Hellenistic Greece

Hellenistic Greece is the historical period of Ancient Greece following Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great of Macedon and the Roman conquest of the Achaean League after the battle of Corinth in 146 BC, a crushing Roman victory in the Peloponnese that led to the destruction of Corinth and ushered in the period of Roman Greece. Hellenistic Greece's definitive end was with the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, when Octavian defeated Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony, the next year taking over Alexandria, the last independent great center of the Hellenistic world. The Hellenistic period began with the wars of the Diadochi, armed contests among the former generals of Alexander the Great to carve up his empire in Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa. The wars lasted until 272 BC, witnessing the fall of both the Argead and Antipatrid dynasties of Macedonia in favor of the Antigonid dynasty. The era was also marked by successive wars between the Kingdom of Macedonia, the kingdom of Epirus, the Aetolian League, Achaean League, Sparta, Rhodes, kingdom of Pergamum as well as the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires. During the reign of Philip V of Macedon (r. 221–179 BC), the Macedonians not only lost the Cretan War (205–200 BC) to an alliance led by Rhodes, but their erstwhile alliance with Hannibal of Carthage also entangled them in the First and Second Macedonian War with ancient Rome. The perceived weakness of Macedonia in the aftermath of these conflicts encouraged Antiochus III the Great of the Seleucid Empire to invade mainland Greece, yet his defeat by the Romans at Thermopylae in 191 BC and Magnesia in 190 BC secured Rome's position as the leading military power in the region. Within roughly two decades after conquering Macedonia in 168 BC and Epirus...