[EB Antigonid/Macedonian AAR/Tale] Successors of the One-Eyed [Updated: 22/01/2014]

[McScottish]

In the beginning...

My father, the son of Demetrios Poliorketes, son of the founder of the Antigonid line – Antigonus Monophthalmus, or “one-eyed” - was always an absent figure in my life.

My mother, a Thessalian slave girl named Lasthena, would sit by the fireside of her homestead and tell me tales of him – oh yes, she had a homestead. Antigonus knew where she was and kept her as comfortable as possible, living in a life of semi-luxury, with a home and slaves all of her own. All he asked of her was that she keep my parentage a secret from others and that I would not grow up to rise against him. Anyway, she would tell me of how handsome he was, smooth-faced and with the body of an Athenian statue, how he glistened in his armour and seemed to her, a smitten maiden of only sixteen, like some God or other come to earth. She was like that, and she always hoped that he would come back to her, foolish woman, but I get ahead of myself.

Antigonus the Second, called by many 'Gonatas' after his place of birth, came to power late in his life but took hold of the flailing reigns as if he were born to power. His own father, the besieger, had left him good holdings before he finally drank himself to death, but little else in the way of family. This abandonment of ones offspring seemed to be a trait amongst the Antigonids, Demetrios having a maniacal sense of self-importance to go with it, building a capital city in Magnesia named of all things 'Demetrias' after himself. Next he warred with Pyrrhos, and after that, attacked by Epiros on one side and Lysimachus on the other, left Greece to attack the Asiatic holdings of the latter. There he died, never coming back to his wife or son, who by this time was fifty years of age and now one of a few claimants to the Makedonian throne.

At this time I was still in Thessaly with my mother, waiting for news of my fathers triumphant victories. I was but a boy then, fourteen years from my mothers womb, and was eager to meet this conqueror, this Titan amongst men, but disappointment is a bitter dish and some would even say poisonous.

Why then, why write a discourse on the life and campaigns of a man that was never closer to me than an ant to the Gods on Olympus?

My mind is not yet sure about this, but perhaps by writing and leaving this to posterity, those many that come after me, I might be able to answer my own question by the closing word.

************

The first years of this chronicle are as one might expect, more focused on myself than with my father or his ambitions to regain hegemony of all Greece. To drive the barbarians back into the north and to put down the rival claimants to the throne. This is not some puffed-up vanity however, I have never set myself higher than any other and what news I did receive of him was by way of rumour and hearsay and not from my views and experiences. Do not worry, I shall not bore you with accounts of my childhood or my years growing from a young child into an older child, but will tell you only that little which you may need to know about me to make your own decisions about what I write here.

As I look through the notations and scraps of papyri I used to record events beyond my control I can hardly believe that I wrote them.

Now where to begin?

As I have said, I am one – maybe one of many – of the bastard children of arguably the rightful king of Makedonia. This is my only claim to a noble lineage, and even that is marred by a fathers wish not to see his son when he was born. I come from the womb of a woman who was, for most of her life, worth no more than a hog and would feed me more of the food than she would feed herself, a brave woman and one that taught me my earliest lessons of how to live my life.

I had no Athenian education, no military training with phalangites or horsemen, no father that was loved by the Greeks and Makedonians alike. What I learnt was the knowledge of one who comes from the earth, from the sweat and salt of the land, things such as how to honour one who gives you a good turn or how to respect those that are both your superiors and in others ways your equal. With this, perhaps not as my mother intended, came a rebellious streak and a hatred toward those of nobility and high birth. When I was only eight I took a thick stick and thrashed a Boeotian boy nearly to death with it, and when my mother asked why I had done this I replied “because I can”.

This may seem a rather obscure answer, and obtuse, but it was the only thing I held above him which I could use, as I have always been large for my age and both bigger and stronger than the other boys of my rugged mountain home. We would wrestle, sprint, throw rocks and sticks and pretend to battle and I would always win. My mother called it arrogance, and would have no part of it, I called it a gift from Olympus, getting the strength to wrestle a full-grown man to a standstill but not enough intelligence to outwit anyone! My father need ever have feared me, I have been called too stupid to be a conspirator, and I would not disagree. I could never sit still, never focus, never keep my mind on one thing for too long before it became boring and monotonous, “Alkestis,” she would say in her disapproving tone, “sit still before I cut off your legs and make you a cripple.” That was my mother.

By the time my father claimed kingship over Makedonia, both his father and grandfather dead already, I was tall, strong and still not too bright.

Hearsays flew throughout the Hellenic world then, Antigonos seeking shelter in his fathers city and Pyrrhos of Epiros sailing to a place called Italia to strike a blow against a people I had never even heard of, the Rhomaios, or 'Romans' as they apparently called themselves. It was well known to all, even a backwater peasant, that this Epirote prince was one of the greatest leaders of men since Alexander, some even saying he was Alexander in another body or some nonsense like that. Nor were these claims wrong, for at a place called Heraklea he slew seven thousand Romans and sent their shades to Hades, decimating his own ranks in the process but keeping possession of his lands in Megálē Hellás, in Sikelia, and in his own lands of Epiros.

This was the enemy that Antigonos feared the most, his forces little more than hard-bitten bands of fighters that still clung loyally to him and his line seeking some hope of victory. Pyrrhos on the other hand, had he chosen to do so, could march through central Greece and wipe Makedonia from the very earth. In the Peloponessos the city-state of Sparta began to once more grow in power, the Aitolians and their League helping little to ease his mind, and always the Thrakians and Illyrians threatened his northern borders. Yet, whatever the faults of my father, he knew what needed to be done, and once he knew that some of his fathers gains were secure he set about reinforcing garrisons, sending coin and men out to claim disparate warriors for himself and making sure his foothold would not crumble beneath him.

Light is fading outside, and I grow weary...and I shall continue my work tomorrow.

[McScottish]

Surrounded by Foes; Thessalia, 3rd year of the 127th Olympiad (270 BCE)

Makedonia, that kingdom that had given birth to Phillipos and Alexandros both, had been decimated by the ravages of the Keltoi host.

By the time my birth-father announced himself as 'King of Makedonia' once more, having been driven away by Pyrrhos before returning again, that great conqueror also forced from Italia and Sikelia himself and back into Eperios and Makedonia, that rough land of rolling plain and rugged highland was left devoid of people and of the resources to construct a new army. In the eastern tracts of the fractured empire of the Great one the Diadochi, his so-called successors, fought one another as they had for decades and spilled both native and Makedonian blood in the sandy wastes of Aegyptus and the grassy plains of Persia, thousands upon thousands of men giving their lives for victory or losing them in defeat, while in the heartland of his once great kingdom Antigonos could do nothing but prey to the Gods that his fortunes would change.

What his wealth gained him, what wealth he had after his fathers expensive campaigns in both east and west, were the lowest of the low. Makedonian farmers and herders, rough and coarse men unused to even the simplest form of military training, returning slowly but surely to their farms and homesteads and praising Antigonos for his single-handed defeat of the host of furious invaders. In truth he had done nothing of the sort, the son of Ptolemy shattering these wild barbaroi before losing his own life and his kingship in the action, and my father simply driving what scattered bands had remained to plunder our lands from within our borders and back their own untamed wildernesses in the north.

Well, when a mass of citizens come to you and hail you as a saviour and hero, no-one can cast blame upon him for accepting rather than denying their extolment. Which basileus would ever think of doing such a thing?

