After the death of Alexander there was not really a successor. Officially, his handicapped stepbrother Arrhidaios would take the power as Phillip III, and the still unborn son of Roxana would follow him as Alexander IV. But reality was different and the empire got shared between the main powerful figures: Chiliarch, Perdiccas and Antipatros (the strategist from Athens), Craterus and some Satraps like Antigonos (who took Mayor Phrygia, Lykien and Pamphylien), Ptolemaios (who took Egypt) and Lysimachos (who ruled over Thracia).

This started a series of small fights and territorial alterations. Some states were disintegrated and formed again with new a territorial structure, they became independent and after dissolved because of internal arguing. This situation ended at the beginning of 281 BC with the extinction of the generals. Antipatros and Craterus defeated Thessaly and destroyed once and for all the naval power of Athens, that got occupied by the Macedonian troops. In Asia, Perdiccas tried to extend his power, until that in 320 BC he got killed by a campaign in Egypt.

The same year fell also Craterus in the fight against Eumenos in Minor Asia. Antigonos got the power over Asia and died in 301 BC at the age of 81 during the battle of Ipsos in Phrygia. Ptolemaios died in 283 BC. Seleucos became the ruler of Babylon and strongly enlarged his reign in a short time. The fights continued in this way for a long time, and many rulers died and got quickly replaced by other. Finally, the empires got shared between Lysimachos, who had in the mean time taken the supremacy in Europe, and Seleucos, who was ruling over Asia and Minor Asia.

Now it was the time for the fights between Lysimachos and Seleucos to start, that ended with the death of Lysimachos in 281 BC during the battle of Curupedium. Seleucos saw then close his dream of seizing the power over Europe, but got killed when entering the European territories. The result of these power struggles were the three remaining big empires: the Ptolemaic Empire, the Seleucid Empire, and the ancestral territory of Macedonia.

In Greece, many cities got together to create alliances that would set them in a more relevant position. The first ones were the Aetolian League, that seized the power over almost all central Greece after expelling the Celts that had advanced until Delphi, the Achaean League , that surrounded the Peloponnesus, and the Melossian Alliance, in the entire region of Epirus. In 276 BC, an anti-Macedonian alliance between Athens and Sparta followed the Chremonidean war but ended with the defeat of Athens, giving Macedonia the total control in 262 BC. After that, Pergamos enjoyed a short rise between 228 and 223 BC, when Attalos I dominated over a big part of Minor Asia.

Cleomenes managed to make Sparta born again through his reforms, but got beaten in 222 BC by a Macedonian Achaean Alliance and the city went down again. In 224 BC, a Hellenic Alliance leaded by Macedonia was created with the union of Achaia, Thessaly, Epirus, Akarnany, Boeotia, Phokoe, Lokre and Euboea. This Alliance guided the allies war against Sparta and Aetoler in 220 BC, which ended with the peace of Nafpaktos, the last peace signed before the Roman arrival in Greece.

In fact, the Roman established themselves in Macedonian territories during the I and II Ilyrian war in 229 and 219 BC. Phillipp V formed then an alliance with Carthage, in Sicily, and Rome with Aetolia. This leaded to the first Macedonian war in 215-205 BC, which ended with a peace agreement. Ιn the II Punic war, the Roman defeated Carthage and Sicily became a Roman province.