Antipater

Antipater held Macedonia and Greece together while Alexander was away, and the arrangement he left behind did not survive his death by a year. He was a general of Philip II, a generation older than Alexander, and was left as regent of Macedonia and commander in Europe when the army crossed into Asia in 334. The job was to hold down Greece with the troops Alexander had not taken, and he did it. Sparta rose under Agis III in 331 and he destroyed the revolt at Megalopolis while the king was in Persia. His relationship with Alexander's mother Olympias was poisonous and constant, each writing to Alexander about the other, and by the end Alexander had summoned him to Asia in terms that could have meant anything. He did not go, sending his son instead. Alexander died before the question was resolved, which is why one strand of ancient rumour has Antipater's family behind the poisoning. The Greeks rose again at once on hearing of the death. He beat them at Crannon in 322, ending Athenian democracy as a functioning system and installing a property qualification; Demosthenes took poison rather than be taken. The qualification is worth stating in numbers. It restricted the franchise to men holding property above a threshold, which removed something over half the citizen body at a stroke and put a Macedonian garrison in the Piraeus to guarantee it. At Triparadisus in 321 he became regent of the whole empire and kept the fiction of a single realm alive. He died in 319 having passed the regency over his own son to an old officer named Polyperchon, which set the son against the settlement immediately. The empire was partitioned in earnest from that point.

• Lived: 400 BCE – 319 BCE
• Nationality: Macedonian
• Roles: military, politician