nikanor. The beautiful boy, on the cusp of puberty, rubbed his half-lidded eyes and smiled. “Where to, grandfather?”

“To the sacred grove of Athena. Remember my boy, I did not become known as Nikator by neglecting to respect the gods.”

The boy nodded, “Yes, grandfather.” Metron hurried off to find a company of guardsmen. With the sun still a bit below the horizon, the party fell in between the soldiers and left the arkhon’s mansion, then taking a turn along the plain instead of down into the town.

Initially sour, the old paidagogos brightened up at a sudden opportunity to explain something. “Young sire, do you know why there is a sacred grove to Athena here?”

The boy tossed his head. “Athena is one of the greatest Olympians, and deserves respect anywhere. It is not unusual. Is it?”

“Not at all unusual,” Nikanor shook his head. “But think. This area until very recently was always under threat from the savage Thrakian barbarians and not easily accessible by land. Hellenic colonists and traders needed to come by ship. Who would have had the ability to maintain colonies here?”

“Ahhh, I see, so Athenai created these colonies, so in these lands Athena is most revered.”

“Just so,” Nikanor smiled proudly at his charge’s intelligence. Then he went off into one of those long, rambling, bookish tangents of his that Demetrios found sickeningly useless. But he understood that as future basileus, the boy would probably find some benefit from the lectures. Before he knew it their feet had taken them easily down to the beach west of town. There was a green forested area some three stadia square standing out against the yellow farmland and blue sea. The peeking sun bathed the tops of the trees in light.

“Halt!” the basileus called, and the soldiers stopped. Demetrios saw his basileus was frowning, and soon he knew why. They strode to the treeline at the path to the grove, where a slave was holding several horses in the shadows. “You there! Whom do you serve?”

The wide eyed slave bowed and averted his eyes. “Great basileus, I serve Ptolemaios, called Keraunos.”

“A pious one, he?” the basileus scoffed, eyebrow raised. “No doubt he beat me here to pester me about some matter. Or beg me for the throne of Makedonia.” The slave stared at the ground. “No matter,” Seleukos shook his head and made to move on.

“Grandfather,” the boy called. “Let us bring more men.”

“Mmm, what’s that?”

The boy swallowed. “We should bring more men. The man is not called Keraunos [2] for nothing.”

The basileus’s face twisted as if to scoff again, but then he stopped and became still. He looked to the west. “I thank the rising sun, Apollon, for your wisdom my boy.” Louder he said, “Damasias, bring your men and come with us.” The captain hurried along with his dozen men. “The rest of you, surround the grove.”

Thus protected, Seleukos the basileus and Seleukos the grandson entered the sacred grove of Athena.

[1] The POD. In OTL the boy was left to rest
[2] Thunderbolt, and not for being decisive, but rather impatient and destructive

Map of the relevant world in the fall of 31 Meta Seleukos, before Seleukos's crossing to Thraki​

News of the apparent plot spread through the army like wildfire. Though the slave at the entrance to the grove had held four horses, eleven men of Keraunos’s retinue, and some of Seleukos’s own officers, had been chased out of the grove. Imprisoned, tortured, and executed, they had revealed the scheme to assassinate the basileus. Donating heavily to the priests of the grove of Athena at Kallipolis, basileus Seleukos also vowed to build a great temple to Apollon Alexikakos, for averting this evil. Scandalized that their basileus could have been harmed on the very eve of total victory, men invented increasingly gruesome ways for Ptolemaios to die.

But it was not to be. Ptolemaios Keraunos, no matter how villainous, was a very useful pawn to use against his half-brother Ptolemaios Beta [1], basileus of Aigyptos. There was no love lost between the two, but there would inevitably be some disaffected segment of the Aigyptian officer and administrative classes who would support Ptolemaios Keraunos as basileus. It also gave Seleukos a good reason to invade Aigyptos, to ostensibly restore an eldest son to his rightful throne. And by doing so eliminate the final great threat to his realm.

The basileus also kept Lysandra and her children under close guard. Lysandra was a full sister of Ptolemaios Keraunos but the two were not close. She had been married to Agathokles, the heir to the diadokhos Lysimakhos, basileus of Thraki and Makedonia. Her half-sister Arsinoe (full sister of Ptolemaios Beta) then married Lysimakhos himself, bred some children with him, and immediately began to intrigue against her stepson and half-brother-in-law Agathokles. If he were removed, Arsinoe’s son’s path to the throne of Thraki would be assured. Eventually Lysimakhos was swayed to his beautiful, intelligent young wife’s way of thinking, and executed his own firstborn son for supposedly intriguing against him. This left Lysandra without a husband and without security, but not without hope. She fled immediately to Asia and sought the help of Seleukos. With her came her Keraunos. He had fled to Thraki years before after being effectively disinherited by his father the great Ptolemaios Soter. However despite his hatred of his half-brother Ptolemaios Beta, Keraunos had seemed reasonably civil, even at times chummy, with his half-sister Arsinoe. Thus suspicions and rumors that he had a hand in Agathokles’s execution, perhaps hoping to seize the throne of Makedonia for himself.

Regardless of the facts, though he joined his sister Lysandra in fleeing to Seleukos there was little love between them. Yet Seleukos kept her and her children under guard. Though her son was a toddler he held a claim to Thraki as did the sons of Arsinoe. And there would be no other basileis of Alexandros’s realm if Seleukos could help it.

When Seleukos reached Lysimakheia alive and well and that city celebrated the fact that it wasn’t being sacked, it was obvious to all that he was going to Makedonia. Home after decades in the trackless, wandering east. Lysimakhos’s priests and some servants had remained at his palace, but his barbarian advisors and other administrators had fled at the news of his defeat and death at the battle of Korou Pedion [2]. As had his family and close friends. His widow Arsinoe and their sons, accompanied by loyal servants, fled to the town of Kassandreia [3] in Makedonia. On hearing of Seleukos’s approach they took ship for Aigyptos knowing that they would be safe and well received at her full brother’s court in Alexandreia.

But it was not to be. News travels quickly across the Aigaio Pelagos. Antigonos Gonatas, pirate-lord of Hellas, doubled his patrols and caught the refugees. The beauty and intelligence of Arsinoe was widely known, she was still young and fertile enough to bear him sons, and most importantly she was one of the most noble women in the world. And she was in his hands.. Thus the 37 year old Antigonos married for the first time, the 35 year old widow Arsinoe at his base at Athenai.

The Lykeion of Athenai brightened for the first time in decades as its skholarkhes [4] Straton of Lampsakenos had been a tutor of Arsinoe and her full siblings in their youth, and had been a correspondent of hers in all the years since. Tall, handsome Antigonos and his forced bride attended weekly debates and demonstrations at the Lykeion, art and knowledge being a pursuit of both. In this way though Arsinoe would have felt more safe in Aigyptos, she attained some degree of comfort. Especially compared to bedding with the octogenarian Lysimakhos.

In this way the two disappointed Seleukos, who had hoped to capture Arsinoe and her sons and keep them very close under heavy guard. Her eldest son Ptolemaios, called Epigonos for becoming the main heir of his father, was a sturdy 18 year old man who could marry and produce troublesome heirs at any time. Thankfully for the time being his stepfather Antigonos was keeping him from escaping to people who would actually care about him, such as his uncle Ptolemaios Beta.

Seleukos adjusted his plans accordingly. He left Lysimakheia and Thraki in the care of Lysimakhos’s timid brother Autodikos, who knew the land and people well. Seleukos himself moved on to Makedonia. It is said that on hiking to the top of the hills north of Thessalonike and seeing the one thousand square milia of the fertile Makedonian plain to the west, Seleukos wept and offered thanks to the gods for bringing him home at last. Fifty-two years after departing Makedonia with Megas Alexandros and his bright-eyed adventurers ready to take on the world, Seleukos was home.

The victor moved on to Pella and took over the stagnant administration of the land, which had been mistreated by its squabbling kings Lysimakhos and Pyrrhos of Apeiros. In appropriate ceremony he was acclaimed basileus of Makedonia by the his army and the assembled Makedonian levies. In the midst of seeing to his homeland, Seleukos continued to think and to write letters. Always thinking of the future, Seleukos plotted to keep Aigyptos busy and unable to interfere with events in Hellas, or to invade Syroi. Magas of Kurenaike was an independently minded man, and chafed at being subordinate to his younger half-brother Ptolemaios Beta; the two men shared the same mother, Berenike, who had married Ptolemaios Soter well after the death of her first husband, Magas’s father. Though Magas owed all to the generosity of his stepfather, he felt no loyalty to the half-brother though their mother was still alive.

So Seleukos offered the hand of his daughter Phila in marriage to Magas, which would keep Ptolemaios Beta too tied up and cautious to interfere in Seleukos’s affairs. Then Seleukos wrote to Antigonos Gonatas himself, as family, to offer him the regency of Makedonia and Hellas in return for submission. There was no doubt in Seleukos’s mind that Antigonos would refuse, and he was correct. To call Antigonos family was almost an insult. After the battle of Ipsos in which Antigonos’s grandfather the great Antigonos Monophthalmos was killed and Antigonos’s father Demetrios was forced to flee, Selekos had married Demetrios’s daughter (Antigonos’s sister) Stratonike to ally himself with Demetrios, still powerful in Hellas and Makedonia, against Ptolemaios in Aigyptos and Lysimakhos in Thraki and Asia.

Seleukos treated Stratonike well and fathered a daughter, the same Phila who would be married to Magas, on her. But on finding that his son Antiokhos, who was older than Stratonike, had fallen in love with her to the point he was sick, Seleukos allowed the two to marry, to save the sanity and possibly life of his son. And Stratonike was in love and very much happy with Antiokhos. But this had been taken very poorly by father Demetrios and brother Antigonos, sharing their daughter/sister like a common whore. Thus the not-so-subtle insult of calling Antigonos family, and thus forcing his rejection of peace. This let all the city-states and petty kingdoms of Hellas, from which Antigonos derived his manpower and wealth, know that it was Antigonos who refused the peaceful path and forced war and destruction on them.

Instead Antigonos wrote hastily to Pyrrhos of Apeiros, busy winning disastrous battles against the Romans in Italia. Pyrrhos was still sour at being forced out of Makedonia by Lysimakhos years earlier, and was taking out his anger on Italians and Karkhedonians [5] alike. Antigonos offered to him his old half of the kingship of Makedonia, if he would come back across the Ionio Pelagos and join Antigonos against the massive eastern threat that was Seleukos.

It took Pyrrhos only a moment to decide. He was tired of his lackluster success, and the ungrateful cities of Megale Hellas were growing stingy with their men and restless against his presence. Pyrrhos agreed forthwith and sealed the deal by agreeing to a marriage between his daughter Olympias and Antigonos’s stepson Ptolemaios Epigonos. Pyrrhos knew how things stood, that Antigonos didn’t quite want his stepson to marry, but that he didn’t dare decline for fear of Arsinoe’s fury. Arsinoe knew this as well, so Pyrrhos would soon be in her, and thus Aigyptos’s, good graces.

Pyrrhos waited for the end of winter, for Ionio Pelagos to stop being so stormy and dangerous. Then he crossed with his army and joined Antigonos at Larisa in Thessalia, ready to do battle.

[1] In OTL later known as Ptolemy II Philadelphus
[2] Better known as Corupedium (curse the Romans and their lack of localization)
[3] Located near modern Nea Poteidaia, north of modern Kassandreia
[4] Director
[5] Carthaginians

 

[Dagoth Ur]

APOLLONIDAI OF THE OIKOUMENE
Victory in Makedonia, Summer 31 Meta Seleukos to Winter 32 Meta Seleukos​

Agathon strode through grasses slick with blood and guts. His toes were sticky and cold with the filth. He looked forward to washing them thoroughly in the river. He came to another shaking man, laying on his back, heaving for breath, body mangled beyond repair. “To Hades with you, brother,” he said not unkindly. He stared at the man’s one remaining eye as he slit his throat. The man’s life ended in a long rasping gurgle. Agathon hung his head for a moment, then stood.

The folly of other Hellenes, to want to fight the proven victor, the last man standing, the one remaining diadokhos. Antigonos and Pyrrhos had marched north with their armies, passing from Thessalia into Makedonia through the mountain pass north of Mount Olympos. Agathon had been in the Pella barracks when word came that the enemy host had moved. Then in one day Antigonos covered the thirty milia between the mountains and the coast, and encamped on the beach south of the ruins of Methone.

An admirable feat, but ultimately wasted. Agathon and his tentmates debated in the few idle hours after sunset. It wasn’t clear to them why Antigonos had come. Maybe he felt there was no use entrenching himself in Hellas proper, that Seleukos would just come south and root him out. Certainly he was becoming less and less popular with the poleis as time went on. Maybe his thinking was if he didn’t act soon, the poleis would turn against him and deliver him to Selekuos without a fight. Antigonos could have even fled to the court of his wife’s brother in fabulously wealthy Aigyptos. That led to philosophical questions of the nature of a man, and honor, and belief. Antigonos had operated from late adolescence knowing he was heir to the great Antigonid name. Perhaps to him death was preferable to servitude or dependence on another. Certainly Antigonos’s father Demetrios had felt that way, drinking himself to death after a few years of luxurious captivity in a fine Babylonian villa.

