The Successor States were a fascinating hodgepodge of Greek, Iranian, Egyptian, and so on, cultures and religions. Ptolemy co-opted Egyptian religion and myth to legitimize his rule as a Pharaoh, rather than a foreign usurper. Seleukos ruled an empire of Greek colonists and conquered Iranians, and had to struggle to keep all the multiple ethnic groups from breaking away, much less the usual rebellions. Greek culture was definitely alive and strong, just evolving. Cultures always have foreign influence. The Greek City-States era learned from their neighbors, albeit not to the extent of the Successors. So I kinda see the Successor States as being late Arlathan, when everything was starting to deteriorate and barbarians (humans) were wandering around, sacking places, and eventually one group of barbarians rises up above the rest and conquers you and says, "Well, what does your philosophy say about that?" (Yes I have watched Colin Quinn's Long Story Short recently. 
)
As for many steps back, Athens' democracy had already fallen into imperialism and nastiness, as seen in the Peloponnesian war. 
And the Achaemenid Empire was arguably more moral, which didn't help them when the Macedonians came a knocking. Of course, that's highly, highly debatable.
Pardon me if I go to ancient military history nerd.
Phillip and Alexander's armies' success lay in the combined arms.
The sarissa armed pike-men weren't the virtual tanks of bronze that the classical hoplites were. They were, however, more practical. Lightly armored, because when you have an eighteen foot spear and thousands of brothers-in-dory to keep the enemy at bay, you don't need that much armor. Backed by swordsmen, auxilliary barbarian infantry, and more traditional hoplites and swordsmen to protect the ever vulnerable flanks, the phalangites provided the anvil.
The cavalry, specifically the Companions, provided the hammer.
The line of infantry would advance and engage the main enemy force. The spearmen would pin down the enemy, and the cavalry would be able to wheel around and drive at the weak point, crushing resistance.
The combined-arms army of Alexander was, to use TV Tropes terms, the Performer. Flashy, artistic, gorgeous to witness when done right, it was also overly complicated. There were many moving parts, and it took a general of great skill to wield them in concert and achieve victory. A poor general would lead this sort of army to a miserable defeat.
The Roman Legion was, in contrast, the Technician. Boring, but practical. Ruthless in its efficiency, and simple to use. They were the engineers to the Hellenes' artists. The Roman force could be commanded by a poor general and still come out ahead. They would likely lose to a general like Alexander, or Hannibal Barca with his own motley army that any other general would fail to hold together during lunch, much less a masterpiece like Cannae. In the Camillian and Polybian days, three lines of infantry. From the most inexperienced to the elite. Slowly wear down the enemy. Never give up. If you lose an army, recruit another. Their mastery of roads, engineering, and siegecraft led them to rule an empire that would dominate the West, all while cheerfully adopting Greek culture and making it their own. (Especially Stoicism. ) The Romans divided and conquered Macedon, Greece itself, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt. The Parthians swept in and seized the rest of Alexander's old empire, and the two (and Parthia's successors) would battle out in a stalemate over the Middle East for many centuries, extending well beyond Rome's fall.
I'm going to make the wild speculation that Arlathan's magic took centuries to unfold and was beautiful in its design and implementation, like Solas talks about. But the Neromenian magic was quick and dirty, because the humans needed it now, and they didn't care about what happened so long as the job got done. Blood magic, slave sacrifice? All good. (The Arlathan elves sacrificed their slaves with style, with panache.)
Now we get to the fun part.
The Successor generals lost a lot of the essence of what made Alexander so incredibly successful on the battlefield.
They started doing very silly things to outdo one another.
First, scythed chariots. Not entirely practical. Alexander managed to counter them with relatively simple phalangitai tactics. Y'know. The soldier that is now the mainstay of every Successor army? 
But they look AWESOME and make this terrifying death-rattle as they come your way. So they incorporated them into the army.
ELEPHANTS. Porus used elephants, didn't he? Remember when we all freaked out, but Alex was like, "Don't worry, guys, I got a plan. 
" And how we've seen elephants stampede their own forces in a panic?
Wouldn't it be great if we added those into our army? Let's go find even bigger elephants. Let's put armor on them. Let's make it big shiny metal armor, and paint it, and paint the elephants. What if we added a platform to it and put a bunch of archers in it? Can we paint the archers too?
Why build a bunch of regular sized siege towers when you can compensate for all of your soldiers' 'shortcomings' at the same time? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helepolis
That leads us to the part where one smarmy Successor general added a few inches onto his sarissas, so his men could poke the other guys just a bit earlier and keep them at bay. Cue the pissing contest, where eventually you end up with an army of 25 feet pikes that you can't actually hold up properly, much less form a phalanx with.
As for the infighting, the Romans were actually bewildered by how much nonsensical backstabbings were going on during their conquests of Macedon and Greece.
"Just..just shut up. We can't keep the names straight. We're killing everyone, capiche?"
Retour en haut
In this case I'm also frozen by a filthy Venatori.