Nonetheless it took time, time and coin, to equip and train the once disordered Makedonians back into a killing weapon that could be taken to the enemies of the Antigonid line. This was helped greatly by the many Hellenes which flocked to his standard, Greeks from the south, Thessalian horsemen and nobles from my homeland, and Thrakian tribesmen who were both fierce and easily swayed by the wealth of any ruler. Using this solid core of experienced fighters, a goodly number of Makedonian veterans included among them, he forged swiftly a weapon out of the lowest end of the land-owners in Makedon who then stood ready to defend their homes from any threat.

These threats were legion; in the south, especially the Peloponessos, the old powers of Athenai and Sparte stirred up rebellion and sedition against those they had never ceased to see as invaders and barbarians from the north. To the north of Makedon the restless tribes of Thrake and Illyria, Keltoi nobles even ruling over some of them, never stopped looking for weaknesses in their 'civilised' southern enemies. Yet perhaps the greatest threat came from that cousin of Alexandros, that Epirote king whose fortunes had reversed against the hydra that was Roma, the man who now sat in his capital and plotted the overthrow of Antigonos and the reclamation of the lands he once owned back into his own hands.

It was as this new ruler made preparations to march against his foes, fifty years old and seething with thoughts of vengeance, that a rider appeared in my peaceful village. A rider with a message that would not only change my life forever, but also place me firmly in the centre of the storm that was Antigonos Gonatas.

************

I remember awaking to the sound of dogs barking, something they had little enough reason to do unless we were truly threatened, raised voices getting even louder and closer the more I tried to pull the furs I slept beneath over my head and return to sleep and dreams. This was something that I would not be able to do for weeks, the immediate chill of a cold wind making me sit up and crane my neck to peer at a towering figure standing in the entrance to my family home. At his side, for he was most unquestionably a man, was my mother, her beautiful eyes filled with tears which refused to roll down her high-boned cheeks and an expression of utter sadness aimed in my direction like a killing arrow.

“Alkestis, my son, come here please.”

Rising at her behest and urging, ignoring my own nakedness, I threw back the furs and padded closer to her and the unknown stranger. My heart thumped in my chest, and to me, though I was taller than any other boy I knew, the stranger was like a colossus come to life. In the half-shadow I could see a smooth face which did not look unkind but held an countenance of extreme neutrality, framed by shoulder-length locks of manure brown hair, two piercing green eyes running themselves over me, a sharp mouth like a knife slit and a somewhat hooked nose making him not unattractive but plainer than a handsome man. The armour he wore over his broad torso, arms like two tree-trunks resting on a belt at his waist, and the weapons which rested at his side fired my imagination and I could not stop myself from speaking...I was ten-and-four years after all.

“Father?” I blurted, thinking that this figure, the first 'true' man I had really seen, must be he that my mother spoke of. Perhaps I mistook her tears for tears of joy?

Both of them looked at one another, the man casting his eyes to the floor in a quite effeminate motion, and my mother giving a shake of her head and taking my hand when I was close enough to be reached by her arms. She got to one knee and, looking me straight in the eyes, announced “it is time for you to go, my son. To meet your true father. He has summoned you to join him at Aegae and the tombs of your ancestors.”

A warm squeeze of my hand bought me back into the moment, my young mind whirring and tears beginning to fill my own eyes, half-blinding me and my throat constricting as I tried to speak, “but I do not want to leave you!” I managed to squeak, “do not make me go, please,” I wrapped my arms around her, nearly knocking her backwards with my bulk, but with some force I did not even know she had she peeled my hands apart and took one of my hands into her own. Oddly that is what I remember most vividly of that day, the warmth of her two hands pressing against one of mine.

“You have to go, I will not have you spend the rest of your life here. I-” now her throat left her lost for words, the tears finally breaking the dam of her eyes and her entire body shaking, “I do not want you to leave, you know this, but you must leave. Please understand, my child. I love you Alkestis, I love you.”

Time passed in a blur then, my mother moving about the house and gathering everything I would need for a long journey and the journeys end. Clothing, some food to eat as I rode – oh yes, I could ride at that age, but then so could most children in Thessalia – and a tiny pendant that went around my neck, Herakles standing there with his club raised and his lion-skin wrapped around his muscled figure.

By the time she was finished, handing everything to me without so much as I word, I had cried all the tears that it was possible to cry. So had she. I left that house with my bundle, clothed in a simple chiton, a plain brown chalmys and a pair of calf-high riding boots, with only a brief embrace from my still shuddering mother, and then a firm hand on my shoulder to lead me away and into the dreary grey morning light where a group stood waiting for me and my newest acquaintance.

They were Thrakians, a group of some twenty horsemen that barked playfully back at the dogs and even at the farmers of my village that had come to see what the commotion was. I remember them as seeming harmless, more like young boys at play than warriors, and they were young men, most no older than a youth on the cusp of manhood. I thought them harmless because I had never seen them fight, a judgement I would later change altogether. I now know that Thrakians are some of the hardiest, most bloodthirsty bastards anywhere in the bowl of the world, truly children of Ares.

Most were dressed in chitons not unlike those of any other civilised people, peaked helmets of bronze, called 'Phrygian' by smiths of metal, sat on their heads and straight-edged swords at their waists. Some of the helmets were crafted to unify the image of a curled beard with that of the helmet, and some had simpler protection for the face. In their hands most of them leant against long spears or shorter javelins, their broad square shields resting at their legs. A few, the laziest of the lot, had not even dismounted and instead lounged on the necks of their steeds, more like small ponies than horses especially to the eyes of a Thessalian. I would find out that these men, long-limbed and grey eyed like most of their kind, were the older men and therefore veterans of the wing and that being lazy was their privilege.

Among the group were two horses, real horses this time and not the stubborn beasts the Thrakians rode, one with a leopard-skin draped over its back and the other, a brown stallion with white markings, only a drab cloth thrown across it. The first was my hosts and the second was clearly mine.

When we had nearly reached our respective mounts, even the senior barbarians standing straighter in the presence of their paymaster, the man with his arm on my shoulder turned to face me and I watched as his Makedonian cloak billowed out behind him. He looked at me for a moment, his eyes seeming to dance in their intensity, before he spoke in a voice both melodic and unexpected. It was not harsh, but smooth as flowing water, quite out of place with his rugged exterior.

“Do not fear for your safety, son of Antigonus. My name is Hermon, and I ride with your father as one of his hetairoi, he has charged me with bringing you safely to him. Be at peace now, for you are amongst friends.”

How could I – no, I did not want to refuse, and so with a bow of my head I was helped onto the back of the horse and went to meet my father.

[McScottish]

Meeting Your Maker; Thessalia, Spring, 3rd year of the 127th Olympiad (270 BCE)

We rode for almost half a week, riding north-east as if the very furies were behind us, during which time I listened closely to the garbled tongue of the Thrakians and spoke and thought little. I ate what was cooked for me, what I was given, but never partook of the hunting which so seemed to please my escorts and their blood-fuelled cravings for the thrill of the chase. Hermon, the Gods bless him, tried his very best to make me feel welcome among them, introducing them each by a given Greek name and making doubly sure that they knew I was not to be toyed with the way they toyed with other newcomers. I was the son of the king, and no-one was to touch or tease me on pain of death.

