Alexander : a history of the origin and growth of the art of war from ...

664 THE DIADOCHI.Greece and Macedon were no longer what they had been.Their preeminence had departed with their patriotism.The campaigns of Alexander in Asia had not tended tokeep up the admirable spirit of discipline which Philip hadcreated in the Macedonian army.Its contact with the riches,luxury and low moral tone of the East had sapped its hardyvirtues to the core.It had needed Alexander's own wonderfulpower as a soldier and a king to keep this evil from destroyingthe army, root and branch, even during his life.Only he was capable of getting from it the work it did.That Alexander's army was no longer what ithad been inearlier and simpler days was manifested by the several conspiracieswhich occurred in Drangiana and Bactria, the refusalof the soldiers to cross the Hyphasis, and the mutiny at Opis.On Alexander's death, there was no one capable of checkingthe further and rapid spread of this demoralizing evil. Hisgenerals, — the Diadochi, or successors, — Perdiccas, Antipater,Craterus, Ptolemy, Antigonus, Eumenes, Cassander,Leonnatus, Lysimachus, Seleucus, divided up the empire,ostensibly as regents and lieutenants for Alexander's halfbrotherPhilip Arrhadaeus, whom the army had chosen king,and as some say also for Alexander, his posthumous son byRoxana. But ambition for absolute control and jealousiesamong the Diadochi soon ledto wars which were continuousand bloody, which extinguished by murder the entire familyof Alexander, and which were not ended until the close ofthe century, at the battle ofIpsus.But out of all this turmoil there arose several monarchies,the Eastern ones of which represented the influence of Alexander'slife in their marked Hellenistic character.These monarchieswere : Egypt, under Ptolemy, son of Lagus, and hisdescendants ; Syria, under Seleucus and his descendantsPergamon under the Attalidse; Macedonia, under the de-