Arguably the most important series of political events in this period were the conquests of Alexander, bringing about the collapse of the once formidable Persian Empire and spreading Greek culture far into the east. Alexander dreamed of an east/west union, but when his short life ended, his vast empire was plunged into civil war as his generals each carved out their own separate kingdoms. Thus began the Hellenistic age, a period characterized by a more absolute approach to rule, with Greek kings taking on royal trappings and setting up hereditary successions. While a degree of democracy still existed in some of the remaining independent Greek cities, many scholars see this age as marking the end of classical Greece.
Praxiteles or his followers makes Hermes and the infant Dionysos. A Hellenistic or Roman copy after a Late Classical original is at Archaeological Museum, Olympia. Discovered in the rubble or the ruined Temple of Hera at Olympia in 1875.
399 BCSocrates is executed in Athens on charges of impiety and corrupting Athenian youth.
Mid-4th century BC - Skopas (?) makes Panel from the Amazon frieze, south side of the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos. It is now kept at The British Museum, London.
"The safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." (Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929).
Starting in the year 309 BC, the later Chinese historian Sima Qian (145 BC-90 BC) wrote that the Qin-employed engineer Bi Ling of the newly conquered State of Shu in Sichuan had the shoulder of a mountain cut through, making the 'Separated Hill' that abated the Mo River, and excavated two canals in the plain of Chengdu. The significance of this was phenomenal, as it allowed the new Guanxian irrigation system to populate an area of some 40 by 50 miles (60 × 80 km) with over five million people, still in use today (Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Volume 4, Part 3, 288).
The Chinese astronomer Gan De divides the celestial sphere into 365¼ degrees, and the tropical year into 365¼ days at a time when most astronomers used the Babylon division of the celestial sphere as 360 degrees (Deng, Yinke. [2005] (2005). Chinese Ancient Inventions. ISBN 7508508378).
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