ABSTRACT
It is often considered both convenient and apt to end a survey of the ancient world with the record of the death, in Babylon in July 323 BC, of Alexander, son of Philip King of Macedon, commonly called ‘the Great’. After his brief, extraordinary lifetime, the axis of world politics shifted westwards, away from the Near East. At this point a new epoch approaches which will be very different in its mores, philosophy and attitudes to the world in the coming centuries. The modern world, unmistakably, is in the offing.
