pothos.org

Whilst I agree that the limits of Ptolemy's ambitions have been underestimated, grasping for the whole Empire seems beyond the scope of his power. Certainly there was a time when he manouvered for the control of Macedon and Greece but the Eastern Empire was out of his reach.

At Tyre in 314, I think Antigonos , along with proclaiming the greeks to be autonomous, restated his generalship (strategia) of Asia which Antipater granted at Triparadeisos but also claimed to have acceded to the regency through his deal with Polyperchon, this is clearly a bid for the Empire in toto (Diod 18 80ish). No other successor made such an explicit claim, Kassander was content in Macedon and Greece, Seleukos was no one until Ipsos and the same can be said for Lysimachos, it was the Antigonids who were after Empire rather than kingdoms and even Hieronymos cristicises Antigonos and Demetrios' pleonistaia or acquisitiveness.

I think the connexion would be well recognised among contempories.

Ptolemy was more careful than Antigonus, and that is what made Antigonus look more acquisitive and what made Ptolemy more succesful. It does not seem to me that he was less ambitious. The hi-jacking of Alexander's body, the marriage plans with Kleopatra, his coinage all point to the aim of becoming Alexander's true successor. How credible would it have been if someone claimed to be Alexander's true successor without aiming at controlling his entire empire while Antigonus (and the the others too, imho) was openly doing just that? I cannot argue the whole point here, but it seems very striking to me that no ancient author actually mentions separatist ambitions by any of the Successors, that they often ascribe the aim of getting the whole to various diadochoi, and that two sources even say explicitly that all the Successors wanted to reign over Alexander's entire realm:

-Diodorus XX 37.4:

Because of the distinction of her (=Cleopatra) descent Cassander and Lysimachus, as well as Antigonus and Ptolemy and in general all the leaders who were most important after Alexander’s death, sought her hand; for each of them, hoping that the Macedonians would follow the lead of this marriage, was seeking alliance with the royal house in order thus to gain power over the entire empire for himself.

(I have taken the freedom to slightly adapt Geer's Loeb translation, but I cannot deny, of course, that "supreme power", as Geer has it, is also a possible translation.)

-Nepos, Eumenes, 2.3-4:

he (=Perdiccas) purposed (what all in great power generally covet) to seize and secure for himself the shares of all the rest. Nor did he alone, indeed, entertain such designs, but all the others, who had been friends of Alexander, formed similar intentions.

(Watson's translation: http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/nepos.htm)

If you want, I can give you a list of passages where this is said to be the ambition of individual Diadochoi.

Pausanias I 6.3 says that Ptolemy was chiefly responsible for dividing the empire into kingdoms, but that clearly is his own misinterpretation of the satrapy distribution, as the context and the verbal parallels with Appian show.

I think the ambitions of Ptolemy have indeed been underplayed. It is tempting to think that he was a “separatist” from the beginning and to cite the ceding of the regency of the murdered and aggrandising Perdiccas to Peithon as proof of his intention to remain out of the fray. Given that Seleucus, Peithon and the Argyraspid commander Antigenes had just murdered the first marshal to attempt to rule the empire, this was obviously a poisoned chalice he’d prefer – for the moment – to pass on. Given what was to transpire at Triparadisus, where Antipater came within an ace of following Perdiccas at the hands of the Argyraspids, it was a wise move.

The problem is that Ptolemy’s actions speak against such a view. I noted in
another threadthat Ptolemy, up to this point, had acted in anything other than a disinterested fashion. His problem was that he appeared to have little in the way of Macedonian troops. This he may have rectified after Perdiccas’ murder but, as I observed above, the royal army seemed to be developing a mind all its own.

As well, events were taking their own course to the north east where Antigonus, with his single eye firmly fixed upon empire, had the remnants of the royal faction to deal with. Better to let them play out and play the alliance game whilst the shake-out went on. As it happened, Antigonus came within inches of losing the lot to Eumenes whose army’s Macedonian core of the Argyraspids refused to listen to either Antigonus or Ptolemy.

It is after this that he seems to pursue, block by block, a policy of aggrandisement which utilised alliances with Cassander, Lysimachus and, most importantly as a thorn in Antigonus’ ambitions, Seleucus. By the time of the peace of the Diadochs, he was in quite a handy position. Indeed it is his meddling in Greece and Asia Minor, where he’d gained considerable influence, that sparked the response from both Cassander and Antigonus that lead, inevitably, to war. It is now, in the campaigns leading to Ipsos, that he seems to have realised that he would not ever be in a position to challenge the Asian powers of the Antigonids and Selecus – a creature of his own creation – and resigned himself to the “traditional role” of the Egyptian Pharaoh , including the regulation fascination with Coele-Syria.

I would not be too concerned with Nepos' take on matters since he is not a particularly acute historian and in all probability took the continual wars as a sign that the contenders sought the supreme power.

Diodoros is a different matter if we assume he took this interpretation from Hieronymos and it is not his own gloss; however, it would be in the interests of the acolyte of Antigonid power to portray all the successor's as similarly ambitious. Personally i would see the interest in Kleopatra as directed towards power in Macedonia proper rather than empire-wide power