Diádochoi, ‘successors’, is a literary collective term for the generals of Alexander who after his death in 323 BC made themselves heirs to his empire both co-operating and opposing each other. Their successors, the second generation after Alexander, were then grouped together as epígonoi, ‘those born later’. The memory of the Epigoni of the legend, the sons of the Seven against Thebes, probably played a larger part in naming them than Alexander's Epigoni, the group of 30,000 young Oriental troops who were meant to supplement the Macedonian phalanx (Arr. Anab. 7,6,1).
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