In the end these philosophical questions were only ways to pass the time. Agathon and the men he marched with made a large loop, first west from Pella, then south until they were in Berea, then west. They crossed the Haliakmon and moved to Antigonos’s army where they were a welcome sight, five thousand reinforcements from Apeiros! Immediately Agathon’s commander and Pyrrhos had a long meeting that left Pyrrhos quite contented.

Basileus Pyrrhos of Apeiros​

Finally with the reinforcements, and no hint that Seleukos would move on him, Antigonos was forced to make a move or else turn back and be left worse off than he started. He marched north toward Pella at a relaxed pace. This allowed his men to warm up without becoming tired. Some six milia from Pella the army came to the Loudias River. It was some one hundred podes wide and at that time in the year, spring, pretty lively and too deep for a soldier to cross comfortably. Thus the army crossed the sturdy bridge that had been built by Megas Alexandros’s father Philippos, to enable him to more easily control Thessalia and respond to events in Hellas.

As the honored ally, having crossed Ionio Pelagos to join the fight, Pyrrhos crossed the bridge first and arranged his forces to protect this bridgehead. By then many of Antigonos’s scouts had come within sight of Pella and seen the Seleukid army preparing for battle in the distance there. Six milia was not a large distance, and it would take an hour just to get Antigonos’s army across the Loudias bridge. Pyrrhos’s reinforcements, too, protected the rear of the army and would act as the surprise reserve in the upcoming battle. After marching so far so quickly from Apeiros this would allow them to rest just a bit more. They were obviously solid veterans too, and could be used to greatly strengthen any faltering section of the battle.

Agathon remembered the thudding of his heart in anticipation of the bridge crossing. Up to that moment he had contained the deception well. He had spoken with dozens of men, good soldiers all, who happened to be on the other side. Thessalians and Athenians and Thebans and Korinthians and many others. He hoped that in the slaughter to come most would be smart enough to cast their weapons down and surrender.

As Antigonos and the first of his men crossed the bridge and drew up along the Apeirotes, Pyrrhos made his move. He turned in on them and attacked, with his reinforcements doing the same on the other side. At each end outnumbered, the majority of the soldiers were left flailing and pushing uselessly on the bridge. The fighting was ferocious at first, the men of the poleis incensed at this betrayal. But as the position on the bridge became desperate and men leapt into the river to escape the crush, cries of “philoi, philoi!” [1] came up all around. The battle downgraded into knots of isolated fury as most of the Hellenes cast their weapons down.

In the rear some of the false reinforcements even disrobed and leapt into the river to save some of the floundering men of the poleis. In the front the battle raged on. Antigonos and his loyal bodyguard fought like lions against Pyrrhos. The contest was brutal as neither party could give up. Then Antigonos and his bodyguard had broken through Pyrrhos and his elephants, and were now fleeing to the north, Pyrrhos’s cavalry in hot pursuit. Isolated and without an army, deep in enemy territory, it is not a fun day to be Antigonos today, Agathon reflected.

So now Agathon straightened up from the corpse that a moment before had been a man, and stretched, and saw there were no more men to aid or help along to Hades. Some five hundred men had perished on the south side of the bridge. Even now their bodies were being arranged, grouped according to origin, identified by their comrades in arms. Some men of the poleis crouched, hunched over, weeping at defeat and the disastrous, unexpected deaths. Others stood shocked, not understanding the betrayal. Still others stood with stony faces, vowing revenge against either Seleukos, Pyrrhos, or even Antigonos himself for leading the poleis into a foolhardy ill-conceived venture.

Other of Agathon’s comrades were gathering the surrendered weapons and taking over the baggage train. The captives were herded over the bridge, to the north side, into country it would be easier to escape in. Agathon hopped onto a wagon and looked into the northern horizon. He saw clearly the glittering of arms and armor, Seleukos’s forces approaching from Pella.

Later in the day Agathon went to the pavilion set up for the basileus’s arrival. He had to push through the crowd, but eventually he got near the front, being one of the infiltrators instrumental in the victory. Still he had to go on his tiptoes and crane his neck to see the dignified, silver-haired figure seated on a throne on the stage. At his shoulder stood a tall golden-haired boy, and a brown-haired bushy-bearded man as tall as the boy, and behind were arranged other men. Men were talking and laughing all around Agathon, glad at the victory. From them he learned that Antigonos had been captured.

Agathon saw as a tall man of regal bearing, surely Antigonos, walked stiffly across the stage. Blood splatters painted him from his neck to his knees. The defeated basileus had been given time to wash his face and head, and now stood looking handsome. He conversed with Seleukos for some time, then knelt in submission. The surrounding crowd of soldiers cheered uproariously, Agathon among them.

Antigonos was led off stage, unbound, but still under heavy guard. Next came Pyrrhos, of an age with Antigonos but more youthful looking by far. He beamed boyishly out at the soldiers and waved, and they responded with cheers. “Pyrrhos! Pyrrhos! Pyrrhos!” Though the Makedonians loved their basileus, they were grateful to Pyrrhos for making the easy victory possible. He too conversed with Seleukos at some length, then knelt in submission. The cheering now was muted. All were curious to know what had been said.

The word spread back through the ranks and caused a ripple of conversation and excitement. When the news reached Agathon the man next to him turned. “We’re going with Pyrrhos! Well then, lucky us! I hear Italian girls are lovely.”

[1] Friends, friends!

The victory at the battle of Loudias proved to be, more than a martial victory, a complete diplomatic coup. The Hellenic poleis had united–with little order, to be sure, but united nonetheless–behind Antigonos to preserve their relative freedom. That Antigonos had led them into total defeat, and led to the imprisonment of the flower of their manhood, was no small thing. It was a greater thing still when Seleukos released the men to make their ways home, provisioned with food and wine for the journey. With the men went a flurry of diplomats, and Seleukos took to reforming the League of Korinthos.

The league had been formed originally by Philippos, mortal father of Megas Alexandros. Member states–which included every Hellenic polis except for Sparta–met in a council to resolve disputes amicably, and provide a common fund and army for defense of Hellas. Alexandros had taken league troops with him to Ariane [1] and the east. Those men had made a sizable portion of the army, and many even served in India. On Alexandros’s mortal death the league had fallen apart, with each polis going its way and following one diadokhos or another, or else attempting to assert independence and usually failing.

Now there was finally a clear hegemon of the entire world, it benefited Seleukos to recreate the league. As much as it provided for peace and security, it also allowed the basileus to create informants and spies in the important poleis. No more would revolt face his empire from Hellas, at least not without long forewarning.

With this news and the goodwill generated by the release of the prisoners, Seleukos traveled south slowly in state, welcomed at every town if not as a liberator, then as a gentle master. When he reached Athenai it did not resist, but Arsinoe, sister of Ptolemaios Neos [2] and new-ish bride of Antigonos, was nowhere to be found. She, her sons, and loyal servants had fled to Korinthos. Seleukos found that before reforming the League of Korinthos, he had to actually obtain the cooperation of Korinthos.

Korinthos is not far from Athenai, only some fifty milia. But it sits in an advantageous position on its isthmus, and Seleukos did not have the ships for a quick siege. However he had not counted on the polis’s self-esteem. Korinthos, having played second fiddle to Athenai since Antigonos’s settling there two decades ago, was grateful at the chance to occupy the secondary center of Hellas. For naturally the primary center of Hellas was not even in Hellas proper anymore, but in Pella, in Makedonia.

So Korinthos opened its gates at Seleukos’s approach, its majority native garrison having outfought the Makedonian garrison left by Antigonos, under the command of Antigonos’s half-brother Krateros. This Krateros was the son of the famous general Krateros who served under Alexandros. This son Krateros, and his own son named Alexandros, were delivered to Seleukos, along with Arsinoe and her sons.

Seleukos had made life difficult for Arsinoe. In the summer of the previous year she had been queen of Thraki, and her son its heir. In one year she had been forced to flee her home of over a decade, been captured on her way to salvation in Aigyptos, forcibly married, and now fled and captured again. Seleukos thought it over. On the one hand he wished to put Hellas to rest and force the poleis of the Peloponnese to join the league. But that would lead to war with Aigyptos, and the garrisons of Syroi would not be able to effectively fend off the Aigyptian armies that could be over the border at a moment’s notice. Whereas most of Seleukos’s troops were with him, or in Mesopotamia.

So he did the sensible thing. He sent Arsinoe and her sons to Alexandreia, to the court of Ptolemaios Neos. This got rid of a clever, scheming woman whose beauty and wit was already affecting her jailors; it also was a gesture of good will to Aigyptos. Ptolemaios would not have to worry about unprovoked war with the Seleukid realm. Seleukos could use the free years to put in the effort it would take to mold Hellas into a loyal, peaceful region…if the Moirai [3] allowed him enough time to do so.

With the Aigyptian question hopefully settled for now, Seleukos sent a swift messenger to his capital Seleukeia on the Tigris. Antigonos Gonatas, and Lysimakhos’s daughter-in-law Lysandra and her children, would be sent there into luxurious imprisonment. There they would be far removed from the world where they were known and could have sympathizers, and placed into the East, where Seleukos had ruled unchallenged for the past two decades. Then as events unfolded, it could be decided what to do with them.

With Antigonos went Akhaios, Seleukos’s bushy-bearded second son, at least for a short way. In midsummer they took ship from Korinthos and arrived in Smyrna. Ideally they would have sailed for Seleukeia Pieria, the port city some fifteen miles from great Antiokheia in Syroi. However the ever present threat of piracy along the southern coast of Anatole precluded them from doing so, especially with such precious cargo. From Smyrna they went overland to Sardeis where Akhaios halted. He had been charged by his father with the rule and reorganization of the Anatole, and this he planned to do from Sardeis, the western end of the great old Royal Road.

Antigonos and his guard continued on to Seleukeia. In Anatole, Akhaios sent messengers to various states and even the independent realms, to settle affairs with them all. Now that the world was united under a hegemon again, it was time for the world to benefit from Seleukos’s hard work over the decades.

Most prominent among the correspondents was Philetairos, governor of Pergamon and the surrounding area. During the fallout from Lysimakhos’s execution of his own son Agathokles, Philetairos switched sides from Lysimakhos to Seleukos, offering up valuable Pergamon and her nine thousand talents of silver to Seleukos. Philetarios also took good care of his own people, and Akhaios was relatively sure he could be trusted so long as the Seleukid family stayed on top of things.

Then there was fiercely independent Bithynia, ruled by the Hellenized basileus Zipoites. The area was small, but Zipoites used geography and defensive alliances with the cities of Mysia and Paphlagonia to great effect. He had even defeated the diadokhos Lysimakhos in war. This had made the Bithynians overly proud. Akhaios knew he would have to knock them down a peg or two.

Mithridates of Kios was notable as well, a Persian nobleman who had fled his native Kios to Pontos. There through force of will and some wealth he courted and subjugated the tribes and poleis of the area over almost two decades, and had just last year crowned himself basileus of Pontos. For this feat he was called Ktistes [4]. While not shaky on his throne, his was a brand new dynasty, and bore watching. He would be on the lookout for fresh conquests to prove himself, which could be a boon if steered in the right direction, or a threat if he thought he could contest the might of the Seleukid empire.

Also in mind was doddering old basileus Ariarathes of Kappadokia, whose father had been satrap of Kappadokia for the Akhaemenid basileis. In his youth Ariarathes had returned to Kappadokia after Megas Alexandros’s death, and defeated the Makedonian governor Amyntas. Since then he’d ruled with peaceful relations with the diadokhoi, cleverly maintaining his position despite the various armies passing around and sometimes through his territory. Involved in any decisions of his was his son Ariaramnes who spoke Hellenic quite well, and could write it too.

The poleis and leagues of Ionia were contacted in their multitudes. The diplomats and princes of Elaia, Mytilene, Kyme, Khios, Smyrna, Ephesos, Samos, Halikarnassos, Kos, Knidos, and a dozen other poleis would be loyal to the empire if their rights and internal independence were guaranteed and respected.

Greatest among the Hellenic poleis was Rhodos, home to the great Kolossos. In reality Rhodos was the third most important player in Anatole, after Akhaios himself and Philetairos. Her forces, if involved, could decide any naval conflict between the Seleukid empire and Aigyptos, or any other power for that matter.

Last of all in the mind of Akhaios were the numerous tribes of Pamphylia, Pisidia, Isauria, and Lykia. At worst they were considered a nuisance, raiders of the hinterland of the Hellenized coastal cities and the rich Phrygian cities. But Akhaios would not underestimate them. By their very presence he knew they would be useful in force. He would show them the respect not shown to them by most, and see how that would turn out.

Finally, Akhaios dealt with the Armenians, with Prince Hydarnes and his faction. A cousin of basileus Orontes of Armenia, Hydarnes was in favor of thinking and deliberating before taking action, unlike some other members of Orontes’s court who in their ignorance saw chaos and much opportunity in Anatole. Being on the eastern edge of Anatole, and bordering too northern Syroi which was ruled by the Seleukid empire, in Hydarnes’s opinion the Armenians had an interest in analyzing carefully whether it would be beneficial to attack Pontos and Kappadokia. Victory could not just be assumed, and it would be a shame to have their lands devastated and lose their considerable autonomy should they attack an ally of Seleukos’s.

