THE WORLD ATLAS

Empire · 700–168 BCE · Europe

Kingdom of Macedon and Empire of Alexander

Also known as Empire of Alexander, Kingdom of Kassander, Macedon and Hellenic League

Macedon was a kingdom in northern Greece that emerged in the 7th century BCE (later legend dated its founding to about 808 BCE); it was seen by many southern Greeks as half-barbarian. Philip II transformed it after 359 BCE, creating a professional army built around the long-speared phalanx and heavy cavalry, and in 338 BCE he defeated Athens and Thebes, making Macedon master of Greece.

His son Alexander the Great invaded the Persian Empire in 334 BCE, won at the Granicus, Issus and Gaugamela, took Egypt, Babylon and Persepolis, and marched to the Indus. When he died in Babylon in 323 BCE, aged 32, he left no adult heir; his generals fought over the empire and carved it into rival kingdoms. Macedon itself, ruled from 277 BCE by the Antigonids, was conquered by Rome after the Battle of Pydna in 168 BCE.

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Gold oak wreath from the royal tomb II at Vergina (ancient Aigai), the Macedonian royal burial ground, 4th century BCE
Gold oak wreath from the royal tomb II at Vergina (ancient Aigai), the Macedonian royal burial ground, 4th century BCE Holger Uwe Schmitt · CC BY-SA 4.0
Years
700–168 BCE
Capital
Aigai, then Pella; Alexander's court moved with his army and he intended Babylon as capital
Greatest extent
323 BCE, about 5.20 million km²
Region
Europe

At Alexander's death, from Greece and Egypt to the Indus; c. 5.2M km² (Taagepera 1979; Turchin, Adams & Hall 2006)

Legacy

Alexander's conquests spread Greek language and culture from Egypt to Afghanistan, opening the Hellenistic age.

Timeline of Kingdom of Macedon and Empire of Alexander

  1. Philip II becomes king of Macedon and reforms its army

    Macedon, in northern Greece, was a weak kingdom on the edge of Greek affairs when King Perdiccas III was killed fighting the Illyrians in 359 BCE. His brother Philip, who had spent years as a hostage in Thebes learning from its general Epaminondas, was named regent for Perdiccas's infant son but soon took the throne himself. He rebuilt the army around the Macedonian phalanx, combined it with cavalry, and made skilled use of siege engines, diplomacy and marriage alliances. In less than 25 years this reformed army turned Macedon into the dominant power in Greece.

  2. Philip takes Amphipolis, opening Macedon's eastward expansion

    Amphipolis, a city in Thrace, commanded the gold mines of Mount Pangaion, and Athens had long tried and failed to recover it. In 357 BCE Philip besieged and took the city after agreeing to hand it over to Athens in exchange for Pydna; instead he captured Pydna too and kept both, and Athens declared war. In 356 he also seized nearby Crenides, renamed it Philippi and garrisoned its mines. The gold from this region paid for much of Philip's later campaigning, and Macedon's power now reached east along the northern Aegean coast.

  3. Philip defeats Athens and Thebes at Chaeronea

    Philip's growing power alarmed the Greek city-states, and Athens and Thebes led an alliance against him. In August 338 BCE the armies met at Chaeronea in Boeotia; Philip, with roughly 30,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry according to Diodorus, commanded the right wing, while his 18-year-old son Alexander led the left. The Macedonian victory was decisive. Philip then created the League of Corinth, which bound the Greek states to Macedon as allies, and was chosen to lead a pan-Hellenic war against Persia. Mainland Greece was now under Macedonian leadership.

  4. Philip assassinated at Aegae; Alexander III becomes king

    In October 336 BCE Philip's court gathered at Aegae, the old Macedonian capital, for the wedding of his daughter Cleopatra to King Alexander of Epirus. As Philip entered the theatre, unguarded so as to appear approachable to Greek visitors, he was stabbed to death by Pausanias of Orestis, one of his own bodyguards. His 20-year-old son Alexander took the throne at once. Alexander inherited not just Macedon and its control of Greece but also his father's army and his planned invasion of the Persian Empire, whose advance guard was already in Asia Minor.

  5. Alexander crosses into Asia; victory at the Granicus

    In 334 BCE Alexander crossed the Hellespont into Asia with the army of Macedon and its Greek allies, beginning his war on the Persian Empire. In May the Persian satraps (governors) of Asia Minor, with Greek mercenaries under Memnon of Rhodes, tried to stop him at the crossing of the Granicus river, the modern Biga in Turkey. Alexander forced the crossing and destroyed their army; the captured Greek mercenaries were sent to Macedon as slaves. Sardis and Ephesus soon fell, and the Persians were left defending isolated cities in Asia Minor.

  6. Alexander defeats Darius III at Issus

    After the Granicus, King Darius III took personal command of a huge Persian army and advanced into Syria to stop Alexander. On 5 November 333 BCE the armies met at Issus in southern Anatolia, where Darius had to fight on a narrow battlefield that favoured Alexander's smaller force. Alexander's attack broke the Persian line and Darius fled, leaving behind his treasury, his mother, his wife and his daughters, who were all captured. The victory gave Alexander complete control of southern Asia Minor and opened the road south into Syria and Phoenicia.

