Legacy and division of the Empire
He left a huge empire of Persio-Greek culture to his successors (the Diadochi or Diadochoi), who jostled for supremacy over portions of his empire. When the dust settled, virtually all of his officers had disposed of their Persian wives, and all but two of his top officers, his mother, his wife Roxana, his son Alexander IV of Macedon ( 323 - 309 BC), his illegitimate son Heracles ( 327 - 309 BC), his sister Cleopatra, his half-sister Euridice, and his half-brother Philip III of Macedon, were dead, only one of whom (Antipater) died of natural causes.
His empire was divided at first into four major portions: Cassander ruled in Greece, Lysimachus in Asia Minor and Thrace, Seleucus I Nicator in Mesopotamia and Syria, and Ptolemy I (or Ptolemy Soter) in the Levant and Egypt.
Soon, Lysimachus obtained Cassander's portion, and the empire was divided into three major portions, controlled by the descendants of Ptolemy Soter in Egypt, Antigonus Monopthalmos (literally "One-eyed") in Greece, and Seleucus in the Mideast. By about 281 BC, only two dynasties remained in Alexander's old empire — the Seleucid dynasty in the north and the Ptolemaic dynasty in the south.
Many eponymous towns remained: Alexandrias, Alexandropolises and other Alexvilles dotting the landscape of this odd cosmopolitan mish-mash he had conquered. Whatever dreams he might have had of some kind of merging of Greek and Persian cultures died shortly after he did, with the Macedonians and Greeks edging the Persians into less powerful positions -- although there were Greek Diadochoi (Eumenes in particular) none of the Diadochoi were Persian.
Alexander is remembered as a folk-hero in Europe and much of western and central Asia, where he is usually called Iskander. In Iran, on the other hand, he is remembered as the destroyer of their first great empire and as the leveller of Persepolis. Ancient sources are generally written with an agenda of either glorifying or slandering the man, making it difficult to evaluate his actual character. Most refer to a growing instability and megalomania in the years following Gaugamela, but it has been suggested that this simply reflects the Greek stereotype of a medizing king. The murder of his friend Cleitus in a drunken rage, something Alexander deeply regretted, is often pointed to, as is his execution of Philotas and his father Parmenion for failure to pass along details of a plot against him, though this last may have been prudence rather than paranoia. Modern opinion is strongly divided as to whether he was a heroic empire-builder or an ancient Hitler.
Historical perspective
Modern historians treat the death of Alexander the Great and the birth of the successor kingdoms as the event that divides Hellenic civilization from Hellenistic civilization. Alexander's conquests and the administrative needs of his Greek-speaking successors promoted the spread of the Greek language and Greek culture across the eastern Mediterranean and into Mesopotamia.
Ancient historians who wrote about Alexander's campaigns include Arrian and Plutarch.
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