Antigonus Monophthalmus, assessing the threats, marched from Antigoneia with his “standing army” and engaged Lysimachus, who after a number of fighting retreats, fell back upon Amastris and her port of Heracleia. Antigonus also sent a smaller force to block Seleucus’ march into Cappadoccia – it failed. Antigonus, realising that a confrontation with the three was unavoidable, took the measure of his opponents. Eighty years shrewd, he sent messengers into Syria spreading news of a catastrophic defeat of the allied armies in Cappadoccia. Ptolemy, an empire gambler never quite prepared to call a bluff, folded. Antigonus, his rear for the time being secured, was joined by his co-regent and son, Demetrius. Their combined armies, along with those of Lysimachus and Seleucus, awaited the spring and the inevitable showdown.
And so we have Diodorus at the end of his twentieth book:
Given that now only scraps remain of the following book(s) this is the season end to end all seasons of any show. I do not know how many times I have read this paragraph – probably as many as I have of Thucydides books six and seven – and always with the same ridiculous notion: this time it might be different. But the Athenians never leave directly after the disaster in the Great Harbour; they wait upon their procrastinating “general” and suffer – ultimately – for his superstitions. And there is no coherent book twenty-one of Diodorus.In this way, then, the forces of the kings were being gathered together, since they all had determined to decide the war by force of arms during the coming summer. But, as we proposed in the beginning, we shall make the war that these kings waged against everyone for supreme rule the beginning of the following book.
Hieronymus of Cardia, why hast thou manuscript deserted us?