accession of Alexander brought about a change in the mon etary system of the kingdom. With the conquest of Asia, Alexan der conceived the plan of issuing a uniform coinage for the em pire. Gold had fallen from the diffusion of the Persian treasure, and Alexander struck coins in both gold and silver on the Attic standard, leaving their relation to adjust itself by the state of the market. This imperial coinage was designed to break down the monetary predominance of Athens.
external fortunes of the Macedonian empire after Alexan der's death must be briefly traced before its inner developments be touched upon.' There was, at first, when Alexander suddenly died in 323, no overt disruption of the empire. The dispute be tween the Macedonian infantry and the cavalry (i.e., the com monalty and the nobles) was as to the person who should be chosen to be the king, although it is true that either candidate, the half-witted son of Philip II., Philip Arrhidaeus, or the posthumous son of Alexander by Roxana, opened the prospect of a long re gency exercised by one or more of the Macedonian lords. The compromise, by which both the candidates should be kings to gether, was, of course, succeeded by a struggle for power among those who wished to rule in their name. During a period of con fused warfare, which lasted, with intervals, for forty years, the family of Alexander was wholly destroyed ; the endeavour of An tigonus, satrap of Phrygia, and of his son Demetrius, to establish a new imperial dynasty, was frustrated by the former's defeat and death at the battle of Ipsus (305 B.c.) ; and a similar and all but successful attempt by Seleucus, governor of Syria, ended in his assassination (280 B.c.) About 275 B.C. a horde of Celtic warriors from the Danube lands who had crossed over into Asia Minor after a series of devastating forays in Macedonia and Greece, took possession of the central plateau and there formed a federation of tribal king doms known as Galatia. In Cappadocia two Persian houses, relics of the old aristocracy of Achaemenian days, had carved out prin cipalities, one of which became the kingdom of Pontus and the other the kingdom of Cappadocia (in the narrower sense) ; the former regarding Mithradates (281-266) as its founder, the latter being the creation of the second Ariarathes ( ?3o2–?281). Ar 'For details see separate articles on the chief generals.
menia, never effectively conquered by the Macedonians, was left in the hands of native prances, tributary only when the Seleucid court was strong enough to compel. In India, Seleucus had in 302 ceded large districts on the west of the Indus to Chandragupta, who had arisen to found a native empire which annexed the Mace donian provinces in the Punjab.
Whilst the Antigonid kingdom remained practically whole till the Roman conquest ended it in 168 B.C., and the house of Ptol emy ruled in Egypt till the death of Cleopatra in 3o B.c., the Seleucid empire perished by a slow process of disruption. The eastern provinces of Iran went in 240 or thereabouts, when the Greek Diodotus made himself an independent king of Bactria (q.v.) and Sogdiana, and Tiridates, brother of Arsaces, a "Scyth ian" chieftain, conquered Parthia (so Arrian, but see PARTHIA).
Armenia was finally lost in 190, when Artaxias founded a new native dynasty there. Native princes probably ruled in Persia before 166 (see PERSIA). In southern Syria which had been won by the house of Seleucus from the house of Ptolemy in 198, the independent Jewish principality was set up in 143. About the same time Media was totally relinquished to the Parthians. Baby lonia was Parthian from 129. In 64 the last shadow of Seleucid rule vanished, when Syria was made a Roman province by Pom pey. From this time Rome formally entered upon the heritage of Alexander as far as the Euphrates, but many of the dynasties which had arisen in the days of Macedonian supremacy were al lowed to go on for a time as client states.
The Macedonians of Alexander were not mistaken in seeing an essential transformation of their national monarchy when Alexander adopted the guise of an ori ental great king. Transplanted into this foreign soil, the mon archy became an absolute despotism, unchecked by a proud terri torial nobility and a hardy peasantry on familiar terms with their king. The principle which Seleucus is reported to have enunci ated, that the king's command was the supreme law, was literally the principle of the new Hellenistic monarchies in the East. But the rights belonging to the Macedonian army as Alexander in herited it did not altogether disappear. Like the old Roman peo ple, the Macedonian people under arms had acted especially in the transference of the royal authority, conferring or confirming the right of the new chief, and in cases of the capital trials of Macedonians. In the latter respect the army came regularly into function under. Alexander, and in the wars which followed his death ; and in Macedonia, although the power of life and death came de facto into the hands of the Antigonid king, the old right of the army to act as judge was not legally abrogated. The right of the army to confer the royal power was still symbolized in the popular acclamation required on the accession of a new king, and at Alexandria in troubled times we hear of "the people" making its will effective in filling the throne, although it is here hard to distinguish mob-rule from the exercise of a legitimate function. Where it is a case of delegating some part of the supreme author ity, as when Seleucus I. made his son Antiochus king for the eastern provinces, we find the army convoked to ratify the ap pointment. So too the people is spoken of as appointing the guardians of a king during his minority. Nor was the power of the army a fiction. The Hellenistic monarchies rested, as all gov ernment in the last resort must, upon the loyalty of those who wielded the brute force of the state, and however unlimited the powers of the king might be in theory, he could not alienate the goodwill of the army with impunity. The right of primogeniture in succession was recognized as a general principle ; a woman, however, might succeed only so long as there were no male agnates.