The Strongest: A Thrace AAR

[Basileus2]

The Strongest​

A Thrace AAR

The Reign of Lysimachos: Part 1 (323 - 302 BCE)
The Reign of Lysimachos: Part 2 (302 - 298 BCE)
The Reign of Lysimachos: Part 3 (298 - 286 BCE)



When one walks the ruins of Lysimachia they may wonder, ‘what giants built this place?’

Lycus Albanus, Philosopher

The Setting Sun, Babylon, 323 BCE​

“It’s going to rain, master,” Tus said.

Lysimachos glanced upward and grunted. “So be it.” The general was a man of few words.

Better for me, Tus smiled inwardly.

His friends and colleagues, men of the bureaucracy that had once served the King of Kings, Darius III, had all come to serve their new lord, Sikander [Persian name of Alexander], after he had wrested control of the empire. Many of them had been assigned to the general staff of the new King of Kings and many had complained to him of the barbarity of such men; their ill-tempered babbling and their constant, demeaning boasts of their superiority to the Persians. Luckily for Tus, Lysimachos was none of these things. He was a soldier to the core, a man used to giving orders and having them obeyed. He did not believe in wasting his air on frivolous words, save for when in his cups when he enjoyed recanting his tales of adventure and youth. He treated Tus as he would any other servant, be they Macedonian or Massagetae.

Together they passed under the blue glazed tile walls of Babylon and through streets lined with vendors hurriedly packing and covering their wares. The people too seemed to know a storm was coming.

Tus led the general through the emptying streets and past the ziggurat of Etemenanki and to the royal palace. The troops guarding the palace were a mix of the elite native satrapal guards and the Macedonian Silver Shields.

How odd these specimens are, Tus mused, observing the Silver Shields. They should be retired at home, being fed grapes and sung songs of their greatness, not standing guard duty. They were all hard veterans who had campaigned with Sikander and his father, Philip. Had they not had their burnished silver shields at their sides one might’ve mistaken their name as being derived from their grey hair. They were old men, all of them.

Tus, Lysimachos and their entourage passed lightly over beautiful rugs and under the waving fronds of palms grown in the airy, perfumed corridors of the palace. They proceeded past wall reliefs telling of the city’s history and a procession of increasingly grim faces. At last, they reached the antechamber of the King of King’s quarters. There stood many other Macedonian generals. The King’s scribe, Eumenes the Greekling, stepped forth.

“Greetings, old friend,” Eumenes said.

“I came as quickly as I could,” Lysimachos replied.

“And yet you’re too late. He is dead.”

Dead? Sikander…dead? Tus thought. Marduk, what will happen now?

“When?” was all Lysimachos asked.

“Hours ago.”

For the first time since he’d met his master, Tus saw conflict on Lysimachos’s face.

“How could this be? I was told he was ill but recovering days ago.”

“Typhus, perhaps? Neither doctor nor magi can tell for sure.”

“What were his last orders? Who is his successor? The King has no legitimate son.”

Eumenes looked lost in thought, his eyes having wandered to the wall reliefs behind Lysimachos. Lysimachos shifted to stand before Eumenes’s gaze. He repeated his questions.

“Him, I suppose,” Eumenes answered, nodding towards Perdiccas. The King’s right-hand man stood pale-faced, surrounded by a gaggle of generals who were all trying to speak at once.

“What does that mean?”

“Alexander only mumbled at the end,” Eumenes said, still absentminded. “He said something about the strongest.”

“Perdiccas is certainly not that,” Lysimachos said brusquely.

Overhead the sky seemed to tear open with thunder. The hiss of rain hitting the sun-heated bricks of the city rose to a background whine.

“One of his wives is pregnant,” Lysimachos said. “The Bactrian one. The child will be heir.”

“Meleager and the infantry regiments are already petitioning for the king’s brother, Arrhidaeus, calling him a true born Macedonian and son of Philip.”

Lysimachos harumphed. “Arrhidaeus has half a brain.”

“If Roxana’s child is a girl what are your thoughts on the king’s bastard, Herakles?” Eumenes continued.

“A bastard cannot be king,” Lysimachos stated it as if it were fact. “None of this will end well. A settlement must be made between all the powers that be until Roxana comes to term. Ptolemy will want something, a satrapy of his choosing, as will Peithon, Leonnatos, Crateros – ”

“ – and so many others,” Eumenes cut in.

“As for me,” Lysimachos said, placing a hand on Eumenes’s shoulder. “I want to go home. I haven’t seen Macedon in ten years or more.”

“Impossible,” Eumenes said. “Perdiccas is already assigning commands. He is to ask you to take up lordship of Thrace. I was about to write up the command.”

