Alexander's Generals

The Wars That Tore an Empire Apart

By: Shane Larson

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

When Alexander the Great died at thirty-two, he left behind the largest empire the world had ever seen — and no plan for what came next.

His generals — the Diadochi, the "Successors" — spent the next forty years tearing each other apart in wars more dramatic and consequential than Alexander's own conquests. An eighty-one-year-old one-eyed general charging into his last battle. A siege engineer who built towers taller than city walls. A pragmatist who stole Alexander's corpse and built a dynasty that lasted three centuries. A political operator who murdered an entire royal family to secure his throne.

This is the sequel to Alexander that almost nobody knows — and it changed the ancient world forever.

In Alexander's Generals, you will discover:

• The Babylon Crisis — how a room full of armed generals nearly killed each other within hours of Alexander's death, and the fragile compromise that delayed the inevitable
• Ptolemy's Masterstroke — how the most pragmatic Diadochi stole Alexander's body, secured Egypt, and founded the dynasty that would end with Cleopatra
• Antigonus One-Eye — the last man who tried to reunify the empire, and why he died at eighty-one refusing to leave the battlefield
• The Battle of Ipsus — the decisive clash where five hundred war elephants settled the fate of Alexander's empire forever
• Demetrius the Besieger — the most brilliant and self-destructive general of the ancient world, whose siege of Rhodes produced one of the Seven Wonders
• Seleucus and the Eastern Empire — how a fugitive with a handful of followers built the largest successor kingdom from nothing
• Cassander's Murders — the systematic elimination of Alexander's bloodline and the end of the royal house
• The Birth of the Hellenistic World — how the wars of destruction created something new: a civilization that blended Greek and Near Eastern cultures across half a continent

This book is for you if:

• You know Alexander's story and want to know what happened next
• You enjoy military history told through the personalities who shaped it
• You want to understand how the ancient world's political geography was created
• You appreciate stories of ambition, betrayal, and the consequences of power without succession planning
• You've been looking for an accessible account of the Diadochi wars without the academic density

The Wars of the Diadochi are the most dramatic and least-known story in ancient history. Forty years of warfare. Some of the most extraordinary personalities who ever lived. And the creation of a world that Rome would eventually absorb but never fully replace.

The sequel Alexander's empire deserved. The story history forgot to tell.