Wars of Alexander 's Heirs

In 323, at one of the feasts, Alexander unexpectedly fell ill and soon died at the age of 33. The disease could be caused by either a normal fever or poisoning. Alexander's body was solemnly transferred to Egypt and buried there. The location of his grave is still unknown.

Alexander had no adult heirs, so after the death of the ruler, fierce disputes broke out about power among his closest associates (diadochs), who gathered in the Syrian city of Triparadis (321) and divided Alexander's empire. The military commander Ptolemy Lag received Egypt, the governor of Macedonia Antipater and his son Cassander - Macedonia and Greece, the governor of Asia Minor Antigonus, nicknamed One-Eyed, - Asia Minor, the bodyguard of the king Seleucus Nicator (the Winner) - Mesopotamia, and another bodyguard of Alexander Lysimachus - Thrace, Propontis and part of Asia Minor. Alexander's associates were cruel and unscrupulous people who did not disdain any means in the struggle for power, which flared up with even greater force after the redistribution in Triparadis. As a result, the last possible heirs of Alexander - his feeble-minded brother and a young son from his marriage with the Bactrian princess Roxana - were treacherously killed.

Antigonus the One-Eyed tried to recreate the empire, who, together with his son Demetrius Polyorketes ("Taking cities"), proclaimed himself king in 306 BC. Lysimachus, Seleucus, Ptolemy and Cassander united against the new autocrats and defeated them in a battle near the Phrygian city of Ips (301), where Antigonus died.

The surviving heirs of Alexander were still mortally hostile to each other. Ptolemy died soon after his death, so the decisive redistribution of power took place in 281 BC between Seleucus and Lysimachus in the battle of Corupedion ("Valley of the Virgin", northwest Asia Minor). Seleucus challenged Lysimachus to a duel and struck him down, but was soon killed himself.

During the wars, which mostly ended by the beginning of the 70s of the III century BC, all those who could claim sole power in Alexander's huge power, which by that time had finally disintegrated into separate parts, died and died. The largest of them were the Ptolemaic, Seleucid states, the Macedonian Kingdom and a number of state entities located in Asia Minor, in particular, Pergamum and Pontus. The era of Hellenism began (III-I centuries BC).