Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/160

 io6 General History of Europe of a drunken debauch, and after a few days died (323 B.C.). He was thirty-three years of age and had reigned thirteen years. Alexander has been well termed "the Great." Few men of genius, and certainly none in so brief a career, have left so in- delible a mark upon the course of human affairs. Alexander's amazing conquests had placed the Orient under European leaders, and from that day to this with some intervals the effort to force Western leadership on the Orient has continued. 165. Division of Alexander's Realm ; the Ptolemies in Egypt. After a generation of exhausting wars by land and sea Alexander's empire fell into three main parts, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, with one of his generals, or one of their successors, at the head of each. In Europe, Macedonia was in the hands of Antigonus, grandson of Alexander's commander of the same name. He endeavored also to maintain control of Greece. In Asia most of the territory of the former Persian Empire was under the rule of Alexander's general Seleucus, who founded the important city of Antioch. In Africa, Egypt was held by Ptolemy, one of the cleverest of Alexander's Macedonian leaders. He grad- ually made himself king and became the founder of a dynasty or family of kings, whom we call the Ptolemies. He took up his residence at the great harbor city of Alexandria, the city which Alexander had founded in the western Nile delta. For nearly a century (roughly the third century B.C.) the eastern Mediterra- nean, from Greece to Syria and from the ^Egean to the Nile delta, was under the control of Egypt. 166. Decline of Greece. Greece was no longer commercial leader of the Mediterranean. The victories of Alexander the Great had opened up the vast Persian Empire to Greek commer- cial colonists, who poured into all the favorable centers of trade. Not only did Greece decline in population, but business pros- perity and the leadership in trade passed eastward, especially to Alexandria and Antioch. As the Greek cities lost their wealth- they could no longer support fleets or mercenary armies, and they soon became too feeble to protect themselves. Although they began to combine in alliances or federations for mutual assistance,