Tus shivered. Thrace was a cold backwater, a land of savage tribes and bow-wielding centaurs. It was less a satrapy of the empire than a smattering of garrisoned coastal villages surrounded by untamed wilderness.

“If Perdiccas has been named regent then I will obey,” Lysimachos said.

Always the soldier, damn him.

“Alexander gave him his signet ring before he died,” Eumenes said, shaking his head.

“That is as good a sign as we are likely to get. I will discuss the details with Perdiccas, then.”

Tus knew he had to act quickly before Lysimachos could fully regain his composure. He would not be carried along with the general to that strange land of Thrace.

“Great General,” he cut in. “I can prepare your belongings for the trip now and help you set your affairs in order. It has been an honour serving you.”

“An honour you will continue to have, then,” Lysimachos said. “You are coming. If I am to serve the kingdom in Thrace then I shall have to form designs for its destiny and you have proven yourself too valuable an administrator of my will to leave my side.”

“But my family – ”

“Shall come with us.”

Marduk save me, Tus thought.

Prologue: From the Death of an Age, Birth​

Having marched from the gates of Pella in Macedon to the banks of the river Hydaspes in India, the realm King Alexander III Argead had forged was unlike any other in history. Incorporating a thousand nations, tribes and peoples, it required, at least in infancy, a ruler of genius equal to its size to hold it together. Though the realm may have had such a man in Alexander, it was not blessed with either an initial monarch of longevity nor a worthy successor as the Persians had in Cyrus the Great and Darius the Great. Alexander too may have been ‘the Great’, but he passed away young, unable to capitalize on the success of his youth.

In the fallout of Alexander’s death, the world order collapsed. Attempts were made to re-establish control by the generals and women of Alexander’s court. All failed. August figures such as Perdiccas, Eurydice, Olympias and Antipater all squabbled amongst themselves for regency over the babe king Alexander IV, son of Alexander the Great, and Philip III ‘Arrhidaeus’, the half-wit, half-brother of recently passed king. The egos involved in these conflicts were too large and the stakes too high to allow for the true accession of these successors, who were both to be consumed in the flames of the wars that followed their coronations. The empire’s seams and stitches were torn one by one until it finally shattered apart entirely. When at last the cards settled, a new world order had come to be; the Hellenistic Age.

From this age came many great conquerors, epic romances, tales of daring, and above all, new civilizations. Of said civilizations, the one most frequently cited as their favourite from historians to school children is that of the realm of Thrace. Thus, it is in this humble chronicle that I shall seek to recount the tale of that great people and nation.

The Reign of Lysimachos I (306 - 286 BCE): Part 1​

As one of Alexander the Great’s prime generals, Lysimachos was granted the satrapy of Thrace in the Partitions of Babylon that took place after the great king’s death.

Begun, the wars of succession, have.

Lysimachos is known as a prickly character. A soldier’s soldier, he was given perhaps the most difficult task of all the generals of Alexander; to fortify the wild frontier of the northern empire in the region of Thrace. By the time of the Fourth War of the Diadochi Lysimachos had been married twice, including to one of the Persian brides Alexander had foisted upon him. These marriages had produced four children, including his eldest, Alexandros, a curious, detail-oriented child who would one day succeed his father.

​

Of all the lands in the Argead empire at the time of Alexander’s death, the region of Thrace would likely be deemed one of the least likely to be the seat of a future Mediterranean superpower. Yet rise this superpower did. In the beginning, Thrace was indistinguishable from the person of Lysimachos the First, the Lion Slayer, the Despoiler of Odrysia, the Bridge of East and West. However, it soon came into its own and would stamp its unique place in world history.

Wary of contenders to his regency, Perdiccas sent off the most feared of his would-be political opponents to the ends of the earth, often with little or suspect support. It can be inferred from the fact that Lysimachos was ordered to Thrace with only a meagre force of 4,500 veterans that he was one of the regent’s greatest worries. Despite these long odds, Lysimachos’s military genius was to use this small force as the core of an army that would soon conquer from the Hellespont to the Danube, tripling Thrace’s European possessions.

Since 323 BCE when being sent to Thrace, Lysimachos had ruled the province with an iron fist. He had brought the Greekling city-states on the Black Sea coast back under Macedonian suzerainty and fought back multiple incursions from the various Balkan tribes, most prominently the Getae and Odrysians. In 315 BCE Antigonos the One-eye, perhaps the most powerful successor of Alexander at the time, had stirred up the Scythian horse-archers against Lysimachos in order to distract him from providing aide to his friend and ally, Cassander, who had taken control of the old Macedonian heartland. With his characteristic skill, Lysimachos defeated these challengers and consolidated his power by founding a city named after himself; Lysimacheia. This humble colony would soon grow to become one of the Hellenistic world’s great cities.

