Antipater made it a condition of granting peace that all who had favoured resistance to Macedon should be treated as rebels. Demosthenes and his friends fled from Athens, and took refuge at the temples of different gods; but the cruel Macedonian was resolved that they should all be put to death, and took a set of ruffians into his pay, who were called the Exile-hunters, because they were to search out and kill all who had been sent away from their cities for urging them to free themselves. Demosthenes was in the temple of Neptune at Calaurea. When the exile-hunters came thither, he desired time to write a letter to his friends, spread a roll of parchment before him, and bit the top of the reed he was writing with; after which he bowed his head, and covered it with his robe. There was poison hidden in the top of the reed, and presently he rose up and said, “Act the part of Creon, and throw my body to the dogs. I quit thy sanctuary, Neptune, still breathing, though Antipater and the Macedonians have not spared it from pollution.”
He tried to reach the door, but as he passed the altar, fell, and died with one groan. Poor Athens was quite struck down, and the affairs were chiefly managed by Phocion, who was a thoroughly honest, upright man, but submitted to let the Macedonians dictate to the city, because he did not think the Athenians could make head against them. Antipater could never persuade him to take any reward for himself, though others who were friends of Macedon could never be satisfied
with bribes. Meantime, Perdiccas was coming home, bringing with him the two young kings, uncle and nephew, and meaning to put Antipater down; but he turned aside on his way to attack Ptolemy, the ablest of all Alexander’s generals, who was commanding in Egypt, and in trying to cross the Nile a great part of his army was cut off, and multitudes were eaten by the crocodiles. The few who were left rose against him and murdered him in his tent, then offered the command and guardianship of the kings to Ptolemy; but he would not take it, and chose rather to stay and make himself king of Egypt, where his family reigned at Alexandria for three hundred years, all the kings being called Ptolemy.
Antipater was by this time an old man, and he died a little after; and his son Cassander expected to take the government of Macedon, but, to his surprise, found that his father had appointed the old general Polysperchon in his stead. This he would not endure, and a war arose between the two. One of Cassander’s friends took possession of the Piræus, to hold it for him; and Phocion was accused of having advised it, and was obliged to flee with his friends into a village in Phocis, where they were made prisoners by Polysperchon, who thought to please the Athenians by sending them in waggons to Athens to be tried. A mob of the worst sort came together, and would not hear their defence, but sentenced them to die by taking hemlock. When Phocion was asked whether he had any message for
his son, he said, “Only that he bear no grudge against the Athenians.” There was not enough hemlock to poison all, and more was sent for. The jailer desired to be paid, and Phocion said, “Give the man his money. One cannot even die for nothing in Athens.”
Phocion is sometimes called the last of the Athenians, but it was a sad kind of greatness, for he could not give them freedom, and only tried to keep them from the misery of war by submission to Macedon. The Spartans would give no help; and though the little city of Megalopolis held bravely out against Cassander, it was taken and horribly punished; and it was plain that the old spirit of the Greeks was gone, and that they could no longer band together to keep out the enemy; so they all remained in subjection to Macedon, most of them with a garrison of Macedonian soldiers in their citadel. But Athens was as full of philosophers as ever, and became a sort of college, where people sent their sons to study learning, oratory, and poetry, and hear the disputes of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers.
In the meantime Alexander’s embalmed body had been buried at Alexandria, and the two young kings, his son Alexander Ægos and his half-brother Arridæus, had been brought to Macedon. His mother Olympias put poor Arridæus to death as soon as she could get him into her power. She had always hated Antipater, and now took part with Polysperchon against Cassander; but this was the losing side. Polysperchon was beaten, and driven out of Macedon: and she, with her grandson
and his mother, the Persian princess Roxana, shut themselves up in Pydna, where Cassander besieged them till he had starved them out, and Olympias surrendered on condition that her life was spared; but Cassander did not keep his word, and sent soldiers to put her to death. The young king and his mother were kept at Amphipolis till the boy was sixteen years old; and then, growing afraid that he would try to win his father’s throne, Cassander had them both slain.
So the great empire of Alexander was broken up among four chief powers, Cassander in Macedon, Lysimachus in Thrace, Seleucus in Syria, Ptolemy in Egypt.