Battle of Ipsos
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- Date:
- 301 BCE
- Participants:
- Macedonia
- Seleucid empire
- Thrace
- Context:
- civil war
Battle of Ipsos, (301 bce). Alexander the Great’s sudden death in Babylon in 323 bceleft his leading generals locked in decades of squabbling over the spoils of his empire. At Ipsos, Antigonus—long in the ascendant—was finally overpowered by the combined forces of his rivals, and particularly by their strength in elephants.
With a powerbase at the heart of Alexander’s empire in Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, Antigonus appeared to have the upper hand among the diadochi (successors). His son, Demetrius, had taken Athens and southern Greece, but others opposed their primacy: Lysimachus, ruler of Macedon and Thrace; Seleucus, who had established himself as king across Mesopotamia, Persia, and other eastern territories; and Cassander, whose father Antipater had taken charge of Alexander’s homeland in Macedon.
The last great diadochus—Ptolemy, ruler of Egypt—was still struggling to rebuild his armies after Antigonus’s invasion of 306 bce. This experience convinced the successors of the need to offer concerted resistance. In 301 bce, accordingly, Lysimachus and Cassander came together with Seleucus to do battle with Antigonus and Demetrius in open grassland near Ipsos, Phrygia, in the center of what is now Turkey.
Skirmishers engaged before the heavy infantry pushed slowly together from both sides; Demetrius drove forward, with the elite of the Antigonid cavalry, from the right flank. His attempted encirclement was thwarted when Seleucus deployed his elephants as a living wall. Antigonus’s own seventy-odd elephants had given him a clear edge over rivals in earlier rounds, but Seleucus had 400 animals, and this made the difference. As the allied infantry pressed their advantage in a storm of arrows, slingshot, and other missiles, Antigonus was caught and killed by a javelin.
Losses: Unknown.