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The 320s BC

121 sourced entries across 10 years, inside the 4th century BC. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

329 BCE8 entries

  • In Bactria, Bessus raises a national revolt in the eastern satrapies using the title of King Artaxerxes V of Persia.
  • From Phrada, Alexander the Great presses on up the valley of the Helmand River, through Arachosia, and over the mountains past the site of modern Kabul into the country of the Paropamisade, where he founds Alexandria by the Caucasus.
  • Crossing the Oxus, Alexander sends his general Ptolemy in pursuit of Bessus. In the meantime, Bessus is overthrown by the Sogdian Spitamenes. Bessus is captured, flogged, and sent to Ptolemy in Bactria with the hope of appeasing Alexander. In due course, Bessus is publicly executed at Ecbatana. With the death of Bessus (Artaxerxes V), Persian resistance to Alexander the Great ceases.

328 BCE8 entries

  • December – Spitamenes is badly defeated by Alexander's general Coenus. At this point Spitamenes' allies, feeling the situation desperate, kill their leader and send his head as a gift to Alexander.
  • Spitamenes raises all Sogdiana in revolt behind him, bringing in the Massagetae, a people of the Scythian confederacy. He besieges the Macedonian garrison in Maracanda. Alexander the Great sends an army under the command of Pharnuches of Lycia which is promptly annihilated with a loss of more than 2,000 infantry and 300 cavalry.
  • At Maracanda, Alexander murders Cleitus, one of his most trusted commanders, friend and foster-brother, in a drunken quarrel; but his excessive display of remorse leads the army to pass a decree convicting Cleitus posthumously of treason.

327 BCE6 entries

  • Alexander the Great invades northern India. Recrossing the Hindu Kush, Alexander divides his forces. Half the army with the baggage under Hephaestion and Perdiccas, both cavalry commanders, are sent through the Khyber Pass, while Alexander leads the rest, together with his siege train, through the hills to the north. His advance through Swat and Gandhara is marked by the storming of the almost impregnable pinnacle of Aornos, a few miles west of the Indus.
  • The relations between Alexander and Aristotle are embittered by the execution of Aristotle's nephew, the historian Callisthenes of Olynthus, who is charged with treason. Callisthenes has been accompanying Alexander to write a chronicle of the campaign.
  • The Samnite army captures Neapolis (present-day Naples). The Romans, who are meanwhile moving south while the Samnites are occupied with Tarentum, take the opportunity to recover Neapolis and, after a long siege, evict the Samnite garrison from the city and make it an ally of Rome.

326 BCE9 entries

  • Alexander continues on to conquer all the headwaters of the Indus River. East of Porus' kingdom, near the Ganges River, Alexander faces the powerful empire of Magadha ruled by the Nanda dynasty. Fearing the prospects of facing another powerful Indian army and exhausted by years of campaigning, his army mutinies at the Hyphasis River (the modern Beas River) and refuses to march further east, thus making this river mark the easternmost extent of Alexander's conquests.
  • Spring – Alexander the Great crosses the Indus near Attock and enters ancient Taxila, whose ruler, Taxiles (or Ambhi), furnishes 130 war elephants and troops in return for aid against his rival Porus, who rules the lands between the Hydaspes (modern Jhelum River) and the Acesines (modern Chenab River).
  • Following the mutiny of his army at the Hyphasis River, Alexander is persuaded by his army leaders to abandon his plans for invading the Ganges Valley. Alexander appoints Nearchus, a Cretan with naval experience, as admiral and places under his command all in the ranks of his army with any knowledge of seafaring. Nearchus has Indian shipwrights build 800 vessels, some as large as 300 tons, to take the army through Persian Gulf waters to Babylon. Alexander the Great begins the return march down the Indus to the sea.

325 BCE15 entries

  • Aristotle writes Ta Ethika on virtue and moral character (approximate date).
  • (around this year) – Pytheas made a voyage of naval exploration to northwestern Europe, reaching Britain and the Baltic Sea, and mentioning Thule as the furthest island to the north in the Atlantic.
  • Alexander the Great leaves India and nominates his officer Peithon, son of Agenor, as the satrap of the region around the Indus.

324 BCE11 entries

  • Alexander the Great spends the summer and autumn at the Median capital, Ecbatana, where his best friend, Hephaistion, dies during the autumn. Alexander indulges in extravagant mourning for his closest friend.
  • To further his policy of integrating the Macedonians and Persians, Alexander and 80 of his officers take Persian wives. He and Hephaestion marry Darius III's daughters Barsine (also called Stateira) and Drypteis, respectively, and 10,000 of his soldiers with native wives are given generous dowries. His determination to incorporate Persians on equal terms into his army and into the administration of the provinces is bitterly resented by the Macedonians.
  • Greek colonists found the city of Akra Leuka (modern Alicante, Spain) on the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula.

323 BCE27 entries

  • 10 June/11 June – In Babylon, Alexander the Great dies, ten days after being taken ill after a prolonged banquet and drinking bout. Diogenes, the philosopher he met years before, when he was just about to set out on his conquests, allegedly dies on the exact same day.
  • Taxiles and Porus are to rule over their kingdoms in India;
  • Philip controls Bactria and Sogdiana;

322 BCE17 entries

  • September 5 – Craterus arrives to defeat the Athenians in the Battle of Crannon. This battle marks a complete victory for Antipater in the Lamian War.
  • By custom, kings in Macedonia assert their right to the throne by burying their predecessor. To pre-empt Perdiccas, the imperial regent, Ptolemy has Alexander the Great's body brought to Memphis, Egypt and buried there in a gold sarcophagus. Ptolemy then marries Alexander's mistress, Thaïs and commences to reign as king of Egypt and the adjacent Libyan and Arabian regions.
  • Spring/summer – The Macedonian admiral Cleitus the White defeats the Athenian navy at the Battle of the Echinades and the Battle of Amorgos, ending Athenian thalassocracy in the Aegean.

321 BCE10 entries

  • Antipater appoints Antigonus commander in chief of his army in Asia Minor and sends him with Craterus to fight against Eumenes, the satrap of Cappadocia and a supporter of Perdiccas.
  • Antigonus and Craterus defeat Eumenes in battle but Eumenes escapes. Antigonus and Craterus then besiege him unsuccessfully in the mountain fortress of Nora on the border between Cappadocia and Lycaonia. Craterus is killed during the fighting against Eumenes when his charging horse (Diodorus) falls over him.
  • Chandragupta Maurya, founder of the Mauryan empire, establishes himself as the king of Magadha.

320 BCE10 entries

  • Theophrastus begins the systematic study of botany.
  • Alexander the Great's various generals control different parts of Alexander's empire. Ptolemy controls Egypt, Seleucus controls Babylon and Syria, Antipater and his son Cassander control Macedon and Greece, Antigonus controls Phrygia and other parts of Asia Minor, Lysimachus controls Thrace and Pergamum and Eumenes controls the Cappadocia and Pontus areas.
  • Eudemus makes himself master of the territories of the Indian king Porus, and treacherously puts that monarch to death.