In 305 BCE with the death of the last male descendants of the Argead bloodline the generals of Alexander, Lysimachos included, dropped all pretension of fighting for their former royal house and named themselves Basileus; king. With himself as a king Lysimachos began to make plans.

Recognising the weaknesses of Thrace, he decided that before any forays into the decadent east could be undertaken, he had to shore up his power in Europe first. Too many times in the last twenty years had the natives and Greek of the region risen up against him for any eastern adventures to be a safe bet.

Long had it been the custom of the Macedonians to lord over their subject peoples. Only Alexander himself had attempted some form of integration, a cause which had earned him the enmity of many Macedonians in the court, Lysimachos among them. However, in his mounting years and responsibilities, Lysimachos understood that were his kingdom act as the vehicle for his ambitions and survive him, some flexibility would be required. In 302 BCE the king made a sweeping and surprising declaration that the Odrysian peoples already living within the lands of his kingdom would be extended limited citizenship rights, including the ability, and responsibility, of serving in the army.

As this very act was promulgating its way through the thatch huts of Odrysians living in the Thracian kingdom, further north, the free Odrysians, under Seuthes III, were gearing up for war. Intent on forming his own state and escaping the harsh tributary terms forced on him from previous drubbings, Seuthes believed that this critical moment of transition would be the opportunity to strike. It was, moreover, key for him to do so before the citizenship acts had been fully completed, lest they draw Odrysian support away from him and towards the mongrel state in the south.

As word of the Odrysian revolt filtered into Lysimacheia, so too did news of something far greater; renewed war between the great generals of Alexander. Tectonic shifts were occurring in the east, with Thrace caught amidst the fury.

 

[Wixelt]

Thraced.

 

[Cora Giantkiller]

also Thraced

 

[Nikolai]

A wonderful start.

 

[Henry v. Keiper]

Awesome start! Loved, loved, loved the introduction, with the interaction between characters, and loved hearing about how Thrace started out. I'm hoping to see more.

 

[Specialist290]

This looks like it will be worth keeping an eye on

 

[Basileus2]

O Lysimachos, shall ye not spare a single hair from the heads of mine people?

Seuthes III, King of the Odrysians

Stone upon Stone​

Tus shivered, but not from cold. He watched over the procession of captives that were brought in from the latest battle with the Odrysians.

Battle. There are better words to use than that, he thought, yet it was what King Lysimachos was claiming. In truth, the wars in the north were more akin to hit-and-run attacks with half-naked savages jumping out of the bushes at the fresh levies of farmers plucked from their fields.

The line of new slaves was strung out all the way across Lysimacheia’s main thoroughfare. They were downtrodden, many caked in dust so thick Tus couldn’t tell one from the other. Where had these hundreds been plucked from? Some festering Thracian village in the middle of the mountains? The peasants seemed to be enjoying the spectacle. They thronged the sides of the streets, screaming something. Tus strained his ears to make the order of singular words from a thousand throats. Nika! Nika! Hema! Hema!

They’re all Greeks, he realized. Victory, victory. Blood, blood, the people were calling. The Greek populace of the city, many pulled into it from the outlying settlements near the Euxine Sea, had been the generational victims of the inland tribes, the Odrysians and Getians the worst of the raiders.

Somewhere in the boil of the crowd a scuffle began. No, not a scuffle. People were backing away from one person who was moving erratically toward the procession of slaves.

A woman.

She was dancing strangely…beautifully. She contorted and flung her head back till her chin pointed to the clouds, her arms flailing and her bared legs pirouetting in wide circles that carried her forward. She was singing something in a high, clear voice. A prayer.

The slaves heard. Some stopped in their tracks and sank to their knees in the direction of the ululations, saluting the woman with their bowed heads. Tus had never seen Odrysians sink to their knees willingly before.

A Zalmoxian priestess, he suddenly understood. Of all the strange rites the Odrysians the invocation of their supreme god, Zalmoxis, was the most revered among them. Tus had studied among the Odrysians who now lived side-by-side with the Greeks in Lysimacheia at the order of Lysimachos. The King had wished it to be so as part of his program of integrating the Odrysians as he conquered their nation.

The more we understand of them the more we can bring them into the fold. We must understand what they want Tus. No, not just freedom! What do they like? What do they fear beyond subjugation?

And why had the King wanted this?

More spears for the army, fool! He’d grumbled at Tus.

And so, Tus had studied. Despite the fact his head felt like it might explode with all the facts he’d learned since entering the service of Darius III, he’d learned yet more.

Suddenly the Greeks surged forward and grabbed the woman. She disappeared in an instant beneath the writhing mass of arms and legs. Tus spied an arc of blood flying through the air. The slaves had too. They now rushed forward to defend their priestess. The street descended into a brawl. Guards in forest green cloaks rushed into the whirl of action, swords and spears in hand.

