The Egyptian fleet participates decisively in the liberation of Athens from Macedonian occupation in the final coalition war between Alexander’s successors, in which Ptolemy, Seleucus, Lysimachus, and Pyrrhus oppose Demetrius.

The death of Agathocles has left idle and unemployed in Sicily a body of Campanian mercenaries who had been in his hire.

Most of them return home but some, liking the climate and the prospect of adventure on a foreign island, remain.

These desert from Syracuse and enter the walled Greek stronghold of Messana (Messina, in northeastern Sicily).

The inhabitants, a peaceful people, allow into their homes the traveling mercenaries, who, after a time, become restless and plot to capture the town.

One night the mercenaries betray their hosts and kill most of the population who are unprepared, in this way claiming Messana for themselves.

The surviving Messanian men are expelled and the property and women divided.

After their victory, the mercenaries name themselves the Mamertines after the Oscan war-god Mamers.

Transforming a bustling town of farmers and traders into a raiding base, they plunder the surrounding territory.

Demetrius, deposed from the throne of Macedon, passes into Asia in 287 and attacks some of the provinces of Lysimachus with varying success.

Famine and pestilence destroy the greater part of his army, and he solicits the support and assistance of Seleucus.

Hostilities break out before he reaches Syria, however, and after Demetrius has gained some advantages over his son-in-law, he is totally forsaken by his troops on the field of battle and surrenders to Seleucus.

Agathocles in 287 BCE is sent by his father against Demetrius I Poliorcetes, who has marched into Anatolia to deprive Lysimachus of Lydia and Caria.

He is successful in this expedition, defeating Demetrius I and driving him out of his father's provinces.

Theophrastus, Aristotle’s successor as head of the Lyceum, dies about 286 BCE, leaving behind an influential body of scientific works, particularly those in botany, as well as his contributions to logic, his Doctrines of the Natural Philosophers, and Characters, his satirical study of ethical types.

The interests of Strabo, who succeeds Throphrastus, lie primarily in physical theory, causing the school to lose touch with Aristotle's major works (either through indifference or unavailability).

Rome’s plebeian families obtain theoretical parity with the patrician families under the Lex Hortensia passed in 287 and named after Quintus Hortensius, the dictator who had been appointed to deal with what will prove to have been the final secession of the plebeians.

This ends the city’s age-old Conflict of the Orders, but few plebeians can actually afford to become politically active.

The Lex Hortensia gives the vote of the Concilium Plebis or "Council of the Plebeians" the force of law, making laws passed by the plebeian assemblies binding on patricians and plebeians alike and in fact making the Council of the Plebeians a leading body for approving Roman laws.

The Roman law of Delict is codified in the Lex Aquilia, one of the first plebiscites, which provides compensation to the owners of property injured by the fault of another.

Mount Fuji, according to Japanese legend, is created during an earthquake in 286.

(Geologists believe that it and the rugged peaks that span Honshu from the Sea of Japan to the Pacific Ocean were created some millions of years ago during the Tertiary Period.

The dormant volcano’s elliptical crater, now approximately two thousand feet/six hundred and ten meters in diameter, was formed less than two million years ago during the Quaternary Period, when great quantities of lava flowed from its center.)

Chandragupta, having abdicated to his son Bindusara in 297 BCE and possibly become a Jain monk, spends his last days in the service of Bhadrabahu at Sravana Belgola, a famous religious site in southwest India.

He fasts to death in 286 BCE.

The Greek cities of Asia Minor had been liberated in 334 BCE when Alexander the Great defeated the Persian forces at the Battle of Granicus.

The pro-Persian tyrant Syrpax and his family were stoned to death, and Alexander was greeted warmly when he entered Ephesus in triumph.

Alexanderm,the inhabitants of Ephesus demurred, claiming that it was not fitting for one god to build a temple to another.

Ephesus in 290 BCE comes under the rule of one of the late conqueror's generals, Lysimachus.

The river Cayster had silted up the harbor, and the resulting marshes had caused malaria and many deaths among the inhabitants.

The people of Ephesus are forced to move to a new settlement two kilometers further on when the king floods the old city by blocking the sewers.

This settlement is officially called Arsinoea after the king's second wife, Arsinoe II of Egypt.

After Lysimachus destroys the nearby city of Colophon and in 292 BCE nearly destroys (and does depopulate by forced expulsion) the neighboring Ionian League city of Lebedo, he relocates their inhabitants to the new city.

Ptolemy, during the coalition war of 288 BCE-286 BCE, has obtained the protectorate over the League of the Islanders, which had been established in 315 BCE by Antigonus and includes most of the Greek islands in the Aegean.

This alliance will be the basis for Egypt's maritime supremacy in the Mediterranean in the ensuing decades.