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None of the leaders was personally present at the peace conference.

Antigonus and Demetrius, at any rate, still had pressing military mat-ters on their minds. Babylon was vital for anyone wishing to control an empire that spanned all of Asia. It was rich in men and supplies, as well as being a meeting point for major overland and sea-to-river routes.

The resources of the eastern satrapies would be less easy to exploit without control of Babylonia. Seleucus’s presence there struck at the

heart of Antigonus’s empire, and he was bound to do something about it. Unfortunately, the details of the Babylonian War that ensued are extremely hazy, because no extant historian bothered to report it (except for a very brief mention of its fi rst phase by Plutarch), ⁵ and we have to rely on information gleaned from a very few cuneiform texts whose fi rst purposes were not always historical, and which survive only in fragments.

Seleucus was of course extremely vulnerable in Babylon. His ally Ptolemy had withdrawn to Egypt, and Antigonid forces could have swept in from Syria if they had not been occupied in their futile at-tempts against the Nabataeans. Above all, Seleucus needed more men.

He recruited a few Macedonian veterans, the remnants of those dis-persed by Antigonus in 315, but he found his main opportunity when, despite being hugely outnumbered, in the autumn of 311 he beat off an attack by two of Antigonus’s eastern satraps. His victory, in a surprise night attack, was so complete that he was able to add ten thousand foot and seven thousand horse to his forces. By the end of 311 he had taken over the neighboring province of Susiana, and was making no attempt to disguise the fact that Media and then the satrapies farther east were his next targets.

Late in 311, fresh from his failure in Nabataea, Demetrius invaded Babylonia. Elsewhere, his father’s representative was signing the Peace of the Dynasts. The governor Seleucus had left in charge of Babylon while he was campaigning farther east evacuated the civilian popula-tion in order to concentrate on defending the two citadels, but half of the city, which was divided by the Euphrates, fell to Demetrius’s army.

Demetrius left Babylon in competent hands and returned to Syria, but if he thought he had won the war, he was mistaken. Seleucus’s gover-nor waged a guerrilla campaign in the countryside to impede the pas-sage of supplies to the city, and Seleucus was already on his way back.

After his arrival, it took him only a few days to recover the second half of the city.

In the summer of 310 Antigonus counterattacked from the west with a full-scale invasion, but although he came to occupy large areas of Babylonia for some months, Seleucus held him at bay. There was “panic in the land,” according to an astronomical diary for Sep-tember 310, ⁶ perhaps referring to the initial reaction to Antigonus’s invasion; a few months later, there was still “weeping and mourning in the land.” ⁷ The cuneiform texts also bear witness to galloping infl ation, as even the bare necessities of life became scarce and expensive.

The war seems to have seesawed. Antigonus had the early successes;

his troops broke into Babylon and drove Seleucus out after fi erce street fi ghting, and at another point he captured a nearby town and allowed his troops to plunder freely. At the end of August 309, Seleucus met Antigonus in an indecisive pitched battle, but surprised his troops in their camp at dawn the next day and infl icted a defeat on them. It must have been a decisive defeat, because Antigonus withdrew to Syria and refocused his energies on more peaceful pursuits, such as building his new capital city, Antigonea. Apart from anything else, he was now over seventy years old, and his great weight, we may guess, was putting a strain on his heart. ⁸

Even in the absence of evidence, it seems safe to say that Antigonus and Seleucus must have entered into a treaty, because for a while after-ward they each went about their separate businesses without infringing on each other’s territories. Antigonus abandoned the eastern satrapies, and over the next few years Seleucus gained control of them one by one, by conquest or by reaching a modus vivendi with the incumbent ruler. The troublesome Indian satrapies and some satellite territories were ceded to Chandragupta, as we have seen, probably in 304. Given the enormous size of the territories involved, and how few troops Seleucus had started with, this is a truly astonishing beginning for a kingdom that was to last, in some form or another, for 250 years. What is not surprising is that he was pleased to be invested with the honorifi c name that he bore for the rest of his life—Nicator, the bringer of victory, the only one to have successfully challenged Antigonus’s rul-ership of Asia.

T

he peace was never stable; it only gave the contenders the opportunity to rally. Even while the treaty was being negoti-ated, Antigonus and Demetrius were already involved in the lengthy business of trying to evict Seleucus from Babylonia and pre-vent him from taking over the eastern satrapies. That in itself did not transgress the peace, because Seleucus was not included in it. But no more than weeks elapsed before Ptolemy helped his friend Seleucus by sending him fresh troops and by invading Antigonid Cilicia on the pretext that Antigonus had installed garrisons in Greek cities there and so had broken the terms of the peace agreement. As it happened, Demetrius was able to repulse Ptolemy’s general, but the fragility of the situation was already clear.

Cassander had the best reasons for relief. He had been on the ropes, but the peace gave him a respite, and then his recovery was enormously helped by the defection in 310 of Polemaeus from the Antigonid cause.

Polemaeus was simply disgruntled. Perhaps he had expected the peace conference to name him as satrap of central Greece or something; per-haps he felt that Antigonus’s preference of Demetrius underrated the invaluable service he had provided in Greece and Asia Minor. At any rate, he declared his central Greek enclave independent, made Euboea his headquarters, and expanded his sway into Hellespontine Phrygia as well, thanks to his friendship with the governor there. Worst of all, he safeguarded his position by entering into an alliance with Cassander, thus depriving Antigonus of access to much of central Greece and opening it up for his enemy. Antigonus immediately sent an army to

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In document HANDBOOK OF FIRE AND EXPLOSION PROTECTION ENGINEERING PRINCIPLES - DENNIS P. NOLAN (página 118-121)