FOOTNOTE:

[1] For the microscopical characters and for figures of transverse

sections of the rhizome, see Lanessan, _Hist. des drogues_, i. 6

(1878).

HELLENISM (from Gr. [Greek: hellenizein], to imitate the Greeks, who

were known as [Greek: Hellenes], after [Greek: Hellen], the son of

Deucalion). The term "Hellenism" is ambiguous. It may be used to denote

ancient Greek culture in all its phases, and even those elements in

modern civilization which are Greek in origin or in spirit; but, while

Matthew Arnold made the term popular in the latter connexion as the

antithesis of "Hebraism," the German historian J. G. Droysen introduced

the fashion (1836) of using it to describe particularly the latter

phases of Greek culture from the conquests of Alexander to the end of

the ancient world, when those over whom this culture extended were

largely not Greek in blood, i.e. _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 it will be first

necessary to indicate briefly what Hellenism in itself implied.

No verbal formula can really enclose the life of a people or an age, but

we can best understand the significance of the old Greek cities and the

life they developed, when, looking at the history of mankind as a whole,

we see the part played by reason, active and critical, in breaking down

the barriers by which custom hinders movement, in guiding movement to

definite ends, in dissipating groundless beliefs and leading onwards to

fresh scientific conquests--when we see this and then take note that

among the ancient Greeks such an activity of reason began in an entirely

novel degree and that its activity in Europe ever since is due to their

impulsion. When Hellenism came to stand in the world for something

concrete and organic, it was, of course, no mere abstract principle, but

embodied in a language, a literature, an artistic tradition. In the

earliest existing monument of the Hellenic genius, the Homeric poems,

one may already observe that regulative sense of form and proportion,

which shaped the later achievements of the race in the intellectual and

artistic spheres. It was not till the great colonizing epoch of the 8th

and 7th centuries B.C., when the name "Hellene" came into use as the

antithesis of "barbarian," that the Greek race came to be conscious of

itself as a peculiar people; it was yet some three centuries more before

Hellenism stood fully declared in art and literature, in politics and in

thought. There was now a new thing in the world, and to see how the

world was affected by it is our immediate concern.

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. 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. In

some cases an outlying colony would coalesce with a native population,

and a fusion of Hellenism with barbarian customs take place, as at

Emporium in Spain (Strabo iii. p. 160) and at Locri in S. Italy (Polyb.

xii. 5. 10). Perinthus included a Thracian phyle. The stories of

Anacharsis and Scylas (Herod, iv. 76-80) show how the leading men of the

tribes in contact with the Greek colonies in the Black Sea might be

fascinated by the appeal which the exotic culture made to mind and to

eye.

The great developments of the century and a half before Alexander set

the Greek people in a very different light before the world. In the

sphere of material power the repulse of Xerxes and the extension of

Athenian or Spartan supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean were large

facts patent to the most obtuse. The kings of the East leant more than

ever upon Greek mercenaries, whose superiority to barbarian levies was

sensibly brought home to them by the expedition of Cyrus. But the

developments within the Hellenic sphere itself were also of great

consequence for its expansion outwards. The political disunion of the

Greeks was to some extent neutralized by the rise of Athens to a leading

position in art, in literature and in philosophy. In Athens the Hellenic

genius was focussed, its tendencies drawn together and combined; nor was

it a circumstance of small moment that the Attic dialect attained, for

prose, a classical authority; for if Hellenism was to be propagated in

the world at large, it was obviously convenient that it should have some

one definite form of speech to be its medium.

1. _The Persians._--The ruling race of the East, the Persian, was but

little open to the influences of the new culture. The military qualities

of the Greeks were appreciated, and so, too, was Greek science, where it

touched the immediately useful; a Greek captain was entrusted by Darius

with the exploration of the Indus; a Greek architect bridged the

Bosporus for him; Greek physicians (e.g. Democedes, Ctesias) were

retained for enormous fees at the Persian court. The brisk diplomatic

intercourse between the Great King and the Greek states in the 4th

century may have produced effects that were not merely political. We

certainly find among those members of the Persian aristocracy, who came

by residence in Asia Minor into closer contact with the Greeks, some

traces of interest in the more ideal side of Hellenism. A man like the

younger Cyrus invited Greek captains to his friendship for something

more than their utility in war, and procured Greek hetaerae for

something more than sensual pleasure. There is the Mithradates who

presented the Academy with a statue of Plato by Silanion, not improbably

identical (though the supposition implies a correction in the text of

Diogenes Laertius) with that Mithradates who, together with his father

Ariobarzanes, received the citizenship of Athens (Dem. xxiii. 141, 202).

Exactly how far Greek influence can be traced in the remains of Persian

art, such as the royal palaces of Persepolis and Susa may be doubtful

(see Gayet, _L'Art persan_; R. Phene Spiers, _Architecture East and

West_, p. 245 f.), but it is certain that the engraved gems for which

there was a demand in the Persian empire were largely the work of Greek

artists (Furtwangler, _Antike Gemmen_, iii. p. 116 f.).

2. _The Phoenicians._--As early as the first half of the 4th century we

find communities of Phoenician traders established in the Peiraeus

(_C.I.A._ ii. 86). In Cyprus, on the frontier between the Greek and

Semitic worlds, a struggle for ascendancy went on. The Phoenician

element seems to have been dominant in the island when Evagoras made

himself king of Salamis in 412, and restored Hellenism with a strong

hand. The words of Isocrates (even allowing for their rhetorical colour)

give us a vivid insight into what such a process meant. "Before Evagoras

established his rule, they were so hostile and exclusive, that those of

their rulers were actually held to be the best who were the fiercest

adversaries of the Greeks; but now such a change has taken place, that

it is a matter of emulation who shall show himself the most ardent

phil-hellen, that for the mothers of their children most of them choose

wives from amongst us, and that they take pride in having Greek things

about rather than native, in following the Greek fashion of life, whilst

our masters of the fine arts and other branches of culture now resort to

them in greater numbers than were once to be found in those quarters

they specially frequented" (Isoc. 199 = _Evag._ SS 49, 50). Even into

the original seats of the Phoenicians Hellenism began to intrude.