With things being fairly settled in most quarters, Akhaios began to ready his troops to attack Bithynia. Akhaios even had friendly letters from Aigyptos expressing its basileus’s gratitude at having his favored full sister returned safe. Across Hellespontos, Seleukos was dealing with barbarians much more savage than the Bithynians. He received an embassage of dreary Kelts from the far Istros River [5] with tidings of war and devastation among the tribes, and invading tribes of Kelts that came from far to the west. The displaced Kelts begged for aid, and Seleukos granted it at once. In his years in the east he’d learned well that devastated tribes had no choice but to join with the strongest, and the whole could snowball into a great threat. By cheaply supporting these weaker tribes he could be keeping a great disaster at bay [6].

[1] Common ancient Greek geographical term meaning “Land of the Aryans”, roughly coinciding with modern Iran (Ariane = Iran)
[2] Ptolemaios the Younger, basileus of Aigyptos
[3] The Fates, determiners of men’s destinies
[4] Founder, of a dynasty or of cities
[5] Danube
[6] Something Ptolemaios Keraunos didn’t know when he ignored the supplicants in OTL, and led to the Gallic invasion of Makedonia, Hellas, and Anatole

 

[Dagoth Ur]

APOLLONIDAI OF THE OIKOUMENE
Raid, Winter 32 Meta Seleukos to Spring 33 Meta Seleukos​

Proteas rode whooping into the town. His eyes stung from the dust thrown up by the horses of his companions in front. A man ran out from a side lane, rolling pin raised high in the air. Proteas sucked in his laughter, guided his horse right with reins and a push of his thigh. The solid stallion pummeled into the villager, rode through him as though he were air. Iron-shod hooves finished the job. Next were a woman and child, embracing each other. Horror at the mangled mess that had been a man a moment ago changed to terror at death galloping toward them. Now Proteas was between two rows of squat houses–not a good spot to be in. He looked side to side, pulled at the reins to get his horse to walk backward.

Back on the main street he saw some of his companions dismounting, others still galloping into the square, others already running into houses in search of plunder or surging out of houses dragging women and boys out by the hair, or carrying amphorae of wine and oil, clothes draped about their shoulders. A pair of them stumbled out of one house under the weight of a finely carved chest, valuable in itself.

Proteas himself dismounted and slid his fine ax out of its sheath. They needed wood. He ran to the nearest house and began hacking at the door. It was quick work, when a man leapt out from the dim interior and shoved him. Proteas was on his back, in a moment he was on his feet again. He growled and hacked at the man, too slow to move aside. In another moment the door was in splinters. Proteas grabbed the jumbled pieces, some slick with the man’s blood and brains, and rushed to pile them along with the others. The arkhon’s house, built all of stone in this rocky land, had thick, solid oak doors and no windows on the ground floor. To weaken the doors and break them down faster they would burn them.

The fire was started and Proteas looked around, hoping some plunder was left for him. He saw women and boys screaming, writhing under other men. Proteas didn’t like that, he needed fresh prey. He found his horse and rode out, circled the town. In the hills he saw figures stumbling, still trying to run, perhaps the townspeople who had first heard the beating of the raiding party’s hooves. On his horse Proteas caught up with them quickly, tried to grab a running girl, but she kept diving left and right faster than his horse could pivot. Cursing, Proteas leapt to the ground, unwilling to risk running her down and ruining her. He ran after her, stumbling, gaining on her.

Something dove at him from the side, knocked him down. He roared in rage as he rolled over, grabbed the meddling youth, pummeled his face until there was nothing left to pummel. When he looked up there was no girl in sight. Back to the horse, he mounted up and looked around with the better vantage, but now he saw nobody. He cursed and rode to the pillar of smoke rising from the town.

It seemed their allies from Pergamon, Kios, and Pontos were thoroughly scouring every house for plunder. Proteas joined his fellow Makedonians, who had surrounded the arkhon’s mansion and were supervising the burning. Every few minutes a team of men would test the doors with a battering ram, the fine chest he’d seen before. In absence of anything else, it was being used. A few quick thinkers had slaughtered some of the villagers’ lambs, turned their spears into spits, and borrowed from the fire to begin a tasty snack. Men banged on the stones of the house, taunting the occupants. One man found a ladder and propped it against the mansion, to climb into a window.

They watched him climb up, calves pumping quickly, then the sounds of a fight, then he tumbled out and broke his neck in the fall. Some men threw burning pieces of wood up through the window in response, but nobody else ventured up. After some time the doors were broken down and the Makedonians burst into the arkhon’s mansion. They fanned out through the rooms, easily cutting through the amateur guards. Leaping over tables and bounding up stairs, they stripped the walls of their finery, denuded the wine cellar, and gently handled the precious jewelry boxes. The arkhon and his family and servants were in a room on the top floor, behind a locked sliding door of fine cypress. The first man in front of Proteas simply ran into the door, then shoved with his shoulder a few times, and it came crashing down.

They slapped the arkhon’s arms aside, laughed as they lifted him bodily and threw him through the same window their fellow had been ejected through. The rest of the bearded victims joined the arkhon on the growing pile below, moaning with limbs askew. Pontic tribesmen leapt on them, cutting their fingers off for their glittering rings, then slitting their throats. Up in the mansion, the first man slapped a beautiful girl, probably the arkhon’s daughter, carried her from the room excitedly. Proteas did the same, to a girl almost as pretty, probably the girl’s sister. But he did not care.

In the afternoon they rode quickly from the town, flushed with victory, cheeks shiny with lamb grease, beards sodden with wine, faces red with bloodlust. The ruined chest was left behind in the doorway of the wrecked mansion, but almost everything else of value was with the riders. Fine cloths and clothes and rugs were draped across shoulders, jewelry carried on fingers or tucked into cloaks, pigs were driven in squealing agitation by teams of men, chickens hung squawking and flapping their wings upside down from saddles.

Other things of value, slaves to abuse and sell, were draped across the riders’ saddles. With him Proteas had the girl he’d violated, sobbing and bleeding. His breath was quick and shallow, his loins light. He hadn’t had a fine day like this in a long time. The old man had always wanted the people respected, treated fairly, though they were unfit to lick a Makedonian’s boots. That explained why the old man had reigned so long in Mesopotamia, but it also explained why he had no proper respect at home.

Proteas shook these idle thoughts from his head, slapped his new slave’s rump laughing. The rider in front of him slumped sideways, a rock thudding against his temple. It took a moment for Proteas to react, which was far too long. A spear found his horse’s chest and the beast was dead in an instant, slumping to its knees and falling to the right, crushing the captive girl’s head. It also crushed Proteas’s leg.

He gritted his teeth against a scream, hissed, worked furiously to prop himself up on his right arm and grab his ax with his left. He saw men falling all down the line, shaggy-haired Bithynian tribesmen leaping out of the forested rise to the left. Proteas cursed and worked faster, screaming when he propped himself up too high and tore something in his mangled leg. A shadow fell over him and he saw his death, a bloody-faced Bithynian howler, chanting a shrill barbarian curse, wide green-yellow eyes boring into Proteas’s own. The eyes stayed with him after the ax split his head, until everything was black.

A forested track in Bithynia, ideal for ambush. From Google Maps street view. Quality suffers due to image size limits​

As Akhaios made plans to invade and subjugate Bithynia in the beginning of summer, he put them into action in late summer, the month of Gorpiaios [1]. This timing achieved several things. Firstly it was a quick win for him and the empire, ridding themselves of a nettlesome neighbor. This increased their allies’ confidence in them, particularly ambitious Pontos, being victorious where both formidable Antigonos and clever Lysimakhos had failed in decades past. Akhaios used the inertia of his diplomacy, immediately acting where months of delay or waiting until the spring would certainly decrease enthusiasm for the war. And finally he was straining Bithynia’s limits, either denying basileus Zipoites men for soldiering, or men for reaping the year’s crops, or both. Whereas Akhaios himself used only professional soldiers who never needed to work the fields.

The mistake of Antigonos and Lysimakhos was, as Akhaios saw it, in tackling the Bithynian problem as if it were a realm ruled by a diadokhos, rather than a Hellenized basileus of a people who had one generation ago all been barbarian tribesmen. When they invaded in force they found that, aside from the main coastal roads, all the ways were forested paths and dim tracks through foggy hills. Harassed by barbarians who could melt into the ravines and heights, Antigonos and Lysimakhos’s armies were well depleted and demoralized before a battle was ever fought. Only along the coast could they boast supremacy, naval power unmatched, but that was nowhere near Bithynia’s power and potential.

Akhaios would not make their mistakes. He would send smaller, more mobile parties, strike at towns and villages, move steadily inward from Anatole, and along the coast too. Squeeze Zipoites and he would be forced to react, and fight a pitched battle where Akhaios would be sure to prevail. To this end his forces proceeded, from all sides. Akhaios led the main force which struck from Kios to the west, burning the land between Propontis and the mountains. After a couple of weeks of unstoppable raids, some of the parties were attacked with heavy losses, and one was even wiped out. At this sign of resistance Akhaios increased the size of raiding parties, and redoubled combing of the land. The armies moved slower, but no stone was left unturned.

In the meantime Akhaios’s father Seleukos, in Hellas, saw to matters there. The poleis of the Aitolian League were granted concessions, and peacefully absorbed into the League of Korinthos. The only polis excluded was Sparta, as it had not been in the original League formed by Philippos. Sparta still had ties of trade and amity with other poleis of Peloponnesos, so Seleukos would let them be. Let their exclusion from the League be their badge of shame, and hopefully someday soon they would come into dispute with a weaker neighbor, and the neighbor would appeal to the League for aid, and the League itself would conquer Sparta, without needing to be pushed by Seleukos.

To celebrate the inclusion of all Hellenes–save for the Spartans, of course–in the League, Seleukos prepared great donations and lavish gifts for the upcoming Nemean games, held in the month of Apellaios [2]. Nemea is a polis in the hills which make up the borderland between Arkadia, Argolis, and Korinthia. It was here that Herakles defeated the monstrous Nemean lion, after which he founded the Nemean games in honor of his victory. Athletes, politicians, tradesmen, musicians, actors, and people of all other occupations flocked to Nemea from all over Hellas, Ionia, and Makedonia to participate in, view, or profit from the games. The basileus selected a moderate amount of bodyguards to be with him at Nemea. He trod the fine line between oppressive tyrant and selfless benefactor. His guard managed to keep the peace, and to the Hellenes’ credit they themselves did not stir up old grudges or create new ones.

The athletic competition was fierce. Antigonos has been something of a benefactor of the various Panhellenic games, presiding over them every two years when they were held. However they had always been colored by his personal favorites, and the fear or knowledge that if his favored athletes did not win, the true winners’ fortunes or lives could be in danger. Seleukos made it clear to all that his personal favorites were simply those who would emerge victorious. He did not even favor those of his soldiers who participated.

Footraces, boxing, wrestling, and the pentathlon were all done in the nude, and only by men, in the stadion. Horse and chariot racing were done in the hippodrome. Also here only men could compete, but the victor of a horse or chariot race was the owner of the horse or chariot, not the racer himself. Thus women could win these races. By far the most respected and anticipated competition was the pankration–”all power”--boxing in which combatants used punches, kicks, wrestling, any technique besides eye gouging and biting, to subdue their opponents. Herakles defeated the Nemean lion using pankration, and so a particularly great winner of the pankration was thought to be imbued, at least temporarily, with the power of Herakles.

Stadion of Nemea, from Wikipedia​

The Aitolian poleis too sent their athletes and politicians to Nemea in time, and even the Spartans were present–they would not miss a chance to show off their physical prowess. And so it was that it was in fact a Spartan who won the pankration. Bloodied and battered, but still standing, Hekataios of Sparta stumbled the distance from the pankration grounds to the Nemean baths surrounded by cheering fans and ecstatic countrymen. At the award ceremony Seleukos presented fine gifts to the victors. Gold and silver and crystal goblets, finely wrought and decorated suits of armor, baskets of exotic spices, and more were given along with the traditional crown of wild celery. Prayers were made to the gods, and Herakles most of all, that the power and vigor of Hellenes be directed to conquering other peoples, and not despoiling each other.

The prayers were apparently answered. Rather than despoiling each other, the poleis remained peaceful through the winter, and in the spring Makedonia’s campaign to despoil Bithynia continued. In fact, it was almost at an end. With Akhaios’s careful strategizing and efficient implementation of his tactics, Zipoites of Bithynia had finally been drawn out into open battle after half a year of devastation and destruction. And was duly destroyed. The basileus himself lay dead on the field, and Akhaios entered his Hellenized capital of Nikaia. Astakos had been the capital, but was destroyed by great old Antigonos Monophthalmos twenty years prior and only partly rebuilt. In any case it was on the coast, and quickly taken by Seleukos’s marines. Nikaia was inland, and well defended. Now Akhaios entered as a bearer of peace. The inhabitants were surprised at this treatment, after the terror of his campaign of the past six months. Many in Nikaia were refugees from the countryside, and terrified of Akhaios’s troops.

