The Battles of Paraitakene and Gabiene

Paraitakene (autumn 317 BCE) and Gabiene (winter 317 to 316 BCE) were the two great battles between Eumenes of Cardia and Antigonus the One-eyed, fought on the plateau of western Iran during the wars of Alexander’s successors. Paraitakene was a draw; Gabiene was won on the field by Eumenes and lost in the baggage camp. The result gave Antigonus control of Iran for the next few years.

How two Macedonian armies came to fight in Iran

By 317 BCE the empire Alexander had left was split between rival generals (see Alexander’s death and the wars of the successors). Eumenes, a Greek from Cardia who had been Alexander’s secretary, fought in the name of the royal family. Antigonus, the most powerful general in Asia, wanted the empire for himself. Eumenes went east, joined the satraps of the Iranian provinces at Susa, and took over their armies, money and elephants. Antigonus followed him.

The satraps were an awkward alliance. Peucestas, satrap of Persis, had the most troops, including 10,000 Persian archers and slingers, and thought he should lead. Eumenes kept command partly by holding councils in a tent dedicated to the dead Alexander, as if the king were still presiding. He also produced a forged letter announcing that a friendly army was on its way, to stiffen the satraps’ loyalty.

Paraitakene, 317 BCE

After a summer of marches through Susiana and the Zagros, the armies met at Paraitakene. Diodorus gives Eumenes about 35,000 infantry, 6,100 cavalry and 114 elephants, and Antigonus some 28,000 infantry, 8,500 cavalry and 65 elephants. Both sides had Macedonian pikemen in the centre, cavalry on the wings and elephants in front: a Hellenistic battle in the hills of Iran, with Iranian horsemen, Indian elephant drivers and Persian archers on both sides.

Eumenes’s veteran infantry, the Silver Shields, broke Antigonus’s phalanx. Antigonus saved the day with a cavalry charge into a gap that opened in Eumenes’s line. Fighting stopped at nightfall with neither side destroyed, but Diodorus says Antigonus had lost 3,700 infantry and 54 cavalry dead, against about 540 infantry for Eumenes. Antigonus slipped away by a night march into Media to winter at Gamarga.

A funeral on the battlefield

Diodorus records a scene after the battle that historians of India often cite. Keteus, the commander of Eumenes’s Indian troops, had been killed, and his two wives quarrelled over which of them had the right to die on his funeral pyre. The younger was chosen and burned with him while the army marched around the pyre. It is one of the earliest Greek descriptions of the Indian custom later called sati.

The winter march across the desert

Eumenes spread his troops out across Gabiene for the winter, many days’ march apart. Antigonus decided to cross the desert edge in a straight line and catch them before they could gather. He ordered his men to light no fires at night. The cold was so hard that they did anyway, and local people on fast dromedaries saw the glow and rode to warn Eumenes’s camp.

Eumenes, with only part of his army at hand, used a trick. He had campfires lit along the hills over a wide area, as if a whole army were encamped there. Antigonus, believing he had been discovered by a ready enemy, turned aside to rest his men, and the delay gave Eumenes time to bring in his scattered units and his elephants.

Gabiene, winter 317 to 316 BCE

The armies met on a flat, salty plain. When the cavalry and elephants clashed, the trampled ground threw up a huge cloud of white dust.

In the centre, the Silver Shields decided the infantry battle. These were the 3,000 or so veterans of Philip and Alexander, and Diodorus says the youngest of them was about 60 and many were over 70. They charged Antigonus’s younger phalanx, shouting to them that they were attacking their fathers, and according to Diodorus killed more than 5,000 men without losing one of their own.

On the wings it went the other way. Antigonus himself attacked Eumenes’s left. Peucestas, commanding a large part of Eumenes’s cavalry, withdrew from the fight, and Eumenes’s horse was driven back. Under cover of the dust, Antigonus sent Median and Tarentine light cavalry round the flank to the enemy camp, where they seized the baggage train.

The betrayal of Eumenes

The baggage held everything the Silver Shields owned: their wives, children, slaves and the savings of decades of campaigning, including loot from Persia itself. Their phalanx had won the battle, but they were ruined. They opened secret talks with Antigonus, who promised to return the baggage. In exchange they seized Eumenes and handed him over.

Antigonus held him for a time while his council argued. Plutarch says Antigonus’s son Demetrius and Alexander’s admiral Nearchus asked for mercy, but most were for execution, and Eumenes was put to death. Antigonus did not trust soldiers who had sold their general. He sent the most troublesome of the Silver Shields to Sibyrtius, satrap of Arachosia, with orders to use them up in dangerous frontier service.

Consequences for Iran

Gabiene left Antigonus master of all of Alexander’s eastern provinces. He executed Peithon of Media, removed Peucestas from Persis and took the treasuries of Ecbatana and Susa. His control did not last: within five years Seleucus had won back Babylon and taken the upper satrapies, laying the foundations of the Seleucid Empire.

The battles also matter as history-writing. Their main source, used by Diodorus and Plutarch, was Hieronymus of Cardia, a fellow citizen and friend of Eumenes who was present, was wounded and captured at Gabiene, and later served Antigonus. Because of him, these are among the best-described battles of the ancient world, and they give a rare picture of the land and people of western Iran in the years after Alexander: the hill tribes, the desert edge, the Persian archers and the local camel riders who carried news faster than any army.