The weather changed for the better as we splashed across a low ford of the Apidanos, a river that flows from the sea and flows south-west through Thessaly, linking with the Enipeas further south. I remember having little use for my cloak on that afternoon, the air warm and fresh and pleasurable to ride in. Even my Thrakian guards appeared to have their blood cooled by the calm breeze and the chirping of bird sin the few trees we passed, my assumption that it must be because of the difference to their frigid country, with endless tracts of forest and there brooding boughs making a man feel almost suffocated. So I thought, the thoughts of a young man that had never been out of Thessaly in his entire life.

Hermon took me aside one evening, his strong arm clutching me to him like an old friend, the stench of uncut wine and garlic sausage filling my nostrils as he sat me down on the stump of a tree, offering me some of his drink and then chuckling when I politely refused. I watched in the hazy evening light as he leant against a tree trunk and threw a good half a skin-full down his throat and smacked his lips like a man drinking water after a desert march.

“Listen, lad,” he half said and half belched, leaning towards me - swaying might be a better way of putting it - “tomorrow we go to meet your father. He has encamped himself and the army at Krannon, and will no doubt be eager to meet you. You know the place?”

I knew Krannon, and I said as much, a rather prosperous town for Thessaly, some stades south-west of Larissa. It had always been ruled by the Skopadae, a family of humble birth and now great wealth, the flocks and herds that grazed on the fruitful plains all about the city selling for a lot of money further south, or west in Epiros.

“I know it,”I said sullenly, my thoughts already turning back to my own home, “a good place to encamp an army and only a short march from Larissa.”

The Makedonian highlander laughed at me, I who sounded like a veteran campaigner giving my opinion of the kings placements. His laughter made my cheeks turn crimson but I gave a shrug and the snort of an irritated boy, which I never forget is what I was.

“Aye,” he spoke after his laughter subsided, “get some sleep and wear your finest, or what passes for your finest. Stay near the fire tonight, and do not fret about what is to come.”

“Hermon-” I blurted out as he turned to walk away, the large warrior turning and smiling at me, knowing what it was I was thinking, “your father will love you, Alkestis, such as all fathers and sons of the Antigonid line have done since the Cyclops' first heir was born. Now rest yourself.”

So I did.

************

There must have been nearly three-thousand men gathered around Krannon the next day, something I would not have believed if I had not seen it with my own eyes. Yes, compared to the number of men, camp followers, carts and siege weapons that had churned up the turf of Thessaly for decades now it was very few, but three-thousand was all that could be gathered for such a swift strike against my fathers enemies. Oddly I felt nothing, my blood tied to my father though I had never met him, even when I stared open-mouthed at the thick layer of black smoke rising from hundreds of camp fires. At least the Skopadae would be spared the ravages that were certain to take place in Eperios once their lands were taken.

Men turned and looked at us as we passed, most just giving a gesture of indifference and returning to their activities; some sharpening blades and spears, others polishing their breastplates or shields, and many just laying flat on their backs and gazing up at the blue sky overhead.

“I know little of military matters,” I admitted to Hermon as we rode side-by-side,“but are your men not to salute you?”

The cavalryman of the companions had until that time, I think, been concentrating his mind on more important matters. After I spoke he scratched his chin and shrugged, “most men salute the king only, yet he is first among equals. As is the Makedonian way. These men,” he pointed to the closest, a mass of sarissa carrying infantry, “and those further away from the kings tent are all xenoi, hired foreigners,they have no obligation to salute me or even the king himself.”

I nodded at this, a perfect explanation, and paid more attention to threading my horse between and around groups of men and woman, some children too, following close on the flank of Hermon and beginning to sweat when I saw a tall tent rise in the distance.


It was a large construct, more Persian than Greek in nature, ribbons fluttering in the gentle wind that moved about us and two warriors equipped in the traditional manner of two hoplitai standing as still as statues outside the tents one opening. When Hermon dismounted some feet away from the tent, I did too, our Thrakians having veered off to some other part of the camp without any attention from myself when we first arrived. As we approached, at a slow pace as I had been told to do, my eyes took in the two living statues and my imagination flared to life.

They had tall helmets, peaked and with cheek-pieces coming across their face, like faceless Gods to me, their shields were an odd purple and their thoraxes blindingly white. At their hips were the xiphos of the southern Greeks and in their hands the eight-footer of the hoplite, truly I found them to be more than men.

************

A sudden movement to my side cut my reverie short, my head swiftly twisting to see Hermon raising an arm in salute and, moving toward us like some engorged larvae, a large group of armoured hoplitai and beyond them a mass of courtiers and envoys from Thessaly and the fractured Greek Leagues to the south. There may also have been representatives of scattered pretenders to the throne of Makedon, but not that I noticed, my eyes fixed on the hunched cloaked figure who made his way through the press to come and stand before Hermon and myself.

“Hermon,” spoke he, by way of greeting and of questioning, two deep-set eyes turning to glance at me from beneath a mass of curling hair, “this is he?”

So, this was my father?


At that very moment, without knowing him as I was to come further years,I believed that my mother must have been either blind or drunk, or both, at the time that I was conceived. Perhaps she was wrong in the head and had hidden it well from me for all those years? No, I shall not condone my own words, if anything she was cleverer than most of the eunuchs and sycophants who existed then or now.

Antigonus the Second 'Gonatas' was nothing like he had been described to me,except that, had he stood straight and not had a slightly hunched back, he may well have been as tall as I was told. Clad in kingly armour and leaning on an olive-tree branch, which he deftly used as a walking stick to aid him, his Makedonian cloak moving in his wake, I studied this sovereign who had given my mother the gift of my life. I did so with young eyes, eyes that are want to bite into the worst of a person like a great hound, which is what I did at first. I saw his bulbous nose that stuck out like a flame in the night, his curved spine and his legs, which were so thin that I was surprised he could stand, his knees knobbly and protruding and the rounded jowls of his face concealing most of the smile that creased them as he turned entirely upon me.


“Come,”he commanded in his resonant voice, “return with me to my tent, we have much to speak of.”

[McScottish]

Meeting Your Maker, Part II; Thessalia, Spring, 3rd year of the 127th Olympiad (270 BCE)

The interior of the tent, far from being the mirror image of the silks and banners of the outside, would have made any Spartan extremely proud. Such were the furnishings that I can still recall them and mention them; a small table covered in papyri scratchings, two chairs beside it, sat near the central pole which help up the tent, a wooden stand with a crossbeam being where he would no doubt leave his armour when it was not being worn, and lastly was a cot framed of wood and covered in furs. When I thought of all that I had seen outside, the guards and various envoys, it was hard to see exactly how my father lived.

“Please,” said the king as he smiled at me, “sit yourself down, Alkestis.”

I could see that my shocked expression amused him, my mouth flapping like a landed fish before I could regain control of myself, slipping into one of the chairs and absently eyeing the assortment of scrolls before looking at him once more. Since entering the pavilion he had changed, he now stood taller and rubbed his back, his stick still aiding him but only for a slight limp in his leg. It was true, he certainly was tall, and certainly not as weak in body as I had first thought.

“You-you know my name?”

“Of course I know your name,” he laughed, a strange sound like that of a donkeys braying but nevertheless pleasing to my ears, “you are one of my offspring. I make it a matter of importance to know of all my descendants. Illegitimate or no.”

Perhaps I bristled at that, tightening and flexing my fingers unknowingly, something obviously showing again on my face. Whatever it was, it caused Antigonos to sit opposite me and take a few moments of silence to study me. As if a rabbit caught in the light of a torch I did not move, feeling his eyes studying my face and body as one studies any other object of great curiosity.

