18.4
We are told, also, that Eumenes asked his keeper, Onomarchus, why in the world Antigonus, now that he had got a hated enemy in his hands, neither killed him speedily nor generously set him free; and when Onomarchus insolently told him it was not now, but on the field of battle, that he should have faced death boldly, Yea, by Zeus, said Eumenes, then, too, I did so; ask the men who fought with me; I know that none I met was a better man. Well, then, said Onomarchus, since now thou hast found thy better, why canst thou not bide his time?
19.1
When, then, Antigonus had decided to kill Eumenes, he gave orders to deprive him of food. And so, after two or three days of fasting, the prisoner began to draw nigh his end. But camp was suddenly broken and a man was sent to dispatch him.According to Nepos ( Eumenes, xii. 4), Eumenes was strangled by his keepers, without the knowledge of Antigonus. His body, however, was delivered to his friends by Antigonus, who permitted them to burn it and collect the ashes and place them in a silver urn, that they might be returned to his wife and children.
19.2
Eumenes thus slain, on no other man than Antigonus did Heaven devolve the punishment of the soldiers and commanders who betrayed him, but he himself, regarding the Silver-shields as impious and bestial men, put them into the service of Sibyrtius the governor of Arachosia, ordering him to wear them out and destroy them in every possible way, that not a man of them might ever return to Macedonia or behold the Grecian sea.
