HPLN: Interlude: The Pieces Move. . .

For a bit over a year, an uneasy truce had been maintained between the Sons of Ptolemy I Soter. The lands of their father had been divided amongst them into three parts, with three of the Sons of Ptolemy I Soter and one Breakaway State having sundered the once-mighty Kingdom into Quarters. Peace had reigned, though all knew it for what it truly was, that being a truce rather than real peace. As two-seventy-seven dawned, none expected the fragile peace to last the year. In fact, none expected it to last past the Summer, as all realized that the armies that the various Rulers were and had been building would likely be used soon.

First, there was Meleager sitting in Phoenicia, Cyprus, Judia, Part of Nabatea, and the Levant, styling himself as Great King of Phoenicia, Overlord of Judea, Protector of the Temple of Solomon, Master of Cyprus, and a host of other, somehow even less important titles. The Pomp of such titles did not do much to distract from the fact that Meleager was, ultimately, a Seleucid vassal. However, with that Vassalage came economic ties to the Mighty Seleucid Empire under Antiokos I Asianos. Meleager had used those ties to build up a powerful, if slow, force of Heavy Cavalry, Armored Hoplites, and War Elephants, supported by a fleet of Triremes and Quadriremes that could transport it all much faster than it could march on its own.

Secondly, Ptolemy Keraunos sat in his Capital at Thebes, having moved the Administrative Center back there during the First Brother's War from his father's stronghold at Ptolmais in the Thebiad in order to show solidarity with the largely Native Egyptian Population of Upper Egypt, which he ruled, and the Nubian Population of Kush, which he also ruled. This had largely worked, though he had needed to placate the relatively few Greek Settlers in his territory by lessening their tax burdens somewhat. The Army he had built, however, was the antithesis to the mighty, but plodding, force of Meleager. Every man of his army could ride a horse, and every man of his army had one. It was a force largely of light cavalry, Mounted Longbowmen, and Mounted Thorakitai. A fast force that could maneuver rapidly and strike without warning.

Meanwhile, there was the separatist, Magas of Cyrene, sitting in the Cyrenaican Pentopolis and profiting off the lucrative Silphium Trade. His people were the most united, being largely Greek Colonists in Cyrenaica as well as a few Hellenized local Libyan Settlements. His Army was also the most orthodox, a force of Phalangites, Thorakitai, Companion Cavalry, and Peltasts, almost the same as something you might have seen in the Armies of Alexandros Megas back in the previous century. This army was supported by a small but well-trained fleet of Triremes and Quadriremes, with their home port being Apollonia.

Lastly, Ptolemy Philadelphos sat in Alexandria, allied to the Breakaway State of Cyrenaica, but with his own forces largely composed of native Egyptians he had conscripted as a more martial form of corvée labor. His attempt to use his remaining Greek Forces as a cadre to train the Egyptians had met with somewhat less success than he had hoped. At the same time, he had largely alienated swathes of the Hellenic Military Elites of Egypt by refusing to bow to their demands for fewer taxes and more control over the Egyptian Military, undercutting their leverage by conscripting Native Egyptians. Ptolemy Philadelphos' Kingdom of Lower Egypt was possibly the least unified and most discontented of any of the Kingdoms of the Claimants to Ptolemy I Soter's Realm.

That would prove to be the spark that ignited the blaze of Civil Conflict, ultimately sparking the Second Brother's War between the fractious successors to Ptolemy I Soter's Kingdom. It began with an attack on April Sixteenth, two-seventy-seven, in the City of Memphis on an Initiate of the Temple of Ptah by a group of drunk and angry Greek Teenagers. These teenagers had previously been bemoaning the fact that, in their wine-soaked minds, a number of Native Egyptians had joined the Army and taken billets that would have rightfully belonged to them when they came of age in the new year. In the ensuing scuffle, the Initiate had been stabbed. This set off riots in Memphis, which forced Ptolemy Philadelphos to intervene personally, publicly declaring that any rioters had a day and night to return to their homes and no questions would be asked. Anyone still rioting when the Amnesty Period had ended, however, would be put to the sword by the Army.

Most rioters took Ptolemy Philadelphos' offer, with only a few of the most committed rioters having to be rounded up at spearpoint by the Army. By that point, however, the damage had been done, and the Memphis Riots of April Two-Seventy-Seven had given Ptolemy Kerounos, watching the scene unfold from Thebes, and proclaimed that he would invade Lower Egypt to protect the rights of the citizenry and restore order. The pretext had been all too tempting to ignore, and Ptolemy Keraunos called his Army Together and set out into Lower Egypt by the end of April Two-Seventy-Seven.

