Diadochi: Did you mean...?

Illustration of the Siege of Rhodes (305-304 BCE) by Zvonimir Grbasic. Courtesy of Ancient Warfare Magazine / Karwansaray Publishers.

No military commander in history has ever won a battle by himself. To be successful he needs the support of a well-trained army who will follow him regardless of the cost whether it be a stunning victory or hopeless defeat. One need only...

Cyrus the Great (558-530 BCE) built the first universal empire, stretching from Greece to the Indus River. This was the famous Achaemenid Empire of Persia. An inscription at Naqsh-i-Rustam, the tomb of his able successor Darius I (521-486...

In the search for ever more impressive and lethal weapons to shock the enemy and bring total victory the armies of ancient Greece, Carthage, and even sometimes Rome turned to the elephant. Huge, exotic, and frightening the life out of an...

By c. 240 BCE, Ptolemaic Egypt stood as one of the most powerful and stable successor states of Alexander’s empire, reaching a high point under Ptolemy III Euergetes (reign 246-222 BCE). Emerging from the fragmentation that followed the death...

Inscribed stone boundary marker from Chalkidiki, c.350 to 300 BCE. Archaeological Museum of Thessalonika. It is an example of ancient Greek boundary markers, known as horoi, and it contains an official declaration regarding the new Macedonian...

Greece is a country in southeastern Europe, known in Greek as Hellas or Ellada, and consisting of a mainland and an archipelago of islands. Ancient Greece is the birthplace of Western philosophy (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle), literature...

Babylon is the most famous city from ancient Mesopotamia, whose ruins lie in modern-day Hillah, Iraq, 59 miles (94 km) southwest of Baghdad. The name is derived from bav-il or bav-ilim, which in Akkadian meant "Gate of God" (or "Gate of the...

Cleopatra VII (69-30 BCE, reign 51-30 BCE) was the last ruler of Egypt before it was annexed as a province of Rome. Arguably the most famous Egyptian queen, Cleopatra was ethnically Greek as a member of the Macedonian Ptolemaic Dynasty (323-30...

The Library of Alexandria was established under the Ptolemaic Dynasty of Egypt (323-30 BCE) and flourished under the patronage of the early kings to become the most famous library of the ancient world, attracting scholars from around the...