Impact Of Alexander The Great Expansion On Ancient Greece

Alexander the Great became the leader of the Greek kingdom of Macedonia in 336 B.C. and by the time he unexpectedly died 13 years later, Alexander had managed to successfully build an empire that stretched from Greece all the way to India. Although Alexander’s empire expansion campaign was rather brief, it nevertheless had a major global impact as it resulted in the spread of Greek culture and ideas over the entire expanse, ranging from the Eastern Mediterranean region to Asia. Historians commonly refer to this era in Ancient Greece as the Hellenistic Period. The term Hellenistic is derived from the Ancient Greek root word Hellas, which was used in reference to the territory of Greece. During this period, the Greek expansion efforts and the resulting wars are observed to have had a major impact on ancient Greek Civilization. The impact that these wars and the resulting expansion had on the Ancient Greek civilization is worth analyzing further. A major impact of the expansion that was witnessed during the Hellenistic period in ancient Greece is …show more content…
The effects of this aggressive warfare ranged from the spread of higher education, the shift in the governance of the Greek city-states from democracy to monarchy, a spread in the Greek culture and language as well as the spread of Buddhism, and increased trade. Even though the rule of Alexander the Great was short-lived, the amount of influence his kingdom exerted on both the western and eastern culture during the Hellenistic period cannot be denied. Not only did he leave a legacy of having spread Greek-influenced culture to most of the known world, he also made it possible for new cultures to rise that were able to fuse their own cultures with Hellenism and in the process emerge as some of the most powerful civilizations of the ancient