The World of Hellenistic

The World of Hellenistic Three eras can be distinguished in the history of the Greek-speaking world in antiquity: the independent City States, which Philip and Alexander ended; the Macedonian dominance, of which the last vestige was destroyed by the Roman conquest of Egypt following Cleopatra's death; and lastly, the Roman Empire. These three periods are distinguished by the following: subjection and order in the second, freedom and disorder in the first, and subordination and order in the third. The Hellenistic Era refers to the second of these eras. The scientific and mathematical work produced during this time is the greatest that the Greeks have ever produced. Though less so than the time of Plato and Aristotle, it is nonetheless significant in philosophy as it contains the establishment of the Epicurean and Stoic schools as well as skepticism as a well defined theory. Up to the Neoplatonists in the third century A.D., nothing genuinely novel had been done in Greek philosophy after the third century B.C. However, in the meanwhile, the Roman world was getting ready for Christianity to triumph. Alexander's brief career abruptly changed the Greek world. He subjugated Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, Samarcand, Bactria, and the Punjab in the 10 years between 334 and 324 B.C. Three conflicts brought down the greatest empire the world has ever known— the Persian Empire. Greek curiosity got acquainted with the old Babylonian legends and superstitions, as well as Zoroastrian dualism and, to a lesser extent, Indian religions, where Buddhism was gaining ascendancy. Alexander established Greek cities everywhere he went, including the highlands of Afghanistan, the banks of the Jaxartes, and the tributaries of the Indus. There, he attempted to replicate Greek institutions and grant some degree of self-government. He first regarded himself as the apostle of Hellenism, despite the fact that the majority of the Greeks in Europe submitted to him against their choice and that his army was primarily made up of Macedonians. But as his conquests grew, he gradually came to advocate a congenial union of Greek and barbarian cultures. He had several reasons for doing this. On the one hand, it was clear that his little soldiers could not maintain such a wide empire via force and that, in the end, the conquered nations would have to reconcile. However, the East was used to just having a divine ruler as a type of administration, a position Alexander thought he was well-suited for. The question of whether he considered himself to be a god or if his adoption of divine characteristics was solely motivated by policy rests with the psychologist, as the historical record is not entirely conclusive. Whatever the case, he was obviously pleased with the praise he got as the Great King of Persia and the heir apparent to the Pharaohs in Egypt. His Macedonian captains, known as the "Companions," treated him with the deference that western nobles would show a constitutional monarch: they refused to bow down to him, offered counsel and criticism even at personal danger, and at a critical juncture, they exerted control over his actions by forcing him to retreat from the Indus rather than continue toward the conquest of the Ganges. As long as their religious preconceptions were respected, orientals were more tolerant. Alexander had little trouble with this; all he had to do was claim to be the god's son and associate Ammon or Bel with Zeus. Psychologists note that Alexander detested Philip and was likely aware of his death; he would have rather to think that his mother Olympias had been a goddess' beloved, like to any lady from Greek mythology. Alexander's career was so extraordinary that it's possible that he believed a miraculous beginning to be the most fitting explanation for his extraordinary achievement. The Greeks held a deep sense of superiority over the barbarians; Aristotle's assertion that northern races are spirited and southern races are cultured, but that only the Greeks are both reflects the prevailing opinion. Greeks should not be made into slaves, according to Plato and Aristotle, but not barbarians. Not entirely a Greek, Alexander attempted to subvert this arrogant mindset. He forced his leading Macedonians to wed Persian ladies of aristocratic descent and married two barbarian princesses himself. One would assume that in his many Greek cities, there were far more males than women among the immigrants, and their men must have followed his lead by getting married to local women. This program had the effect of introducing the idea of humanity as a whole into the minds of intelligent individuals; the previous allegiance to the City State and, to a lesser extent, to the Greek race, looked inadequate. This global viewpoint originated with the Stoics in philosophy, but in actuality it dates back to Alexander. As a result, there was reciprocal learning between the Greeks and the barbarians: the Greeks learned a great deal about barbarian superstition, and the barbarians learned something about Greek science. Greek culture expanded geographically and lost its Greek identity. Greek culture was predominantly urban. Of fact, a large number of Greeks worked in agriculture, but their contributions to what made Hellenic culture unique were little. From the Milesian school onward, wealthy commercial cities frequently bordered by barbarian populations were linked to the Greeks who excelled in science, philosophy, and literature. The Phoenicians, not the Greeks, were the ones who first established this kind of society; Tyre, Sidon, and Carthage relied on hired mercenaries to fight their battles and on slaves for domestic labor. Unlike contemporary capital cities, they were not reliant on sizable rural populations that shared the same ancestry and political privileges. The closest contemporary parallel may be found in the Far East in the later part of the 1800s. Little European