Book excerpt: Kingship was probably the most important institution in the Hellenistic world. The enormous territories conquered by Alexander the Great were not organised as democratic republics or a Greek type of "tyranny", but as monarchies inspired by the Macedonian kingdom and the Persian Empire. In fact, the idea of kingship was, so to speak, contagious in the Hellenistic era, and the proclamation of a king was the simplest way of establishing sovereignty. This monarchical legacy was eventually taken over by the Roman Empire, from where it was transferred to mediaeval Europe. This volume focuses on the symbolic aspects of the Hellenistic monarchies: what were the values and ideals of these kingdoms? Were they identical, or were there regional differences?