  7. Alexandria founded in Egypt; Darius beaten again at Gaugamela

    After taking Tyre and Gaza in 332 BCE, Alexander entered Egypt, where he was welcomed as a liberator from Persian rule. During a few months there he reorganised its taxes and founded Alexandria, later the capital of the Ptolemaic kingdom and a great centre of Greek culture. In 331 he marched north-east to the Tigris and, at Gaugamela near Arbela (modern Erbil), heavily outnumbered, defeated Darius again with superior tactics. Darius fled to Ecbatana, and Alexander took Babylon, Susa and Persepolis with their treasuries: the Persian heartland was now his.

  8. Darius III is killed by Bessus; the Persian Empire is Alexander's

    After Gaugamela, Darius III fled east, but his authority was collapsing. In 330 BCE, as Alexander closed in, Darius was taken prisoner by Bessus, satrap of Bactria and his own kinsman, whose men stabbed the Great King to death; Bessus then proclaimed himself king as Artaxerxes V. Alexander gave Darius a royal burial and presented himself as his avenger and the rightful heir of the Achaemenids. The Persian Empire was now Alexander's, though he spent the next years fighting Bessus and rebels in Bactria and Sogdiana, founding cities such as Alexandria Eschate in modern Tajikistan.

  9. Alexander defeats Porus at the Hydaspes; his army mutinies at the Beas

    After conquering Persia, Alexander crossed into the Punjab, where King Porus of the Paurava kingdom blocked the Hydaspes (Jhelum) river with an army that included war elephants. In May 326 BCE Alexander crossed the monsoon-swollen river away from Porus's camp to catch him in the flank, and defeated him in what was possibly his costliest battle; he then made Porus a satrap, effectively restoring him as ruler. Pushing east, his exhausted army refused to go beyond the Hyphasis (Beas) river. The mutiny ended the expedition: Alexander turned back, and the Beas became the eastern limit of his empire.

  10. Alexander reaches Susa after a costly march through the desert

    On the way back from India, Alexander split his forces. Craterus led part of the army through Carmania, the admiral Nearchus explored the coast of the Persian Gulf by sea, and Alexander took the rest on the harder southern route through the Gedrosian Desert and Makran. Many men died in the desert before he reached Susa in 324 BCE, where he executed several satraps and governors who had misbehaved in his absence. Back in the heart of the empire, he tried to bind Persians and Macedonians together, and his veterans mutinied at Opis over his adoption of Persian customs.

  11. Alexander dies in Babylon; Perdiccas becomes regent of the empire

    Alexander returned to Babylon, which he had planned to make the capital of his empire, and was preparing an invasion of Arabia when he died there on 10 or 11 June 323 BCE, aged 32. He left no adult heir, and his officers argued over the succession. In the settlement known as the Partition of Babylon, his half-brother Arrhidaeus (as Philip III) and the child Roxana was expecting were named joint kings, with Perdiccas as regent. The provinces were shared out among senior officers as satraps, setting the stage for the wars of the Diadochi (successors).

  12. Philip III Arrhidaeus executed; Alexander IV is sole king

    After Perdiccas was murdered in 321 or 320 BCE, the veteran general Antipater became regent and took the two kings to Macedon. When he died in 319 he passed over his own son Cassander in favour of Polyperchon, and civil war broke out. Philip III's ambitious wife Eurydice sided with Cassander, while Polyperchon allied with Olympias, Alexander's mother. When Olympias invaded Macedon in 317, Eurydice's soldiers refused to fight the mother of Alexander and changed sides. Philip and Eurydice were captured and put to death, leaving the boy Alexander IV as sole king under Olympias's control.

  13. Cassander has Alexander IV murdered, ending the Argead line

    Cassander struck back and retook Macedon in 316 BCE. He executed Olympias and held the young Alexander IV and his mother Roxana under guard in the citadel of Amphipolis. The peace of 311 promised that Alexander would succeed Cassander when he came of age, which made the boy a threat to Cassander's own power. Cassander had mother and son killed, poisoned according to the writer Pausanias, though the year is uncertain, with estimates from 311 to 304 BCE. With the last legitimate Argead king gone, nothing remained to hold Alexander's empire together.

  14. Antigonus and Demetrius take royal titles; other generals follow

    With no Argead king left, the generals who held Alexander's provinces no longer needed to pretend to serve the royal family. In 306 BCE Demetrius, son of Antigonus the One-Eyed, destroyed Ptolemy's fleet off Salamis in Cyprus, and after this victory Antigonus and Demetrius both took the title of king. Ptolemy, Seleucus and Lysimachus soon did the same, and eventually Cassander. Alexander's empire had become a set of rival kingdoms whose rulers claimed royal rank in their own right, while Antigonus still hoped to rule it all.

  15. Ipsus: Seleucus and Lysimachus defeat and kill Antigonus; empire divided

    Antigonus, master of most of Asia Minor and Syria, was the strongest of the successors and the last who aimed to rule Alexander's whole empire. Cassander, Lysimachus and Seleucus joined forces against him, and in 301 BCE they met Antigonus and his son Demetrius near Ipsus in Phrygia. Seleucus's war elephants, obtained from Chandragupta Maurya, cut Demetrius's cavalry off from the battle, and Antigonus was surrounded and killed by javelins. The victors carved up his lands: Ptolemy kept Egypt, Seleucus gained northern Syria and eastern Asia Minor, and Lysimachus the rest of Asia Minor. Alexander's empire was permanently divided.

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