
Alexander the Great's Legacy
The Decline of Macedonian Europe in the Wake of the Wars of the Successors
Mike Roberts(Author)
Pen & Sword Military (Publisher)
Published on 28. January 2022
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-1-5267-8852-8 (ISBN)
Description
Why was it that 2400 years ago the people who had recently conquered the world were unable to stop barbarian Galatians from looting the tombs of their revered royal line? Why was it that the Macedonian state virtually created by Philip II and taken to the heights of epochal triumph by his son Alexander the great had, hardly two generations after his death , became a weaker entity than it had been when the young conqueror had crossed the Hellespont?
This was a period during which Cassander and Lysimachus had seemed about to construct durable Europe based polities and had seen the likes of Demetrius Poliorcetes and Pyrrhus of Epirus battling and besieging across Macedonia,Thrace and Greece.
The story that unfolds here explores how both the unique character and the particular legacy left when Alexander died at Babylon in 323 ,at the romantically youthful age of 32 , ensured that his homeland failed to gain the kind of imperial dividend that accrued to others of the world's great Empires. For Macedon there was not the thousand years of glory that was the extraordinary destiny of the Romans, nor even the two hundred years of Persian primacy, only 50 or so years of strife and trauma ending in a Galatian deluge that threatened the sacred site at Delphi and had remarkable parallels to the earlier Persian invasions of the Greek world that Alexander had claimed to avenge.
This was a period during which Cassander and Lysimachus had seemed about to construct durable Europe based polities and had seen the likes of Demetrius Poliorcetes and Pyrrhus of Epirus battling and besieging across Macedonia,Thrace and Greece.
The story that unfolds here explores how both the unique character and the particular legacy left when Alexander died at Babylon in 323 ,at the romantically youthful age of 32 , ensured that his homeland failed to gain the kind of imperial dividend that accrued to others of the world's great Empires. For Macedon there was not the thousand years of glory that was the extraordinary destiny of the Romans, nor even the two hundred years of Persian primacy, only 50 or so years of strife and trauma ending in a Galatian deluge that threatened the sacred site at Delphi and had remarkable parallels to the earlier Persian invasions of the Greek world that Alexander had claimed to avenge.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
South Yorkshire
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
Illustrations
20 colour illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-5267-8852-8 (9781526788528)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Mike Roberts
Alexander the Great's Legacy
The Decline of Macedonian Europe in the Wake of the Wars of the Successors
E-Book
04/2023
Pen & Sword Military
€18.18
Available for download
Person
Mike Roberts is a retired social worker but has a long-standing interest in the military history of the Classical world. He is the co-author (with his good friend Bob Bennett) of several well-received books: The Wars of Alexander's Successors (volumes I and II); The Twilight of the Hellenistic World and The Spartan Supremacy. This is his second solo book, following Two Deaths at Amphipolis. He lives in Dudley.