Demetrius by James Romm;

Author:James Romm;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Lord of the Isles

With his intact but defeated cavalry corps, Demetrius dashed for the port of Ephesus, more than two hundred miles to the west of the Ipsus battlefield. His foes were either too slow or too tired to pursue him. He had five thousand horsemen with him when he arrived at Ephesus and four thousand infantrymen, the latter probably garrison forces collected along the way. There was no point any longer in keeping men in his Anatolian forts; his Asian holdings were forfeit.

There was little time to grieve for his father’s death or regret having partially caused it. He had to marshal his resources and show the world he was not a beaten man. His strength lay in his navy and in the ports and harbors he still controlled throughout the eastern Mediterranean, places like Ephesus, Sidon, Tyre, and the cities of Cyprus. In Europe he had Corinth in his control, and also Athens, or so he might think, but he had not yet learned how changeable Athens could be.

He needed money to pay for his ships and their crews. The Ephesians were certain he intended to plunder their Temple of Artemis, a magnificent structure, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, where rich dedications were housed. Instead, Demetrius boarded ship and sailed to Cilicia, off to the east, to collect funds from his palace and evacuate his wife Phila, his children by her, and his mother, Stratonice. Cilicia now belonged to Cassander’s brother Pleistarchus as part of the division of spoils among the victors of Ipsus; Lysimachus received large parts of Anatolia, while the rest of that region and Mesopotamia went to Seleucus. Syria was claimed by both Seleucus and Ptolemy, the grounds for future disputes between these two.

Before Pleistarchus arrived at Cilicia to claim his new lands, Demetrius relocated his family to Cyprus, which now became his principal base. The island had good dockyards, harbors, and ship sheds, as well as a ready supply of silver, plus a mint with which to strike coin. Demetrius began issuing currency from this mint and from Ephesus too, proclaiming to the world his new naval posture. These coins depicted a grandly naked Poseidon holding a trident and, on the reverse, a figure of Nike, goddess of victory, on the prow of a warship. The inscription proclaimed the coin that “of King Demetrius,” for king he remained, though monarch now of a diffuse realm that spanned hundreds of miles of salt water and also included parts of “free” Greece.

Other coins that appeared at this time depicted Demetrius himself with small horns on his head that signified godhead. This followed the precedent set by Ptolemy, who had already begun stamping his own face on coins—the first Western ruler to do so. Demetrius went him one better by adorning his coin portrait with attributes of a god (probably Poseidon or Dionysus). Such measures were part of the new age to come, an age in which political power would merge with divinity.

At Athens, the leaders who’d honored Demetrius as a god were deeply shaken by his stunning defeat.

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