“Yes...you have the look of your mother about you,” he finally said with a sigh, “I have always loved her you know, my beautiful Lasthena.” There was a distant look in his eye as he clearly thought of her, something almost...was it love? He did not speak for an instant, almost as if he were looking inward, only to look back to me and give a small shrug of his broad shoulders, “but I was younger and thinner then, yes!” We both smiled, and the more I listened to him the more I found myself drawn to him, “my own mother took her own life when my father was defeated, I bringing his ashes back to his self-named city where they even now remain buried. It gladdens me therefore that nothing has ever happened to you or your blessed mother in my absence.”

“Why am I here? Why now?” I blurted out, unable to hold back the question that I had been wishing to ask since catching a glimpse of him.

“My enemies are a multitude,” he confided in me, nodding slowly to emphasise his point, “I war against Pyrrhos because he covets the throne of Makedon, my throne. His exploits in Italia and Sikelia went awry, and now he plots to retake what he sees as his just inheritance. In the south those Greeks, those Hellenes that should be speaking my name with joy, slither here and there like serpents to ferment rebellious ideals and thoughts into the populace.” Motioning to the gnarled stick he gave a chuckle, “I am old now, but I am not infirm. They call me 'Gonatas' – knock-knees – because they believe me both feeble in body and that I am a coward. I take the title with pride, honouring my birthplace...and what conqueror would be the same without some sort of byname, eh?”

Gesturing to the pieces of pressed reed on the table, his arm sweeping over them like a wave in the ocean, he spoke again, “these are treaties and beseeching letters from a hundred different poleis in Eperios and Greece informing me that the time is right for me to act with the support of the people, Korinthos and Demetrias, as well as Euboea, already garrisoned by Makedonian forces.” After stroking his chin for a moment he relaxed back into his chair and sighed, interlocking his fingers and resting his hands in his lap, “I need those I can trust around me, and we Antigonids have never been strangers to one another. You are nearly a man now Alkestis, though still a Thessalian born, and I believe it is time that you received something of your heritage from me. I intend to return to Pella in a couple of days, where your half-brother and my eldest son Alkyoneos eagerly awaits us, and I would ask that you accompany me. You can refuse.”

How could I have refused? How could I have refused this man that was my father and the true King of Makedonia? I could have, and I wanted to, but I had found my father now – later rather than never – and was loath simply let him disappear again.

“Then I accept, father.”

“Good...” he seemed pleased, a look of conflict within his eyes, perhaps wondering whether he should embrace me or not, in the end he simply patted one hand into my shoulder and stooped once more into the frail old man he would have everyone believe he had become, “we leave in two days. Seek out Hermon and he shall see to all your needs.” Before he left he turned briefly, stuck between leaving and speaking, my own eyes watching him expectantly, “it is good to finally see you, my son. We shall speak more later.”

Then, just like that, he disappeared in a hobbling gait and a swish of a silken flap, leaving me alone with nothing but my thoughts. After a few minutes I too left the tent, seeking out Hermon and with him my future.

[Ownager]

This is great. Plus rep for your hard work. I love aars in this style. The addition of pictures is an added bonus. Good luck as Makedon. Try not to kill Pyrrhos in a less than epic way. I love that guy. Don't expand into Anatolia, my AS Empire has my eyes on you.

[McScottish]

Meeting Your Maker, Part III; Dalmatia, Autumn, 4th year of the 127th Olympiad (269 BCE)

For a year or more I lounged in Pella, the capital of my fathers people, meeting for the first time my half-brother Alkyoneos. He was two-and-twenty years of age when I met him, considered a man grown in the eyes of all, a scholarly son who was never seen without his personal historian and a rather queer actor that capered and moved by his side everywhere he went. Though he was dull, never taking part in Makedonian pastimes such as hunting or drinking, he was no dullard but in fact very astute and sharp as a spear-point. Combined with his charm and wit, a loyalty to his father unknown among other bloodlines, and his ever-cheerful disproportion, it mattered little that he had made himself wealthy by underhanded means for as a trader he was truly not blessed by the Gods and thus was forced to rely on more crooked methods to achieve personal abundance.

“Hail, Alkestis,” he greeted me on our first meeting, both walking the halls of the palace and lost in our own thoughts, “my brother and my blood.”

It was almost dreamlike as he embraced me, his strong arms only having seen battle once or twice, but his entire manner that of a man who knew how to kill without remorse. A man who, I dare say, was more than capable of killing his own brother if he had the will to do so.

“Alkyoneos, brother, it is good to meet you at last.”

We were both of us pleased with the other, getting on as close friends and blood-relations, talking of our families and upbringings and all that we could think up on our long rides together in the Makedonian hills and woodlands. It was during one such excursion into the woodlands that he told me of his wish not to become King, to study and write and to remain in the background of his fathers glory.

“You have enough for the both of us, I think,” he laughed after taking a long swig of imported wine, “I think I shall be the scholar and you, my young sibling, shall play the soldier. What do you say to that?”

“I accept!” I bellowed, letting out a loud belch, more intoxicated than I should have been but still able to think for myself.

Little could I have anticipated, on that early spring day, that the prediction of my brother would prove right. Even as we lazed in the dim sunlight and drunk ourselves stupid, one of the only times I ever saw Alkyoneos in such a state, our father was gathering his forces to him and preparing to march north-west into the hills and mountainous terrain of Illyrian Dalmatia.

“You shall ride with your own kin, my son,” he announced when I next saw him, his eyes rimmed with deep shadows and his beard and hair even whiter than it had been before, “an ilè of Thessalians have just arrived from Pharsalos. I believe you would be happier among your own people, but I shall send Hermon with you if that is what you wish?”

I was unwilling to leave my fathers side and, had I not understood why he was doing this, I may well have shouted or raised my voice. I knew, however, that being among other Thessalians would be best for me, their language and customs being those of the people I had spent my short life so far in the midst of. If I could not make myself comfortable in their company then where could I?

“I accept this honour, father. As for Hermon, I shall let him make his own decision, but I would like his company.”

What followed was a lesson in campaigning that lasted many months, myself placed with the Thessalians and given my own baggage-carrier – a younger lad than myself from Korinth – as well as a horse of my choosing and a suit of armour for my own. I chose a fine and tall horse with the blackest coat I have ever seen, darker than night and probably as deep as the pits of the Underworld, but accustomed to the noises and heat of battle as well as being possessed of exceptional stamina. My armour, such as it was, took the form of a bronze thorax, a pair of greaves, and an open 'Boeotian' helmet complete with three flowing plumes of horsehair. The baggage carrier I knew little about, save that he was something of a hostage and his name was Brison, a boy exchanged with his father for his eldest son who had been taken in battle. On the march he walked with the other skeuophoroi, carrying my lance and armour, and I would glance at him from time-to-time and quickly look away if he saw me looking. I had no idea why, but I did suspect that I would find out later.

If you have never seen an army on the march then it is hard to describe, so many trampling feet and the sights and the smells, the clinking of armour and weapons and the shouts for water along the line, nearly two-thousand phalangites pounding their sandalled feet against rock and dirt, horsemen driving their mounts along the flanks and rear, and mercenary Keltoi and Thrakians riding ahead to scout a path. Each night this entire mass would settle in one spot, sentries placed about the camp and the sound of snoring or drunken bellows replacing the heaves and grunts of the march.