Tus turned away, nauseous.

“Father? What’s wrong?” a thin voice spoke.

“The King will be displeased,” he said to his son, Pylaeus. He’d given the boy a Greek name, one that translated to gateway, for that was what he was. Since time immemorial Tus’s family had lived in Babylon, serving the Great Kings. They’d been Babylonian in blood, belief and bonds. Now though…he was cut off from home by long decades and great distance.

“Why?” Pylaeus asked.

“He wishes our two peoples to live side by side. Together, as your mother and I do,” Tus clasped his hands together.

He’d married a Greek woman, darling Melite, who’d sired him a half-breed son. Perhaps the day would come when Pylaeus’s descendants would think they’d lived time immemorial here in Thrace.

“Then why is he marching them through the streets like that? That’s stupid. Of course, they’re angry.”

“It is…complicated. Those who join us willingly, who submit, are welcome. Those who resist earn the brand and shackle,” Tus explained, tugging his son to follow.

They descended down their staircase. Tus’s knees aching as they did. They went out the back entrance to avoid the street havoc. Together Tus and his son walked the back alleys of the city. He remembered when all this had been but a dream.

Lysimacheia had been a Greek colony, one of hundreds. It was of no note. Not even its original name was remembered today. The King had chosen it for its strategic location, sitting just over the straights between Europe and Asia as it did. The city had flourished. Most buildings were still ramshackle thatch and mud, but new ones in the Greek style, white-walled with red tiled roofs, were rising fast, as were the great ramparts and towers that Lysimachos had marked out himself when he’d once walked the perimeter of the city. Tus smiled at the memory.

So long ago now, he thought. He was old. The King was old. Soon it would be the time of his sons, Alexandros and Agathocoles.

Which will rule? And how long will they last? He wondered.

He continued down the streets with Pylaeus towards the palace. There was work to do yet, and the boy had to learn fast.

The Reign of Lysimachos I Part 2 (302 – 298 BCE)​

Even before declaring himself King in 306 BCE Lysimachos had been embroiled in border conflicts with the Ordysians. Caught between renewed war and a window of opportunity to attack Antigonos alongside his friend Cassander and old comrades Seleukos and Ptolemy, Lysimachos decided at last that it was time to end the Odrysian threat once and for all.

Lysimachos entrusted his generals with the conquest whilst he turned south to contend with the coming storm between his former comrades in arms. Each day the small but professional armies of Lysimachos spread further into Odrysia, sinking talons deep into the land’s open terrain.

While this was occurring, the decree for the integration of the Odrysians was promulgated, laying the groundwork for their people becoming one of the subject family of nations that Lysimachos planned to lord over. It took only one great battle for the once mighty King Seuthes III to come to the bargaining table, as he had all those years before.

Lysimachos declined his offers of peace, stating that “They [the Odrysians] gave us war. We are returning it to them”. Lysimachos thoroughly done with insubordinate behaviour from his northern neighbours. He planned to turn the land into a march with which to protect his own heartlands along the Bosphorus.

As always, Lysimachos was a man of two faces. With one hand he extended citizenship to the Odrysians. With the other he utterly despoiled the lands of those who resisted. Upon reaching the fledgling capital of Seuthes, the general Krateros Tauriskid, one of Lysimachos’s elite ‘Companions’, a company of royal intimates such as Alexander the Great had, completed his orders by razing the city to the ground. Thousands were slain, and thousands more taken into slavery. The last survivors fled in all directions. Many became vagabonds and bandits in later years that were only hunted down after extensive operations by future governors of the region.

Whilst Seuthopolis burned so too did the fires of war in Anatolia. The war had been going poorly for Cassander, who was never known amongst Alexander’s companions as being a warmaker. However, despite the Antigonid upper hand, greater powers had been coaxed into joining hands with Cassander to war on the One-Eye’s eastern flank.

Letters of alliance had come from Cassander to Thrace too. In them, Cassander, despite not holding claim to any of the territory he promised, told Lysimachos that if he were to join in defeating the strongest of the Successors, that he would be given all of Antigonos’s Asian lands. Clever Cassander had made similar promises to Seleukos and Ptolemy as well, perhaps hoping that after defeating Antigonos the three men would fight amongst themselves like jackals over a carcass, all the while building his own strength.

Lysimachos wanted war. However, after catching the King exhausted from a day of boar hunting, the royal advisors convinced the king to follow a more cautious path. Instead, after further plying him with wine that night, they received the stamp of his signet ring upon a parchment they’d crafted and sent to Antigonos.

When Lysimachos learned of what had been done, rather than be furious, he simply relented. It was a strange and out of character moment for the old King. His age, some whispered, was catching up with him. Perhaps he sought more time amongst the boars than amongst soldiers, they said. Within the month a reply arrived.