islands, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and the other treaty ports of China were home to a white male commercial elite that subsisted on coolie labor. White males in North America were forced to work in agriculture because there was a shortage of labor north of the Mason-Dixon line. Because of this, the white man's hold on North America is solid, but it has already significantly weakened and may soon come to an end on the Far East. However, a large portion of his kind of culture—particularly industrialism—will endure. We may better comprehend the Greek situation in the eastern regions of Alexander's empire with the aid of this analogy. Alexander had a profound and enduring impact on Asian imagination. "And it happened, after that Alexander son of Philip, the Macedonian, who came out of the land of Chettiim, had smitten Darius king of the Persians and Medes, that he reigned in his stead, the first over Greece, and made many wars, and won many strong holds, and slew the kings of the earth, and went through to the ends of the earth, and took spoils of many nations, insomuch that the earth was quiet before him; whereupon he was exalted, and his heart was lifted up." This is how the first Book of Maccabees, written centuries after his death, begins. And he assembled an incredibly powerful army, ruling over nations, kingdoms, and kings that submitted to him. And following these events, he became ill and thought he ought to pass away. Because of this, he appointed his noble servants who had grown up with him and divided his kingdom among them while he was still living. * Alexander thus ruled for twelve years before passing away. He lived on as a mythical figure in the Mohammedan faith, and small-time chieftains in the Himalayas still assert their ancestry to this day. There has never been a more ideal occasion for the mythopoeic faculty in the history of heroes. An attempt was made to keep Alexander's dominion together after his death. However, one of his two boys had not yet been born, and the other was a baby. Although both had followers, both were sidelined in the ensuing civil war. Ultimately, his empire was split among the three generals' families; roughly speaking, one general inherited the European, one the African, and one the Asian portions of Alexander's holdings. The successors of Antigonus eventually took control of Europe; Ptolemy, who conquered Egypt, established Alexandria as his headquarters; Seleucus, who conquered Asia after several battles, was too preoccupied with campaigning to establish a permanent capital, but Antioch eventually became the center of his dynasty. Alexander's attempts to create a synthesis of Greek and barbarian culture were abandoned by the Ptolemies and the Seleucids (as the dynasty of Seleucus was known), who formed military tyrannies based first on their portion of the Macedonian army, which was bolstered by Greek mercenaries. Egypt was mostly under the control of the Ptolemies, but two centuries of disorganized dynasties and warfare in Asia were only put an end by the Roman occupation. The Parthians subjugated Persia over these centuries, and the Bactrian Greeks found themselves more and more alone. Around the year 200 B.C. They had a monarch named Menander, whose Indian Empire was rather large, (after which they faded quickly). A few conversations between him and a Buddhist sage have persisted in Pali and, to some extent, in a translation into Chinese. The first, according to Dr. Tarn, is based on a Greek source; the second, on Menander's abdication and subsequent transformation into a Buddhist saint, is most definitely not. Buddhism was a vigorously propagating religion during this period. The holy Buddhist king Asoka (264–28) writes in an inscription that is still in existence that he dispatched missionaries to all the Macedonian kings: "And this is the chief est conquest in His Majesty’s opinion—the conquest by the Law; this also is that effected by His Majesty both in his own dominions and in all the neighboring realms as far as six hundred leagues—even to where the Greek king Antiochus dwells, and beyond that Antiochus to where the four kings severally named Ptolemy, Antigonus, Magas, and Alexander... and likewise here, in the king's dominions, among the Yonas"* (i.e. the Greeks of the Punjab). Sadly, there isn't a single surviving western report of these missionaries. Hellenism had a far greater impact on Babylonia. As we have seen, Seleucus of Seleucia on the Tigris, who lived around 150 B.C., was the only ancient who adhered to the Copernican theory after Aristarchus of Samos. According to Tacitus, in the first century A.D. Despite having not succumbed to the savage practices of the Parthians, Seleucia had managed to hold onto the institutions established by its Greek founder, Seleucus. Greek became the language of literature and culture across Mesopotamia and the wider West until the Mohammedan invasion. Three hundred people, selected for their riches or intelligence, comprise as it were a Senate; the population also has its part of authority. Syria (except from Judea) underwent total Hellenization in its literary and linguistic expressions inside the cities. However, the more traditional rural communities continued to practice their own languages and beliefs. * For ages, the Greek coastal towns in Asia Minor influenced their barbarian neighbors. The invasion of Macedonia exacerbated this. The Books of the Maccabees chronicle the story of the first Hellenistic battle against the Jews. It is an incredibly fascinating tale that is unmatched in the Macedonian Empire. I'll address that later, when I discuss the beginnings and development of Christianity. Greek influence met with no such obstinate resistance elsewhere. From the perspective of Hellenistic society, the greatest achievement of the third century B.C. was Alexandria, the city. Compared to the European and Asian regions of the Macedonian dominion, Egypt was less vulnerable to conflict, and