Weeks passed swiftly, my shoulders being stripped red and raw by my unfamiliar armour, though my thighs were hardened to riding since before I could walk. It was a good life with my countrymen, our coarse dialect and crude jokes suitable to cover a fierce pride and mastery of mounted combat that the Hellenes of the south did not possess. We were only ever outmatched in the army of Antigonos by his own Royal Wing of horsemen, his Companions, those that never left his side and surrounded him on the field of battle. I still remember when an Agrianian peltast tried to kill a Thessalians horse for some meat, his own stomach emptier than his head apparently was, and was found dead the next morning.

Why did we march? Now that is the question!

We marched from Pella and into the hills because Pyrrhos was being lazy. He remained within his capital in Epiros, eating and drinking and sending his sons to attack northern barbarian tribes, but as for himself there was not one sighting. For a number of days we pursued Helenos, one of two brothers abroad in the mountains, wasting valuable time and energy as he ran before us and disappeared back to Epiros without so much as giving battle.

Then, after nearly losing all hope, an excited scout arrived and demanded to see the King. In a matter of minutes we were assembled and on the move, for Alexandros Aiakides had been seen hunting in the hills not far from us with only fifty of his closest companions.

I still remember that day...

There is not much to tell, but I shall try.

In the morning of a cold autumn day our army came upon them, encamped near the coast in a ruined watchtower. Perhaps they had been there for days, or even weeks, we did not know, riding out each day to hunt the plentiful game and dangers in the hills of Dalmatia. By the time they knew we were coming it was far too late.

“The Thrakians and Keltoi I think,” laughed my father, “send our Greek friends and the Thessalians just to make sure.”

The feral mercenaries took off like an arrow from a bow, their horses carrying them like the wind toward the hurriedly formed line of horsemen, each man ready to die for his ruler and friend. How I wish they had ran, even as I tapped the flanks of my own mount, urine running down my leg as I thought of riding against an enemy for the first time, two-hundred Greek horsemen from Athens and Ionia on either side of us, all of us simply there to support the outsiders should they decide to flee or turn against their paymaster.

What happened next was a massacre, the Thrakians and Keltoi striking the Epirotes like a blade through soft flesh, curved blades rose and fell like autumn leaves and very soon the horses were washing their hooves in blood and excrement. Thirty or so of our paid cavalry fell that day, their own people grieving for them in their own unintelligible way, Alexandros himself struck down by a Thrakian cleaver as he tried to defend himself. His body was not defaced, but picked from the pile of the dead, and bought to Antigonos who bade that it be washed and sent with all ritual and speed to Ambrakia where his father would soon be mourning.

“We make camp in these hills, make sure all have food and water. If this course does not bring the old fox out of his hole then I know not what shall.” I heard him say, “tonight I shall weep for him.”

That day and night I hid in my tent, ashamed as dirtying myself over nothing, Brison trying his best to comfort me. When the chill came, and frost began to form on the ground, I invited him into my cot and together we slept peacefully through the night. I dreamt of Alexandros, son of Pyrrhos, his bearded face all bloodied and pale, and swore in my mind that I would never disgrace myself in such a shameful way again. In the morning I awoke and turned my head, the handsome and soft form of Brison still snoring softly beside me, my head resting back and staring up at the fabric of my tents ceiling.

What would happen now, I wondered in my head, will Pyrrhos really come to avenge his sons death or would he risk shame and remain where he was? In the south the Greeks and their Leagues were stirring up trouble again, and in Korinth is was known that the nephew of my father was disloyal.

Indeed I was living in very interesting times.

[Ownager]

Is this already a book? Is there something I don't know here?

[McScottish]

Is this already a book? Is there something I don't know here?

You are far too kind to an amateur scribbler, but I thank you nonetheless for your welcome words. I've played a few more turns and things have just gotten more and more interesting within the framework of the game. If anything, the next update could well be longer!

[Ownager]

Wow. I really cannot believe you aren't professional. I had half a mind to ask you your name, just so I could remember it. My AARs are nowhere near as good as these. Half the time I don't know enough Greek names for all the characters. My only problem is that its hard to understand what you are actually doing in the game. But your writing style makes me forget that.

[McScottish]

Wow. I really cannot believe you aren't professional. I had half a mind to ask you your name, just so I could remember it. My AARs are nowhere near as good as these. Half the time I don't know enough Greek names for all the characters. My only problem is that its hard to understand what you are actually doing in the game. But your writing style makes me forget that.

Just look about for the names, they're out there!

And, just for you, and to help, here you go...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

To the right you will see the army of Antigonos Gonatas, sandwiched between two enemies, as well as the army of Helenos stood outside Ambrakia. Then beneath that is pretty much the largest army I have as Makedon, the army with which Gonatas shall conqouer the world!

Hope this helps.

[Ownager]

Thank you. Filled in the last gaps for me. Take heart that you have one die hard fan. My strongest army had less pikemen and more flanking units, but I don't doubt your skills. Hope you didn't save before the battle.....

[McScottish]

The Making Of Great Deeds; Summer, 1st year of the 128th Olympiad (268 BCE) to Summer, 2nd year of the 128th Olympiad (267 BC)

Makedonia was empty.

In the years of which I am about to tell the entire kingdom had been emptied, every hamlet, village and farm now silent as the grave, and every man young enough or boy old enough to hold a sarissa sent to join Gonatas and his ever swelling army encamped in the Dalmatian wilds. Wives and children looked longingly from doorways, weak fires burning in their hearths, and silently bid their menfolk return to join them once again. At least this was the situation of the Makedonian levy, a bloated force of fourteen-thousand Makedonians from every strata of their society, from the lowest farm boy to the nobles that were only below my Father and his son in wealth and power. Their King, acclaimed as such by the army once Pyrrhos had fled back to Epiros, calling them to him and they answering gladly.

It was all the manpower that Makedon could muster, and it would need to be enough.

To supplement these taxeis Antigonos was forced to open his coffers and pour forth wealth that he just did not have, borrowing from his wealthiest companions and closest confidants, to hire xenoi and the lowest of the low to act as light troops. Two-thousand sphendonetai he had, all taken from the highland settlements of Makedonia or the more rugged Greek states of Arkadia, Akarnania or Aetolia. Beside these familiar sights came their betters, my own Thessalian kin of course, but also Hellenic nobility from the poleis of the Korinthian League in the persons of Athenians, Boeotians, Eleans and Korinthians, all bound to my father and therefore to his service.

Lastly were the forces of the barbaroi; tall and firm Thrakian horsemen, bearded helmets covering their features and long lances in their hands, pale Keltoi riding alongside them and smoothing their drooping moustaches while laughing at some rough jibe against us.

The only ones who marched in relative silence were the Agrianian infantry procured from one of their princes, men such as those that Alexandros himself had used in every major battle, sturdy and rugged mountaineers who were also experts with the flung javelin or the sharpened blade. On cool evenings or in the light of day I would squat onto my haunches, playing with the frosted or dewed grass between my fingers, and watch them clad only in a chiton as they practised their unique form of combative training with and without weapons.

By the time I had watched enough to make up my mind I visited my pater, busy as always planning battles that had not even happened yet, and requested an Agrianian of my own. Writing this now, I realise how arrogant and spoilt I sounded, a little too familiar with my new position in life perhaps? As it went he accepted, sending word to the leader for a worthy man, and no-one was harmed or any worse for my wholly selfish actions.