To the surprise of the entire former Argead empire, Antigonos bowed to the demands of Lysimachos. Perhaps realizing that yet another enemy would doom his family’s cause, the One-Eye surrendered the seven satrapies along the west Anatolian coast. Finding himself suddenly buffered by rich, ancient lands filled with all that his current realm lacked, Lysimachos, somewhat satiated, turned his attentions back north. An accord had been reached, with land being its price.

The ripples this concession caused in the fracturing Argead empire cannot be understated. Whereas he would have been cornered from all sides by kings, Antigonos and his fledgling realm were now free to confront the enemies that rallied on their eastern borders. By selling a third of their empire, they had saved the other two thirds and won yet more to make up for it.

In 300 BCE the Antigonid cause was vindicated in the great Battle of Sagaphros, when the combined forces of Cassander, Seleukos and their allies were utterly crushed with near thirty thousand dead on the field. Thereafter Antigonos chased the remnants of Seleukos’s army out of Anatolia whilst his son, Demetrios, captured the heartlands of Macedonia, sending Cassander into the western mountains.

Cassander, at this point afflicted with terrible gout, was driven into depression. Ptolemy, cautious to leave the confines of Egypt, was defeated when he sought to steal Cyprus from the busy Antigonids. In the Battle of Kition the great Ptolemaic and Antigonid fleets clashed, with the Antigonids only achieving the upper hand after a vicious storm blew up. Tens of thousands more perished that day, with the shores of Cyprus littered with the crab-eaten dead for months thereafter.

Whereas separate peace’s were signed with Seleukos and Ptolemy, Cassander was pursued into the Grecian peaks. The Antigonid cause had found victory in the fields and seas but the mountains defeated them. Three separate armies Demetrios led into the mountain passes to hunt down Cassander, but each time he failed. Despite these victories, Cassander’s realm was much diminished. He soon died, whether from his sickness of mind or body none can tell. He left two sons to battle over his meagre possessions.

As the wars in Asia, Africa and Macedon began to wind down new ones flared up in the northernmost reaches of the Lysimachos’s Thracian kingdom. The King, smelling dominion over all lands south of the Istros [Danube] River, sent out demands for submission, offering similar terms he did to Seuthes III before that king’s final, fatal rebellion against him. By this point, having had only victory to his name in decades, Lysimachos had begun dreaming of empire. He saw great Macedonian cities rising from the Istros to the far-off Tauros Mountains. He was, however, to never see this dream realized.

Having received columns of refugees fleeing Lysimachos’s ambition, the tribes refused his offers. With new war to be had, the last years of Lysimachos’s life would be consumed with putting down tribesmen, not conquering the Asian lands of Antigonos.

Recognizing that new opportunities to ply their trade closer to their home existed, many of the veteran warriors of the other Successors made their way to the wild lands of Thrace and Lysimachos seeking new fortunes or eventual repatriation. These new recruits included the ancient, such as several of the remaining Argyraspides, the elite Silver Shield unit, now all in their sixties and seventies, and the young, such as the exiled prince Pyrrhos of Epiros.

Both Pyrrhos and one of the Argyraspides, a certain Derdas Leosthonid, became two of the most influential commanders of thte professional core of Lysimachos’s army. They trained the men to peak physical condition and drilled into them tactics learned from the great battles in Asia learned these last several years. These proved boons in the long wars to come.

The Kingdom of Thrace, a realm hereby that only existed in paper, was fast coming into existence by force of arms. Soon, Lysimachos would march north himself in what would prove to be his final, most decisive campaign yet.

[The Kingdom of Thrace in 298 BCE]​

 

[Henry v. Keiper]

Well, I feel pretty sorry for the priestess there...

On a more positive note, nice to see the Antigonids put up a decent fight against the Seluecids and others. Usually in my games, they get steamrolled.

 

[Specialist290]

The Odrysians are brought into the fold, but it seems that old wounds heal slowly, and some grudges never die...

Lysimachos has carved out quite the empire for himself -- and hopefully one that, unlike his master's, will survive his own demise.

 

[HistoryDude]

Thrace seems mighty.

It may yet stand the test of time.

To The Strongest goes Alexander's Empire. Perhaps Thrace is Strongest?

 

[Nikolai]

To The Strongest goes Alexander's Empire. Perhaps Thrace is Strongest?

Funny, I wondered the same.

 

[Basileus2]

For those who are wondering, I'm playing Ironman. And...I'm pretty awful at the game! I'm actually playing a lot more cautiously than I would otherwise because I'm trying to learn the mechanics properly and not lose horribly. You're going to see a few wars coming up as I make some mistakes but manage to claw back enough war score to save myself from giving up too much. Take my lack of skill at the game as part of the role-play.