Now helpless to him, gates open, the Bithynians were forced to accept the easy terms. They would not be a free people…but they would be a living and prosperous people, included in the civilization of Seleukos’s empire. Akhaios installed Zipoites’s only living son (the other two having died on the field of battle with their father) Nikomedes as basileus of a reduced Bithynia. Some eastern parts were given to Pontos, so Mithridates was sated. Akhaios also took a great deal of Bithynia’s royal treasure, and gently plundered some of the royal palace, to divide among his other allies and reward his own troops. The subjugation of Bithynia was complete.

Shortly thereafter he received an embassage from Armenia congratulating him on his victory and presenting gifts in honor of their friendship. Akhaios responded in kind, and with secret letters for his friend Prince Hydarnes of Armenia.

[1] Roughly corresponding to August
[2] Roughly corresponding to November

 

[Dagoth Ur]

APOLLONIDAI OF THE OIKOUMENE
Death of Boys, Spring 33 Meta Seleukos​

The young men trotted shivering through the thick wood. It was Xanthikos [1] and thin snow still lay in hollows, shaded spots, and between the roots of trees. The wood was sacred to Xanthos, one of the twelve sons of the wild nature spring god Pan. Xanthos was allied to Dionusos, god variously of life and fertility and revelry and wine and freedom. It was Xanthos’s nameless warrior-priest who now led the boys through the sacred wood. They had ventured forth the previous evening, over two thousand boys, the youngest of Makedon’s manhood, clad only in loincloths. There in the dense wood they had made a heap of leaves and twigs, and in it huddled together all night for warmth. Now they ran to the sacrificial ground, for the Xanthika.

Young Seleukos trotted with them, near the front, breath billowing in front of him into the cold early morning air. It was just light enough that he could see the boys ahead of him outlined. Their forms were black and devoid of feature. Being taller than most, he could see clear to the front where the warrior-priest chanted rhythmically as he ran. How many generations of epheboi had the grey-haired man initiated into manhood?

After a bit of time Seleukos began to distinguish features of the boys ahead of him. This one’s hair was short, that one’s long; this one’s might be brown or blond with more sunlight, that one’s was certainly black; and more. Evidently the warrior-priest could see better as well for he picked up the pace, no longer fearful of tripping over a root or rock and pitching headlong into the ground. The boys huffed and sweated now, no longer cold or sleepy.

Seleukos saw a break in the trees ahead, and suddenly he was blinking under a cloudless, brightening sky. They were on the plain not far from Pella, near the ground where they had assembled the day before. The men of the court were assembled, and hundreds of stern Makedonian fathers anxious that their boys do the family no dishonor. Most of the boys had arrived in large groups, shepherded by nearby noblemen, but a few hundred of the boys were noble themselves, or had families well-off enough that the father could spare the time to travel.

To the plain they ran, and were directed to assemble in rank and file, like an infantry formation. Some boys stood gasping for air or shivering, but most stood solid and silent, waiting for the formation to be complete. It did not take long. Seleukos stood at the very front, Through this all the warrior-priest of Xanthos was chanting and pacing, variously looking up at the crisp, cloudless sky then down at the yellow-grassed ground. He would turn to face the forest, then around to face the boys. He had attendants and lesser priests to join him, burning incense and preparing the sacrificial ground. Many words and phrases Seleukos could understand despite the ancient language used, but others were harder to parse, or seemed nonsensical. Perhaps the language of the gods.

The sun rose then, shining bright into the boys’ eyes, peeking over the treetops. Starting today the days would be longer than the nights, and nature would fully lend itself to warmaking. Stocky Epaenetus shuffled from among the court, strode through the grass to Xanthos’s priest who now stood still in front of the largest tree, still chanting. Epaenetus was the royal kennelmaster, known for being rough and quick tempered…except with his dogs. With them he was gentle and patient. He was leading the best dog of his kennel, massive Lykos, a dog in the prime of his life. A wolfhound who had killed many wolves, he was the only possible choice for the Xanthika of the basileus’s oldest grandson. Normally it would have been a great dog past its prime, or a lesser dog of the kennel.

Epaenetus was grim, frowned sourly at the arrayed boys. He reached the priests and told Lykos to sit. Lykos sat, his head coming up a bit higher than Epaenetus’s waist. Lykos glanced up from his master to the odd-smelling priest who was clearly the odd-smelling group’s alpha. Lykos could see his master was upset, but trusted that it could not be so bad, for he was not fighting this priest. Epaenetus knelt and patted the dog’s head, mumbling affectionately. Four priests gathered in and each grabbed one of Lykos’s legs. He did not like it, but trusted his master so much that he played along for now.

The nameless priest of Xanthos, still chanting, came from behind and with one practiced, experienced stroke slit the dog’s throat deeply. Blood squirted strongly once, twice, three times. For so many heartbeats Lykos struggled, legs spasming strongly. The priests could barely hold on. But then, suddenly, he slumped and began to sag down. Harsh Epaenetus wept soundlessly, shuffling back to the court. After that it was quick work, cutting the tail off and splitting the rest evenly down the middle. If this had been a less somber and religious occasion Seleukos could easily imagine them whistling as they worked. They did this every year with their knives and cleavers and chisels, making not one unnecessary stroke.

The two halves of great Lykos were hoisted up on spears. The spears were then lowered into ready holes, so the halves stood in the air twice the height of a man and about a plethron [2] apart. Blood and viscera slid down the shaft and dripped down from drooping ribs and guts and the halves of the head.

Still chanting, the warrior-priest of Xanthos beckoned the boys forward. He and his fellow priests stood a few paces apart between the spears. Attendants held bowls of mighty Lykos’s blood at the priests’ sides. Seleukos strode forward to the warrior-priest, and the other boys followed. The man’s arms were covered in blood to the elbows, and he did not yet need to dip his hand into a bowl. “Xanthos we ask you, may this boy die and the man be born,” he chanted, then smeared Seleukos’s mouth and cheeks with his open palm.

Seleukos strode forward with his back straight. The iron taste of dog blood overrode all other smells. He wanted to wipe the sticky mess off his face, but could not, with all the court watching. Every Makedonian warrior had undergone this purification and entry into the world of manhood since time immemorial, since at least the Argeadai began their rule of Makedon. He could not dishonor his entire race by being one, and of the noblest blood at that, to fail. He strode to the neatly folded pile of khlamudes [3] set to the side, and pulled one on.

Now he was a man. He could do great things.

[1] Roughly corresponding to March
[2] One hundred podia, or about one hundred feet
[3] Plural of khlamus, later khlamys or chlamys, a cloak or robe

With Xanthika complete, some of the young men organized into bands who would live off the land for a year, raiding the Paionians and Thrakians to sustain themselves. If they survived to return home, they would be considered men. Others were inducted into the basileus’s army, which could always use more Makedonians. Seleukos Neos was in the latter camp, though as general rather than infantryman. He had learned much of warfare at his grandfather’s elbow, then shoulder–the young prince towered over the old basileus. He had certainly inherited the height, if nothing else, of his maternal grandfather Demetrios Poliorketes. Some old timers even compared him to Demetrios’s father, the massive Antigonos Monophthalmos who had for a time been the strongest diadokhos. The basileus snorted at these assertions. His grandson was tall, but Antigonos had been a giant.

The young man had also learned something of war at Loudias, at the defeat of Antigonos Gonatas. Nevertheless he would be accompanied by advisors and capable captains. No more would he be tutored by his old paidagogos Nikanor. A portion of the army headed east through Thraki to reinforce Akhaios in Bithynia. Seleukos Neos, as he was known, led his army west through the mountains of Makedonia and Apeiros, to the polis of Apollonia. Apollonia governed itself but had for a decade been under Pyrrhos’s protection from the Illyrian tribes to the north. Of course Apollonia had protected itself just fine for centuries, but at least Pyrrhos’s protection included protection from Pyrrhos himself.

Apollonia sat across Ionio Pelagos from Pyrrhos’s nearest Italian ally, Hydrous. More directly Apollonia sat across from Brentesion, a stronghold of the Messapioi. This city was neutral and could not for now be convinced to join Pyrrhos against Rhome. However once the city elders learned the might of Seleukos’s realm backed Pyrrhos in his risky endeavor, they accepted the movement of troops and supplies through their ports and streets. The business soldiers and war brought was always welcome. If the Rhomans happened to win, well, it could easily be argued Brentesion’s hand was forced, unable to resist such a powerful suitor. So Seleukos Neos was welcome to Brentesion, there to assess the situation.

In 30 Meta Seleukos the Rhomans had garrisoned various poleis of Megale Hellas against the Leukanians. One of these was Thourioi, which chafed under the imposition of Rhoman troops. Some elements of Thourioi’s elite appealed to Taras and other poleis of Megale Hellas for aid. It was Taras, widely considered to be the finest polis of Megale Hellas in Italia, who responded immediately. Sending an army and being welcomed mostly with open arms, they drove out the Rhoman garrison of Thourioi...and proceeded to gently plunder the polis.

Some key poleis of Megale Hellas, by Roger D. Woodard, from "The Ancient Languages of Europe"​

Rhome responded with alacrity. Sending a larger army commanded by one of the consuls of the year, Thourioi was retaken without a fight, and Taras was dangerously threatened. There were almost as many men in the Rhoman army than there were citizens of Taras. This is when Taras called for aid from Pyrrhos, a man who was always spoiling for a fight. His first visit was not eventful, but after his return to Apeiros and Makedonia to participate in the Battle of Loudias, he came back to Megale Hellas with a vengeance, and bolstered by some of Seleukos’s forces.

This was early summer of the previous year. At the time he arrived in Taras, the Rhomans were mopping up a war with the Saunitai [1] and Leukanians. Hoping to keep them fighting, Pyrrhos sent them aid. Then he turned his forces west and began to march toward Leukania, to induce the poleis and tribes there to rise against Rhome, and to slaughter the Rhoman garrisons there. Having heard of his arrival, the Senate of Rhome sent consul Publius Valerius Laevinus against him with almost 50,000 men. Laevinus marched to Herakleia and there camped his army, blocking Pyrrhos’s path.

Pyrrhos could range the fertile plain north of Herakleia and Metapontion, but in the end he could not avoid fighting. There was no easy path to Rhome, and in any case he could not leave Laevinus’s massive army to his rear wreaking devastation on his allies and his supply lines. In midsummer, in the dry heat of a morning by the sea, the two massive forces clashed in a first meeting of titans. The Rhoman legion against the Makedonian phalanx.

The day ended with a resounding victory for Pyrrhos. For hours the battle was undecided, Pyrrhos fighting bareheaded, cheered by his own troops and Seleukos’s men. They had seen his victory at Loudias, and trusted he would lead them to victory. It was Laevinus’s death that caused his tribunes to sound an orderly retreat. Despite the orderly retreat, Rhoman resolve was shaken at such losses. A full third of the Rhomans and their allies lay dead on the field, 15,000. Pyrrhos purchased such carnage at a cost of a mere 5,000 of his own men [2]. Where his army had been a bit smaller than the Rhoman, now it was larger again by half.

Rhoman lives bought cheaply some might say, yet Pyrrhos could not agree. Every loss of his was felt acutely. Replacements in any great number were far away across the sea, whereas Rhomans seemed to be able to grow armies in their gardens. Seeing the potential peril, he sent his somewhat-doomsaying counselor Kineas to treat with the Rhomans. From them he asked only freedom for the poleis of Megale Hellas, and even offered to give over the Rhoman prisoners in his possession. By Kineas’s account the Rhomans were inclined to accept (and possibly renege later anyway, when Pyrrhos inevitably had to leave). However the old blind patrician Rhoman hero, builder of roads and aqueducts, twice consul, Appius Claudius Caecus, shamed the Senate into declining the offer of peace.

To this Pyrrhos sighed, shrugged, decided to follow up his victory with a march down the coast of Leukania, as he had planned. He needed to restock his provisions and flocks, recruit more men, and reassure himself that his rear was secure. He was already celebrated as a hero in Taras, Metapontion, and Herakleia. He moved on to glorious receptions in Thourioi, Kroton, and Lokroi among other poleis. Men flocked to his banner. He was grateful for the men to fill his ranks, and soon reinforced his army to beyond its original numbers. However his army was now more diverse, and the men prone to bickering in camp, packed with the petty rivalries of their poleis.

Finally they came to Rhegion, commanding half the strait of Messene. For two years they had suffered under an alliance enforced on them by the Rhomans. When the Rhoman garrison commander Decius Vibelius heard of Pyrrhos’s victory, he knew what choices he had. Flee the emboldened polis and return to Rhome in ignominy, or remain in Rhegion and be inevitably massacred along with the men under his command. He chose a third option open to him. He and his men slaughtered the pro-Rhoman men of the town and declared themselves the new rulers of the polis.

Now Pyrrhos battered into them with a vengeance. To his mind, every Hellene in Megale Hellas was under his protection. The Rhomans of Rhegion would have to die. In this all citizens of Rhegion helped him. Even the pro-Rhoman citizens rose against the tyranny of Decius. It could always be argued he had clearly undone his own command, and was in a state of rebellion and war against Rhome, and so it was the citizens’ duty to defeat him.

With the few hundred Rhomans distracted by a joint siege assault and internal rebellion, Rhegion was liberated at the cost of only a few dozen lives. The surviving Rhomans were handed over to the euphoric citizens of Rhegion, who tore them apart. Pyrrhos donated funds to support repair and recovery of the polis, and installed a garrison at this vital gateway to Sikelia.

