In 338 B.C.E., Philip II, king of Macedonia, defeated the armies of Athens and Thebes at the battle of Chaeronea (kehr-uh-NEE-uh) and established a Common Peace, a new political system that maintained each Greek city-state’s right to its own laws and customs. Following Philip II’s assassination in 336 B.C.E., his young son Alexander set about to finish his father’s plans and conquer Persia. By the time of his premature death in 323 B.C.E., Alexander had conquered the entire Persian Empire and taken his army through Afghanistan into what is now northwestern India. The newly connected reaches of the expanded Greek Empire became a melting pot of culture in what is commonly referred to as the Hellenistic Period (336–30 B.C.E.). Although Alexander’s empire quickly broke up into smaller states, Greek rulers dominated most of the eastern Mediterranean and spread Greek culture, or Hellenism, far into the East. New schools of philosophy took root and gained followers, and educated people throughout the Mediterranean world adopted the Greek language. Yet the divided empire never regained the strength and stability it had possessed under Alexander, and the Hellenistic Period was characterized by constant warfare. ■