11.3 Europe: 400 to 301 b.c.  (Page 3/5)

Actually the great battle with Persia was not enjoined until after Philip's assassination and Alexander's coronation as king. Within a few years Alexander had conquered all western Asia and a part of India and Egypt, carving out an empire 3,000 miles wide and in most regions up to 1,000 miles from north to south, thus approaching the size of the United States. As accompanying maps will show, the boundaries were almost identical with the previously existing Persian Empire. All of this was conquered within about twelve years without motorized vehicles and only about 35,000 men including some 5,000 mercenaries. He initiated the use of a torsion catapult to shoot arrows and stones, beginning a whole new era in siege warfare. (Ref. 222 , 213 ) At least thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Greeks followed in Alexander's footsteps, emigrating to the East and giving a deep Hellenic imprint over and above the purely military conquest. Alexander died in 323 B.C. at the age of thirty-three years, a man of tremendous vanity, at times kind and considerate and at other times vicious, cruel and destructive. He died in Mesopotamia, possibly of malaria. (Ref. 125 )

Alexander set up no competent administrations in the various conquered areas and after his death the empire rapidly collapsed, with division of the territory among the various Greek generals. Initially the divisions were as follows:

• General Seleucus controlled the Asian part of the old Persian Empire and the south half of Asia Minor except the coast, clear across southwest Asia to the Indus
• General Antigonus kept Macedonia itself, but by 301 B.C. he was killed in battle and his son Demetrius I was defeated as Lysimachus took the area of Thrace and Cassander took Macedonia and Greece
• General Ptolemy took Egypt, along with most of the coast of the eastern Mediterranean, including Judea and the old Phoenicia and the coast of Asia Minor

NOTE: Insert Map 22. THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Italy

In 400 B.C. the Gauls plundered Etruria in northern Italy, conquering Felsina, which subsequently became known as Bononia. Ten years later, under King Brennus, they sacked Rome itself and retreated only after the payment of 1,000 pounds of gold. Thus began the long Roman-Gallic wars which did not end until the time of Julius Caesar in the 1st century of the Christian era. In spite of the Gauls, Perusia, which had broken free from Clusium, was the most powerful Etruscan center in the upper Tiber Valley. The Clusines spread their alphabet up the Adriatic coast to Venetia and the northeast and it became the basis of the alphabets of Venetia, Illyria and Raetia as well as of the German and Scandinavian runes. Meanwhile the Romans also had to continue to fight the Etruscan city-state of Veii, destroying it about 396 B.C. and then take on the powerful and highly civilized Samnite tribes of southern Italy. The only Etrurian power left in the immediate vicinity of Rome was Tarquinii and a seven year war flared up with it in 358 B.C. In 343 B.C. the Greek cities in Campania (Naples area) joined the Samnites in their campaign against Rome, but in spite of all this warfare some advancement of civilization did occur in Rome. The Compromise of Camillus in 367 B.C. gave concessions to the Plebes and internal dissension stopped, leaving energies free for expansion. The Appian Way was started at this time. While the Etruscan towns had always remained small, chiefly in the 5,000 to 10,000 bracket, early in this century Rome probably passed the 10,000 mark and drew level with Tarentum, the largest Greek city in Italy. (Ref. 75 , 8 , 136 )