Pyrrhos continued on, wrapping around the toe of Italia and beginning the march along the front of the leg of Italia. He was greeted too as a hero in Hipponion and Poseidonia, among other poleis. The story of his generosity at Rhegion was spread far and wide; the story too was used as proof of the destructive insanity of Rhomans. After Poseidonia went the rest of Kampania. Pompeia had only been forced into allied status with Rhome about a decade ago, and was glad to be independent once more. Neapolis too was receptive. News of Pyrrhos’s approach and the Hellenic inhabitants’ indifference and hostility to the Rhoman colonists of Neapolis sent them fleeing toward Lation [3]. Kyme and Kapye were tougher to crack. Kapye especially was a sizable city, and both had Hellenic minorities who held neither civic nor military power. Pyrrhos plundered the wide Kampanian plain between the two cities, and moved on.

Detailed map of the cities and geography of central Italia around this time period, by Wikipedia's ColdEel and Ahenobarbus​

Now he entered truly hostile territory. These were lands loyal to Rhome, towns peopled by Rhoman citizens. These towns he forced his way into and plundered, quickly moving on. Breastworks set ablaze, assaults impossible to defend against given the size of his army, fields stripped clean for cattle fodder if nothing else. Southern Lation was left in ruin. From the coast Pyrrhos marched inland, up the valley of the Leiris River, then the Toleros River. This way he had a fairly gentle hike into the bosom of Lation, and he avoided the dreaded Pomptine Marshes, an area of mosquitoes and disease.

Pyrrhos and his army reached Anagnia, a town some two days from Rhome. There he stopped, and rested his army for a day. He was only some three to five days from Rhome herself, imagined he could see the gleam of the Capitoline Hill. Yet he knew from his scouts, who HAD seen Rhome, that no fewer than three armies waited for him. The army of Publius Valerius Laevinus, done licking its wounds and recruiting, and ready for more action. An army led by Tiberius Coruncianus which had kept the Tyrrhenoi from joining Pyrrhos, and had now marched to Rhome to defend the city. And an army which had been stationed near Rhome, now commanded by proconsul Quintus Marcius Philippus.

Ironic, said Kineas, that a Rhoman commander should bear the name of divine Alexandros’s mortal father. Pyrrhos raised his eyebrows, shrugged. Considered the information of his scouts, and that a fourth Rhoman army sat to his rear. The army at Venusia, on the borderlands between the Saunitai and Leukanoi, was commanded by Lucius Aemilius Barbula, and could hasten at a moment’s notice to cut off any retreat. The odds were not in Pyrrhos’s favor, the Rhoman forces easily numbered three times his own. He would have to turn back, regroup, reinforce Megale Hellas, seek allies among the Saunitai and other Oscans and the Tyrrhenoi, and strategize a way to defeat the Rhoman armies piecemeal.

Pyrrhos’s men were disappointed in turning away from Rhome. Their morale was eroded by harassment from Rhoman scouts. Kineas cleverly made light of it, declaring that the dogs were nipping at the wolf’s heels as he ran off after having devoured every chicken in the coop. Pyrrhos’s army reached Taras safely, the lone Rhoman army at Venusia unwilling to give battle to an undefeated army. The autumn new year turned, and Pyrrhos wintered there in Taras in the year 33 Meta Seleukos.

Now the poleis of Megale Hellas began to worry. They had exchanged one master for another. Pyrrhos would not let his Hellenic Italians go home for the winter. He declared he was their strategos, and as such would not accept discharge until his campaign making Megale Hellas safe was complete. Men began to melt away to desertion, in large helped by the local populace, secreting them to their various home poleis. Nothing could unite the poleis better than avoiding foreign domination and tyranny. The worsening situation forced Pyrrhos to begin his spring campaign early.

Over the winter the Rhoman presence at Venusia, among other things, had preyed on Pyrrhos’s mind. He could never safely attack Rhome herself while she occupied such a strong position behind his lines. He must focus, and push the Rhomans steadily north. Venusia, Lukeria, and Aikai were his main targets that spring. To his purposes he bent the Apoulians and Daunioi, two peoples increasingly depressed by Hellenic interference. Together they marched on the Hellenic polis of Canusion, a Rhoman ally. The polis swiftly changed sides to support Pyrrhos.

From there they marched up the Aufidios River, to well-fortified Venusia. Pyrrhos laid siege to the town, vital to Rhoman control of the south. He sent feelers out to the Saunitai. Then he heard Seleukos Neos had landed in Brentesion. He sent the young man a message requesting they join forces, and waited.

[1] Samnites
[2] Seleukos’s forces, and the greater coordination between them and Pyrrhos’s men, led to this better result for Pyrrhos
[3] Probably correct Greek for Latium, right?

 

[Dagoth Ur]

APOLLONIDAI OF THE OIKOUMENE
Siege of Aphrodisia, Summer 33 Meta Seleukos​

The shadows were still long in front of them as they rounded the bend in the road, and it came into sight. The siege camp was teeming with activity. Men sitting to rest or eat a late breakfast, women carrying buckets to fill from water wagons, errand boys and messengers dashing between rows of tents, slaves carrying or dragging logs, soldiers forming up in ranks or standing guard. The one hundred and one duties and functions of a military force. Seleukos Neos smiled. The same eager smile had been on his face ever since he had marched out of Makedonia, through the mountains at the head of his own army.

“So there it is,” Alexandros son of Krateros, grandson of the famous general Krateros, said. He eyed the activity critically. He stroked the fuzz on his upper lip as if that could make it grow any faster. “Let’s see if Pyrrhos really does know all there is to know about soldiering.”

“There it is,” old Balakros said heavily, spurring his horse to the young man’s side and squinting. “What in the world could there be for you to teach a seasoned man like Pyrrhos?” He swiveled to squint at Seleukos in turn. “Remember my prince, you aren’t two boys playing soldier.”

“Old sourpuss,” Seleukos smiled sunnily, then whooped. “Come cousin, let’s show our allies our flair!” The young men spurred their horses forward, and their entourage cursed or laughed, following. Heads turned and men began to cheer and laugh as the party approached the edge of the camp. Seleukos and Pyrrhos had been in near constant communication for some days now, it had been well known they would arrive this morning, and the scouts had already been to the camp shortly after dawn. Seleukos took off his helmet and raised it to all in greeting. “Hail, people of Pyrrhos, men of Apeiros and Megale Hellas and Makedonia, hail!” He repeated the greeting several times as he neared the command pavilion.

A few hundred men could have stood in formation in front of the pavilion. People were gathering around to see the newcomers. Stableboys were already lounging against the building, ready to take the horses. Seleukos and his companions had no trouble halting their horses and dismounting. “Wow,” Alexandros breathed after their gallop. “Pyrrhos does think big.”

The famous Pyrrhos of Apeiros, quite accurate to the existing statues, posted by Nikos (@Achaios) on Twitter, not sure if it's his own work​

“Think big, win big.” Seleukos turned to see who had spoken. Alexandros stepped to the side to see around his taller friend. Pyrrhos had creases at the corners of his eyes and his hair was shot through with grey, but otherwise he looked young and fit, with a boyish face and strong nose. “Prince Seleukos,” Pyrrhos bowed his helmeted head, “I am honored that you could join me. May you be as much of a nikator as your grandfather and namesake.” Behind him stood other men, all captains or generals, and what looked to be a soothsayer.

“Basileus Pyrrhos,” Seleukos bowed in kind. “The honor is mine. You are the anointed basileus, not I. You have spent these years becoming a legend in Hellas with your warmaking where I have no experience.”

Pyrrhos clapped him on the shoulder and grinned a wide, boyish grin. “We will remedy that, we will take the fight to these Rhomans and Karkhedonians [1] so hard that, did you not have royal blood, you would grow sick of winning.” He eyed the young man up and down. “It’s been two years since I last saw you, when you and your grandfather saw me off after Loudias, right? And you are not even at the end of your man’s growth yet. You will be a giant, a great warrior like Telamonian Aias [2].”

Seleukos smiled affably. “I am already as tall as my grandfather Demetrios Poliorketes, or so people tell me. But I hope my success in war, and in statecraft, is more like my other grandfather’s.”

“Psh,” Pyrrhos waved a hand around at the camp. “Statecraft, a bureaucrat’s game. The proper duty and pastime of noblemen is war, prince. War! Now your grandfather Poliorketes’s skill in siegecraft, so much that he got his nickname for it, that’s what we could use now!”

“By all means, let’s inspect the siegeworks. I am eager to learn.”

Pyrrhos opened his mouth to answer but Balakros stepped into the gap. “May I speak, my prince?”

“In this company, you are always welcome to speak,” Seleukos said. “Basileus Pyrrhos, this is Balakros, my highest advisor.”

“My prince, first and foremost we should see to the disposition of your camp. Where we should camp, the state of water supply, the status of the siege. Then we must learn from basileus Pyrrhos what the lay of the land is, information his scouts have been able to obtain, and such things. Then we will be ready to consider the siegeworks and siege weapons.”

Seleukos considered this and nodded. “So it shall be. I should start with the basics.”

And so it went. Venusia–once the Hellenes gleaned the origin of the name, they renamed the town Aphrodisia–sat on a small, gentle hill among other small, gentle, rolling hills. There were only several dribbling creeks in the area, so wells were dug for water. Pyrrhos’s army had access to several smaller wells that were outside the city walls, but he augmented it with barrels filled at Lake Lokon [3], some ten milia away. Aphrodisia itself had ravines on two sides, so a besieging army would only need to fully guard two of the sides of town. No organized attack or escape could be made through the ravines. However messages could be smuggled out fairly easily, so those areas still needed to be watched.

As it was, Pyrrhos’s army was spread out a bit thin for comfort. He was grateful to consolidate his forces, and allow Seleukos Neos and his fresh troops to fill the gap. Pyrrhos’s command pavilion was built on a mound across the ravine from the town’s akropolis. The encampment around it was just a small area to support his activities. He wanted to stay close and visible to the town’s commanders. Seleukos Neos–with Balakros’s advice–built his own command on the opposite side of Aphrodisia, at the rear end of the town, and close. He stood as a threat, and divided the defenders’ attention. His men spread their camp out to embrace half the town. Now the two allies surrounded the town comfortably, and a breakout would not greatly threaten any side.

No doubt the Rhomans were calling their levies to war, having heard of the siege. The new consuls of the year–amazing, that a people should be so successful without a monarkh to lead them–would be organizing the legions. The Senate would be deciding the campaigns of the year, and surely the fight with Pyrrhos and Seleukos would be the largest. Starting so early in the season gave Pyrrhos a distinct advantage. Aphrodisia, Rhome’s southernmost tentacle, was now vulnerable. Useful in threatening and controlling the Saunitai, Daunioi, Apoulians, and cities of Megale Hellas, it could not be allowed to fall.

Late in the afternoon the men watched Seleukos’s wagons roll into his camp. “Those look heavy, and well guarded,” said a black bearded Apeirote, pointing. “That is the treasure you’ve brought with you?” Seleukos and Balakros stood, wide eyed.

Pyrrhos chuckled and clapped the man on the back. “Kineas doesn’t miss much.”

“I was thinking to distribute gifts and arms to the Saunitai, and induce them to join us in warfare. At the very least they could sabotage Rhoman military operations and force them to keep extra reserves at home guarding Rhome, when they could be here fighting us.”

“An excellent idea,” Pyrrhos nodded. “You have heard then that the Rhomans entered some Sauni towns and confiscated their weapons and armor? What arrogance!” He shook his head and growled. He stood lost in thought for a moment. “You,” he called to an aide. “See if the prodromoi [4] have finished their raiding of nearby farmsteads. It’s growing late and I want to make sure they’re back safely. Go.” He turned back to Seleukos. “You’re sure those horse archers of yours are somewhat civilized? They look wild, I wouldn’t want them hurting non-Rhomans who could be good allies.”

“I am sure. They are led by Makedonian officers, and they know how to speak like civilized men, and they obey orders.”

Pyrrhos nodded. “Well, that’s good. I’ll need the people of Italia on my side as well, if I’m to win. The Rhomans’ problem is they want to subjugate everybody, complete domination. I just want to rule over them, and leave them to their own devices.”

Later still, they inspected the siege weapons. “We have already had some of them built, but I wanted to wait for you to inaugurate them. Fairly standard lithoboloi and oxybeles, but my chief engineer has made some improvements.”

An oxybelos, by Wikipedia's Arz​

They looked over the machines. Alexandros grunted, “Remember those from Korinthos?”

Seleukos grinned. “Ah, I didn’t know you got to see them up close. I entered the polis after Korinthos gave itself over to us.”

Alexandros shook his head. “First the garrison delivered me and my father to you and your grandfather. Then you left us under guard. As they were delivering us, we passed through the camp and saw your lithoboloi and oxybeles which you didn’t get to use.” He gazed up at Pyrrhos’s machines. “But these are bigger than what you had at Korinthos.” He was right. The oxybeles was the same height off the ground, about waist high, but with a more massive, and a longer draw. The arrows had to be as long as a man was tall. The lithoboloi were normal, except for one, which stood twice as high off the ground. The stones piled next to it were large, about the size of a dog–but not as large as great Lykos, the sacrificed wolfhound of his Xanthika. Men had to use rods and spears as levers to roll the stones around, and it took two men to even lift them off the ground.

