Wars of the Diadochi

The Wars of the Diadochi ("successors") were a series of conflicts fought from 322 to 275 BC among the generals, family members and former companions of Alexander the Great following his death in 323 BC without a clear heir. Beginning with the Partition of Babylon, which divided Alexander's empire into satrapies under rival commanders including Perdiccas, Antigonus, Ptolemy, Seleucus, Lysimachus and Cassander, the wars unfolded across roughly four decades of shifting coalitions, betrayals and set-piece battles including Paraitacene, Gabiene and Ipsus. The fighting eliminated Alexander's own bloodline, including his son Alexander IV, and by its end had fractured the unified empire into the rival Hellenistic successor kingdoms, the Antigonid dynasty in Macedon, the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt and the Seleucid Empire across much of Asia, that would dominate the eastern Mediterranean and Near East for the following two centuries until Rome's later conquests absorbed them.