The Macedonian kingdoms, strained by continual wars, increasingly
divided against themselves, falling often under the sway of prodigals
and debauchees, were far from realizing the Hellenic idea of sound
government as against the crude barbaric despotisms of the older East.
Yet, in spite of all corruption, ideas of the intelligent development of
the subject lands, visions of the Hellenic king, as the Greek thinkers
had come to picture him, haunted the Macedonian rulers, and perhaps
fitfully, in the intervals of war or carousal, prompted some degree of
action. Treatises "Concerning Kingship" were produced as a regular thing
by philosophers, and kings who claimed the fine flower of Hellenism,
could not but peruse them. Strabo regards the loss of the eastern
provinces to the Parthians as their passage under a government of lower
type, beyond the sphere of Hellenic [Greek: epimegeia] (Strabo xi. 509).
In the organization of the administrative machinery of these kingdoms,
the higher power of the Hellene to adapt and combine had been operative;
they were organisms of a richer, more complex type than the East had
hitherto known. It was thus that when Rome became a world-empire, it
found to some extent the forms of government ready made, and took over
from the Hellenistic monarchies a tradition which it handed on to the
later world.
AUTHORITIES.--For the general history of the Macedonian kingdoms, see
Droysen, _Histoire de l'Hellénisme_ (the French translation by
Bouché-Leclercq, 1883-1885, represents the work in its final
revision); A. Holm, _History of Greece_, vol. iv. (1894); B. Niese,
_Geschichte der griechischen und makedonischen Staaten_ (1893-1903);
Kaerst, _Gesch. des hellenist. Zeitalters_, vol. i. (1901). A masterly
conspectus of the general character of the Hellenistic kingdoms in
their political, economic and social character, their artistic and
intellectual culture is given by Beloch, _Griech. Gesch._ iii. (i.),
260-556; see also Kaerst, _Studien zur Entwicklung d. Monarchie_; E.
Breccia, _Il Diritto dinastico helle monarchie dei successori
d'Alessandro Magno_ (1903). Popular sketches of the history,
enlightened by special knowledge and a wide outlook, are given by J.
P. Mahaffy, _Alexander's Empire_ ("Stories of the Nations Series");
_Progress of Hellenism in Alexander's Empire_ (1905); _The Silver Age
of the Greek World_ (1906). See also HELLENISM; PTOLEMIES; SELEUCID
DYNASTY. (E. R. B.)