Rating: 4 out of 5
I have been a great fan of the Diadochi – and especially the Seleucids – ever since an early age when I saw a map of the ancient world which highlights them in the far east of the Mediterranean. I have found Mr Fabbri’s work on this subject to be very interesting because it brings to light the characters; sure, with the liberty of a writer of fiction, but grounded in sources as much as these exist. I have enjoyed this series and I have been trying to read each installment as quickly after its publication as I could. This one was no exception and I was not disappointed.
The premise of the story in this installment is to look at how Antigonus is finally defeated. This takes the concerted efforts of almost all of the others including Seleucus (Seleukos), Lysimachus, Demetrius, and Ptolemy (Ptolemaios). What was a particular interest to me this time around was to see how the siege of Rhodes unfolded. The endeavor of Demetrius, Antigonus’ son, is well known in the ancient world for clever siege craft but for me personally this was interesting to imagine because I have been there and I could see in my mind’s eye how these events unfolded. I was tempted throughout the depiction of the author’s version of these events to actually look up how the siege actually ended but I was able to restrain myself to read up on it afterwards. All in all this was a major part of the story and it was also a very interesting depiction in which almost all of the major players had some role to play.
The other major part of the story was of course the lead up to the final battle with Antigonus facing everyone else. It is a surprise to me actually that he was so successful in doing so. I think this is one of the few parts of the story that the author doesn’t really put forward very well. In a way it’s understandable because this goes into historiography. But at least from my point of view, I would have liked to understand how Antigonus managed to roughly equal the forces of everyone else combined. The depiction of the battle of Issos itself is based on the few glimpses of ancient sources that we have. It doesn’t give us much but the author has turned this into some sort of viable strategy. For the lack of anything else I think it’s believable and understandable.
We end the story with one less state in existence. Reading up on on the major actors of these times, however, it was incredibly interesting to see how many of them have a new chance (mostly inevitably squandered) to gain an upper hand 5, 10, or 15 years later again. This felt like the end of a series to me, but I would really hope that Mr Fabbri continues exploring the soul of the ancient Macedonian as it was after conquering those lands and fighting over them for three decades.
