Antiochus Hierax, who had initially fared badly…

Demetrius II, Antigonid king of Macedon, occupies Boeotia and …

…Megara in 237 BCE and 236 BCE, separating the Aetolian and Achaean Leagues and reducing the so-called War of Demetrius to isolated skirmishes.

Hamilcar Barca on his own responsibility ferries the Carthaginian army across to Gades to start an expedition into Hispania (236 BCE), where he hopes to gain a new empire to compensate Carthage for the loss of Sicily and Sardinia, and to serve as a base for any future conflicts against the Romans.

A story, likely fictitious, has Hamilcar making his ten-year-old son Hannibal swear eternal hatred of Rome.

Demetrius’ occupation of Boeotia and Megara ends in 235 BCE, having lasted only a year.

Sparta’s King Leonidas II dies in 235 BCE; his son succeeds him as Cleomenes III, who, seeking to increase Sparta’s power, institutes several social reforms.

The area around Alicante has been inhabited for over seven thousand years, with the first tribes of hunter gatherers moving down gradually from Central Europe between 5000 and 3000 BCE.

Some of the earliest settlements had been made on the slopes of Mount Benacantil, where the Castillo de Santa Barbara stands today.

By 1000 BCE, Greek and Phoenician traders had begun to visit the eastern coast of Spain, establishing small trading ports and introducing the native Iberian tribes to the alphabet, iron and the pottery wheel.

By the sixth century, the rival armies of Carthage and Rome had begun to invade and fight for control of the Iberian Peninsula.

Hamilcar establishes the fortified settlement of Akra Leuka (Greek:"White Mountain" or "White Point"), where Alicante stands today.

Megalopolis joins the Achaean League after 234 BCE and again successfully repels an attempted Spartan conquest.

The presence of the string of Greek colonies on Illyrian soil, dating from the eighth to the sixth centuries BCE, had brought the Illyrians, bearers of the Hallstatt culture, into contact with a more advanced civilization, which helped them to develop their own culture, while they in turn influenced the economic and political life of the colonies.

The colonies began to decline in the third century BCE and eventually perished.

The Illyrians are divided into tribes, each a self-governing community with a council of elders and a chosen leader.

Roughly parallel with the rise of Greek colonies, Illyrian tribes began to evolve politically from relatively small and simple entities into larger and more complex ones.

At first they formed temporary alliances with one another for defensive or offensive purposes, then federations and, still later, under strong tribal chieftains, kingdoms.

The most important of these kingdoms, which flourish from the fifth to the second century BCE, are those of the Enkalayes, the Taulantes, the Epirotes, and the Ardianes.

By the latter part of the third century BCE, the Ardian branch of the Illyrian people has developed a strong state with efficient armed forces and a fleet of warships, and Rome determines to curb the power of this vigorous neighbor.

One of the most important rulers of this last and best-known Illyrian kingdom, centered upon Scodra (modern Shkodër, Albania), is Agron, who, in alliance with Demetrius II of Macedonia in 231, defeats the Aetolians.

He dies suddenly, however, and during the minority of his son, his widow, Teuta, acts as regent.

Under Queen Teuta, Illyrians attack Sicily and the Greek colonies of the coast with part of the Illyrian navy.

The Epirote alliance, after the Aeacid monarchy ends in 232 BCE, transforms itself from a coalition of tribes into a federal state, the Epirote League, with a parliament (synedrion).

Epirus, although severely weakened by Pyrrhus’ expensive failures in Italy a few decades earlier, joins the Achaeans and Aetolians in 231 BCE against Macedon’s Demetrius II.

The city of Pyrrha on the seismically active island of Lesbos, sited in a small valley off the Gulf of Kallonís, suffers from an earthquake in about 231.