In 356 BC Alexander the Great was born, and the state of Qin began Shang Yang's reforms.
Alexander's empire fell apart the moment he died; Shang Yang's reforms led Qin to unify China 135 years later.
The events
- The reforms of Shang Yang356 BC · State of Qin. From 356 BC Shang Yang, adviser to Duke Xiao of Qin, carried out Legalist reforms: ranks and land were granted for military merit, families were bound by collective responsibility, and uniform measures and counties run by officials were introduced. He was executed in 338 BC, but his system made Qin the strongest state and led to the unification of China.
- Death of Alexander the Great323 BC · Babylon. Alexander died in Babylon aged 32, leaving no capable heir. His generals, the Diadochi, carved up the empire into Hellenistic kingdoms — Ptolemaic, Seleucid, Antigonid — spreading Greek language and culture across the region.
- Qin Shi Huang unifies China221 BC · Xianyang. After conquering Qi, the last rival state, King Ying Zheng of Qin took the title Shi Huangdi, 'First Emperor'. He standardised script, weights, coinage and law and began the Great Wall, creating a unified Chinese state.
4th century BC · 3rd century BC
More amazing facts
- 356 BC Tradition holds that the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus burned on the very day Alexander the Great was born.
- 351 BC The word 'mausoleum' is a man's name.
- 350 BC · 1963 A schoolboy in Tanganyika noticed what Aristotle had written about: hot water sometimes freezes faster than cold.
- 340 BC Diogenes did not live in a barrel but in a pithos, a huge clay storage jar, in Athens.
- 338 BC One of history's shortest replies came from Sparta.
- 326 BC Alexander’s men marvelled at an Indian reed that “yields honey without bees”. That was how his admiral Nearchus described sugarcane in 326 BC, a plant Europe barely knew.