A balding man with gnarled, chapped hands appeared from behind the lithobolos. “Basileus, prince,” the man said, bowing. “My name is Antigenes, chief engineer. I call her Aphrodite. She will take her own city back, so she will not be occupied by these barbarians any longer, who name her Venusia.”

A lithobolos, similar to Aphrodite, probably from an Osprey history book​

“Good name,” Seleukos nodded. “We will sacrifice to her in the morning. How heavy are the stones?”

Antigenes looked pleased. “A typical siege lithobolos throws stones that weigh one talenton [5]. Aphrodite throws stones that weigh two or three times that. I have tested her on a farmhouse not far from here. Blew the wall right down.”

Seleukos nodded, impressed. “Aphrodisia has walls twenty podia thick, and twenty or thirty podia tall in places. I think your Aphrodite will be able to make some good breaches for us, and in a short time.”

“That is what I’m hoping for, prince. I like watching walls fall down,” Antigenes smiled.

“The simple desires of a not so simple man,” Pyrrhos winked. “Though I prefer watching girls’ clothes fall down, myself.” When the laughter died down he continued, “Antigenes really is a genius of rare sort. If you do wish to become poliorketes like your mother’s father, he could teach you what you need to know.”

Finally it was time to sleep. Had he really only ridden into the siege camp that morning? It seemed at least a few days had passed. Images of stones, lithoboloi, women carrying water, houses falling, horses galloping freely, flitted through his mind. Someone stepped into the room, and from the step he knew it was Balakros. “What is it, sourpuss?”

The grizzled old veteran chuckled. He strode to the bed, carrying a candle, and tugged Seleukos’s ear. “Careful, scoundrel. Learn too much and I can leave even sooner. I have children and grandchildren waiting for me Ekbatana.”

Seleukos looked at him for a moment, and seriously. “I didn’t know that.” There was some silence between them. “I’ll learn fast then. How did I do today?”

“Strange,” the old man shook his head, “for a noble to be asking advice of me. Our basileus sure is a different sort. I guess that’s why he’s nikator, and the last diadokhos left standing. He knows how other men think, and he’s trying to make sure you learn the same.”

There was another silence. “So…how’d I do then, sourpuss?”

“Oh, right. Quite well. Riding into camp showed off your youth and energy, brought the men’s morale up even higher than it already was.” He sighed and knelt beside the bed with a groan. “Pyrrhos seems like a good man, easy to deal with, though I wouldn’t want to tell him he needs to treat the men of the poleis as free men and not servants. You made dispositions just as I would have, and you listened to advisors, and I’m not just saying that because I am an advisor.” The old man took a breath and went on, “The truly smart man knows when he doesn’t know enough, or when other people know more than he does. He takes their advice. When I was your age I thought I knew everything, then I realized I don’t know anything at all. Most men are this way, and some pay dearly for it. If you really are as I’ve known you these weeks, you have the makings of a great basileus, perhaps greater than your grandfather.”

Seleukos smiled easily. “I’m glad to hear it. But if I become greater than my grandfather, it would only be because I am standing on his shoulders. What other mortal could have almost reunited divine Alexandros’s empire?”

“There are some,” the old man said, staring into space, “who say your grandfather is also divine, a son of Apollon, carrying on the work of his kinsman Alexandros. Or so some men say, in Ekbatana and other eastern parts of the world.” Seleukos said nothing, eyes glittering in the candlelight. “Anyway, you have much to think on. Good night, my prince.”

“Rest well, good Balakros.” The man was gone in a moment, and again the room was dark. Images flitted again, of stones, and lithoboloi, and…he opened his eyes and saw the coming dawn was lightening the room.

[1] Carthaginians
[2] Ajax, from the Iliad
[3] Locone, in Italian
[4] Light cavalry who serve as scouts and shock cavalry in battle
[5] Around sixty pounds

At dawn the following morning, sacrifices were made to Aphrodite. Then her namesake, the great lithobolos, was hauled onto a special ramp, built to bring her higher in the air and closer to the city’s walls. The lithobolos was aimed and wound up. Seleukos Neos had the honor of pulling the tension pin. He did so swiftly, in one smooth motion. The sharp scrape of stone against steel, a few breathless moments watching the arc of the stone’s path, then the satisfaction of the burst of bricks and white and brown dust spew from the wall. A moment later came the crack, and shouts of alarm. The assembled troops cheered, and the commanders left the engineers to their work.

The other lithoboloi, and the oxybeles, followed suit. From then on the inhabitants of Aphrodisia would have no rest. Pyrrhos was determined to crack them, punish them for not surrendering. He had allowed the word of Seleukos’s approach spread freely the previous week, hoping the garrison would sally out to fight him before the prince’s arrival. He saw now their resolve. They would try to hold out and wait for rescue. In return he would pummel them into dust.

The oxybeles were not often used. Their crews peered like hawks into the distant streets, their main game being people and cattle. Aphrodisia was normally a town of perhaps five thousand inhabitants. The Rhoman had colonized some 20,000 fighting men in the surrounding farmland. Now most of those men and their families were stuffed into the town, and suffering. The Sauni natives, vastly outnumbered, were helpless to override the Rhomans’ commands. They were relegated to second class citizens in their own town. As the days wore on they were the first to go hungry.

Steadily the Rhoman army approached. Kineas and a heavy guard were sent to the cities of Saunitia bearing the well-wishes, treasures, and arms of Seleukos Neos. The Saunitai, incensed at being so ill-treated by the Rhomans, took up the arms and funds enthusiastically. With a late start, they nonetheless began to raise their own levies and set about ensuring defense of their lands. Word came from spies to the north, in the midst of the Apenninon Mountains. Part of the army steadily making its way to Aphrodisia peeled off and made for the land of the Volski, south of Lation. The Rhoman fear of enemies so near to the city forced them to encamp that army, joined by the consular army, at Akounon, or Rhoman Aquinum, on the very border of Saunitia.

Detailed map of the cities and geography of central Italia around this time period, by Wikipedia's ColdEel and Ahenobarbus​

So Pyrrhos was glad, and made the fact known to the people packed into Aphrodisia. Their city would fall, with only a weak army approaching to relieve it. The Rhoman army crept closer, marching from the midst of the Apenninon Mountains to the formerly Apoulian stronghold of Teanon in just seven days. Pyrrhos frowned. They could be at Aphrodisia in four days if they didn’t stop to rest, surely in seven days at even a relaxed pace. He cursed the two days that had been wasted moving the siege weapons to the other side of the city. Pyrrhos had initially wanted them near to him, but he realized breaches on the ravine side of the city were probably useless. His men would have to hack through brushes and stumble through snake-infested grasses to reach the far side, arriving as a disorganized mess. On the other side, by Seleukos’s command pavilion, the breaches could be made on flat land. The gates could be flattened, and the natural breach that provided could be widened by the assault of lithoboloi.

When the Rhomans reached Arpoi, Pyrrhos acted. He had to have the city in his hands and well plundered before fighting a battle. He could not turn back now, with nothing accomplished! The Rhomans had been picking up levies from their colonies down the coast as they marched, and now the army had swelled to well over 60,000 men, larger than the combined forces of Pyrrhos and Seleukos. Pyrrhos cursed. They grew on trees!

The next dawn, for a few hours the lithoboloi assault on the walls were redoubled, slaves and engineers moving at a feverish pace, snapping several tension cords from normal wear and tear. Meanwhile the bulk of the armies were moved to the plain west of the town, while remnants remained on all sides to keep up the threat of infiltrating units, and distract the defenders. A month of siege had had its effect on the defenders. The native Sauni had all fled or died of starvation, and some Rhoman civilians were following suit. Many of the soldiers were weaker and emaciated than they should have been, sharing their precious allotment of food with their wives and children. In the past few days some wells had run dry, too, and thirsty men despaired of salvation. They knew the fate of their wives and children should the city fall.

Seleukos assaulted from the west, the first major contact of the forces. His hoplitai and hypaspitai jogged in formation, shields raised. Arrows rained on them from the several thousand Rhomans on the walls who still had the strength to draw bows. Dozens of men fell screaming, or slumped to the ground and were half-carried by their companions. But there would be no rest to them where they were going. Rhomans waited in the breach, pushing forward, shouting furiously in their barbarian tongue.

Guts spilled and blood sprayed as the Rhoman xiphe [1] met Makedonian and Apeirote and Hellenic spears. Hundreds of yards away the lithoboloi and oxybeles kept on propelling their stones and massive arrows into the Rhomans packing the streets of Aphrodisia, and the Rhomans on the walls. Anything to thin the Rhoman ranks, and widen the front of attack, was useful. The wider the front of attack got, the more useful the Hellenic advantage in numbers would be.

The fighting wore on, and became disorganized. Men stumbled on and tripped over corpses, or slipped on guts and other viscera. It would have to be the Rhomans who fell back from the chaos. If the Makedonians fell back, they would have to fight doubly hard to regain the ground and enter the breach once more. “We could charge in!” Alexandros exclaimed, white fist clenching his cloak. His horse nearby neighed nervously at his agitation. He paced the same nervous steps he had paced the entirety of the battle, called up again to Seleukos. “Charge in, drive them back!”

“Are you mad?” Seleukos called down dispassionately from Aphrodite’s platform. “There are a thicket of Rhomans there who don’t have the space to shy from our charge. We’d kill a few dozen of them, then they’d fall in on us from all sides and slaughter us.”

“What will we do, then? We can’t let the fighting just slog on like this, with the other army to face in a couple of days.”

“Pyrrhos is well known for a reason, cousin.”

And so he was. Other men under his command, mainly Hellenes of the poleis of Megale Hellas, stood in formation facing the city’s other gates, preventing a sally. They stood and hurled abuse at the defenders. Pyrrhos knew the men of the poleis had less resolve in fighting for him, so he could not use them in the crucial breach of Seleukos. However their bitterness would be well used in demoralizing–and distracting–the defenders with constant taunts.

Pyrrhos himself had led two hundred chosen Makedonians down into the ravine the previous night. They wore no armor, only thick woolen clothes to muffle sound and keep warm during the night. For arms they carried javelins and xiphe, easily handled and making no noise. They slept there under the bushes and in the tall snake-infested grass, trusting to the goddess Aphrodite whom they were serving, and in glorious Tukhe [2]. Tukhe must have supported her mother Aphrodite, for not a man was bitten. They lay in the shade that bright morning, keeping out of sight. The grass grew warm under them, the din of the battle was muffled, almost comforting in its remoteness.

Then it came. The high, clear horn note was the signal for them to attack. Pyrrhos glanced up through the foliage to the walls dozens of podia above. The enemy soldiers guarding this breach at the ravine must have been pulled away, to participate in Seleukos’s meat grinder. The Rhomans had seen neither hide nor hair of soldiers on this side of the wall. The Rhoman command on the town’s old akropolis could clearly see Pyrrhos’s camp, and any attack that came from that direction. But they did not look down as two hundred men darted up the slope to the breach.

The Rhomans had made a good attempt to shore up the gap with rubble and debris and raw concrete, but the jumbled mess was easy enough to climb over. With no men above or on the other side to attack the climbers, they were quickly over the wall and into a screaming crowd of ragged women and bony children. Pyrrhos was first to raise his sword and hack away, making room to organize. His men dashed through houses smashing amphores and starting fires. They ran quickly, spreading mayhem and hurrying to keep ahead of the Rhoman soldiers rushing to seek them. The Rhomans were exhausted with the stress of waiting all night for what might be their doom, and with little water and almost no food to go around. But they made up for that in numbers, thousands against Pyrrhos’s two hundred. So the damage was done, hundreds of blazes were set to roast the Rhoman civilians alive and hopefully distract their soldiers, and Pyrrhos and his crack-men vaulted the breach again and disappeared into the ravine.

The plan worked. None chased Pyrrhos over the wall, too weak to scale it and in any case busy putting out fires and trying to understand the devastation. In Seleukos’s battle at the breach the Rhomans heard the screams, saw and smelled the thick smoke. Their town was burning, their women and children were exposed to the enemy. Who knew, at Seleukos’s breach, how many enemies were already spreading through the streets looting and massacring and raping? The Rhomans at the breach began to turn, run to save their families.

The bloodied, wild-eyed Makedonian hoplitai and hypaspitai of Seleukos grinned like wolves and followed close behind.

[1] Plural of xiphos, sword; Rhomans mostly used their variation of the xiphos, adapted from the Hellenes, prior to the more famous “gladius”
[2] Also known as Tyche, goddess of luck. Originally the prosperity and guiding force of a polis, during and after the time of Alexandros Tukhe became associated with truly random whims of fate which affected the lives of people and nations

Rough, basic diagram of the order of battle, overlaid on top of modern Venosa, which today contains about the same amount of inhabitants as the ancient city did​

 

[Dagoth Ur]

APOLLONIDAI OF THE OIKOUMENE
A Plea for Peace, Summer 33 Meta Seleukos to Fall 33 Meta Seleukos​

Stratonike strode purposefully past the richly painted columns of the Garden of Apama. The pillars were covered in vivid scenes depicting the campaigns of divine Alexandros, and of basileus Seleukos. The capitals contained scenes of the divine, carved out and almost lifelike. Herakles defeating the Nemean lion, Apollon slaying the serpent Python, Akhilleus taking his revenge upon Hektor, and other frozen images, all depicting killing and bloodshed. Stratonike flicked her gaze over the images, then looked forward again, shuddering. Is that all men can think about, killing? With the man she was going to confront today, she couldn’t stop the impish thought, Killing, and sex.

