Alexander's Bandit Kings

Abstract

After the death of Alexander, the Great in 323 BCE at Babylon, his generals, friends, family, and even secretaries would fight for decades to control the spoils of his newly forged empire. Eventually a series of Hellenistic kingdoms would carve up his empire stretching from Western Greece to Northern India. For nearly 300 years after his death Alexander’s successors would fight a series of titanic and seemingly never-ending wars with each war simply leading into the next. The Seleucids and Ptolemies would fight six Syrian Wars and never manage to fully conquer one another, Pyrrhus of Epirus would go on a never-ending series of military expeditions each time failing until he was finally killed in skirmish in Argos. The question must be asked then what compelled the Hellenistic Kings to go to war so much? By looking at primary and secondary sources it becomes clear that Hellenistic Kings were motivate by a powerful fusion of economics, geography, military, ideological, and legitimacy needs that would propel them into war after war. This essay determines what these myriad reasons were specifically and how it affected the Hellenistic kingdoms rational for going to war.