Ptolemy Philadelphos, suspecting his brother would do something like this, gathered together his forces and called upon his ally Magas to do the same. Both Kings would move to attempt to head off possible attacks by Ptolemy Kerounos up the Nile towards Hermopolis, with Ptolemy Philadelphos especially using river barges on the Nile to ship his troops down the River to Hermopolis, while Magas was more cautious, slower to gather and send forth troops, just in case of a trap, as he had been paying attention to Ptolemy Keraunos' efforts to rebuild his army and knew that Ptolemy Keraunos had the advantage of mobility. Both Kings expected the cities between Hermopolis and the border with Upper Egypt to have all been seized by the time that a defense could be mustered, which meant the most likely place for confronting an invasion from Ptolemy Keraunos would be Hermopolis.

In this, they would prove mistaken, as Ptolemy Keraunos' swift-moving, lighter force not only managed to circumvent the planned interception at Hermopolis, riding into the desert on an arc around the Nile and effectively hopping from Oasis to Oasis, beginning with the Oasis of Hib, and moving northwest to the Oasis of Oxyrhynchus, before heading east to the Oasis of Sheydt, before moving southeast toward the Nile to attack the City of Ptolmais Eurgetis. The City, a major center for the Cult of the God Sobek, surrendered to Ptolemy Keraunos on the condition that he not ransack the Crocodile God's Temple. Agreeing to these conditions, Ptolemy Keraunos surprised the Priests of Sobek by offering sacrifices to the Crocodile God in the temple.

This cemented his position in the hearts and minds of the Native Egyptian Populace, and with Ptolemy Keraunos having taken Ptolmais Eurgetis in a lightning maneuver that no one had expected, he was now in a position to threaten any attempt by either Magas or Ptolemy Philadelphos to come to the aid of the other. This action, falling on the Ides of May of Two-Seventy-Seven, only emboldened the other Challenger, Meleager, the Great King of Phoenicia, to act as well. The City of Pelusion, on the Northwestern end of the border between his Kingdom and that of Ptolemy Philadelphos, was the last bit of Arabia Petraea that did not belong to either Meleager Himself or his Patron, Antiokos I Asianos. Ptolemy Philadelphos' current predicament proved the perfect opportunity to rectify that situation.

His forces surged forth from Judea, bolstered by his Phoenician-built-and-crewed fleet, to attempt to capture Pelusion, and in so doing, seize control of all of Arabia Petraea for himself and his Patron. The Garrison of Pelusion was sizable, however, around three thousand troops and local auxiliaries, and was well provisioned for a siege. That was what would wind up occurring, as the Pelusion Garrison had no hope of actually facing Meleager's twenty-thousand-strong Army in a field battle and emerging victorious. This suited Meleager just fine, however, as Ptolemy Philadelphos would be some time in mustering any relief for the besieged defenders at all now that Ptolemy Keraunos was threatening his rear. By the twentieth of May, Pelusion was well and truly under siege by Meleager.

The last major thing to happen before the end of Spring Two-Seventy-Seven was the Battle of the shores of Lake Moeris between the advance force of Magas of Cyrene and the Forces of Ptolemy Kerounos. Ptolemy Kerounos set a group of Light Cavalry up hidden behind a grassy ridge near the Lake, while also hiding Longbowmen in the tall grass at the top of the ridge. He then baited Magas' Advanced Force of Companion Cavalry, Thorakitai, and Phalangites into attacking this position with an attack by mounted Thorakitai on Magas' Screen of Peltasts, who were foraging ahead. In the ensuing ambush, Magas' Forces were dealt a heavy blow from the hidden Longbowmen, whose Longbows and Cretan-tipped Arrows were able to penetrate even the breastplates of the Phalangites.

When Ptolemy Kerounos' Light Cavalry then charged out from behind the Ridge, throwing javelins at the suddenly outflanked Cyrenaican Force before charging with lances couched, thanks to the Stirrups of their mounts, the Cyrenaicans broke. In the ensuing carnage, the Cyrenaican Advanced Force was routed from the field, leaving a third of their number slain, another third captured, and the last third fleeing northeast for the Safety of Memphis. In a single action, Magas of Cyrene lost four thousand troops slain or captured, a massive blow to the prestige of Cyrenaica as the primary military power of the Alliance between Magas and Ptolemy Philadelphos.

