Near East (333–322 BCE): Alexander’s Conquests and the Macedonian Empire

The year 333 BCE inaugurates the Hellenistic Age in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East, as Alexander III of Macedon decisively defeats the Persian Empire, ushering in profound geopolitical and cultural transformations across the region.

Alexander’s conquest begins with significant military victories at the battles of the Granicus (334 BCE) and the Issus (333 BCE). Following these triumphs, he systematically campaigns through Asia Minor, the Levant, Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia. Alexander’s occupation of Egypt marks a pivotal moment as he is welcomed as pharaoh, reflecting his strategic adoption of local governance and religious practices to solidify his rule.

The decisive battle at Gaugamela (331 BCE) culminates in the collapse of the Persian Empire and the flight of Persian King Darius III, allowing Alexander to assume control of the vast Persian territories. However, his dominion remains challenged, necessitating continued military efforts to consolidate authority. Alexander integrates various conquered peoples by adapting administrative structures, encouraging intermarriage between Macedonians and local populations, and founding new cities to anchor his empire, notably Alexandria in Egypt (331 BCE).

While Alexander continues his ambitious military expeditions into Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, his increasingly weary troops mutiny, compelling his return westward. His remarkable empire-building is abruptly curtailed by his premature death from fever in Babylon in 323 BCE.

Alexander’s sudden demise precipitates immediate succession crises, resolved temporarily through the Partition of Babylon (323 BCE), orchestrated primarily by Perdiccas. Macedonian generals, including Ptolemy Soter, Seleucus, Antigonus Monophthalmus, and Antipater, claim governance over fragmented portions of Alexander's territories, setting the stage for prolonged conflicts among these Diadochi (successors).

Philip III Arrhidaeus, Alexander’s half-brother, is installed as nominal king alongside Alexander's infant son, Alexander IV, under the regency of Perdiccas. Meanwhile, the Lamian War (323–322 BCE) erupts in Greece, involving Athens and allied city-states against Macedonian control, ultimately resulting in a Macedonian victory and reinforcing Macedonian hegemony in the region.

By 322 BCE, the Near East stands at the cusp of significant fragmentation, poised between Alexander’s unifying legacy and the divisive ambitions of his successors, signaling a prolonged era of Hellenistic influence and rivalry.

The rule of Alexander's empire following his death in 323 BCE had been given to his half-brother Philip Arrhidaeus and Alexander's son Alexander IV.

However, since Philip is mentally ill and Alexander IV born only after the death of his father, a regent had been named in Perdiccas.

The former generals of Alexander had meanwhile been named satraps of the various regions of his empire.

Alexander’s successors are the founders of the territorial kingdoms of the Hellenistic world, in which warfare will be almost continual from 321 BCE to 301 BCE.

The twenty-year power struggle will divide Alexander’s empire into several parts, including mainland Greece and Macedonia, Syria and Mesopotamia, and Egypt.

Macedonia itself remains the heart of the empire, and its possession, along with the control of Greece, is keenly contested.

The rival generals, ultimately seven in number with the addition of Antipater's son Cassander and Antipater's appointee, Polyperchon, are known to modern historians as the “Diadochi,' (Greek: “successors”), a term introduced by German historian Johann Gustav Droysen in the nineteenth century.

Several satraps are eager to gain more power, and when Ptolemy, satrap of Egypt, rebels with other generals, Perdiccas moves against the former but is killed by a mutiny in his camp.

Ptolemy declines the regency and instead brings to the office Peithon and Arrhidaeus.

This designation meets the strong opposition of Eurydice, wife of king Philip III, leading, in the meeting called in 321 BCE at Triparadisus of all the diadochi, to their replacement with Antipater.

The meeting also proceeds to divide again the satrapies between the various generals.

Roxana, Alexander's widow and the mother of his young son Alexander IV, in 319 joins Olympias, mother of the late king, in Epirus.

Polyperchon had invited the terrible Olympias to act as regent for her young grandson, Alexander IV, but she continues to decline his request.

Cassander drives Polyperchon from Macedonia in 317 BCE.

Alexander's two successors, his half-brother Philip III Arrhidaeus and his son Alexander IV, continue to furnish a nominal focus for loyalty.

When Cassander establishes Arrhidaeus as king of Macedon in 317 BCE, Philip’s wife makes Cassander regent.

The Macedonian soldiers, however, support the return of a furious Olympias, who puts to death Philip and his wife, Eurydice II, as well as Cassander's brother and a hundred of his partisans.

Olympias is finally named Stratonice, which is probably an epithet attached to Olympias following her victory over Eurydice in 317 BCE.

Polyperchon returns to Macedonia until Cassander renters the country and blockades Olympias in Pydna, where in the spring of 316 she surrenders.

She is condemned to death, but Cassander's soldiers refuse to carry out the sentence.

She is killed eventually by relatives of those she had had executed.

Cassander keeps Alexander's widow Roxana, captured together with her son Alexander IV, at …

…Amphipolis under his protection—or guard.

All the other Diadochi (Alexander's successors) confirm the existing boundaries and the freedom of the Greek cities.

Antigonus, no longer regent but merely strategos (officer in charge) of the whole of Asia, is to rule in Syria and from the Hellespont to the Euphrates, leaving Lysimachus with Thrace, Cassander with Greece and Macedonia (but only until Alexander IV comes of age in 305), and …

…Ptolemy with Egypt and Cyprus.

Ptolemy suppresses the island's kingdoms and in 310 forces the last king of Salamis, Nicocreon, to commit suicide, together with all his family. (For the next two and a half centuries, Cyprus will remain a Ptolemaic possession, ruled by a strategos, or governor-general.)

Ptolemy next attacks Cilicia, sparking the second coalition war (310-301) against Antigonus.