Alexander died at 32 and left no working plan for what came next. What his generals built lasted far longer than he did.
Alexander of Macedon spent about eleven years on campaign and never returned home. The empire he assembled stretched from the Adriatic to the Punjab, and it held together as a single unit for barely a year after his death in 323 BC. His generals fought each other for four decades before settling into three main kingdoms: the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Seleucids across Asia and the Antigonids in Macedon. What followed is called the Hellenistic period, and it matters less for its politics than for what moved along its roads. Greek became the working language of government and trade from the Nile to Central Asia. Alexandria supported paid scholars and a library that tried to collect everything written. Buddhist sculptors in what is now Pakistan borrowed Mediterranean drapery and modelling. Rome absorbed the whole thing piece by piece, finishing with Egypt in 30 BC.
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Play it insteadAnswer: B. Macedon
Why: His father Philip II had already brought most of mainland Greece under Macedonian control. Alexander was twenty when Philip was assassinated in 336 BC.
Answer: A. Alexandria
Why: Its Museum paid scholars to work full time, and its library tried to collect a copy of everything written in Greek. More than a dozen other cities founded during the campaigns also carried his name.
Answer: D. His generals fought over it and split it into rival kingdoms
Why: The generals, known as the Diadochi, fought each other for roughly forty years. The main survivors were the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Seleucids in Asia and the Antigonids in Macedon.
Answer: C. The Ptolemies
Why: Ptolemy took Egypt when the empire was divided and ruled from Alexandria. His line kept Greek as the language of government throughout.
Answer: B. Koine Greek
Why: It was a simplified everyday version of the Athenian dialect. The New Testament was later written in it.
Answer: A. Archimedes
Why: He worked on levers, floating bodies and the measurement of curved shapes. Syracuse was a Greek city in Sicily, which is how it came to be at war with Rome.
Answer: D. Chandragupta Maurya
Why: Seleucus gave up eastern territory in exchange for 500 war elephants. Chandragupta's grandson Ashoka later left inscriptions carved in Greek as well as Indian languages.
Answer: C. Corinth
Why: Carthage was destroyed in the same year at the other end of the Mediterranean. Greece was placed under Roman administration and later organised as the province of Achaea.
Answer: B. Gandhara
Why: Its Buddha figures use drapery and facial modelling closer to Mediterranean work than to earlier Indian styles. The region had been ruled by Greek-speaking kings for generations.
Answer: A. The Roman annexation of Egypt in 30 BC
Why: Egypt was the last of the great successor kingdoms to fall. The period is named for the spread of Greek culture rather than for Greek political power, which had gone long before.
Floods, tricksters and dying gods turn up across unconnected cultures. Three explanations, and how to tell which applies.
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