I am learning quite well though and this all bears out eventually as you'll see .

 

[-DI- RivalET]

For those who are wondering, I'm playing Ironman. And...I'm pretty awful at the game! I'm actually playing a lot more cautiously than I would otherwise because I'm trying to learn the mechanics properly and not lose horribly. You're going to see a few wars coming up as I make some mistakes but manage to claw back enough war score to save myself from giving up too much. Take my lack of skill at the game as part of the role-play.

I am learning quite well though and this all bears out eventually as you'll see .

Eh contious successes would be boring anyways. Not all tales can be like that of the Great!

 

[Basileus2]

​

Apologies for the late posting of this, folks! Another writing project got in the way of continuing this one just as work heated up.

Do you hear? He’s marching through the gates. The king has come home.

Last words of Lysimachos I

Wars and Weddings​

Tus laughed as he watched his son’s drunken antics. The boy had consumed far too much wine, but it was good to see the youth laugh. It had been too long since either of them had been happy. Not since before Melite’s death in childbirth had he remembered being this…what was this feeling? Normality?

Tus sipped at his goblet again and reclined backward, observing the room. It was filled with courtiers, soldiers and the family members of both the bride and groom. Alexandros, eldest son of Lysimachos, was being married. The bride was the beautiful Philokleia. The King hadn’t cared a wit who his son married, but Alexandros, made of more devious stuff, had understood that her branch of the Alkimachids were among the greatest clans of the burgeoning kingdom, and displeased with their lack of a role in its governing to boot. To help placate them, he’d chosen Philokleia as his wife-to-be.

Around the room were other important figures; Derdas Leosthonid, the former Silver Shield, was regaling a crowd of his battlefield exploits. Among that group was Pyrrhos, the young princeling from Epiros who’d fought in the successful campaigns of Antigonos One-Eye in Asia. To the left was Lysimachos himself, back from his latest conquest, the tribal settlements of Serdika and the

Moesians, regaling a bevy of magistrates including his favourite sycophant, the balding steward, Numerion, with tales of how he’d originally come to Alexander’s attentions; by beating a lion with his bare hands. Tus wasn’t sure the story was true, but it Lysimachos had told it so many times that he knew just how to hook the audience in. It was just as gripping as the first time he’d heard it.

Agathokles, the king’s second son and Alexandros’s, sat sulking in a far corner of the room. Tus noted with some concern that the young man had been by himself all evening, drinking and eyeing people with hostility. Agathokles saw himself as Lysimachos’s rightful heir, since his mother was currently married to the king. Thankfully, the second heir’s skills never seemed to match up to the schemes his elder brother cooked up, for Tus found him to be utterly despicable and a poor candidate for the throne. Now though, Philippos, Master of the Guard, had approached Agathokles. The two seemed to be deep in conversation, whispering to one another. Suspicion bit at Tus.

Alexandros stood to give a prepared speech, his honey-haired wife arising next to him.

“Friends, countrymen, today is an auspicious day, the joining of the fates of two of the great families of our fledgling land. We shall…”

As the princeling continued, Tus, perhaps with confidence buoyed by the wine, made his way across the room of Philippos and Agathokles.

“Philippos, Agathokles, a fine wedding, no?” Tus asked, intruding on the plotting.

Agathokles said, looking at Tus in annoyance. “What do you want, old man?”

“To join the conversation. I’m no soldier, but am I not man enough to join the chat of two great soldiers?”

Agathokles looked Tus up and down. “I’ve always disliked you, Babylonian. Your kind shouldn’t be anywhere near the halls of power.”

Tus frowned. Agathokles was one of those Macedonians who believed in the utter superiority of their country. Men like that were the ones who’d broken the realm of the Great King, who’d destroyed Alexander’s legacy; Antigonos, Cassander, Leonnatos, and all the rest. Only Eumenes (a Greek), and to some extent, no little thanks to Tus’s manoeuvrings, Lysimachos, had seen the need for multicultural rule. Agathokles was like the rest of them only more foolish.

“Councillor, would you care to join us for some meat? Crackled goat rubbed with honey and thyme, if my nose is correct,” Phillipos said in a far more conciliatory tone.

Agathokles harumphed, stood, and stomped off.

“Forgive him, he’s not happy about Alexandros being so high up in his father’s esteem,” Philippos said.

No wonder.

“I too fail to understand why,” Tus said, giving his best smile. His mouth stayed closed of course. What few teeth he had left were yellow and displeasing to look upon.

“Sit, sit. Your bones must ache.”

“Oh, how they do. When one has marched from Babylon to India and back, then to Thrace of all places, one’s body doesn’t let its owner forget,” Tus chuckled.

