Hellenization

“ Even the barbarian courts, their neighbours or vassals, were swayed by the dominant fashion to imitation. But by the courts alone Hellenism could never have been propagated far. Greek culture had been the product of the city-state, and Hellenism could not be dissevered from the city. It was upon the system of Greek and Macedonian cities, planted by Alexander and his successors, that their work rested, and though their dynasties crumbled, their work remained. Rome, when it stepped into their place, did no more than safeguard its continuance ”

“ The Renascence, that great re-awakening of Hellenism, that irresistible return of humanity to nature and to seeing things as they are, which in art, in literature, and in physics, produced such splendid fruits, had, like the anterior Hellenism of the Pagan world, a side of moral weakness, and of relaxation or insensibility of the moral fibre, which in Italy showed itself with the most startling plainness, but which in France, England, and other countries was very apparent too. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But as Hellenism developed, its social and intellectual life began to exercise a power of attraction. The proud old civilizations of the Euphrates and the Nile might ignore it, but the ruder barbarian peoples in East and West, on whose coasts the Greek colonies had been planted, came in various degrees under its spell. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Greece realized soon after the Persian war that she had a mission to the world, that Hellenism stood for the higher life of man as against barbarism, for Aretê, or Excellence, as against the mere effortless average. First came the crude patriotism which regarded every Greek as superior to every barbarian; then came reflection, showing that not all Greeks were true bearers of the light, nor all barbarians its enemies ”

“ By founding so many urban communities of Greek type the Macedonian kings of West Asia undeniably introduced Hellenism as an agent of political civilization into much of the Ancient East, which needed it badly and profited by it. ”

“ Hellenism, then, the flower of the Greek spirit, grew in a soil impregnated with superstition, or, if you do not care for that word, with a religion containing many elements of magic. Every modern student of the subject, I fancy, admits that, although some scholars make more of the magical elements, some less. What no one can deny is that Hellenism tends to reject magic, and tries to expel it from human life. Magic was barbaric, and Hellenism was in reaction against Barbarism. ”

“ Then the stream began to rise again, first with the influx of the learning of the Spanish Moors, then with the new knowledge of Greek brought from Constantinople in the 14th century. With the Renaissance and the new learning, Hellenism came in again in flood, to form a chief part of that great river on which the modern world is being carried forward into a future, of which one can only say that it must be utterly unlike anything that has gone before. ”

“ When the powerful tide of Turkish invasion, coming after so many other barbarian inroads, completely submerged Greek culture there, the Hellenic idea which this element represented was so strong that it survived everything. It was in vain that the fierce conquerors, as the tradition states, cut out the tongues of the inhabitants in order to cause this people to unlearn its language ”

“ I. The Expansion of Hellenism before Alexander.—In the 5th century B.C. Greek cities dotted the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea from Spain to Egypt and the Caucasus, and already Greek culture was beginning to pass beyond the limits of the Greek race. Already in the 7th century B.C., when Hellenism was still in a rudimentary stage, the citizens of the Greek city-states had been known to the courts of Babylon and Egypt as admirable soldiers, combining hardihood with discipline, and Greek mercenaries came to be in request throughout the Nearer East. ”

“ To get rid of one's ignorance, to see things as they are, and by seeing them as they are to see them in their beauty, is the simple and attractive ideal which Hellenism holds out before human nature; and from the simplicity and charm of this ideal, Hellenism, and human life in the hands of Hellenism, is invested with a kind of aërial ease, clearness, and radiancy; they are full of what we call sweetness and light. Difficulties are kept out of view, and the beauty and rationalness of the ideal have all our thoughts. ”

“ The darkest epoch of Asia Minor began undoubtedly with the advent of the followers of Osman, who, ever since their irruption into that country, have wrought havoc among its people, and within a comparatively short space of time have reduced that fair land to barbarity and desolation. The ancient seats of learning, the theaters, the stadia, the treasures of art and other tokens of Hellenic civilization are now nothing but heaps of ruins, inarticulate witnesses to the ancient glory of 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. The literature of Hellas was creative; the literature of Hellenism is derivative.
Alexandria was the centre of Greek intellectual activity from Alexander to Augustus. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was of far more importance that Hellenism had a task in the West like that in the East; to save the Greeks of Italy and Sicily, to overcome the Carthaginians and the tribes of Italy, to turn the whole Mediterranean into a Greek sea, was just as urgently necessary as the conquest of Western Asia. It was the aim that Alcibiades had set himself and on which Athens had gone to wreck. ”

