The Macedonian generals had condemned Eumenes to death after the murder of Perdiccas in Egypt by his own soldiers, assigning Antipater and Antigonus as his executioners.

Eumenes, betrayed to them by one of his own officers, had fled to Nora, a strong fortress on the border between Cappadocia and Lycaonia, where he has held out for more than a year, until the death of Antipater throws his opponents into disarray.

As Antipater had left the regency to his friend Polyperchon instead of his son Cassander, Cassander therefore allies himself with Antigonus and Ptolemy, while Eumenes allies himself with Polyperchon.

He is therefore able to escape from Nora, and his forces are soon threatening Syria and Phoenicia.

Eumenes, a non-Macedonian with a fortune behind him, can claim to represent the kings against the ambitions of generals and governors.

After he secures Babylon, Polyperchon recognizes Eumenes as the royal general in Asia.

Antigonus marches against him in 318 and Eumenes withdraws east to join the satraps of the provinces beyond the Tigris River.

Antipater's death in 319 BCE had signaled the end of centralized authority in the empire.

His successor, a senior commander but maladroit politician named Polyperchon, tries to win the Greeks of the mainland by a new proclamation of their liberties.

The result is that the Athenians of the democratic party regain power and use their freedom to execute the pro-Macedonians, including the worthy but compromising Phocion—who, his forty-five elections as general notwithstanding, is executed as a traitor for permitting the Macedonian seizure of Piraeus.

Antipater's son Cassander refuses to acknowledge the new regents and war flares up.

Antigonus joins forces against Polyperchon with Ptolemy, Lysimachus, Eumenes, and the able, up-and-coming Cassander.

Cassander, with the help of Antigonus, seizes Macedonia and …

…most of Greece, including Athens.

Polyperchon had invited the terrible Olympias to act as regent for her young grandson, Alexander IV, but she continues to decline his request.

Eumenes marches toward the eastern provinces, pursued by Antigonus.

He holds Antigonus in check during a long and hard campaign on the Iranian plateau; the two armies meet at Paraetacene in summer 317, a technical victory for Antigonus but an inconclusive battle.

One Berenice had arrived in Egypt after the death of her first husband in the retinue of Eurydice, Ptolemy's second wife and queen, whom he had married as part of a political agreement with her father, Antipater of Macedonia.

Ptolemy in about 317 makes Berenice his third wife.

Cassander drives Polyperchon from Macedonia in 317 BCE.

Alexander's two successors, his half-brother Philip III Arrhidaeus and his son Alexander IV, continue to furnish a nominal focus for loyalty.

When Cassander establishes Arrhidaeus as king of Macedon in 317 BCE, Philip’s wife makes Cassander regent.

The Macedonian soldiers, however, support the return of a furious Olympias, who puts to death Philip and his wife, Eurydice II, as well as Cassander's brother and a hundred of his partisans.

Olympias is finally named Stratonice, which is probably an epithet attached to Olympias following her victory over Eurydice in 317 BCE.

One Agathocles, a potter’s son who had moved from his native town of Thermae Himeraeae to Syracuse about 343 BCE, had learned his father's trade, but afterwards entered the army and served with distinction under Timoleon.

In 333, he had married the widow of his patron Damas, a distinguished and wealthy citizen.

He has been twice banished for attempting to overthrow the oligarchical party.

Returning in 317 with an army of mercenaries drawn from cities chafing under Syracusan domination, he takes a solemn oath to observe the democratic constitution which is then set up.

Forcibly establishing himself as “strategus auticrator,” he also appropriates the title of “general plenipotentiary,” accorded in the past only to Dionysius the Elder.

In what comes to be called Agathocles’ Massacre, he murders his political opposition and members of the ruling Council of Six Hundred, in all killing or banishing an estimated ten thousand persons.

As master of Syracuse, he creates a strong army and fleet and subdues the greater part of Sicily.