Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander The Greta's Empire, Robin Waterfield, c. 2011

Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander the Greta's Empire, Robin Waterfield, c. 2011


Preface

• time frame of the book
• beginning: death of Alexander the Great, 323 BC
• ending: death of last two direct Successors of Alexander
• the next generation after the direct Successors: the Epigonoi
• goal: hold unto what they had, no expand
• Macedon: the Antigonids
• Asia: the Seleucids
• Greater Egypt: the Ptolemies
• the Successors: forty years of warring
• a distinct culture evolved
• "the Greek east" distinct form "the Roman west"
• the Successors who set up the confrontation between the two power blocs
• the result: Roman dominion over the entire Greek world
• the takeover culminated in 30 BCE with the annexation of Egypt
• 30 BCE: the end of the "Hellenistic" period
• the "Hellenistic" period began with the death of Alexander the Great when the Greek culture that the Successors fostered came to dominate the world from the Mediterranean to Afghanistan
• the spoils
• Seleucus: won an empire, large chunks of the former Achaemenid empire of Persia
• Ptolemy: won an empire, Greater Egypt
• Antigonids: won a kingdom, much of Greece
• 15 or so Successors; very few won much
• previous empires
• the Persian empire of the Achaemenids, 550 - 330 BCE, most significant for neighboring Greeks
• the Neo-Assyrian empire, 934 - 610 BCE (much, much smaller)
• Hittite empire, 1430 - ca. 1200 BCE)
• Akkadian empire, later third millenium
• farther east
• northern China, during the Shang and Zhou periods, 1766 - 1045; 1045 - 256 BC;
• Alexander's successors created the first empires whose rulers and dominant culture were European; the so-called Athenian "empires" of the fifth and fourth centuries were not really empires, above all because subjects and rulers shared a common ethnic background