THE ANTIGONID CAMPAIGN IN CYPRUS, 306 BC* One of the crucial turning points in the continual ebb and flow of power which characterises the decades following the death of Alexander the Great is the campaign fought in Cyprus between the Antigonids and Ptolemy Soter in 306 BC. The centrepiece of the campaign is, naturally, the great sea-battle fought near Salamis, but the lead-up to this momen- tous engagement, and the historical ripples which emanated from it, are arguably of far greater importance, although they have received much less scrutiny from scholars of the epoch. Consequently, several aspects of the affair amply repay further investigation. These include the actual timing and preliminary phases of the campaign, some source anomalies concerning the battle of Salamis itself, and the short- and long-term historical repercussions of the overwhelming victory achieved by Demetrius Poliorcetes on behalf of his father, Antigonus Monophthal- mus. The campaign also enables analysis of a crucial transitional stage in the career of Demetrius himself, and it is these matters which the pre- sent paper seeks to address. The events of the Cypriote campaign may be summarised as follows: at some stage soon after establishing an Antigonid foothold in Greece at Athens and Megara with a large expeditionary force in summer 307, Demetrius received orders from his father to embark on a campaign to drive Ptolemy from his base on Cyprus. He landed on the island in early 306, and after some preliminary sparring, crushed Ptolemy at sea. Imme- diately afterward, Antigonus assumed the title of basileus for himself and his son, thus becoming the first of the Hellenistic kings. The battle of Salamis was arguably the most significant naumachia since its homonymous predecessor of 480, and was a watershed in the careers of Antigonus and Demetrius. It enabled them not only to arrogate the royal title, but also to assert themselves as the new Macedonian dynasty * Note the following abbreviations: R.A. BILLOWS, Antigonos: Antigonos the One-Eyed and the Creation of the Hellenistic State, Berkeley 1990. H. HAUBEN, Vlootbevel: Het vlootbevelhebberschap in de vroege Diadochentijd (323-301 vóór Christus). Een prosopografisch en instutioneel onderzoek, Brussels 1975. G. HILL, Cyprus I: A History of Cyprus, vol. I, Cambridge 1940 [repr. 1972]. J. SEIBERT, Ptolemaios: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Ptolemaios’ I., Munich 1969. 134 P. WHEATLEY replacing the Argeads, and their propaganda machine was to use the vic- tory to enhance the Antigonid image for decades1. Diodorus Siculus is the chief literary source for the Cypriote cam- paign, devoting seven chapters of his Library of History to it, mainly focussed on the military narrative. There are some problems with his tallies of Antigonid ship numbers, but aside from this, he supplies us with a sharp, precise, and detailed account in the Hieronymean tradi- tion. Indeed, it is generally agreed that Hieronymus of Cardia, a con- temporary Antigonid official who later compiled a history of his times, must be Diodorus’ immediate authority2. Much of the account of the Cypriote campaign has the appearance of being first-hand, and Hiero- nymus would have found ample court records and eye-witnesses of the great sea battle, even if he was not a participant himself3. Our other major literary source, Plutarch, compresses his account into only two chapters of his Life of Demetrius. While digesting the actual battle of Salamis itself, he nevertheless supplies some information not provided by Diodorus, perhaps indicating that he is employing an Atthidographic source rather than using the Hieronymean tradition4. He includes 1 Sources for the Cypriote campaign: Diod. XX 46.5-53.2, 82.1; Plut., Demetr. 15.1- 17.1; Pausanias I 6.6; Polyaenus, Strat. IV 7.7; Justin XV 2.6-9; Trogus, Prol. 15; Appian, Syr. 54; Parian Marble, FGrHist 239 F B21; Alexis ap. Athen., Deip. VI 254a. The literary tradition is unanimous regarding the brilliance and significance of the vic- tory, but the numismatic evidence perhaps best epitomises how effectively it was used to publicise the Antigonid cause in the following decades. Demetrius usurped the royal pre- rogative of issuing coins from the mint of Salamis after 306, culminating in the famous series depicting the winged Nike alighting on a warship’s prow; for full discussion, see E.T. NEWELL, The Coinages of Demetrius Poliorcetes, London 1927, ch. III, esp. p. 24ff. & Pl. II; O. MØRKHOLM, Early Hellenistic Coinage from the Accession of Alexander to the Peace of Apamea (336-188 B.C.), Cambridge 1991, p. 77-78, Pl. X, nos. 162-165 & 171. 2 J. HORNBLOWER, Hieronymus of Cardia, Oxford 1981, is still the best treatment of the historiography; see also R.A. BILLOWS, Antigonos, p. 327-352. 