Perdiccas and the Civil Confrontation at Babylon

The succession struggle at Babylon in 323 sparked a civil confrontation, with open battle between the two principal divisions of the Macedonian army, the pezhetairoi and hetairoi, only narrowly averted when Perdiccas enforced a formal reconciliation: in the name (and presence) of Philip III Arrhidaeus he arrested the ringleaders of Meleager’s faction who had defied the senior officers’ choice for succession and threw them under the feet of war elephants to be trampled to death in full view of both infantry and cavalry. Perdiccas’ use of violence as discipline echoes Alexander’s use of execution the year prior in disciplining the instigators of the rebellion at Opis. Counter to the view that Perdiccas thus revealed his grasping nature, this paper argues that by stunning them into silence as Alexander had done so effectively in 324, Perdiccas gained control of both the situation and the army, for the short-term and beyond.