Pleistarchus (son of Antipater)

Pleistarchus (Greek Πλείσταρχος; † after 295 BC) was a Macedonian commander during the period of Diadochenkriege. He was a younger son of Antipater and brother of Cassander, king of Macedonia.

Pleistarchus served his brother as a commander and was appointed by him to 312 BC governor in Chalkis, which he was to defend against the antigonidischen General Ptolemy. Pausanias reports that Pleistarchus a battle against an army of Athens lost, but he calls to no exact timetable background.

During the fourth Diadochenkrieges Pleistarchus BC was sent to fight against Antigonus Monophthalmos in winter 302 by his brother with an army of 12,000 infantry and 500 cavalry to Asia Minor. However, since the Hellespont by Demetrios Poliorketes, the son of Antigonus, had been barred to Pleistarchus turned to the Odesos to set from there by means of a fleet across the Black Sea to Heraclea Pontica. As the fleet but was too small, he had divided his army into three divisions translated sequentially. Only the first division reached healing the coast of Asia Minor, the second was intercepted by a fleet of Demetrius and the third, personally run by Pleistarchus department, suffered shipwreck in a storm, whereby a large part of the army was lost.

With his remaining troops finally succeeded Pleistarchus to fend for Lysimachus and Seleucus to his allies. With them he fought 301 BC in the victorious battle of Ipsos, was defeated in the Antigonus Monophthalmos. In the subsequent division of his dominions among the victors themselves Pleistarchus could the landscape Cilicia and a part of Caria, possibly, save as a separate kingdom. However, his rule in Cilicia did not take long. Already 299 BC Demetrius landed Poliorketes with its superior naval power on the Cilician coast and gradually took possession of the country. From Seleucus Pleistarchus could expect no help, since it was now allied with Demetrius, and by the death of his brother Cassander 297 BC was also the support from Macedonia. Only Lysimachus took a rescue attempt. But when it reached the besieged by Demetrius Soloi, he should have chosen in view of the gigantic war machines of the enemy to turn back.

After the loss of Cilicia to Pleistarchus ' dominion was limited to his Carian possession, especially the coastal town of Heraclea, which he had renamed in " Pleistarcheia ". There Pleistarchus is yet to be established by the year 295 BC, and then lose track of him. Plutarch calls for the year 287 BC Lysimachus in the entire possession of Caria, perhaps he had been the rule of Pleistarchus to an end.