Her girls and ladies trailed behind her, grim in service of their mistress. Men and servants stood aside for their basilissa, the men bowing deeply, the servants collapsing to hands and knees, and going quiet at the look on her set face. What had happened? Some disaster in Makedonia or Italia? Slowly Stratonike’s ladies had a trailing entourage of their own, curious at what would apparently be court drama. They followed her ladies, who followed her, as she turned right at the column depicting the Battle of Ipsos at which her grandfather Antigonos Monophthalmos was killed, and which was his only defeat.

The garden, the finest in the palace, was named for basileus Seleukos’s first wife Apama, mother of Stratonike’s husband Antiokhos. It was widely held to be the finest in the palace. Not for its size, for the largest was the Garden of Alexandros, but for its orderly arranged fragrant, fruitful citrus trees. The trees had been planted and trimmed to perfectly line up with the colonnades on all four sides of the garden. Not too tall, the trees had been trimmed to devote their energies to stretching their branches out to all sides. So it was that now, twenty-five years after construction of the city and palace, even at high noon on this summer’s day, every part of the garden was in cool shade.

Between the trees was soft grass kept very short. Stratonike wished she could walk barefoot on the cool grass, but her mission forbade it for now. She had to keep her silver-laced sandals on to look every inch a basilissa. She saw them well now. Her husband the basileus Antiokhos, her rangy son Antiokhos, the strategos Telesarkhos, that wretched charlatan Deimakhos, the priest of Zeus Belos whose name she didn't know, and other men. The men turned at her silent approach, eyes drawn to her bright white robes, the silver diadem and the silver crescent-shaped plate it supported, the golden hair done up in the Babylonian style shining around the diadem. The silver paled in comparison to the gold. Deimakhos stopped his babbling and bowed, as the men all bowed, except for her husband.

Her boy, at least the only one with her now, walked calmly to her and hugged her. Only seven years ago she’d birthed him, and already he came up to her shoulder. She smoothed his brown curls and bent to kiss each long-lashed green-yellow eye. So like his father. She looked up to see her husband, his mild, unreadable expression. No doubt he knew already what she would demand, and was trying to think of a way out of it. Putting her arm around her son’s shoulders she took some steps forward.

“Excuse me for my interruption, gentlemen. Deimakhos,” she inclined your head to him, “I know you were speaking, and your words are always most valuable. Yet I must interrupt, to plead for the mercy of my master.” She bowed her head, facing her husband. He was silent, but all could hear and see the spread through the area of the people who had followed her. They had quite an audience now. He was still silent, possibly he was giving himself time to think. She forged on.

“My father Demetrios, breaker of walls, perished three years ago. All his life he was a man of action, practiced in war and experienced in battle, a target of assassins and traitors. Yet despite the danger, he died of a broken heart, an oppressed spirit. Our great basileus Seleukos defeated him, and my father robbed him of eternal victory by drinking himself to death. I beg you, great basileus, my husband, do not allow my brother Antigonos to languish and to allow himself to suffer my father’s fate. Know he is your servant in all things, and a great man.”

“All of you, leave us,” her husband said. His flinty eyes darted to Arkhias, the captain of the palace guard, whose subordinates began to herd everyone out of earshot.

Stratonike hugged her son again and kissed him on the forehead. “Go now, my dear.” He went off with a hug. When the court was at an acceptable distance she raised her eyebrows, knowing she must look too smug. “Well, my husband?”

He narrowed his eyes and hissed, “What a way to do it! Maybe you should join your brother.”

Antiochus I and Stratonike, Jacques-Louis David (1774). Basileus Seleukos is offering his own wife Stratonike to his ill, bedridden son Antiokhos, who is in love with her​

“What other choice did you give me? It has been a year to the day I have been begging you, since my brother arrived. He is my blood.”

“He’s a threat!” Antiokhos snarled, punching his palm. He could not yell, for the court to hear. “A basileus who has worn his own diadem, he will never be a credible or safe servant to myself, or our two sons.”

“Nonetheless, he is my blood. You are lucky, that your brother Akhaios obeys you in all things. He is no threat to you. Can you say the same of our son Antiokhos? When he grows he may be a greater threat than any other man alive to our son Seleukos. Would you want your own son imprisoned by his own brother, his flesh and blood, for being a threat?”

“Yes, woman, yes!” Antiokhos’s eyes were wide and staring. “May Hestia bless you for caring for your family. But it is a greater service to our family to protect us from threats. Thousands of good Hellenes, and not a few loyal Makedonians, died as a result of your brother’s foolishness in resisting my father. There are now hundreds or thousands of boys and girls without fathers, women without husbands, mothers without sons. Would you create more widows?”

Stratonike scoffed. “You’ve been over this ground before, husband. You try to play my heartstrings, but I know you believe none of what you say. You would create a thousand times a thousand widows, for your empire.”

“I would,” Antiokhos nodded without hesitation. “For myself and for our sons, I would do anything it takes. And for our daughters, come to think of it. I will tell any man so, and any man would agree with me.”

Stratonike clenched her hands in frustration, at her husband and at herself. She could not deny the flush of heat when he denied her so damn logically. “The whole court will know of your cruelty!” she said, loud enough for the spectators to hear. She turned on her heel and walked away.

“Let them!” Antiokhos said loudly and matter-of-factly. Her ladies and girls closed in on her but she brushed them away, walked through them. Arkhias and his guardsmen letting them free, the court crowded around Antiokhos and his entourage, eager for details that were not forthcoming. Back under the colonnade, Stratonike slowed her furious bustle when she saw a handsome, dusty messenger, holding a sheet of byblos [1], striding behind a servant. Stratonike stopped and turned to watch the man, then followed him back into the garden.

He walked up to Antiokhos and knelt, head bowed, lifting the sheet. The basileus plucked it from the man’s hand and waved for babbling Deimakhos to stop talking once more. He read the packed sheet for a time. The court was silent, unsuccessful in gleaning the news from Antiokhos’s inscrutable, neutral face. At last he looked up. “A letter from our father in Makedonia. Our son Seleukos has won a great victory against the Rhoman oppressors in Italia!” A cheer went up from the gathered people. “He has taken one of the Rhoman basileis prisoner.”

Telesarkhos nodded. “The Rhomans elect two basileis every year, whom they call konsuls. To lose a konsul this early in the year is ill indeed for them.”

“Hippolokhos!” the basileus called. The priest of Zeus Belos snapped to attention, bowing. “We will offer sacrifices and feasting to Zeus Belos, in honor of our son’s victory, and to gain favor for the victories to come. We shall thank our son for protecting all Hellenes in Italia against the Rhoman threat.” He said this last with a pointed stare at Stratonike.

She turned with a hiss of derision and left the men to their celebrations.

[1] Common word for papyros, or papyrus, when it is not used as foodstuff

The trouble was, Iapygia [1] was all flat land. Saunitia to the west was quite hilly, but the Rhoman army wasn’t coming from that direction. It was coming from the north, over flat land. Seleukos and Alexandros scratched their heads at the problem. They had hit their enemy where it hurt, brutally sacking Aphrodisia and killing some 20,000 Rhoman fighting men with relatively light losses of their own. But if they withdrew now, or rather fled, they would leave all the Hellenes of Italia vulnerable to Rhome's vengeance.

Once the daylong sack of the city was over, and none lived there but dogs and rats, and the allied army was arranged in marching order, Pyrrhos gave his orders. The men would march southwest into Saunitia, then northwest through Saunitia, then to Kampania and Lation to continue his campaign of last year. The Rhoman army would have no choice but to give chase through hostile Sauni territory. Then the Hellenes and the Saunitai would coordinate to ambush and destroy the Rhoman army.

The quick prodromoi lagged behind for half a day desecrating corpses, looting and burning more of the town, and leaving messages. They left small heaps of lopped off heads, genitals, and breasts in the city’s main squares, and smeared taunts with their own excrement on sooty walls. Stringing corpses from the battlements the Rhomans were likely to see first, the prodromoi congratulated themselves on a job well done. They ecstatically found and looted an untouched wine cellar, and raced their horses to rejoin the main army.

Consul Publius Decius Mus wept when he saw what had been done to his people. He vowed revenge, and pursued the Hellenic army posthaste. This is exactly what Pyrrhos wanted him to do. He followed them into Saunitia, into hills and back ways which had avoided Rhoman devastation in their last major war eleven years ago. There Pyrrhos and his Sauni allies fell upon the Rhomans and slaughtered them almost to a man. All survivors were taken as slaves and sent off to Syroi except for one, consul Publius Decius Mus.

The Death of Decius Mus in Battle, Rubens (1618). Depicted is the grandfather of Pyrrhos's enemy Decius Mus, who ritually sacrificed himself in battle to ensure the victory of his army against the rebel Latins seventeen years before the death of Megas Alexandros​

Then began the liberation of Saunitia. Pyrrhos realized his rear would be secure, in more ways than one, and he would have greater numbers in Lation, if he was a good friend to the Saunitai now. His rear would be secure when he proceeded to Lation, and if he had to retreat from Lation or left for his own reasons, any Rhoman revenge would first have to spend itself re-subjugating Saunitia. If they were even capable of doing so once he was through with them.

In twenty days segments of the army, led by Sauni allies, traveled through all of Saunitia, liberating it from the Rhoman presence. Rhoman and other Latin colonies were destroyed, the people driven off or killed, the valuables seized and added to the growing loot train or secreted away with none the wiser. The army joined up again to assault Malieis [2], the most important town in Saunitia. Here the looting and destruction were kept to a minimum, since many of the homes and contents of the town had belonged to Sauni families just eleven years prior.

It was now Panemos [3]. In Malieis the Sauni chiefs, brigand leaders, and commanders held conference to draft a treaty of alliance with the basileus of Apeiros, and the basileus of Makedonia, with Seleukos standing in for his grandfather. The conference was brief as all were eager to burst into Lation and take revenge on the Rhomans. Progress was swift through the areas reached by Pyrrhos the previous year. Many villages and towns were still depopulated, or were indefensible due to damaged walls and gates. The tough cities of Kyme and Kapye, populated by Rhomans and Latins, had been ignored by Pyrrhos previously. This year he would liberate Kampania by seizing these two cities and placing their Hellenic citizens in charge of all non-Hellenes.

Dividing the work, Seleukos took a contingent of the army and all the siege weapons, and sat in front of Kapye to reduce the city. He was keen to prove himself as much a poliorketes as his grandfather Demetrios Poliorketes had been. He spent long hours poring over drawings and calculations with chief engineer Antigenes. He learned more about physike than Aristotle had ever taught divine Alexandros and his companions.

Meanwhile the rest of the army ranged over Kampania raiding and looting. Most land was promised to the Saunitai, who had the presence and population to support occupation of the land. In Kampania the Hellenes wanted only the cities of Neapolis (which they already controlled) and Kyme. Kapye had been a Sauni town, and would be a Sauni town once more. And before Panemos had run its course Kapye was indeed Sauni once more with comparatively few losses.

Seleukos moved on to Kyme, and here he had the help of spies within the walls. In addition he now had eager Sauni allies who placed themselves under his command. By turning Kapye over to their people, he had proven himself as a true ally. One night the gates of Kyme were opened from within, and Saunitai crept through the streets killing hundreds before the alarm was raised. A brief battle ensued, with Hellenes barricading themselves in their homes. From the top of Kyme’s walls Seleukos watched dawn rise between the double peak of Mount Gauros, which had over sixty years ago been the site of a victory of the Rhomans over the Saunitai.

He was welcomed back to the main army as a hero, and they proceeded to Lation. Rhome was now scrambling. One consular army had been destroyed. The other, under Publius Sulpicius Saverrio, was 30,000 men strong and sitting tight to defend Rhome. A proconsular army was involved in fighting the Ombroi [4] to the north and could not leave Rhoman colonists to their fate. The hard decision was made by the Senate for the proconsular army to help the colonists pack up, and bring them to Lation for the time being. Resources wasted due to abandoning a colony paled in comparison to losing the city itself. Meanwhile all Rhoman land south of Lation was ripe for the picking.

On the fifteenth day of Loios [5] the allied army passed through Anagnia, and in three days true, Rhoman, Latin Lation. The wide, flat, fertile plain of the Tiberis was spread before them. A mere two or three days away, at most, was the city of Rhome. Between them and the city stood the consular and proconsular armies. The numbers had swollen to almost 150,000 men in the past month from recruitment, drafting, and impressment. Men from as far as fifty milia away came, and armed and brought their slaves too, to protect the center of their state from the liberating, looting tide of Hellas.

