Hellenistic period

“ With her diminished resources Athens could not indeed hope to cope with the great Macedonian king; however much we may sympathize with the generous ambition of the patriots, we must admit that in the light of hard facts their conduct appears quixotic.
5. The Hellenistic Period.—Philip and Alexander, who sincerely admired Athenian culture and courted a zealous co-operation against Persia, treated the conquered city with marked favour. But the people would not resign themselves to playing a secondary part, and watched for every opportunity to revolt. ”

“ The Nabataeans and the Jews above all had encroached upon the Hellenistic domain; in the south the Jewish raids had spread desolation and left many cities practically in ruins. Under Roman protection, the cities were soon rebuilt and Hellenism secured from the barbarian peril. Greek city life, with its political forms, its complement of festivities, amusements and intellectual exercise, went on more largely than before. The great majority of the Hellenistic remains in Syria belong to the Roman period. ”

“ It is a time full of great names: in one school of philosophy alone we have Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Panaetius, Posidonius. Yet, curiously enough, it is represented in our tradition by something very like a mere void. There are practically no complete books preserved, only fragments and indirect quotations. Consequently in the search for information about this age we must throw our nets wide. Beside books and inscriptions of the Hellenistic period proper I have drawn on Cicero, Pliny, Seneca, and the like for evidence about their teachers and masters. ”

“ Greek civilization had been far-flung over Asia; the Barbarian was adopting Greek customs, Greece was the teacher of the world, in science, in art, and in all that was meant by civilized living. This period lasted from the time of Alexander until Greece became part of the Roman Empire in 146 B.C., and is known as the Hellenistic Age. The centre of Greek civilization was now no longer in Athens, but in Alexandria, the city in Egypt founded by Alexander, and which from its situation was the natural link between the East and the West. ”

“ And the learning and science of the Hellenistic age stood mainly aloof from the religious forces that moved the masses of the people.
Daimonism.—The mystic and theosophic literature of the Hellenistic and Græco-Roman period was markedly ‘daimonistic,’ being infected with the polydaimonism of the East and positing the existence of good and evil ‘daimones’ as a metaphysic dogma. We can trace a corresponding change in the popular Hellenic imagination. ”

“ Euhemerus's theory is no doubt the last serious attempt in the old pagan world to give an explanation of the popular faith which may be called genuine atheism. We will not, however, leave the Hellenistic period without casting a glance at some personalities about whom we have information enough to form an idea at first hand of their religious standpoint, and whose attitude towards popular belief at any rate comes very near to atheism pure and simple. ”

“ Greek sculpture is not to be hastily identified with what we call classicism in art and contrasted with romanticism and realism. Greek art is classic, if we mean by that term academic, only for a brief period of its decadence. During the fourth century and the Hellenistic age it displays all the phenomena of romantic and realistic art. In fact Greek art as a whole comprises every form of artistic expression, and exhibits wellnigh the whole of the possibilities that lie between the caveman and the aesthete. ”

“ The Greek literature of the Roman period can only be utilised in selections and with care, to illustrate{xx} the period with which we have to deal. After Greece came under Roman dominion, new manners and customs took root there, unknown during the period of Greek freedom and the Hellenistic epoch. ”

“ Hellenes, but peoples who had adopted the Greek speech and way of life, Hellenistai. Greek culture had, however, both in “Hellenic” and “Hellenistic” times, a common essence, just as light is light whether in the original luminous body or in a reflection, and to describe this by the term Hellenism seems most natural. But whilst using the term in the larger sense, this article, in deference to the associations which have come to be specially connected with it, will devote its principal attention to Hellenism as it appeared in the world after the Macedonian conquests. ”

“ The main divisions of the Hellenistic world at this time were the kingdoms of Macedonia, under the successors of Antigonus Gonatas; of Syria, under the Seleucidæ; and of Egypt, under the Ptolemies; while the chief second-rate powers were Pergamum and Rhodes. These States continued to be the great centres of Hellenism until they were one by one overthrown by the mightier power of Rome, which in its turn continued and perpetuated the Greek spirit, so that it has become an element in the culture and civilization of modern times. ”

“ In Egypt a Greek aristocracy of office, birth and intellect existed side by side with a distinct native life. But, viewed in its broadest aspect, this new civilization may be called Hellenism. Hellenism (q.v.) means the adoption of Hellenic ways; and it is properly applied to a civilization, generally Hellenic in external things, pervading people not necessarily or exclusively Hellenic by race. What the Hellenic literature was to Hellas, that the Hellenistic literature was to Hellenism. The literature of Hellenism has the Hellenic form without the Hellenic soul. ”

“ For the latter was a civilising power, which extended itself to every department of life. {1639} It fashioned in a peculiar manner the organization of the state, legislation, the administration of justice, public arrangements, art and science, trade and industry, and the customs of daily life down to fashion and ornaments, and thus impressed upon every department of life, wherever its influence reached, the stamp of the Greek mind. It is true that Hellenistic is not identical with Hellenic culture. ”

“ Prophecy and apocalypse linked themselves with the poetic oracles of Greece, and the nationalist movement, the leaders of which soon became Hellenistic princes themselves, goes but a little way towards severing the threads of connection. In the early days of the empire, Philo is no less subject than Cicero to the influence of Posidonius and of Plato. The Pharisees of Jerusalem, and, still more, the populations of mixed districts, could not disown the Hellenistic atmosphere they breathed. Without Alexander, without Hellenism, we cannot imagine the Gospels coming into existence. ”

“ Of these, one may note for their later celebrity Philadelphia in Lydia and Attalia on the Pamphylian coast. The native Bithynian dynasty became Hellenized in the course of the 3rd century, and in the matter of city building Prusias (the old Cius) , Apamea (the old Myrlea) , probably Prusa, and above all Nicomedia attested its activity. While new Greek cities were rising in the interior, the older Hellenism of the western coast grew in material splendour under the munificence of Hellenistic kings. ”

