Before a third attempt could be made, Ptolemy had arrived with re-enforcements, turning away the macedonian army. In a second attempt, Demetrius built a larger land based seige tower, but the Rhodes army flooded the location where the seige tower was going to be placed denying Demetrius and his army again.
Demetrius attempted to bring a seige tower to over take the high defensive walls of Rhodes, but the ship carrying the siege tower over turned in rough waters. The agreement between Rhodes and Ptolemy angered Antigonus I Monophthalmus, so in 305 B.C., he commanded his son Demetrius Poliorcetes take 40,000 macedonian men and attack the island of Rhodes. Together, Rhodes and Ptolemy controlled most of the eastern mediterrean sea trading. With much of Alexander's Empire divided and his generals still fighting over the empire, Rhodes sided with Ptolemy who controlled Egypt. After a year of heavy fighting and many attempts to storm the city, the Antigonids relented and signed a peace treaty with Rhodes.Alexander the Great did not leave a plan to divide his great empire when he surprisingly passed at the age of 32, so his top generals fought on how to divide Alexander's Empire. They besieged Rhodes and attempted to blockade the city’s harbor but failed to completely surround the city. Wary of Rhodian power and their control of regional trade, the Antigonids invaded in 305 BCE with hundreds of ships and 30,000 soldiers. The Antigonids, in coalition with several of the successors, succeeded in expanding their territory but grew increasingly suspicious of Ptolemy and Rhodes-which, while still neutral, had amassed a strangely large navy. The Diadochi Wars, or the Wars of Alexander’s Successors, were conflicts that engulfed this region for half a century as the competing claims and disputed boundaries led former colleagues to take up arms against one another. Other advisors and claimants also rose to rule sections of the dissolving empire that once stretched from Greece to India, and each thought of themselves as the rightful heir to Macedonia’s expansive territory. One of Alexander’s most trusted generals, Antigonus Monophthalmus, retained control of a large swath of the empire in what is today Turkey and Syria, forming the Antigonid Kingdom. This union allowed for near-complete dominance of trade between the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, and Rhodes reached new heights of prosperity, advancement, and power. By 332 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered Rhodes, and it remained a thriving Macedonian port until his death nearly 10 years later.ĭuring the dissolution of the Macedonian Empire, Rhodes remained aligned with Ptolemy’s Egypt. Rhodian success drew attention and ire from its larger rivals on the Anatolian mainland, and it was invaded first by its immediate neighbor and then the expanding Persian Empire in the middle of the 4th century BCE. The grand city had extensive sewage and water systems, a deep harbor, and a thriving commercial sector. In 408 BCE, the main settlements on the island united and began construction on the city of Rhodes-a planned town that would allow for expanded commerce and more formalized civic and governmental institutions. Nominally aligned with Athens during the Peloponnesian Wars, the island successfully maintained neutrality in the conflict and continued to grow more populous and prosperous. Due to its advantageous position along numerous trade routes between ancient Mediterranean civilizations, the island of Rhodes quickly grew to economic and military prominence.