Alexander the Great's Legacy by Mike Roberts;

Author:Mike Roberts; [Roberts;, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History / Military / Ancient
ISBN: 9781526788528
Publisher: Casemate
Published: 2022-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

A Passing Thunderbolt

Three successors had stood proud in the wake of Demetrius being caged up in the Syrian Chersonese and by the time of his actual death this circumstance seemed even more pronounced. While that other unmanageable man Pyrrhus had been boxed up back in Epirus, Ptolemy I was well ensconced in his Egyptian core and had expanded into Phoenicia and Coele-Syria while making sure of a Thalassocracy that covered almost all the Eastern Mediterranean and had long been muscling into the south Aegean. This farsighted dynast had also solved the succession problem by making his son by Berenice joint monarch as Ptolemy II. Seleucus also ruled a massive realm that distance had forced him to divide into two halves, declaring his son and heir Antiochus sub-king in the eastern satrapies. Still, despite the achievements of these two, a case can certainly be made that Lysimachus had done the best of all those who had fought over the empire Alexander had conquered. His territory now included Macedonia, Thessaly, Thrace and much of Anatolia, representing a large yet compact kingdom with an excellent tax base in the rich cities of the Aegean coasts of Asia, the Black Sea littoral and including the riches to be drawn from the extensive transit trade passing through the Hellespont and Propontis. He had great military resources too, not just from his Macedonians-in-arms but from the numerous warriors of Thrace, the Greek and non-Greek peoples of Anatolia, all available to be directly enrolled or hired as mercenaries. His navy might not have been quite up to that of the Lagids, particularly since the Phoenician cities and the squadrons they supported were now all under Ptolemy’s control, yet he did have access to a maritime potential that might allow him in time to take on rivals such as Antigonus Gonatus or Seleucus.

This shrewd monarch also managed a trick that other rulers at Pella had found impossible: he stayed on excellent terms with the Aetolians, a people who named two towns after the king and his wife Arsinoe and indeed his reputation in the rest of central Greece was such that the Phocians felt so much confidence in his friendship that they drove an Antigonid garrison out of Elateia and his ties with the Athenians were strong since their dumping of Demetrius. However, this old king was not calling it a day just yet; what was left of a long life would be full of even more projects of expansion. Apart from ensuring against trouble in some problematic statelets in northern Anatolia and taking direct control of the important Black Sea port of Heraclea, he also had ambitions in Europe where forces of change were at work. Though high-toned hangers-on at court revelling in contacts with refined Athenians may not have been terribly interested in what was happening in semi-barbarous Paeonia, it was far from insignificant to their master, still driven by imperial imperatives. The country had long had associations with both Macedonia and Epirus, more powerful

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