Alexandros need not have died, his death and the return of his body to his father causing not even a ripple, except for Pyrrhos to begin mobilisation of an army not under the command of he or either of his two remaining sons. No, he sat dormant in his royal capital of Ambrakia and came not forth to meet Antigonos in battle, rumours spreading that he was almost bed-ridden by a condition that came and went as often as the waves that lapped the shoreline. Helenos, an Olympic victor, watched over Epidamnos but made no move without the consent of his father.

Nor was Hellas to be left in silence, far from it, the Lakedaimonians and their two Kings demanding that 'true Greeks' unite against the tyranny of Makedon and drive it from their lands. Foremost among these adversaries was the Agiad monarch Akrotatos, a leader of men who had sent more than one envoy to the camp of my father calling for the expulsion of all Makedonian garrisons from Greek soil.

If this were not enough then maybe the stench of sedition wafting from the person of Antigonos' nephew, another Alexandros, completed the rivals and enemies both internal and external of the one called Gonatas. Though only recently a man, he held Korinth and ruled over it like a King in his own right, pressing the Hellenes for taxes and keeping his own father Krateros far from his responsibilities and powers given to him by the King.

Such was the situation in which Antigonos now found himself by the summer of the first year of the one-hundred and twenty-eighth Olympiad.

************

Pyrrhos was unable or unwilling to come himself and fight us, but he sent two of his strategoi in his stead. It was this day that we were taken unawares, much as we had ambushed the hunting party of Alexandros, Amynas and Menelaos coming upon us in the rugged hill-lands with some seventeen-thousand warriors drawn from Epiros and lands far, far, away. Greeks they too had in their ranks, Illyrians conscripted from the brutal pirates and coastal raiders of that land, Kretans who fought for pay and for women and most distressing of all were the elephants.

Swaying, towering masses of muscle, huge snouts swinging back and forth and perched atop their humped backs archers firing down at any that would approach. Being only ten-and-six years of age, and never having left my mothers side, I had never seen such beasts but only heard stories from returned veterans of the eastern campaigns played out among the dunes of grass and sand in the east.

A great cry arose from our sentries, the enemy had been sighted, and they were approaching at speed.

I must compliment Brison on the swiftness of his actions, fitting the silver armour to me with all haste, my adolescent frame carrying the pieces well due to my much matured physique and my shaking hands steadying themselves as I felt one of his own in mine. I remember smiling down at him as he pressed my greaves over my calves, listening to the noise of trumpets blaring and orders being shouted in a dozen different tongues from other parts of the hilltop camp.

Antigonos had chosen our sleeping place well as he was want to do, our own tents pitched atop a rising plateau that plunged down into deep valleys on either side. Somehow, and I dare not fathom how, these two Epirotes had scaled the steepest part of the hill and arrayed themselves before us in a fashion adopted across the known world – a fashion known as “the Makedonian way of war”.

Made great by the demi-God that is now called 'Great' it relied on the centre of the line, commonly the phalanx, to hold. Battles were commonly decided on the flanks where the cavalry and light infantry are placed and clash. Before the lines were those lowest born, slings and javelins arching through the air to cut valuable lives short, clashed in a battle all of their own. This was the way in which all three leaders aligned their forces, my father placing the Greek allied cavalry and Thessalians on the left flank, facing those in the employ of the Epirotes, the Agrianians, Thrakian horse and Keltoi protecting the right of the central line formed of our phalangites. Looking at my enemy was like looking at a mirror, the shields and tongue different but the formation almost identical. One difference were the vast numbers of Greeks forming the enemy phalanxes, a grand show of just how hated my father was in our southern territories, jeers and shouts exchanged between both sides that could only be heard when carried on the wind.

All the while the elephants stalked around behind them, their strategos seeing no weakness to exploit in our line...yet. So, for the moment, we were spared attack by those behemoths.

“Hold your bladder,” urged Hermon as we waited for a command, his presence bringing some comfort to me, “it will all be over soon enough...one way or the other.”

Although my bladder sat tightly in my stomach, pressing as it did against the metal of my thorax, I concentrated on the steady breathing of the horse on which I sat and slowly calmed myself. After my last battle, a mere brush with death really, I was preparing to throw myself bodily into a charge alongside my kin that might see me dispatched by a Greek or Illyrian blade. Across the battlefield I could make out shapes of men and horses descending down into the valley before us, my eyes narrowing and my gut tightening into knots, sun glinting from the face-masks of the Epirote prodromoi and blood pounding in my ears.

“Thessalians!” Yelled the man that lead our wing into battle, a towering giant known as Alkmaion the Pharsalian, “today we fight against the Epirote cowards. Show them that the sons of Thessaly fear no man and no beast, show them Thessalian steel. For Thessaly, and for Antigonos...forward!”

Horns and trumpets rang out, both battle-lines moving forward at a quick pace, each man of the phalanx lowering his sarissa and each horsemen gripping his lance tightly. On the flanks both wings of horse sped up their gait, every horse breathing hard and every rider measuring the distance to their foe before each wing struck the other in a scrum of man and beast.

For myself my teeth had began to chatter, my bowels sloshing like liquid within me, but my nerves remaining as solid as the iron blade in my hand. As the pace of the charge moved on, yells rising from several throats, I spied my personal enemy and tapped the flanks of my horse to urge it on. He was an older man than I, a Greek xenoi with a pegasus painted on the face of his large aspis, my youthful stare able to see the deep-set wrinkles on his sweating forehead and the silvery patches of grey in his beard. From looking at his mount and the cut of his leather spolas I could see that he had not joined our enemy out of hatred for Antigonos, but because they were both of them half-starved and in need of the coin from the treasury of Pyrrhos. Why had he not joined us, as those that rode on either side of me had? That, my friend, is a question we shall never know.

When he came within arms length I took my swing, my curved kopis glancing from his shoulder but cutting something, blood spraying from a wound that would have incapacitated his arm. So I thought anyway. Before I could reassure myself of his wound I had swept past him and deep into the press, here it was like Hades, deep in the enemy formation with rearing horses, thrown dirt, jabbing spears and flashing blades as my only companions. Looking around me I could see neither Hermon nor Alkmaion, but I could heart them. I heard as well the sounds of battle further off, even as a one-eyed Illyrian tried to thrust his blade into my gut, the tip scraping away from my armour and exposing his body for only a moment. Without thinking I turned my kopis and swung it horizontally inward from the right, gore and innards spilling from the gaping hole I produced, his simple linen armour ineffective against my weapons gutting edge. More blows fell, blows and strikes that I did not feel or see, but that I would discover at the conclusion of the battle had left bruises, cuts and some that would even leave scars on me.

“Alkestis...” came a roar from nearby, my head twisting to see Hermon at my side, “we are thinned Alkestis, too many have fallen. Even now the enemy seeks our end. See there.”

There they were, Epirote thureophoroi, a type of infantry taken from the thoughts of the Hellenistic worlds foremost military thinkers. In spite of their obvious advantages in battle, being more flexible and a sometimes more deadly weapon than the phalanx, many strategoi were at a loss as to how they should be used when shield struck shield and blade hit blade. It seemed that these pawns of Pyrrhos knew a little more, hundreds of these soldiers bearing spears and their Galatian shields tumbling down the side of the depression and striking at our cavalry, horses rearing up only to be pierced and their riders finished off once they struck the ground.

Moments passed as more and more of my countrymen disappeared beneath swords and spears, the cries of the dying and the moaning of the wounded ringing in my ears, the whinnying of half-crazed animals and the burning feeling that would not leave my muscles as I strove to keep myself and Hermon alive.