Alexandria had a very advantageous position for trade. The Ptolemies were benefactors of education, drawing several exceptional individuals of the era to their capital. Up until the fall of Rome, mathematics was mostly Alexandrian. It is true that Archimedes was from Sicily, and that he lived in the only region of the globe where the Greek City States continued to maintain their independence until the year 212 B.C.; yet, Archimedes had also attended the University of Alexandria. The head librarian of the renowned Alexandrian library was Eratosthenes. In the third century before Christ, the mathematicians and scientists who were more or less intimately associated with Alexandria were just as skilled and accomplished work of similar significance as any of the Greeks from earlier eras. However, unlike their forebears, they were experts in the contemporary sense and did not claim all knowledge for their area or provide universal ideologies. Euclid, Aristarchus, Archimedes, and Apollonius did not strive for novelty in philosophy; they were satisfied to be mathematicians. The era was marked by specialization across many fields, not just education. In the fifth and fourth centuries, a capable man was seen to be capable of everything in the self-governing Greek towns. Depending on the situation, he may be a politician, a lawmaker, a philosopher, or a soldier. Despite his distaste for politics, Socrates was unable to stay out of political scandals. In his early years, he served as a soldier and studied physical science, notwithstanding his denial in the Apology. When Protagoras had time to spare from instructing young aristocrats who were infatuated with the newest item, he started drafting a set of rules for Thurii. Plato attempted, but failed, to enter the political sphere. When Xenophon wasn't writing about Socrates or acting like a country gentlemen, he was a commander. The goal of Pythagorean mathematicians was to become city officials. Everyone was required to serve on juries and carry out other official tasks. All of this was altered in the third century. True, politics still existed in the former City States, but since Greece was under the control of Macedonian soldiers, they had become irrelevant and localized. Macedonian warriors engaged in severe power battles that had nothing to do with principles and were only about dividing up land between competing explorers. Greeks were used as experts on administrative and technical concerns by these largely illiterate warriors; in Egypt, irrigation and drainage systems were executed to a high standard. There were warriors, managers, doctors, mathematicians, philosophers, and administrators, but nobody could be all of these things at once. That was an era in which a wealthy man without ambition for power might have a pretty comfortable existence, provided that an invading army never happened to come his way. When learned men gained favor with a prince, they might live in great luxury as long as they were skilled flatterers and didn't mind being the target of naive royal witticisms. But security didn't exist at all. The wealthy man's villa may be destroyed by the Galatians; the sycophantic sage's patron could be ousted in a palace revolution; or a dynastic battle could result in the sacking of a city. Given these conditions, it becomes sense that people started to worship the goddess of luck or fortune. The arrangement of human affairs did not appear to be sensible. People who steadfastly refused to give up on logic eventually withdrew within themselves and came to the same conclusion as Milton's Satan—that the mind is its own place and capable of creating both paradise and hell. There was no longer any reason, aside from daring self-seekers, to be interested in public affairs. The Hellenistic civilization was devolving into disorder following the glorious episode of Alexander's conquests due to the lack of a tyrant capable of establishing stable rule or a principle capable of fostering societal cohesiveness. When Greek intelligence was faced with fresh political challenges, it displayed total ineptitude. Certainly the Romans were more barbaric and illiterate than the Greeks, but at least they brought about order. Because every citizen shared in the ancient disorder of the days of independence, it had been bearable; but, the new chaos of Macedonia, imposed upon people by inept rulers, was completely intolerable—much more so than the enslavement to Rome that followed. There was a great deal of social unrest and revolutionary terror. The competition from eastern slave labor likely caused the earnings of free labor to decline, while the cost of necessities increased. At the beginning of his venture, Alexander is seen to have the time to negotiate contracts intended to keep the impoverished in their proper place. * The temples, in the Hellenistic world, were the bankers; they owned the gold reserve and controlled credit. "In the treaties made in 335 between Alexander and the States of the League of Corinth, it was provided that the Council of the League and Alexander's representative were to see to it that in no city of the League should there be either confiscation of personal property, division of land, cancellation of debt, or liberation of slaves for the purpose of revolution." Early in the third century, the Apollo temple at Delos offered loans at a 10 percent interest rate; earlier, the rate had been greater. If they were young and energetic, free laborers who could not even make ends meet with their salary must have been able to find work as mercenaries. There is no denying that being a mercenary came with risks and hardships, but there were also a lot of opportunities. There may be a profitable mutiny; there could be pillage from some wealthy eastern city. One of the reasons why there must have been nearly constant warfare was because it must have been hazardous for a leader to try to dissolve his army. With the exception of Alexandria, the ancient Greek