Thus were the pieces set when, at the close of May, two-seventy-seven, the Fleet of Epirus would arrive off the Coast of Cyrenaica near Apollonia. Magas' Fleet would sally forth to attempt to stop what was clearly an invasion from Epirus, attempting to take advantage of the situation in Egypt for their own gain. Unfortunately for the fleet of Cyrenaica, however, that resistance against the assault was to prove futile. The Small Cyrenaican Fleet consisted of only one hundred ships, the vast majority of which were smaller Triremes, and thus woefully outclassed by the great Dromons of the Epirote Fleet, simply could not deal with the onslaught.

The Cyrenaican Fleet was forced, after just a single hour of battle off the coast, to flee for the safety of Apollonia's Fortified Cothon-style Military Harbor, leaving half its number burning, sunk, or captured behind it, including the majority of its larger, more capable Quadriremes and its sole Quinquireme, the Flagship of the Cyrenaican Fleet, the Xiphos of Cyrene, which had been captured by the Crew of the Epirote Flagship, the Spear of Ambracia. This had disheartened the Cyrenaican Fleet enough that even those Captains who would have otherwise thought about attempting to rally what was left of the Fleet for a Counterattack turned to follow their less heroically-minded brethren into the Harbor.

By contrast, the Epirote Fleet only lost six ships burned or sunk and another six damaged. That meant the Epirotes had sunk, burned, or captured just over four times their own casualties in enemy ships. It was truly a heroic victory for the Epirote Fleet, akin to their battles in the Sporades against the Athenian Fleet, further causing morale among the Cyrenaican Defenders of Apollonia to plummet.

If that caused the defenders of Apollonia's Morale to fall, then it had further to fall still. The Naval Battle Off Apollonia presaged the arrival of a second fleet, this one of transport ships. These transports bore a new army toward Cyrenaica, with Pyrrhus of Epirus at its head. The King of Epirus had come to aid his ally, Ptolemy Keraunos, and also to claim the province of Cyrenaica he had been promised. As Pyrrhus made landfall on the coast just outside the Polis of Apollonia, it was clear that this was no mere round of skirmishing. The Second Brother's War had begun in full.

And it seemed that with Magas and Ptolemy Philadelphos in the positions they were in, that if nothing changed, the Second Brother's War might also be the Last Brother's War. . .

XXXX

AN: All right, so here's the next chapter. This is pretty much just a quick and dirty summary of the events that led to the outbreak of the Second Brother's War and the opening moves of that same War. Ptolemy Keraunos had put Ptolemy Philadelphos on the backfoot from the start by using his mobility advantage to plan a lightning attack through the Oases of the Western Desert to capture Ptolmais Eurgetis, all while Meleager tries his hand at taking Pelusion once more. Meanwhile, Magas hasn't sent Ptolemy Philadelphos too many troops before having to turn and fight Pyrrhus, but he's still having to fight an unexpected invasion from Epirus as he does it. That's the situation as of Pyrrhus' Entry into the war.

As for Place names, since folks have asked, Ptolmais Eurgetis is the modern-day city of Faiyum, and the Sheydt Oasis is the Faiyum Oasis. Meanwhile, Arabia Petraea is the Classical Name for parts of Jordan and the Sinai Peninsula, while Pelusion is roughly nineteen miles Southeast of the modern city of Port Said. The Oases of Hib and Oxyrhynchus are the ancient names for the Oasis of Kharga and Oasis of Bahariya, respectively, while Thebes is on the site of Modern-Day Luxor, Memphis is on the site of the present-day village of Mit Rahina in Giza Governorate in Egypt, and Hermopolis is near the modern town of El-Ashmunein, which is near Mallawi in Minya Governorate in Egypt. Lake Moeris is a now-defunct lake in the Fayum Oasis that currently contains the seasonal Lake Qarun. Finally, Apollonia in Cyrenaica is near the Modern Town of Soussa in Libya, while Cyrene is near present-day Shahat in the Jebel Akhdar Uplands of Libya.

At any rate, the next chapter will have us return to Pyrrhus' POV for his invasion of Cyrenaica against Magas and the main Cyrenaican Army.

Stay tuned. . .