The centuries following the death of Alexander the Great are known as the Hellenistic Period, as the Hellenic spirit infiltrated the vast region, which was now following a diverse structure than the classical type of small, consistent city-state. The political unit became larger in size and lost its homogeneity.

The premature and unexpected death of Alexander caused anxiety among his generals, which was followed by a conscious effort to compromise and find a solution that would preserve his Empire. The army declared the son of Philippos, Arridaios, as well as Alexander's still unborn child (from Roxane), kings. Next step was the division of the Empire in Satrapies: Antipatros made viceroy of Greece, Perdikas and Krateros in the East and Ptolemeus in Egypt. The largest part of Asia Minor was given to Antigonos (satrap of Frygia), Thrace was given to Lyssimachos and Eumenis took Paflagonia and Kappadocia. Perdicas stayed in Babylon, as the guardian of the two Kings, Arridaios and Alexander IV (the son of Alexander and Roxane who was assassinated along with his mother twelve years later). The death of Alexander triggered revolts in several parts of the Empire (in Vaktria, by the Greek soldiers remaining there and in Greece -the Lamian war- with Athens in charge -Iperidis- along with Aetolia, Thessaly, the largest part of central Greece, Sikyon, Ilis, Messinia and Argos). Antipatros, with the aid of Krateros, won and put a forceful ending to their attempts for independence. Peace was impossible to be maintained as the personal and political desires of Alexander's successors were growing and the need to maintain the borderlines and the accessibility of the trade routes was a necessity. Perdikas' ambitions became evident with his decision to marry the sister of Alexander, Kleopatra, which led to the formation of a front against him by the generals Antipatros, Krateros, Antigonos, Lyssimachos and Ptolemeus. In 321, he was assassinated by his own generals as he was marching against Egypt. Around the same time, Krateros was killed in a battle against Eumenis -who had taken Perdikas' side.

In 320 B.C., the remaining successors met in northern Syria, where Antipatros redistributed the satrapies of the Empire; Ptolemeus took Egypt, Syria and Libya and Antigonos, Phrygia, Lykia and Pamphylia. In 315, Antigonos, having in his command a strong army and the largest part of Asia, moved against the other generals, towards Greece, aiming to offer independence and self-governance. In the meantime, Seleukus moved to Babylon, where he established a powerful and permanent dominion, inaugurating the era of the Seleukids. Antigonos and the other generals signed a peace treaty maintaining the status quo, which did not last long and Ptolemeus charged against Greece and occupied of the important cities -Sikyon and Corinth- claiming to reestablish the Corinthian Confederacy. In 307 B.C., Antigonos' son, Demetrius, liberated Athens reestablishing democracy and "opening" the city to the philosophers of the era (Zinon, Epicurus, etc.) turning it into the cultural center of the world. Demetrius next defeated Ptolemeus in a sea battle (306 B.C.) and the dream of a possible unity of Alexander's empire was forever gone. In this new era, Greek culture infiltrated the Empire through the artisans, new settlers or mercenaries being summoned by the Greek rulers of the new autocratic states of the asiatic region. New cultural centers emerged in the large cities of Alexandria, Antioch, Pergamon, Seleukia, Rhodes, which became the trade centers of the world as well as the poles of attraction for power and money.

Away from the homogeneous, centralized, politically oriented small city-states of the classical period, the new role of the people of these cities was egocentric, revolving around the unit, the person and his role in this new era. Since the Hellenistic cities became affluent and luxurious, they allowed for a comfortable standard of living encouraged by the Epicurian and Stoic philosophies that emphasized the pursuit of pleasure and self-sufficiency and generated the concept of the cosmopolitan "citizen of the world", concerned with individualism. Art reflected this change from the idealism that expressed the social humanism of classical Athens to the individualism -through realism- that expressed the particularism of the Hellenistic cities.