3 The account of Demetrius’ aristeia at Salamis, for instance, must either be propa- ganda or an eye-witness account, and is reminiscent of the description of the young man prior to the battle of Gaza in 312 (Diod. XX 52.1-3, cf. XIX 81). The description of the approach of Ptolemy’s fleet to Salamis is certainly from an eye-witness: toÕ dè Ptole- maíou pléontov êpì t®n Salam⁄na kaì t¬n üpjretik¬n ploíwn sunepoménwn pór- rwqen katapljktikòn ör¢sqai sunébaine tòn stólon dià tò pl±qov (Diod. XX 49.6). See J. SEIBERT, Ptolemaios, p. 190-192; H. HAUBEN, Vlootbevel, p. 108-109. 4 See W.E. SWEET, Sources of Plutarch’s ‘Demetrius’, CW 44 (1951), p. 177-181. Plutarch’s interest in military detail in the Demetrius is minimal. He devotes very little space to the critical battles of Gaza, Salamis or Ipsus, being absorbed in his biographical agenda of chronicling Demetrius’ and Antony’s moral and mental deterioration (see, for instance, Demetr. 1.7; Synkrisis 4.2-3, 5.2, 6.2.). If an Athenian source is being used, as ANTIGONID CAMPAIGN IN CYPRUS 135 details from the aftermath of the engagement, and a full account of Antigonus’ response to the news. The significant detail which strongly suggests Plutarch’s use of an Athenian source at this point is the record, nowhere else attested, of Demetrius’ gift of 1,200 panoplies to the city after Salamis5, presumably as a reward for the naval aid6. Numerous peripheral sources also record the battle, but they are extremely abbreviated, and tend thematically to contrast the first con- frontation between Demetrius and Ptolemy at the battle of Gaza (312 BC) with the second at Salamis, severely compressing the intervening years in the process7. The only useful detail added to Diodorus and Plutarch is a chronological pointer in Pausanias. The final source, Polyaenus, con- tains some helpful data, but also a wildly divergent account of the main battle. To these writers we shall return. I. THE TIMING OF THE CAMPAIGN It is difficult to ascertain exactly when Demetrius was ordered to Cyprus by his father, as his precise movements after his triumphal entry into Athens in August 307 are not easy to trace. The chronographic and liter- ary sources are inspecific regarding the date of the campaign: it is only generally recorded by Diodorus and the Parian Marble as being within the archon year of 307/068. However, an extremely compressed excerpt from Pausanias contains a specific chronological pointer: dielqóntov dè toÕ xeim¬nov Djmßtriov pleúsav êv Kúpron Menélaon satrápjn Ptolemaíou naumaxíaç kaì aŒqiv aûtòn Ptolema⁄on êpidiabánta êníkjse· is likely, the detail would perhaps decrease while Demetrius was not in Athens itself, even if the account was ultimately derived from an eye-witness on, for instance, one of the Athenian quadriremes in the battle. 5 Plut., Demetr. 17.1. C. HABICHT, Athens from Alexander to Antony, transl. D.L. Schneider, Cambridge (MA) 1997, p. 77, further suggests this may have been meant to imitate (and outdo) Alexander’s gift of 300 Persian panoplies to the city after the Grani- cus (Arrian, Anab. I 16.6-7). 6 Thirty Athenian quadriremes fought with Demetrius at Salamis: Diod. XX 50.3, with W.S. FERGUSON, Hellenistic Athens: an Historical Essay, London 1911, p. 112; W.K. PRITCHETT, A Decree of the Year of Koroibos, AJP 58 (1937), p. 329-333, 333. 7 Paus. I 6.6; Appian, Syr. 54; cf. Justin XV 1.6-2.6. 8 Diod. XX 47-53; Parian Marble, FGrHist 239 F B21. 136 P. WHEATLEY When the winter was over, Demetrius sailed to Cyprus and overcame in a naval action Menelaus, the satrap of Ptolemy, and afterwards Ptolemy himself, who had crossed to bring help9. The excerpt is too abbreviated to be of much help, but does place Demetrius’ arrival in Cyprus «after winter», and taken in conjunction with the Parian Marble entry, this narrows it down to spring or early summer of 306. But it is impossible to know whether Pausanias refers to the direct embarkation for Cyprus from Cilicia, or is speaking generally of Demetrius’ sailing from Athens to initiate the campaign. However, most scholars assume he spent the autumn and winter of 307/06 in Athens10. This is corroborated to some degree by Plutarch, who reveals at the beginning of a digression on Demetrius’ conjugal habits, that he lingered (sxoláhwn) in Athens for a while, and that when his father’s summons came, he was enmeshed in negotiations with the other Greek states11. These exchanges were no doubt time-consuming, and while the sources do not allow a detailed reconstruction, it may safely be surmised that he spent several months in Athens, but probably not the whole win- ter. The timing of his father’s apparently unilateral decision and sum- mons, which appear to have been driven by concern over the proximity of the Ptolemaic naval base to his new capital in Upper Syria12, is also unclear.