By 338 BCE, King Philip II’s empire of Macedon had become the ruling power in Greece. Philip’s son Alexander the Great adopted his father’s plan to unite the Greek city-states in a war of revenge against the Persian Empire. He defeated the Persians at the battles of Issus (333 BCE) and Gaugamela (330 BCE), and after the assassination of the Persian king Darius III, he claimed the Persian throne for himself and advanced deep into central Asia and India. After his own soldiers mutinied, however, Alexander withdrew to Babylon, where he died in 323 BCE.

Alexander’s generals and their children competed for control of his empire between 323 BCE and 272 BCE. The descendants of Alexander’s generals, Antigonus, Seleucus, and Ptolemy, ruled over separate kingdoms in Macedon and Greece, western and central Asia, and Egypt, building new Greek cities for their Greek colonists. Alexandria in Egypt, the largest Hellenistic city, was a center of Greek science and literature, with its massive library and museum. Having lost sovereignty and self-government, many Greeks sought personal happiness through new philosophies such as Epicureanism and Stoicism.

All images referenced in this podcast can be found at https://openstax.org/books/world-history-volume-1/pages/6-3-the-hellenistic-era Welcome to A Journey into Human History.

This podcast will attempt to tell the whole human story.

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Podcast produced by Miranda Casturo as a creative common sense production.