This year 333 BCE inaugurates the Hellenistic Age in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, when Alexander III of Macedon overthrows the Persian Empire and carries Macedonian arms to India.

The Illyrians have established a coherent political entity under the Celtic threat but in the late fourth century fall under Macedonian influence.

Illyrian tribal leaders and soldiers accompany Alexander on his conquest of Persia, and the Thracians provide Alexander with valuable light-armed troops during his conquests.

Alexander's ten-year campaign in Asia, and the Macedonian conquest of the Persian empire, will become the stuff of legend.

The Macedonian army campaigns in Asia Minor, the Levant, Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia and Persia, winning notable battles at the Granicus, the Issus and Gaugamela, before the final collapse in 330 BCE of Darius's rule.

Alexander thus becomes ruler of the extensive Persian domains, although his rule over most of the territory is far from secure.

Alexander continues campaigning in central Asia in the following years, before crossing into the Indian subcontinent.

The Macedonian army becomes increasingly unhappy, however, and eventually mutinies, forcing Alexander to turn back.

Alexander, using both military and administrative skills to build his empire, is able to integrate the various peoples he has conquered into a unified empire by devising appropriate forms of administration in each region.

In Egypt, he becomes the pharaoh; in Mesopotamia, he becomes the great king.

In Persia, however, he keeps the indigenous administrative system intact under joint Persian and Macedonian rule.

He establishes hundreds of new settlements, encouraging his men to marry local women.

In addition, he manipulates the local religions to legitimize his own rule.

Alexander, in creating his empire, changes the face of the world.

He lives for only thirteen years after his accession to the throne, but he uses this time to create the largest empire ever seen, having perhaps a greater impact on Western civilization than any other man of the ancient world.

As with many great men, his life is shrouded in myth and legend.

Alexander spends his final years attempting to consolidate his empire and planning future campaigns but, probably exhausted by years of hard campaigning, he dies in Babylon at thirty-three of a malarial fever in 323 BCE.

The highest men in Alexander's command, including generals Perdiccas, Ptolemy Soter, Seleucus, Antigonus Monophthalmus, and Antipater, claim his legacy.

Antipater, regent of Macedonia during Alexander's campaign, becomes regent of the Macedonian Empire for Alexander's only adult male relative: his feeble-minded half-brother, who “rules” as Philip III with Roxana's infant son by Alexander, Alexander IV Aegeus.

With the questions of immediate rulership and regency satisfied, the Lamian War in Greece intervenes and postpones the final question of the Alexandrian succession.

Fought by a coalition of Greek cities including Athens and the Aetolian League against Macedon and its ally Boeotia, the Lamian War, or the Hellenic War (323–322 BCE), ends in a Macedonian victory.

The Partition of Babylon, which designates the attribution of the territories of Alexander the Great between his generals after his death, is a result of a compromise, essentially brokered by Eumenes, following a conflict of opinion between the party of Meleager, who wishes to give full power to Philip III of Macedon, and the party of Perdiccas, who wishes to wait for the birth of the heir of Alexander (the future Alexander IV of Macedon) to give him the throne under the control of a regent.

Under the agreement, Philip III becomes king, but Perdiccas, as a regent, rules.

Perdiccas, as regent, manages the repartition of the territories between the former generals and satraps of Alexander.

Meleager and about three hundred of his partisans are eliminated by Perdiccas soon after.

Alexanders’ successors in the ensuing eras will use the satrapies as bases in a struggle to acquire the whole.

Alexander's ongoing plans are abandoned by common consent among his generals, who have to be content with the office of governor.

In the distribution of satrapies that follows Alexander's death, Lysimachus, one of Alexander's bodyguards during the conquest of Asia, is assigned one of the less attractive governorships, that of Thrace.

The soldiers discount Eumenes of Cardia, who bears the main responsibility for civil administration, but he knows more about the empire than anyone else.

Alexander receives complimentary embassies the following spring at Babylon, which he plans to make the capital of his empire, from the Libyans and from the Bruttians, Etruscans, and Lucanians of Italy. (The story that more distant peoples, such as Carthaginians, Celts, Iberians, and even Romans, had sent embassies is most probably a later invention.)

Representatives of the cities of Greece also appear, garlanded as befits Alexander's divine status.

Following up Nearchus' voyage, he now founds an Alexandria at the mouth of the Tigris and makes plans to develop sea communications with India, for which an expedition along the Arabian coast is to be a preliminary.

He also dispatches Heracleides, an officer, to explore the Hyrcanian (i.e., Caspian) Sea.

Busy with plans to improve the irrigation of the Euphrates and to settle the coast of the Persian Gulf, Alexander is suddenly taken ill in Babylon after a prolonged banquet and drinking bout.

Ten days later, in the early evening of June 13, 323 BCE, the thirty-three-year-old conqueror dies in Nebuchadrezzar's palace of a fever—or possibly of poisoned wine.

Having reigned for twelve years and eight months, he leaves no pure Macedonian heirs, no designated successors, and his vision of fusing Greek and Middle Eastern peoples unrealized.

Ptolemy, who has distinguished himself as a cautious and trustworthy troop commander under Alexander, will also prove to be a politician of unusual diplomatic and strategic ability in the long series of struggles over the throne that break out after Alexander's death in 323.

Convinced from the outset that the generals cannot maintain the unity of Alexander's empire, he proposes during the council at Babylon, which follows Alexander's death, that the satrapies (the provinces of the huge empire) be divided among the generals.

Perdiccas, a Macedonian noble who had served with distinction in Alexander's campaigns, leads the aristocratic party that supports the claim of the unborn child of Roxana, Alexander's widow, to the succession.

After a compromise under which a division of the powers of regency is arranged, Perdiccas exercises a wide authority in Asia as “supreme general.”

Soon after Alexander's death, Roxana has his second wife, Stateira (Barsine), killed.

As no heir had been appointed to the throne, Alexander's generals adopt Philip II's half-witted illegitimate son, Philip Arrhidaeus, and Alexander's posthumous son (born August 323) by Roxana, Alexander IV Aegus, as kings, sharing out the satrapies among themselves, after much bargaining.

Perdiccas' colleagues in the regency are Craterus and Antipater.

Seleucus—who, of all the Macedonian nobles, is the only one who does not repudiate his wife after Alexander's death—is given the command of the hetairoi (companions) cavalry.

Together with another soldier noted for his physical and military prowess, Leonnatus, Seleucus waits on events.

Antigonus Monophthalmos (“The One-Eyed”), governor of Phrygia for almost ten years, has shown himself a brave soldier and competent administrator; his firmness and tact are popular with the Greek cities.

Antigonus, who like Antipater is not in Babylon at the time of Alexander's death, now receives also from Perdiccas the governorship of Pamphylia and Lycia formerly vested in Ptolemy.

Perdiccas, wielding wide authority in Asia as “supreme general” and regent of the Macedonian empire, conquers Cappadocia in 322 and installs as satrap (provincial governor) his most reliable and efficient subordinate, Eumenes of Cardia, Alexander's former secretary.