Alexander’s Veterans and the Early Wars of the Successors by Joseph Roisman (review)

Rarely in the historical record does one find soldiers with as much power and privilege as the veterans of Alexander’s Asian campaign had during the period after their king’s death. The rivalry for power among the Successors, all of whom understood the battlefield potency of seasoned troops, put their services in very high demand, and the free flow of cash unlocked by Alexander’s conquests dramatically elevated their salaries. They exercised unprecedented freedom of choice regarding which commander they would serve. During the years 323 to 316, the fate of a two-million-square-mile empire rested in large part on how they used their newfound political clout.

Joseph Roisman recounts, in this cogent and compelling book (based on his Mitchel lecture series at the University of Missouri), the history of this turbulent seven years, keeping his focus on the way Alexander’s veterans navigated its many perils and dilemmas. On one level he provides a detailed and judicious account of the early wars of the Successors, a worthy achievement in itself; but on another, he probes the tense, emotionally fraught relations between the principal generals of those wars and the troops on whom they were all too desperately reliant. He seeks to understand the motivations of these military supermen, finding that they were stirred often by loyalty and a sense of fairness, occasionally by patriotism, almost always by a robust interest in pay, and very rarely, despite some scholarly opinion to the contrary, by a desire to quit fighting and return to their Macedonian homes.

Roisman is a practiced historian who examines his sources with a critical eye. He lays out the evidence carefully and notes the many places where the ancient accounts—principally those of Justin, Diodorus, Plutarch, and the epitome of a lost work by Arrian—disagree with one another, or fail to explain events adequately. Roisman’s boldness in making judgments about whom to believe or in filling in gaps in the record is one of this book’s most appealing qualities. There are points on which my own reconstruction of events differs from his, but I greatly admire the forthrightness of his opinions, all of which are grounded in sound historical logic and a thorough mastery of the sources.

Roisman confronts a difficult interpretive task in focusing his study on a body of anonymous soldiers rather than a central leader or king. For some of the episodes he deals with, he is forced to admit that we simply don’t know how the veterans behaved. Another problem stems from the many ways that the royal Macedonian army was divided, reassigned, and integrated with fresh recruits from Macedonia or from Asia as the wars of the Successors drew in new sources of manpower. Roisman follows the diverging paths of various groups of veterans as best he can, but there are points at which these trails disappear, or the identity of the veterans becomes lost in the great melting pots of the post-Alexander armies. Fortunately the last phase of Roisman’s narrative, involving the war between Antigonus and Eumenes in central Asia, brings to the fore the Silver Shields, a highly visible and cohesive corps of elite veterans whose motivations and temperament can be studied in remarkable depth.

The most difficult challenge confronting any Successor historian is the extraordinary complexity of the early Hellenistic age. Important events take place nearly simultaneously on three different continents; contestants for power change rapidly, and new ones emerge as if out of nowhere; the center does not hold. Roisman’s prose exposition is extremely clear and lucid, but even so, the less expert among his readers will likely feel overwhelmed by the welter of developments. His book would have been well served by a chronological table, a glossary of names and places, or a larger array of maps and illustrations (the only maps...