Plutarch wrote Parallel Lives, paired biographies of Greeks and Romans. This is his life of Eumenes of Cardia, a Greek town on the Gallipoli peninsula in what is now Turkey. He pairs Eumenes with Sertorius, two clever outsiders who commanded other men's veterans.

Eumenes began as a secretary. Alexander the Great trusted his pen. After Alexander died at Babylon, Eumenes held a royal army together by using the dead king's name and setting a chair for his ghost. He beat Craterus, a Macedonian general who could not believe a clerk would fight, and out-marched Antigonus across Asia. The Silver Shields, Alexander's oldest infantry, sold Eumenes to the enemy to get their captured baggage back. Antigonus starved him, then wept. This is a story of brains without a royal bloodline, and of loyalty that lasts until the wagons are at stake.