“I’ve ever admired men of your generation who undertook the Great Journey,” Philippos began. “And I wish to see the good work you and your kind did persist. That is why we must support Agathokles. He is a soldier, where his brother is a slovenly thinker.”

Philippos clearly didn’t realise the irony of what he said. Tus had never so much as lifted a spear in his life.

“He is learned in the ways of ruling diverse peoples and lands. He is an adherent of the great Socrates and Plato’s teachings. He will be a fine ruler, should he be chosen,” Tus said.

“Philosophy is fine if one is seated in the confines of Athens or Corinth, but here, on the frontier, we must have a soldier,” Philippos said. He looked down at his wine and in his cups quietly said, “And there are many who would see this outcome made true.”

He’s plotting treason, Tus realized. He seeks to manoeuvre for Agathokles, but in which way? Assassination? Civil war?

“Tell me more,” Tus leaned in close, assuming a whisper of his own.

He was an old man, but perhaps he could be of use to King Lysimachos one last time.

The Reign of Lysimachos I Part 2 (298 – 286 BCE)​

While war continued with the fractious tribes of the north, word had come to court of the burning of the Temple of Herakles in Sicily. The Siculans, a tribe of native barbarians had risen up with the backing of the Carthiginian empire and begun systematically exterminating the Greek colonies on that island. Great mourning and lamentations rose up from Lysimacheia as well as calls for revenge, even if just the funding of the Greek cause.

Lysimachos, and even more so his favourite son, Alexandros, knew this would be folly, however, and instead invested any spare money into the expansion of their soon-to-be great city Lysimacheia and in the fortifications along the Istros River. The fate of Greek Sicily seemed a dark one with only a handful of cities pledging any kind of assistance. The remainder of the Greek world was still, even decades after his death, still embroiled in the fallout of Alexander the Great’s death.

Lysimacheia by this time had approximately one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, having grown from a mere thirty thousand at the time of the city’s renaming in 315 BCE. It continued to grow rapidly as an influx of new slaves and freedman from the recently conquered northern tribes and annexed Asian shore poured in seeking opportunities.

Of the northern wars, under the brilliance of Derdas Tauriskid the Silver Shield and Pyrrhos of the Aiakid dynasty, the Thracian kingdom was soon able to conquer all enemies as far north as the Istros river and as far west as the Moravian river where, for nearly three centuries, the Thracian border would remain.

The campaigns of Derdas and Pyrrhos, known now as the Thracian Pacification, enabled Lysimachos and more often as the years passed, Alexandros, to focus on state building at home. Around these years, Alexandros married a distant cousin, the pious Philokleia, calming an offended branch of the Alkimachid family.

Lysimachos, now an aged man, had long since been torn between which of his heirs to nominate as his successor. Like Antigonos and the other Diadochs, he espoused a form of semi-divine kingship, but recognised that he would not linger for much longer upon the earth. At last, as his years to come stretched thin, Lyshimachos made a decision; Alexandros would be his heir, not Agathokles, who had served fighting pirates in the navy as well as in the Thracian Pacification.

Agathokles’s time in the navy had brought him into contact with yet another of the Alkimachid clan; Phillipos, nephew to Lysimachos. It is not known whether Agathokles planted the seed of rebellion in Phillipos’s mind or if the admiral took advantage of the youth’s discontentment, but soon rumors of rebellion began to swirl from within Lyshimacheia.

The King, a harsh man if described kindly, did not discount nor excuse these rumors for his own blood. He demanded his son be brought before him to answer the charges, as well as Phillipos. Agathokles however, had recently passed into Asia in order to take control of one of the provinces there. Phillipos was much closer, the royal navy being harbored in the capital’s magnificent port as it was. Phillipos, not wishing to lose control of the valuable asset of the navy, which allowed for control of the straights that split the kingdom in two, prevaricated until he knew his accomplices were ready to rise up. He hired a lawyer.

Meanwhile, after the Second Battle of Seuthopolis, the will to resist of the Moesian tribes was forever broken. With as little as four hundred of their own casualites to the enemies eleven hundred, the campaign was effectively over. While Phillipos delayed (it is said he never left one of his ships in several years he held off on his trial), the magnificent army whom had served in the north were recalled to be honored in Lysimacheia.

Derdas and Pyrrhos were paraded through the capital with great honors bestowed upon them. Alexandros himself presided over the event, crowning his glorious generals with honors and laurel wreaths. There, to the surpise of all, Alexandros offered the hand of his sister to Pyrrhos. He did so only at the insistence of his father, who had come to dote on the young Pyrrhos, claiming he was akin to a second Alexander. This event drove a jealousy within Alexandros, who would later come to be known for his grasping nature. It was acceptable he share honor and glory with Derdas, an old man, but Pyrrhos? And to officially tie the young warrior, who was so much more popular with the crowds than he, to the family? To a keen political mind like Alexandros’s, it was unacceptable.

