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The conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) can be considered a glorious and memorable achievement by whoever doesn't consider with more attention what every war has always meant for whoever fights it and, above all, for the populations hit by the conflicts with destruction, massacres, epidemics, misery, abuse and illegality.

Alexander created within few years a great empire with his strong personality and appeal on his soldiers and his military ability, until the limits of recklessness. It was extended from his homeland Macedonia to the whole Middle East, until the borders of India, along the Hindus River; this empire included the whole Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, Armenia, former provinces of the great Persian Empire and, in addition, the modern Afghanistan and part of Pakistan. Two years later his last conquests at the borders of India, Alexander died in Babylonia, without sons and without designating his unique heir for this so vast empire that become to dissolve immediately after his death, divided in various regional reigns among the most influent generals of his army, the Diadochi.

They soon created and consolidated their own personal dynasties in the following years, despite the initial attempt by the influent Gen. Perdiccas of keeping all of them united as governors (satraps) of that vast Empire. So, Lysimachus got the Thrace, Antigonus the Anatolia, Seleucus Babylon and Syria, Ptolemy got Egypt (where he proclaimed himself pharaoh), Antipater got the homeland Macedonia and Greece (where the Greek towns tried in vain to profit of Alexander's death to reconquest their independence).

Nearly immediately, all those Hellenist reigns started to fight among them to increase or keep their influence in that wide and the series of wars, alliances, betrayals and dynastic developments that occurred in the following two centuries, until their definitive conquest by Rome after the end of the II Punic War (201 B.C.), during the II and I century B.C. This chapter of history is too long and complex to be reported in this article.

With their unstable but ambitious reigns, these generals of Alexander's army exported the instability and division of the little Greek world on a large scale to all the Middle East, the worst side of the great Greek culture, after the relative peace guaranteed by the Persian Empire before Alexander.

Alexander had followed his great dream (or delirium?) of conquering the world in the name of the Greek civilization,

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