Just as hope seemed to fade from me, as all other sounds except that of my breathing and the beating of my heart melted away, as I began to believe I would be joining my ancestors soon, did he come...

Mounted on the largest horse I had ever seen, his companions formed into a wedge behind him, the hunched old man I had first met now gone in a flash of strength and divine wrath, came my father the 'knock-knees' to save us all. Like an avalanche in the mountains they came, picking up speed as they drew nearer, men and horses falling to sturdy lances and flickering blades.

By the time he was near enough for my own eyes to look upon his face I could already feel the smile creeping onto my lips, yet I neglected to keep my eye on the battle around me, something striking hard into my head. My eyes became blurred, my head and entire body swaying from side-to-side and my stomach emptying itself onto the back of my horses neck. The last thing I remember are voices all around me and my whole body hitting the solid ground.

Well, I remember thinking, at least in battle I die.

[Cavalier]

Wow, that's a pretty damn solid story! I like your writing style immensely! +rep

[Stavros_Kalmpou]

you're just awesome

[McScottish]

you're just awesome

Thank you. Filled in the last gaps for me. Take heart that you have one die hard fan. My strongest army had less pikemen and more flanking units, but I don't doubt your skills. Hope you didn't save before the battle.....

Wow, that's a pretty damn solid story! I like your writing style immensely! +rep

@Ownager: I always save before a battle, then again I also always accept the outcome, I simply save in case it crashes and I need to re-play it at all. I'm glad it filled in the gaps, I'm not adverse to using in-game shots, I just would rather write. As for having one die hard fan - it means a lot.

@Others: Means a lot to me, both of you, thank you for your compliments and I'm happy to see others enjoying what I enjoy writing myself. Enjoy playing the game and certainly find writing for you fine people a darned fine experience.

There'll be another update coming soon, probably a shorter one, so prepare thyselves and stay tuned.

[Ownager]

I was scared that you were going to save before a battle and then quit. It happened to me in my AS campaign. You can't activate the script if you save it then. I can look over an add money cheat and a create unit cheat for any good aar, although this one thing really gets on my nerves. Not activating the script. If you search Karthadastim Campaign, you will get this guy who keeps getting annoyed because the script keeps popping up. Damn that made me angry.

PS. I want to do a campaign alongside yours, since your AAR is so inspiring. It helps me right my own reports, though they aren't comparable to yours. Ironically, I am also near Epidamnos and recently fought a big battle, though I was better prepared.

[McScottish]

PS. I want to do a campaign alongside yours, since your AAR is so inspiring. It helps me right my own reports, though they aren't comparable to yours. Ironically, I am also near Epidamnos and recently fought a big battle, though I was better prepared.

Not exactly sure how that'd go (doing one alongside my own, never heard that phrase before), but feel free!

As for being 'better prepared', well, in the next update you shall see that I was prepared enough...and then some. In fact it will begin many months later, and things have changed. For the better. For Makedon.

[Ownager]

Sorry, my phrasing must be bad. I meant to do a Makedon campaign that was similar to yours, following whatever you do in game, just to see how things turn out. By better prepared, when I conquered Epirus, I had Pezhetairoi and,Thessalian cavalry, though I see you are using levies. That's why I said better prepared.

[McScottish]

Sorry, my phrasing must be bad. I meant to do a Makedon campaign that was similar to yours, following whatever you do in game, just to see how things turn out. By better prepared, when I conquered Epirus, I had Pezhetairoi and,Thessalian cavalry, though I see you are using levies. That's why I said better prepared.

Aaaaah riiiight, it all makes a lot more sense now.

Yea, I'm using levies because historically that's mostly what he had at this point, along with a mass of mercenaries, also it helps to keep costs down in-game. I'm now through conquering Epirus and Sparta, that you'll see in the next update, where are you?

[McScottish]

Withered On The Family Vine; Summer, 1st year of the 128th Olympiad (268 BCE) to Spring, 3rd year of the 128th Olympiad (266 BC)

“So the Makedonian awakes...”

My head throbbed in unison as my heart pulsed in my chest, every inch of my body aching, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, the effort of opening my eyes making me grunt and my head swim. Mustering what little strength remained to me I turned my head, my neck hurting from where I had landed on it while falling from my horse, and squinted at a figure I did not know who sat beside my tent-bed. To his own side was Brison, smiling, pleased that I was finally awake but daring not to embrace me lest he cause more pain.

“Who-” I croaked “who in Hades are you?”

“Surazenis,” replied the stranger, his voice tinged with a peculiar dialect not of Greece, his shaven head and grizzled features giving him the look of a hired bandit, “you asked for me.”

I asked for him? When had I asked for him?

The more I studied him - his light but muscular build, his thick limbs and the way his eyes darted about as if checking for unseen dangers – the more I began to realise who he must be.

“You are the peltast I asked for, the Agrianian?”

“I am.” He confirmed, adding a simple bending of his head to me in some sign of respect, “your father said that you wished to learn of my people from one of my people, therefore I am here.”

“Then it is good,” I sighed, laying my head back again and half-shutting my eyes, “and the battle?”

“We won!”

This was Brison, his voice dripping with glee and his Greek words pronounced in perfect forms and syllables, and although I was not looking I could nonetheless picture his smiling face in my mind. His beautiful face.

“Our Agrianian friends danced a merry step with the elephants, hacking stomachs and bellies, flitting around them as so much dust. In the centre the Makedonians held firm, each man doing his duty and keeping his sarissa unwavering. And, on the left, where you were struck and fell before you could be caught, the King and his Companions broke the back of the Epirotes.”

It was as it should be, and as the heat of summer gave way to the temperate winds and drizzle of autumn, everything changing, so to did the place where fierce battles raged. From the mountains of northern Epiros we came, sweeping down into that craggy and unwelcoming region which Pyrrhos and his kin call home, intent on wiping the so-called 'Eagle' and his seed from land that was ours and his no more.

Had he come to face us earlier, mustering his forces and leading them in person, he may not have awoken one day to find us mere miles from his capital of Ambrakia...he did not, and so that autumn that is what my father did!

My own part in this battle was nothing, my body becoming unbalanced if left to stand by myself and my eyesight slowly becoming better, but I heard of it from those that were there and those that took part in the killing and decimation of Epiros. That autumn Ambrakia was besieged, the ranks of my fathers army swollen by Greek cavalry and Thrakians who had come down from the north and fought in their native style, remaining outside the walls of Ambrakia for three weeks before an army under the banner of Helenos Aiakides appeared in an effort to save his homeland, his sire and his people from certain enslavement or extermination.

When I wondered as to how he died, for both he and his father were slain, a swarthy phalangite swore that Helenos and his horsemen had made a suicidal charge into the very points of their weapons, after piercing a number with their lances it was only a matter of moments before they were dragged from their horses or impaled. Pyrrhos, it is said after being strapped by his legs to his saddle, had by this point lost a good deal of his mind to Apollo-given madness. Using the Thrakians as a lure, a lure that Pyrrhos pursued without thinking, Antigonos and the cavalry of the Makedonian army engaged and wiped Pyrrhos and his personal guards from the face of this earth and into Hades kingdom.

Unlike his son he did not give up fighting until a Thrakian, crazed by the death of his brother, drew his curved sika and cut his still blinking head from his body. When the head was presented to Antigonos he began to weep, turning his eyes away and looking instead at the sky, waving away both the barbarian and his trophy. Orders were given at the conclusion of the battle that both bodies of the Aiakides line were to be buried with their ancestors and with the honours befitting their lineage.