cities retained much of their civic character, but Alexander's new cities did not. A new city used to always be a colony made up of immigrants from an older metropolis, and it was bound by sentimental ties to its parent. One illustration of how long-lasting this style of thinking was is the diplomatic efforts made by Lampsacus on the Hellespont in 196 B.C. Antiochus III, the Seleucid king, threatened to subjugate this city, thus it chose to request protection from Rome. An embassy was despatched, but it didn't head straight to Rome; instead, it traveled first, despite the great distance, to Marseilles, which, like Lampsacus, was a Phocaean colony and was also seen favorably by the Romans. After hearing the envoy's speech, the people of Marseilles made the quick decision to send a diplomatic delegation of their own to Rome in order to assist their sister city. The Gauls who resided inland from Marseilles also joined in, proposing Lampsacus to their friendship in a letter to their Galatian kinsmen in Asia Minor. Naturally, Rome was happy to have an excuse to meddle in the affairs of Asia Minor, and with Rome's interference, Lampsacus was able to maintain its independence—until it started to cause the Romans inconvenience. * As far as politics and military exigencies permitted, the kings of Asia referred to themselves as "Phil-Hellene" and maintained friendly relations with the ancient Greek towns. The cities wanted democratic self-government, freedom from a royal garrison, and the ability to refuse tribute, all of which they claimed as rights when they could. Conciliating them was worthwhile since they could provide mercenaries, were wealthy, and several of them owned significant harbors. However, they exposed themselves to outright conquest if they chose the wrong side in a civil war. Though there were certain outliers, the Seleucids and the other dynasties that progressively rose to power generally dealt with them in a reasonable manner. Even though they possessed some autonomy, the new cities did not share the same customs as the more established ones. Their population was made up of people from all around Greece, not just one region. Unlike the older Greek colonists or the New England pioneers, they were not religious pilgrims but rather adventurers like the conquistadors or the immigrants in Johannesburg. As a result, hardly a single city under Alexander's rule established a solid political entity. This was advantageous for the king's administration, but it was also a drawback for the growth of Hellenism. While not entirely negative, non-Greek religion and superstition had a negative impact on the Hellenistic civilization. Perhaps this was not the case. The faiths of the Jews, Persians, and Buddhists were unquestionably superior than the prevalent Greek polytheism, and the greatest thinkers might have studied them to benefit. Regretfully, the Greeks were most impressed by the Babylonians, also known as Chaldeans. First and foremost, they were incredibly ancient; priesthood documents dated back thousands of years, and they claimed to be far older. Then there was actual wisdom: the Babylonians were able to forecast eclipses much earlier than the Greeks. However, they were only factors that made people more open; astrology and magic were mostly what was received. "Astrology, as a new disease that strikes some isolated island people, fell upon the Hellenistic mind," claims Professor Gilbert Murray. Astrological markings covered the grave of Ozymandias, according to Diodorus, and Antiochus I's tomb, found in Commagene, has similar characteristics. Monarchs naturally felt that the stars were keeping an eye on them. * It seems that Berosus, a Chaldean who taught in Cos and, according to Seneca, "interpreted Bel," was the one who introduced astrology to the Greeks during Alexander's reign. Professor Murray interprets this to mean that Berosus translated the "Eye of Bel," a treatise composed for Sargon I in the third millennium B.C. and found in the library of Assurbani-pal (686–26 B.C.), into Greek. As we'll see, most philosophers— even the greatest ones—became believers in astrology. It featured a belief in necessity or fate, which might be contrasted against the common belief in fortune, since it believed that the future was predictable. Most men, I'm sure, believed in both and were unaware of the contradiction. More than intellectual enfeeblement, moral deterioration was sure to result from the overall disarray. While long periods of uncertainty can be compatible with the highest levels of saintliness in a small number of people, they are inimical to the mundane virtues of respectable citizens. For example, there is no point in being stingy when your savings could disappear tomorrow; there is no benefit to being honest when the person you are being honest with is likely to deceive you; there is no point in being steadfast in your support of a cause when there is no cause that is significant or has a chance of winning; and there is no argument in favor of truthfulness when only flexible tergiversation allows for the preservation of life and wealth. In such a world, the guy whose virtue stems from nothing but earthly caution would, if he has the guts, become an adventurer; if not, he will seek the shadows as a fearful time-server. Menander, a guy of this century, remarks: "I have known a great deal of cases where men who were not naturally rogues became so through misfortune or constraint." With the exception of a few remarkable individuals, this represents the moral makeup of the third century B.C. Even for these few, dread supplanted optimism; life's greater aim was to avoid tragedy than to do any constructive good. Metaphysics becomes less significant, and ethics—which are now personal—take precedence. Philosophy is now an ambulance that follows the trail of the struggle for existence and tends to the injured and weak, rather than the pillar of fire that stood before a few brave seekers of truth.