And when he will have stood up, his kingdom will be broken and be divided toward the four winds of the heavens, but not to his posterity and not according to his dominion with which he had ruled.”​—Dan. 11:3, 4, and marginal reading.

After his death, however, his posterity did not succeed in establishing themselves in the kingship. Both the legitimate son Alexander IV and the illegitimate son Heracles were assassinated within a period of about fourteen years after their father’s death. Soon the empire that Alexander (III) had built up passed into the hands of four of his generals (1) Seleucus (I) Nicator, (2) Cassander, (3) Ptolemy Lagus (Ptolemy I Soter) and (4) Lysimachus. In this way it was “divided toward the four winds of the heavens.”