The most powerful state, located on the territory of two continents and three parts of the world - in Africa, Europe and Asia - did not last long. The Greek empire created by Alexander the Great did not survive the death of his monarch. Having conquered the Greek world and many countries of the East, the conqueror created a large space where Hellenistic civilization reigned for a long time.
Land gathering start
Since ancient times , there have been many city-states in Greece , sometimes waging fierce wars among themselves. Decades of conflict have seriously weakened many states. And ruling from 359 BC e. after the consolidation of his country, the Macedonian king Philip virtually united all of Greece within the framework of the Corinthian Union, laying the foundation for the formation of the Greek empire. He created a general council of the Greek states and determined the number of troops that they had to allocate at his command. In the spring of 336, Philip sent a ten-thousand-strong forward detachment on a campaign in Persia, intending to come forward later with the main army. However, he was killed before he managed to take part in the campaign.
His son Alexander killed all possible claimants to the throne and returned Greece to the rule of Macedonian hegemony. When Thebes rebelled against the "boy on the throne," he took the city in two weeks, razing it to the ground. 30 thousand inhabitants were sold into slavery. Frightened by the fate of the ancient polis, the Greeks recognized the power of Alexander, and he began to prepare for a campaign in Asia.
The heyday of the empire
In the early spring of 334 BC the king at the head of the 50,000th army invaded Persia. In several famous battles, Alexander defeated the troops of the Persian king Darius III, capturing his treasury. Having established control over Western Asia, he moved to Egypt, which he took without a fight. The people who hated the Persians met him as a liberator. Alexander was proclaimed a pharaoh. He stayed in the country for six months (December 332 - May 331 years. BC. E.).
By 330 BC the lands of the “First Empire” were fully annexed to Greece, as the Persian kingdom was later called. Alexander took the title of king of Asia and tried to rule all nations, as the former rulers, without division into winners and losers. He took part of the eastern customs, brought Persian nobles closer to him and began to recruit local residents into the troops.
To manage the Greek Empire, three trade and financial departments were created, which were headed by the heads of protectorates. The first included Egyptian lands and Alexandria, the second - satrapies of Cilicia, Syria and Thrace, the third - all the states of Asia Minor and the Ionian protectorate. Alexander always supported theocratic states, for example, he did not interfere at all in the affairs of the Jewish state, which was part of the Syrian satrapy.
By 327, the Macedonians captured the ancient states of Central Asia - Sogdiana and Bactria. During these years, the Greek empire reached its maximum power; there was a march to India ahead.
Empire sunset
After a campaign in India, which lasted two years, from 326 to 324 BC, the territory of the Greek empire expanded to its maximum limits. Alexander returned to Susa, a city on the territory of modern Iran. There he set up an army to rest and, after ten years of continuous military campaigns, began to reform the vast Greek empire.
He died without leaving an heir, a year later, in 323 BC. e., at the age of 32 years. After several wars of the diadochos (so the successors were called in Greek), his generals divided the empire into several states. Thus collapsed the greatest empire in history, having existed as a whole for only 11 years.