“ Hellenistic civilization may appear degenerate when compared with Hellenic; when compared with the civilizations which it superseded in non-Hellenic lands, it marks an unquestionable advance. (For the history of Greek civilization in the East, see Hellenism.) Greece left her mark upon the civilization of the West as well as upon that of the East, but the process by which her influence was diffused was essentially different. In the East Hellenism came in the train of the conqueror, and Rome was content to build upon the foundations laid by Alexander. ”

“ The reclamation of Epirus is perhaps the most honourable achievement of the Greek national revival, but it is by no means an isolated phenomenon. Western Europe is apt to depreciate modern ‘Hellenism’, chiefly because its ambitious denomination rather ludicrously challenges comparison with a vanished glory, while any one who has studied its rise must perceive that it has little more claim than western Europe itself to be the peculiar heir of ancient Greek culture. And yet this Hellenism of recent growth has a genuine vitality of its own. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the East it is popularly thought that Hellenism, as an exotic, withered altogether away. This view is superficial. During the dark ages, in the Byzantine East, as well as in the West, Hellenism had become little more than a dried and shrivelled tradition, although the closer study of Byzantine culture in latter years has seemed to discover more vitality than was once supposed. Ultimately the Greek East was absorbed by Islam; Islam. the popular mistake lies in supposing that the Hellenistic tradition thereby came to an end. ”

“ The values honoured by the rulers of the world must naturally impress themselves upon the subject multitudes. The Macedonian chiefs found their pride in being champions of Hellenism. Of Alexander there is no need to speak. The courts of his successors in Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt were Greek in language and atmosphere. All kings liked to win the good word of the Greeks by munificence bestowed upon Greek cities and Greek institutions. All of them in some degree patronized Greek art and letters, and some sought fame for themselves as authors. ”

“ It had solved the problem of moulding a mass of different nations into one whole completely in the field of intellect, and to a certain degree in that of politics, and, now when the same task on a wider scale devolved on Rome, she entered on the possession of Hellenism along with the rest of the inheritance of Alexander the Great. Hellenism therefore was no longer a mere stimulus, or subordinate influence; it penetrated the Italian nation to the very core. Of course, the vigorous home life of Italy strove against the foreign element. ”

“ Throughout the Middle Ages the Byzantine-Greek civilization flourished in these lands. It formed the most powerful barrier against the wave of barbarism which threatened to inundate the civilized world. The desperate resistance offered by Hellenism permitted the West, by its contact with Byzantine Hellenism, to acquire those requisite elements which have formed the basis of Western civilization. ”

“ Let it be understood, then, that all that preceded Hellenism in the ancient world was but the vestibule of its magnificent temple, and that the sole function of the Roman Empire, which came afterwards, was to tide the world over from Hellenic realities to the more sublime realities of Christianity. The mighty deeds of Egyptian conquerors, the imperial splendors of Persian dynasties,—these were but miniature gems that gilded the corridors and archways in the propylaea of ancient civilization ”

“ But the deepest and largest influence of Greece is not to be sought in the modern literature which treats Greek subjects or imitates Greek form; that influence works more characteristically when, having been received into the modern mind, it acts by suggestion and inspiration, breathing a grace and a power of its own into material and form of a different origin. This influence has been all-pervading in the modern world. Yet those who most appreciate the true value of Hellenism will never claim for it that, by itself, it can suffice for the needs of humanity. ”

“ The business of the Empire was, as we now see it, to develop and hand on to the future, Hellenic civilization. The first dawn of this extended Hellenism must have been to the West a clear intellectual gain: but in the East it was not noticeable. The holders of Greek traditions may have enjoyed the apparent willingness of the conquerors to defer to the mental and moral superiority of the conquered: but they could not have bowed to Rome as the one civilizer known,{68} as did the people of the west of Europe. ”

“ The best of his writings—the fancies of the ideal Hellene before the invention of the city and of money; the appeal to the Rhodians, the only surviving representatives of genuine367 Hellenism; the description of the Hellenes of his time in the solitude of Olbia as in the luxury of Nicomedia and of Tarsus; the exhortations to the individual as to an earnest conduct of life, and to all as to their keeping together in unity—form the best evidence that even of the Hellenism of Asia Minor in the time of the empire the word of the poet holds good: “The sun even in setting is ever the same.” ”