For months after the event, Alexandros plotted to ensure the removal of his budding rival from possible contention to the throne. He paid close attention to the events around the world, seeking an opening to help him secure his position. Alexandros began placing trusted allies in places of power, one such being the Mysian Jew, Xiphares.

Further possibilities opened up when Kios, a city under the protection of the kingdom of Thrace, witnessed a regime change when the Mithridatic family who had previously adminstered the city fled after public opinion turned against them.

Most important of all, however, was the death of Cassander, King of Macedon. In the winter of 294 BCE, the middle-aged king, long plagued with a cancerous ailment, passed away. Though Cassander and Lysimachos had been friends long ago, the bond between the two had been weakened first by Lysimachos’s refusal to become involved in the final Antignoid War, then by the poisinous words of Pyrrhos, whose long exile had been caused by his uncle, who was allies with the Macedonian king.

It was here that Alexandros saw his opportunity. Recognising that Macedon was descending into anarchy, Alexandros suggested that now might be a good time for Pyrrhos to return home and retake his ancestral homeland. The princeling bit. He exploded into the a furious energy, gathering supporters and making plans with such a speed as to surprise even Alexandros.

After six months of preparation, Pyrrhos departed with the good graces and fond wishes of the populace of Lysimacheia. If he was depressed by the sudden departure of his son-in-law, Lyshimachos did not show it. Instead, he poured his attentions into the new northern border, ensuring the Istros was strongly defended and culturally integrated.

​

Before Lysimachos, who was overseeing the creation of these fortifications himself, could return to Lysimacheia, Philippos struck. He emerged from his grounded navy for the first time in over a year with an honor guard of two hundred marines, marching to the palace and demanding an immediate trial with which he could clear his name. Alexandros, startled, but confident in the ability of Numerian the Steward and Lasos the Master of Laws to guide events to a satisfactory conclusion, admitted the trial.

For a week over the sweltering summer of 289 BCE, Philippos’s lackeys schemed and bribed until even Numerian and Lasos lost control of the situation. Furious that public opinion was turning against their cause, Alexandros called an early end to the trial, demanding a verdict. The trial turned on a technicality, with Philippos claiming he was off on one of the Agean islands during which period a piece of otherwise would-be damning evidence had been uncovered.

Claiming he had been unjustly persecuted by Alexandros, a man mad for power, Philippos declared that Agathokles only could be the heir to the absented Lysimachos. Civil war had come to Thrace.

Lysimacheia erupted into violence as marines from Philippos’s navy stormed into the city. Luckily, the royal guard were able to hold the palace just in time for Lysimachos himself to return to the city. The old king convinced several contingents of marines to abandon Philippos, enough for the siege of the palace to be broken. Philippos was able to commandeer the navy and set sail, blockading the passage between Europe and Asia. There, he was also able to get word to his ally, Agathokles, who raised his banner in rebellion. Chastened, Alexandros deferred to his father, though the blinding fury Lysmiachos had first felt at Philippos’s betrayal turned to despondency when he heard of Agathokles’s rebellion. He took to drink and his harem, swearing each night that he would slay his own son if he needed to. Regardless of these promises, Lysimachos would make no move. Instead, he fell further into lethargy. His physical appearance deteriorated rapidly, his hair falling out and his skin assuming a pale, grey, moist, nigh slug-like pallor. Alexandros, surprised by his father’s uncharacteristic lack of action, jumped into motion himself, recalling the loyal governors he’d put into place over the last few years and demanding fresh oaths of loyalty and support. The governors largely complied, proving the effectiveness of Alexandros’s covert campaigns over the last few years.

Regardless though, with the navy absconded and the royal army unable to cross into Asia, the situation was far from comfortable. Alexandros implored his father to rouse himself from his stupor, yet Lysimachos fell ever further into it. For three years the rebellion grew unchecked in Asia while Alexandros scraped together what ships he could. Despite his efforts however, the vessels of Philoppos’s navy still far outclassed those that were slowly gathering in the few un-blockaded ports left to the kingdom’s European half.

In 286 BCE the end came for Lysimachos, King of Thrace, Lion-Slayer, Diadochi. While attending his harem, the king collapsed. Before he could even be coronated, Alexandros launched an inquiry. Since returning from the frontiers he’d said that his father had been acting strange. His line of thought immediately drew him to Katisa, one of the women his father had brought back with him. Long had there been whispers of poisoning. Alexandros had the woman clapped in irons and prepared himself to take up the cup his father had left behind.

The age of the Diadochi was passing. The age of the Epigoni had come.

​

 

[HistoryDude]

Alexandros is smart. He can win this war.

The Epigoni's age is here!