How Did Single Family Units Turn Into Hellenism in Ancient Greece
In 336 B.C., Alexander the Great became the leader of the Greek kingdom of Macedonia. By the time he died xiii years later, Alexander had congenital an empire that stretched from Hellenic republic all the way to India. That brief but thorough empire-building entrada changed the world: It spread Greek ideas and culture from the Eastern Mediterranean to Asia.
Historians call this era the "Hellenistic period." (The discussion "Hellenistic" comes from the word Hellazein, which means "to speak Greek or identify with the Greeks.") It lasted from the death of Alexander in 323 B.C. until 31 B.C., when Roman troops conquered the terminal of the territories that the Macedonian king had once ruled.
Macedonian Expansion
At the end of the classical period, effectually 360 B.C., the Greek city-states were weak and disorganized from two centuries of warfare. (Start the Athenians fought with the Persians; and so the Spartans fought with the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War; so the Spartans and the Athenians fought with one another and with the Thebans and the Persians.) All this fighting made it easy for another, previously unexceptional urban center-state to rise to power: Macedonia, under the believing dominion of Rex Philip II.
Philip and the Macedonians began to expand their territory outward. They were helped along by a number of advances in armed forces engineering: long-range catapults, for example, forth with pikes called sarissas that were most 16 feet long—long enough for soldiers to employ not as projectiles, just as spears. King Philip's generals also pioneered the utilize of the massive and intimidating infantry formation known every bit the phalanx.
King Philip's ultimate goal was to conquer Persia and aid himself to the empire's land and riches. This was non to exist; King Philip was assassinated by his babysitter Pausanias in 336 B.C. at his daughter's wedding, before he could savor the spoils of his victories. His son Alexander, known to history as "Alexander The Great," jumped at the chance to take over his father's imperial project.
The new Macedonian male monarch led his troops beyond the Hellespont into Asia. (When he got in that location, he plunged an enormous sarissa into the ground and declared the land "spear won.") From there, Alexander and his armies kept moving. They conquered huge chunks of western asia and Arab republic of egypt and pressed on into the Indus Valley.
The Hellenistic Age
Alexander'south empire was a fragile 1, not destined to survive for long. After Alexander died in 323 B.C., his generals (known every bit the Diadochoi) divided his conquered lands among themselves. Shortly, those fragments of the Alexandrian empire had become 3 powerful dynasties: the Seleucids of Syrian arab republic and Persia, the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Antigonids of Greece and Macedonia.
Though these dynasties were non politically united–since Alexander's expiry, they were no longer part of any Greek or Macedonian empire–they did share a nifty deal in common. It is these commonalities, the essential "Greek-ness" of the disparate parts of the Alexandrian world–that historians refer to when they talk about the Hellenistic Historic period.
The Hellenistic states were ruled admittedly by kings. (By contrast, the classical Greek city-states, or polei, had been governed democratically by their citizens.) These kings had a cosmopolitan view of the world, and were peculiarly interested in amassing as many of its riches as they could.
As a result, they worked hard to cultivate commercial relationships throughout the Hellenistic earth. They imported ivory, gold, ebony, pearls, cotton, spices and sugar (for medicine) from India; furs and atomic number 26 from the Far East; wine from Syria and Chios; papyrus, linen and glass from Alexandria; olive oil from Athens; dates and prunes from Babylon and Damaskos; silver from Spain; copper from Cyprus; and can from every bit far north as Cornwall and Brittany.
They besides put their wealth on display for all to see, building elaborate palaces and commissioning art, sculptures and extravagant jewelry. They made huge donations to museums and zoos and they sponsored libraries (the famous
libraries at Alexandria and Pergamum, for example) and universities. The university at Alexandria was home to the mathematicians Euclid, Apollonios and Archimedes, along with the inventors Ktesibios (the h2o clock) and Heron (the model steam engine).
Hellenistic Civilisation
People, similar goods, moved fluidly around the Hellenistic kingdoms. Most everyone in the erstwhile Alexandrian empire spoke and read the same language: koine, or "the common tongue," a kind of vernacular Greek. Koine was a unifying cultural force: No thing where a person came from, he could communicate with anyone in this cosmopolitan Hellenistic earth.
At the same time, many people felt alienated in this new political and cultural mural. In one case upon a time, citizens had been intimately involved with the workings of the democratic city-states; now, they lived in impersonal empires governed past professional bureaucrats. Many people joined "mystery religions," similar the cults of the goddesses Isis and Fortune, which promised their followers immortality and individual wealth.
Hellenistic philosophers, too, turned their focus inwards. Diogenes the Cynic lived his life as an expression of protest against capitalism and cosmopolitanism. (Politicians, he said, were "the lackeys of the mob"; the theatre was "a peep show for fools.") The philosopher Epicurus argued that the most of import thing in life was the pursuit of the individual'southward pleasure and happiness. And the Stoics argued that every individual homo had within him a divine spark that could be cultivated past living a expert and noble life.
Hellenistic Art
In Hellenistic art and literature, this alienation expressed itself in a rejection of the collective demos and an emphasis on the individual. For example, sculptures and paintings represented actual people rather than idealized "types."
Famous works of Hellenistic Art include "Winged Victory of Samothrace," "Laocoön and His Sons," "Venus de Milo," "Dying Gaul," "Male child With Thorn" and "Boxer at Residuum," among others.
The End of the Hellenistic Age
The Hellenistic world fell to the Romans in stages, but the era ended for good in 31 B.C. That year, in the Boxing at Actium, the Roman Octavian defeated Mark Antony's Ptolemaic fleet. Octavian took the proper noun Augustus and became the first Roman emperor. Despite the Hellenistic period'southward relatively short life bridge, the cultural and intellectual life of the era has been influencing readers, writers, artists and scientists ever since.
Source: https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/hellenistic-greece
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