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War and Conflict

The Roman Conquest

How was Rome able to conquer Greece?

After Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C., his generals divided his empire into successor states, but Greece remained under Macedonian control. Though the Greeks would fight the armies of the Macedonian kings into the 200s B.C., they would not achieve independence, and instead associations of Greek city-states again fought each other.

Meantime, just to the west, Rome had been conquering lands to become a formidable power in the Mediterranean and soon began to look eastward to expand its authority. When Rome conquered Macedonia in 197 B.C., Greece was liberated. Fifty years later, in 146 B.C., Greece was conquered by Rome and was divided into provinces. While the city-states had no military or political power, they nevertheless flourished under Roman rule. And the Romans, who had first started borrowing from Greek thought and culture around 300 B.C., were soon spreading Greek ideas, art, and religion throughout their empire, giving rise to the Greco-Roman culture inherited by modern western civilization.



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