Directory

317 BCE

Menander wins the first prize at the Lenaian festival with his play Dyskolos (The Grouch). Battle of Paraitacene: The first battle of Western armies each with an elephant corps who fight for control over Alexander's empire. The armies of Antigonus and Eumenes fight each other near today's Isfahan in Persia with no clear victor. After capturing Athens from Macedonia's regent Polyperchon, Cassander entrusts the government of Athens to the Athenian orator, statesman, and philosopher, Demetrius Phalereus.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • Acestorides, a native of Corinth, is made supreme commander by the citizens of Syracuse.source
  • After capturing Athens from Macedonia's regent Polyperchon, Cassander entrusts the government of Athens to the Athenian orator, statesman, and philosopher, Demetrius Phalereus.source
  • Polyperchon flees to Epirus, where he joins Alexander the Great's mother Olympias, Alexander's widow Roxana, and Alexander's infant son Alexander IV. He forms an alliance with Olympias, who is acting as regent for Alexander IV, and King Aeacides of Epirus.source
  • Armenia's Persian satrap, Ardvates, frees his country from Macedonian control.source

Conflict & Security

  • Battle of Paraitacene: The first battle of Western armies each with an elephant corps who fight for control over Alexander's empire. The armies of Antigonus and Eumenes fight each other near today's Isfahan in Persia with no clear victor.source
  • Seleucus joins Antigonus against Eumenes and recaptures Babylon.source

Health & Medicine

  • Private funeral monuments are banned in Athenian cemeteries.source

Crime & Justice

  • After twice being banished for attempting to overthrow the oligarchical party, Agathocles returns with an army and banishes or murders about 10,000 citizens (including the oligarchs), and sets himself up as tyrant of Syracuse. Acestorides is banished from the city.source
  • While Cassander is occupied in the Peloponnesus, Olympias leads an army into Macedonia. She is initially successful, defeating the army of King Philip III Arrhidaeus and capturing King Philip and his wife, Eurydice, as well as Cassander's brother, Nicanor. She then has them murdered.source

Culture & Society

  • Menander wins the first prize at the Lenaian festival with his play Dyskolos (The Grouch).source
  • Ptolemy marries Berenice, lady-in-waiting to his first wife Eurydice.source

Deaths

  • King Philip III of Macedon (b. c. 359 BC)source
  • Nicanor Macedonian officer of Cassander and the son in law of Aristotle.source