Alexander conquers an empire, then dies before securing it
What happened
After his father's assassination in 336 BCE, the 20-year-old Alexander inherited the throne and the invasion of Persia his father had been planning. Over the next eleven years, Alexander never lost a single battle, defeating the Persian king Darius III at Issus and Gaugamela, conquering Egypt, where he founded the city of Alexandria, and burning the Persian ceremonial capital of Persepolis in an act framed as revenge for Xerxes burning Athens a century and a half earlier. His army finally mutinied in 326 BCE on the banks of the Hyphasis River in India, refusing to march further after years of continuous campaigning, and Alexander, after days of refusing, turned back. He died in Babylon in June 323 BCE at age 32 after ten days of fever, and when his generals asked who should inherit his empire, he reportedly answered only the strongest, a response that guaranteed decades of war between his former commanders.
Why it matters
Alexander's conquests spread Greek language, art, and political institutions from Egypt to the borders of India, creating the Hellenistic world that followed his death and giving cities like Alexandria a role as centers of science and learning for centuries. But his refusal, or inability, to name a clear successor meant the empire he built by force fractured within a generation into rival kingdoms that spent the next 300 years fighting each other and, eventually, Rome.
How we know
Multiple ancient historians, including Arrian and Plutarch, wrote detailed if sometimes conflicting biographies drawing on now-lost accounts by officers who marched with Alexander himself, giving modern historians several independent, if not always consistent, versions of the same campaigns to cross-check against each other.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Alexander the Great · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Related timelines
- Ancient Egypt → · The same conquest that founds Alexandria also ends independent Egyptian rule under native pharaohs