“ With this long process of political decline from Alexander to Diocletian correspond the inner changes in the temper of the Hellenic and Hellenistic peoples. There were, of course, marked differences between one region and another. But certain general characteristics distinguished at Social changes. once Greek society after the Macedonian conquests from the society of the earlier age. When the vast field of the East was opened to Hellenic enterprise and the bullion of its treasuries flung abroad, fortunes were made on a scale before unparalleled. ”

“ What a heaven of light falls upon the Hellas of the Isles, that period of its history which does not begin, but ends with the Iliad and with the Odyssey—works that sum up an old civilization! Already is born that beauty which, whether in religion, or in art, or in life, Hellas made its own for ever. ”

“ Between the two extremes there was variation not only between city and city, but, no doubt, in one and the same city at different times. In Syria the independent action of the cities greatly increased during the last weakness of the Seleucid monarchy. With the extension of the single strong rule of Rome over this Hellenistic world, the conditions were changed. Just as the Macedonian conquest, whilst increasing the domain of Greek culture, had straitened Greek liberty, so Rome, whilst bringing Hellenism finally into secure possession of the nearer East, extinguished Greek freedom altogether. ”

“ Hellenism and the Romans. "In the Alexandrian age, with all its close study and imitation of the classical models, nothing is more remarkable than the absence of any promise that the Hellenic spirit which animated those masterpieces was destined to have any abiding influence in the world. ... And yet it is true that the vital power of the Hellenic genius was not fully revealed, until, after suffering some temporary eclipse in the superficially Greek civilizations of Asia and Egypt, it emerged in a new quality, as a source of illumination to the literature and the art of Rome. ”

“ THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA It may well be questioned whether we are really in a position to separate the Hellenistic schools as definitely and surely as we can separate the Attic and Peloponnesian schools of the fifth and fourth centuries or the earlier local schools of the sixth. In the Hellenistic age we find a far greater uniformity and cosmopolitanism in art than ever before. The conquests of Alexander had been in the long run Panhellenic, and outside the mainland at any rate the title Greek came at last to mean more than merely a man’s city or state. ”

“ But among the best of the Romans Hellenism produced a type seldom excelled in the world's history, a type as superior to the old Roman model as the nobleman is to the burgher in most countries—a type we see in Rutilius Rufus, as compared with the elder Cato. ... It was in this way that Hellenistic philosophy made itself a home in Italy, and acquired pupils who in the next generation became masters in their way, and showed in Cicero and Lucretius no mean rivals of the contemporary Greek. ”

“ III. Later History.—It remains only to glance at the ultimate destinies of Hellenism in West and East. In the Latin West knowledge of Greek, first-hand acquaintance with the Greek classics, became rarer and rarer as The middle ages. general culture declined, till in the dark ages (after the 5th century) it existed practically nowhere but in Ireland (Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, i. 438) . In Latin literature, however, a great mass of Hellenistic tradition in a derived form was maintained in currency, wherever, that is, culture of any kind continued to exist. ”

“ Such being, in brief, the process of the building up of culture for Greece, it remains to note the causes of the process of retrogression, which also connects broadly with the course of politics. Indeed, the mere expansion of Hellenistic life set up by the empire-making of Alexander might alone account for a complete change in the conditions and phases of Greek civilisation. In the new Hellenistic world wealth and power were to be won with ease and with amenity [345] where of old there was only an alien barbarism, or at least a society which to the cultured Greek was barbaric. ”

“ New gods could easily be identified with the old, or else be received along with them without a conflict. The religion of the Greco-Roman world is therefore different from that of ancient Greece. It is a curious mixture of the most diverse beliefs. Nevertheless, the whole deserves to be called Hellenistic, because even the most strikingly non-Grecian elements were usually subjected more or less to the subtle molding of the Greek spirit. ”

“ In our time the spirit of Greek culture is scattered broadcast. While forces of all kinds are pressing one upon the other, and the fruits of modern art and science are offering themselves as a means of exchange, the pale outline of Hellenism is beginning to dawn faintly in the distance. The earth which, up to the present, has been more than adequately Orientalised, begins to yearn once more for Hellenism. ”

“ In proportion as the sphere of philosophy in the Hellenistic world narrowed to the consideration of the Useful and the Practicable, the sphere of its influence widened. Alexander’s expedition had thrown the East open to Greek civilisation, and the assiduous and subjective temperament of the youth of the Semitic peoples was drawn to the wisdom of the Greeks. ”

“ It would be important to follow up these vestiges of rudimentary Hellenism, since they might enlighten us on certain phenomena in Hellenic art, which have been up to the present time inexplicable without them. ”

“ It was not that the Hellenistic element failed, whilst the native elements in the civilization prospered; the culture of Islam has, as a whole (from whatever causes) , sunk ever lower during the centuries that have witnessed the marvellous expansion of Europe.
Authorities.—For the inner history of Hellenism after Alexander, the general historical literature dealing with later Greece and Rome supplies material in various degrees. See works quoted in articles Greece, History; Rome, History; Ptolemies; Seleucid Dynasty ”

“ Speaking generally, and in comparison with the ancient Semitic and the mediaeval and even later spirit of Europe, we must pronounce the Hellenic temperament of the earlier and classical period as wholly innocent of fanaticism. The history of Hellas is not stained by any “war of religion”; and no religious hierarchy in Hellas ever possessed the power or displayed the will to suppress art or persecute science and thought. It might occasionally happen that individuals were in danger of punishment if they insulted or openly flouted the civic worship or introduced new deities ”