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After Alexander

After his death, nearly all the noble Susa marriages dissolved, which shows that the Macedonians despised the idea. There never came to unity between Macedonians and Persians and there wasn't even a unity among the Macedonians.  Alexander's death opened the anarchic age of the Successors and a bloody Macedonian civil war for power followed.  As soon as the news of Alexander's death were known, the Greeks rebelled yet again and so begun the Lamian War.  The Macedonians were defeated and expelled from Greece, but then Antipater received reinforcements from Craterus who brought to Macedonia the 10,000 veterans discharged at Opis.  Antipater and Craterus jointly marched into Greece, defeated the Greek army at Crannon in Thessaly and brought the war to an end. Greece will remain under Macedonian rule for the next one and a half century.   In Asia the Macedonian commanders who served Alexander fought each other for power.  Perdiccas and Meleager were murdered, Antigonus rose to control most of Asia, but his growth of power brought the other Macedonian generals in coalition against him.  He was killed in battle and the Macedonian Empire split into four main kingdoms - the one of Seleucus (Asia), Ptolemy (Egypt), Lysimachus (Thrace), and Antipater's sonCassander (Macedonia, including Greece). The rise of Rome put an end to Macedonian kingdoms. Macedonia and Greece were conquered in 167/145 BC, Seleucid Asia by 65 BC, and Cleopatra VII, the last Macedonian descendent of Ptolemycommitted suicide in 30 BC, after which Egypt was added to the Roman Empire. 

With the split of the Roman Empire into Western and Eastern (Byzantium), the Macedonians came to play a major role in Byzantium.  The period of rule of theMacedonian dynasty which ruled the Eastern Roman Empire from 867 to 1056 is known as the "Golden Age" of the Empire.  The Eastern Roman Empire fell in the 15^th century and Macedonia, Greece, and the whole southern Balkans came under the rule of the Turkish Empire.

Greece gained its independence at the beginning of the 19^th century with the help of the Western European powers, while Macedonia which continued to be occupied by foreign powers, gained independence in 1991, but only over 37% of its historical ethnic territory. With the Balkan Wars of 1912/13 Macedonia was occupied by the armies of its neighbors - 51% of it's territory came under, and still is under the rule of Greece, while the remaining 12% are still occupied by Bulgaria. Both Greece and Bulgaria had been condemned numerous times for the oppression of their large Macedonian minoritieswhich they had stripped off basic human rights, ever since the partition of the country.  (bibliography Ancient Greek and Roman Historians and Modern Historians)