This 'compassion' came to an abrupt end when all was said and done, out of the nineteen-thousand Epirotes and hired blades that faced my father only three-hundred or so survived. Every strategoi, including the King of Epiros and his eldest living son, had been slain, and the garrison of Ambrakia that had gone with their King was now no more. By the end of autumn there were Epirote and Illyrian slaves in every poleis, from Massalia to Syracusae, and even as far as Babylon I would assume, fifteen-thousand citizens of Ambrakia and their entire families sent into a life of servitude for the resistance to their rightful ruler. Most were nobility, and those that weren't sent to the flesh sellers were urged to nevertheless provide hostages, others being Illyrian tribal chiefs that had unwittingly taken the side of the defeated and not that of the victor. Most of these were allowed to return to their homes after swearing an oath on their Gods not to take up arms again against Antigonos, though whether he trusted them to keep their word is far from certain. My guess is that he knew full well what a treacherous and underhanded people the Illyrians are.

In the south, the Peloponessos to be exact, Eudamidas of Sparte at last unleashed his revolting Hellenes against Alexandros and his father Krateros as they matched toward that city without walls. What should have been an awe-inspiring show of strength during the warm spring months of the Olympiads second year was turned into an ambush by disloyal Greeks on a faithless and traitorous Makedonian nephew of Antigonos.

As subversive as Alexandros happened to be, he was nonetheless a fine leader of men, the twenty-three-thousand of Eudamidas massacred on the sloping hills of a Lakedaimonian valley to the north of Sparte. Like a ship battering through the side of another he went, the pikes of the phalanx pinning the half-wit Greeks in place while xenoi and loyal Greeks from Korinthos, Elis, and the rest of Achaea sawed away at the flanks. With the ambush like a serpent now twisted back to bite itself Eudamidas fled with his hoplitoi back to Sparte. Only a couple of hundred Hellenes stumbled back to their homes, Alexandros pursuing Eudamidas to the very heart of Lakonia and Sparte herself, there to make war not only on the Eurypontid monarch but his co-ruler Akrotatos of the Agiad line as well.

Unlike Epiros the Lakedaimonians and their city was spared, their temples and sacred places left unspoilt, and their women left as the proud and beautiful examples of womanhood that all Makedonians and Hellenes had been led into believing that they were. No Spartan entered slavery, or even heard the jingling of the slavers chains, but a garrison was placed within the polis, which from there on now, like Korinthos, a Makedonian 'satrapy' but unlike Korinthos much more untrustworthy.

That winter, when the lands were frozen and Ambrakia was like a ruin, Antigonos took the larger part of his army and used what wealth was his to replenish his forces with outsiders. Kretans joined his ranks, ever thankful for plunder and pay and piracy, Galatians from the east and even Keltoi from the land that some call 'Gaul'. At least that is what the savages in Greater Greece called it. When they had gathered he rode forth into the barren north and on to Epidamnos. It was here that the last Aiakides took refuge, Ptolemaios, the last of the royal Epirote bloodline. Though he fought bravely and with courage he was no match for Antigonos, certainly not much like his father, and was knocked to the earth to be dragged in chains before the one that some called 'knock-kneed'.

I was able to witness an audience between my father and Ptolemaios, as well as his strategos Kratillos Bouchetios. Even in the presence of his vanquisher the Prince was defiant, spouting insults and demanding that Antigonos return his lands and his kingdom to its legitimate ruler.

“Epidamneia is mine, fool. Mine by right and mine by the spear. Any claim you had to it is far gone by now, as is the link betwixt you and your people. For they are my people now.”

Offering them both a chance to live, if only they would swear allegiance to him and his heirs, neither valued their lives enough over their honour and both were executed without ceremony.

Such was the end to a dynasty that, had they fought harder and strove to greater things, could have ruled the world. Now they were but shades, the Illyrian chiefs pledging men, supplies and ships to Antigonos and the Epirote nobles grudgingly doing the same. Garrisons were placed in every city, safeguards against uprisings such as those in the south, and very soon the pavilion of my father was as a fortress besieged by the amount of envoys and diplomats entreating him. There were fur-cloaked wild-men from the frigid north, tall and fair-haired with cunning in their eyes, Hellenes from Boeotia, Aetolia, Achaea and Asia Minor and further, Egyptians and those of the Qart-ḥadašt who dwelt in the burning regions of Afrika. All came to pay homage and their respects to he who now ruled both in Makedon and Epirus.

There was one final challenge, and this was to be undertaken by Alexandros and the over-stretched garrisons of the southern poleis.

In the spring of third year of the Olympiad the Greeks, this time under the sway of Athenai, a city known oddly for its wisdom, entered Magnesia and surrounded Demetrios. Such an insult would not go unpunished, and now that he had the wealth and the manpower of two kingdoms, there was nothing stopping my father from spilling more blood to end the conflict and become the supreme ruler of all Greece.

************

Where was I throughout all this?

I was recovering – falling from a horse after being struck had taken its toll on me in more than just body, my fear of once more entering battle increased tenfold and my hands not yet prepared to hold a weapon again. No, I trained with Surazenis rather than face war again, trained with my empty hands and with my mind, keeping my body prepared for the rigours that I would no doubt have to endure before long. Through this training I was taught self-control and how to use the prodigious strength that the Gods had given me, using it not as a blunt tool to beat into submission, but as another blade to be wielded with careful grace and accurate thrusts.

One day in particular will forever haunt the corridors of my memories, a day when one of my fathers companions appeared at the gymnasion with another in tow. This person, hands bound and hair cut short, I first thought to be a slave taken in the war and bought to me on my fathers orders. While both were proven correct and true, it was not exactly as I thought. They were not male, but female, and not just female but one of the Spartan women taken from her home in Lakonia and bought to me.

Alexandros, for all his disloyal behaviour and rebellious thoughts, knew how to sweeten the King and his blood relations and this was how he tried to soften me. I knew his mind and thus it was unsuccessful, but I kept the girl and sent word to thank him for his most generous endowment.

Truly she was a beauty, nearly as tall as I and with soft muscles that moved beneath her brazen skin as she walked or simply moved. Though her hair, brown and straight, was cut short it did nothing to alleviate her striking features. Full lips, a straight nose down which she glared at me with deep blue eyes, high cheekbones and a sharp chin which on any other woman may have looked unbecoming but on her face only served to rouse my interest and other things. Brison did not take to her, of course, but he was always a jealous type, this 'thigh-flasher' he believed would steal me away from him. In a way she did, for I was young and she was also, both of us going through changes and following urges set upon us by nature and the Gods, urges that only by her cold behaviour toward me were kept in check.

As with Brison she served my needs, a chiton of deep red I bought for her and sandals, leaving the hem as short as I dared in a camp full of lonely men. This she rejected and would not remove the torn tunic she already wore except to bath, an activity that I allowed her to conduct in private, though I could have forced myself on her if I had wished. By the spring, when the Greeks once more collected together to cause trouble for Makedon, I at least knew that her name was Thaleia and that she had once been married to a Spartiate ho had lost his life defending his home.

Women, who but the Gods can even try to understand them?

By the time that spring was nearly through I had been summoned to my father and ordered, not asked, to go with a delegation to Pharsalos. There I was to await the gathering of an army that would drive the Greeks not only away from Demetrios but back to Athenai where they would die.

Thus would end the Greeks and thus would rise the Makedonian star over the Hellenic homeland.