Pyrrhos frowned thoughtfully. He had 75,000 to the Rhomans’ 150,000, for the Saunitai of course counted in his numbers. His professional soldiers and the Saunitai were certainly higher quality than the rabble that made up almost two thirds of the Rhoman army, but even a rabble’s neck served to dull a sword and tire the arm that swung the sword. And he had to think too of the 50,000 Rhoman regular soldiers, propertied and respectable men all, many who had seen their handful or more of campaigns.

The Rhomans had poor and not numerous cavalry, and of course no elephants to speak of. Their regular infantry were excellent, perhaps even better than Pyrrhos’s own. And Pyrrhos still had lithoboloi and oxybeles in their wagons. It would have to do. On the seventeenth day of Loios the Rhoman legions drew up for battle in front of the town of Gabii, some eleven milia from Rhome herself. Pyrrhos’s discerning eye determined which areas of the line were made up of the least experienced troops. He arranged his army so the elephants and cavalry would encounter those parts of the Rhoman line first. He could not allow the green, desperate troops to be emboldened by the valor and example of their experienced fellows.

His strategy went flawlessly. His elephants and cavalry dissolved the inexperienced segments of the Rhoman line before they even hit. Then they were, by default, flanking the other segments of the Rhoman line, which then came under simultaneous attack from the front by Pyrrhos’s infantry. The foe fought valiantly, but it was a lost cause. Rhoman tribunes and the consul and proconsul fell in the fighting before the line was worn ragged. Routing men were chased northwest directly into the lake behind Gabii. Desperate to escape the carnage, some men even stripped their armor away and swam off into the lake. But the lake is round and less than a milia across, they were easily caught. Other pockets of resistance stubbornly fought to the last man, with one Rhoman managing to take a priceless elephant down. Pyrrhos howled in pain. Each beast was worth dozens of men, maybe more.

They barely stopped to rest, lest they allow the Rhomans time to regroup and conjure another army out of thin air. They marched the ten milia to Rhome before nightfall, the prodromoi riding ahead to raid, and to clear out small groups of citizens determined to make a stand no matter how hopeless. In the morning they began assembling the siege weapons. Seleukos grinned from great Aphrodite’s platform as she heaved and shook, casting the first stone. By midday the Senate sent an embassy suing for peace. Pyrrhos allowed the bombardment to go on while he and Seleukos received the embassy.

The terms were weighed in the Hellenes’ favor, as expected with the Rhomans in such a dire position. The Rhomans would abandon Kampania and Saunitia. The Rhomans would not make allies or create colonies south of their current ones. The Rhomans would not interfere with any Hellenic polis, including Ankon to the north. Pyrrhos fully expected these terms to be broken at some point, but the Rhomans would probably try to hold to them for a time. The Rhomans would immediately pay indemnity to fund Pyrrhos’s mercenaries, and to rebuild some of Saunitia and Kampania. In return Pyrrhos would release Publius Decius Mus, and withdraw from Lation. When the Rhomans bleated their treasure did not contain the funds, Pyrrhos asked if their treasury contained the funds to rebuild the city from scratch, or what it would buy if he had to break in and take what he wanted? If the situation was so dire, no doubt they could loan from some temples. So he got what he wanted in the end.

On the way back the soldiers chanted songs of war and victory, inventing ditties and myths of the prowess of Pyrrhos. Some took and adapted myths of Herakles, Iason, and other heroes, to apply to Pyrrhos. They feasted with the grateful leaders of reinvigorated Saunitia, who symbolically granted Pyrrhos and Seleukos citizenship. The army was then marched south as the hot summer faded into cool autumn. The men of Megale Hellas spoke wistfully of home, some of them having been in the army, under protest, for two years. They spoke of the women they knew, how tall their sons must be by now, how happy their mothers and fathers would be to see them.

Rumbles of confusion began when they did not pass directly through the lands of the Leukani. Perhaps they would cross Kalabria at a narrow point, and so trade days of marching through thickly forested, rocky hills for days of walking along flat beaches. Then they passed Laos, and knew something was wrong. The contingent from Megale Hellas, a good third of the army, stopped and refused to move further. Rhome was defeated, their charge had been carried out, they must be free to return home. Pyrrhos berated them, called them cowards, threatened them with punishment and slaughter, which only caused them to draw up in battle order. He demanded of them how he would be able to defeat the Karkhedonians [6] on Sikelia. They answered easily that there were Hellenes on Sikelia, to liberate Sikelia. Pyrrhos frowned. Unwilling to demoralize and infuriate the rest of his army by attacking other Hellenes, who were free men and had served well, he begrudgingly allowed them to go, with their share of the plunder.

Humiliated (in his mind), angry (in reality), he marched his reduced army to Rhegion to prepare to cross into Sikelia.

[1] Apoulia, or Apulia
[2] Rhoman Beneventum, previously Maleventum, from Oscan/Sauni Maloeis
[3] June
[4] Umbrians
[5] July
[6] Carthaginians

 

[Dagoth Ur]

APOLLONIDAI OF THE OIKOUMENE
Drums of War, Fall 33 Meta Seleukos​

Kalas strode along the white cobbled path that wended between statues of nymphs and satyrs, and hedges that had been trimmed to resemble the same. He was fully armored, his slaves at home having strapped and buckled the various parts onto his body. He carried his helmet in his left hand and his fine cavalry makhaira in his right. It was a thing of beauty, a (now sheathed) razor sharp blade and silver-finished hilt depicting Megas Alexandros’s conquest of Sogdiane. For Kalas’s father’s role in that campaign he had been well rewarded, and settled in Baktriane with other older veterans.

Now he went into the mansion, turning to marvel as always at the friezes and reliefs lining the white walls. He had been visiting since he was a boy, but they amazed him every time. Suddenly a shout, he was shoved sideways into the wall, then seized and pulled back before he could hit it. He whirled around and laughed as he saw the excited face of Diodotos. “It’s war!” Diodotos shouted into his face.

“I know!” he shouted back and they embraced, thumping each other on the back. “I came here as soon as I heard.”

“I knew you would,” Diodotos smirked. “I sat up in Olympos watching the road for you. I knew the messenger had been by your house first.” Olympos was their name for the highest room in the mansion, from which all Baktra–not a small city by any measure–could be seen, and even some of the surrounding countryside over the mighty walls.

“Ah, Olympos. Remember how we were whipped when they found out we were watching the serving girls bathing from up there?” Diodotos laughed heartily, then Kalas continued, “Well, where’s your armor, man? You’re dressed like a woman, there’s not a piece of iron on you.”

“Sure, sure,” Diodotos waved his hand. “I wanted to make sure I waylaid you, not the other way around. Come on,” he tossed his head and Kalas followed him down the halls he knew better than his own. “How’s the wife?”

Kalas smiled, his chest felt warm and tight. “Berenike is well, she’s showing more and more every day. My mother thinks she will have twins.”

“Nothing but good news, eh? She must have conceived on your wedding night to already be showing so much, and twins will be a blessing of the Dioskouroi on you.” They had reached the stairs now and bounded up two at a time.

“The gods do bless me, it seems. You should get married too, it does a man good.”

“So my father tells me, as well,” Diodotos laughed. “I would, could I find a girl that’s good enough.” He narrowed his large grey eyes and smiled. “I need a girl fit for a basileus.”

Kalas shoved him, then glanced around, wide eyed. “I only hope nobody heard you, and I will make sacrifices to convince the gods to wipe memories in case somebody did hear,” he hissed. “Barely out of boyhood, and you’re already senile? Your father’s cousin is basileus Antiokhos, you speak dangerous words.”

“So now, you just pushed the basileus’s kinsman? Come now, you got to know him as well as I did when he was satrap here. I only mean–and he would know that I only mean–that I need a classy, clever, loyal, industrious girl.”

Kalas sighed and began to walk again, leading now for he knew the way as well as Diodotos did. “He was a man and warrior in his prime, humoring us boys. I doubt he would think kindly of an adult kinsman, far away in Baktriane, saying he needs a royal kind of wife. Really, you are reckless sometimes.”

“As you were, once,” Diodotos frowned. They had reached the mansion’s armory.

“We’re not boys playing at soldering anymore. We can’t be reckless.” Kalas peered into Diodotos’s face, seeing the worry there now, and the face life was changing setting in. Enough, time to lighten the mood. Anyway they would be spending the next few weeks together. Now it was Kalas’s turn to smirk. “When you’re mature enough to handle a wife, you’ll understand.”

Diodotos chuckled, then laughed, the spat already forgotten. He called for servants and quickly set about making himself presentable to the satrap. “What’s this commotion?” a gravelly voice called from the doorway. There stood Diodotos’s father, blue eyes twinkling. “Welcome, Kalas.”

“Thank you, sir,” Kalas bowed his head with a smile. Pateras Diodotos had been like a second father to Kalas. “The satrap has called us warriors to his palace. There is to be war against the horsemen.”

The older man leaned forward and drew a finger along the hilt of the makhaira Kalas held. “You will kill many of those raiding scum with your father’s gorgeous weapon. I remember the smith who made it, a skilled man, in Megas Alexandros’s personal service.” He frowned, looked down at the stump of his right elbow. “Alas, I cannot join you.”

Kalas looked the man up and down. He was fit as a man in his mid-fifties could be, strong and spry with only minor aches and frequent urination to complain of. But it was not Kalas’s place to respond. Diodotos the son, who had been listening, patted the lingering servant boy on the bottom to send him scurrying away. He turned and said, “Father, perhaps you can join us. Your left arm is stronger than the right arms of ten other men. If you train during the march you will be able to hold a sarisa or cast a javelin as strongly as any other man, with your left arm.”

The old man smiled sadly. “I would, maybe, for the joy of it. But I am not hot blooded enough anymore. I will leave the victories to you strong young warriors.” He clapped his son’s shoulders. “And when you come back, do so with a wife!”

Kalas laughed at that, patting Diodotos hard on the back. “So I’ve been urging him to do, sir!” The two young men gathered their kits and made their way out of the house, onto once-clean streets of Baktre. As it was, the alleys and curbs of the great city were full of refugees. It was not yet noon. Satrap Demodamas had sent the messenger early, though all had known for weeks there would be a reckoning for the raids of the brutal Sakai. Worshipping strangely enough Hestia and Ares, or rather their versions of Hestia and Ares, erecting shrines to Ares especially wherever they went. It was said their ululating shamans ate raw meat under the open sky and were perpetually surrounded by clouds of heavy, stinking hemp smoke.

Soon they were part of a throng of men, Hellenes and Baktrians and some Sogdians, with their servants and retainers. They streamed through the streets to cheers and calls of farewell. Boys shadowed the procession, some daring to dart in between the tall, sturdy steppe horses. At the city walls most of the boys darted up the steps to watch the assembled men. Some boys, mostly older ones, continued on. They begged to be taken into service, if only to fetch water or scrape pots. The warriors talked and joked and checked their weapons, though there were the grim and gaunt among them, refugee warriors who had lost everything to the barbarian depredations.

The men gathered in unruly ranks, some clots forming around groups of friends or more influential men. Kalas and Diodotos were greeted many times and gathered a small retinue of their own. Though Diodotos had not garnered any special reputation, his status as kinsman to the basileus and former satrap Antiokhos, as well as his extensive profitable farming estates, ensured he would never be without friends–false or otherwise. The field north of Baktre was wide and fallow, used as an assembly or parade ground. Any attacks on the city itself would always come from that direction, from the Oxus River to the north. The river was a natural avenue for Sakai and Skuthoi and Daoi raiders coming from their steppe homelands to the north and west.

A permanent stage stood on the grounds, and to it the men saw satrap Demodamas climb. He was a severe, thin-lipped man with a hawkish nose and iron-grey hair. His keen, small eyes seemed to stare with expectation and judgement at the men assembled before him. “Men of Baktre!” he called out loudly. He had to shout to be heard well at the fringes of the crowd. The warriors, all being on horseback, took up more space than they would have on foot. “We are ready! Ready to avenge the depredations of the filthy barbarians from the north. The raiders, the rapists, the arsonists, the murderers, the pilferers, the pillagers.” He stopped to breathe and a shout of fury and energy greeted his words. He raised his arm, acknowledging their ire. “They have despoiled virgins and wives under our protection, converted our bright temples into stinky dens for their filthy shamans, ravaged our cities and towns and made off with all manner of goods and treasures.”

“I’ve traded with them!” one man from the crowd shouted. “Let us pay them back tenfold!” Laughs of agreement swept the crowd.

To this Demodamas nodded sternly. “Right, we will pay them back for their transgressions. We will find their men, and we will find their camps where the women and children are. We will chase them, drive them to the ends of the oikoumene [1], and further if need be. By the time we are done, every man here will have ten Sakai slaves to warm his bed and empty his chamber pots and grind his flour. And the men we will put to work in our mines and fields to labor until they have paid us back, and then some!”

“That sounds more like it!” the man shouted, to more merriment from the crowd.

“Well men, saddle up! We have a long way to go.” The men cheered their satrap as he climbed down from the stage and mounted his fine, spirited horse. The mount stamped and tossed its head, infected by the vigor of the crowd, raring to go. Typical of his style, the satrap had taken care of the baggage train and other considerations. When he gave the order to go, there would be nothing to stop him. Piercing eyes on the horizon, the satrap led his thousands of men north to do battle.

[1] The inhabited world