Evagoras at one time (about 386) made himself master of Tyre (Isoc.

_Evag._ S 62; Diod. xv. 2, 4). His grandson Evagoras II. is found as

governor of Sidon for the Persian king 349-346. (Babelon, _Perses

Achemenides_, p. cxxii.; cf. Diod. xvi. 46, 3).

Abdashtart, king of Sidon (374-362 B.C.), called Straton by the Greeks,

had already entered into close relations with the Greek states, and

imitated the Hellenic princes of Cyprus (_Athen._ xii. 531; _C.I.A._ ii.

86; _Corp. inscr. Semit._ i. 114). The Phoenician colonists in Sardinia

purchased or imitated the work of Greek artists (Furtwangler, _Antike

Gemmen_, iii. 109).

3. _The Carians and Lycians._--The seats of the Greeks in the East

touched peoples more or less nearly related to the Hellenic stock, with

native traditions not so far remote from those of the Greeks in a more

primitive age, the Carians and the Lycians. It came about in the last

century preceding Alexander that the first of these peoples was

organized as a strong state under native princes, the line founded by

Hecatomnus of Mylasa. Hecatomnus made himself master of Caria in the

first decade of the 4th century, but it was under his son Mausolus, who

succeeded him in 377-376 that the house rose to its zenith. These Carian

princes ruled as satraps for the Great King, but they modelled

themselves upon the pattern of the Greek tyrant. The capital of Mausolus

was a Greek city, Halicarnassus, and all that we can still trace of his

great works of construction and adornment shows conformity to the pure

Hellenic type. His famous sepulchre, the Mausoleum (the remains of it

are now in the British Museum), was a monument upon which the most

eminent Greek sculptors of the time worked in rivalry (Plin. _N.H._

xxxvi. 5, S 30; Vitruv. vii. 13). His court gave a welcome to the

vagrant Greek philosopher (Diog. Laert. viii. 8, S 87). Even the Carian

town of Mylasa now shows the forms of a Greek city and records its

public decrees in Greek (_C.I.G._ 2691 c, d, e = Michel 471). In Lycia,

which in spite of "the son of Harpagus" and King Pericles, had never

been brought under one man's rule, the Greek influence is more limited.

Here, for the most part in the inscriptions, the native language

maintains itself against Greek. The proper names are (if not native)

mainly Persian. But the Greek language makes an occasional appearance;

Greek names are borne by others beside Pericles. The coins are Greek in

type. And above all the monumental remains of Lycia show strong Greek

influence, especially the well-known "Nereid Monument" in the British

Museum, whose date is held to go back to the 5th century (Gardner,

_Handbook of Gk. Sculp._ p. 344).

4. _South Russia._--Hellenic influences continued to penetrate the

Scythian peoples from the Greek colonies of the Black Sea, at any rate

in the matter of artistic fabrication. Our evidence is the actual

objects recovered from the soil. (See SCYTHIA.)

5. _Egypt._--From the time of Psammetichus (d. 610 B.C.) Greek

mercenaries had been used to prop Pharaoh's throne. At the same time

Greek merchants had begun to find their way up the Nile and even to the

Oases. A Greek city Naucratis (q.v.) was allowed to arise at the

Bolbitinic mouth of the Nile. But the racial repugnance to the Greek,

which forbade an Egyptian even to eat an animal which had been carved

with a Greek's knife (Hdt. ii. 41), probably kept the soul of the people

more shut against Hellenic influences than was that of the other races

of the East.

6. _Macedonia._--In Macedonia the native chiefs had been attracted by

the rich Hellenic life at any rate from the beginning of the 5th

century, when Alexander I., surnamed "Phil-hellen," persuaded the judges

at Olympia that the Temenid house was of good Argive descent (Hdt. v.

22). And, although their enemies might stigmatize them as barbarians,

the Macedonian kings maintained that they were not Macedonians, but

Greeks (cf. [Greek: aner Hellen Makedonon hyparchos], Hdt. v. 20). It

was not probably till the reorganization of the kingdom by Archelaus

(413-399) that Greek culture found any abundant entrance into Macedonia.

Now all that was most brilliant in Greek literature and Greek art was

concentrated in the court of Aegae; the palace was decorated by Zeuxis;

Euripides spent there the end of his days. From that time, no doubt, a

certain degree of literary culture was general among the Macedonian

nobility; their names in the days of Philip are largely Greek; the

Macedonian service was full of men from the Greek cities within Philip's

dominions. The values recognized at the court would naturally be

recognized in noble families generally, and Philip chose Aristotle to be

the educator of his son. How far the country generally may be regarded

as Hellenized is a problem which involves the vexed question what right

the Macedonian people itself has to be classed among the Hellenes, and

Macedonian to be considered a dialect of Greek.[1] As the literary and

official language, Greek alone would seem to have had any status.

7. _In the West: the Native Races of Sicily._--Italy and the south of

Gaul had not remained unaffected by the neighbourhood of the Greek

colonies. Under the rule of the elder and younger Dionysius in the 4th

century, the hellenization of the Sicels in the interior of Sicily seems

to have become complete (Freeman, _History of Sicily_, ii. 387, 388,

422-424; Beloch, _Griech. Gesch._ iii. [i.] 261).

The alphabets used by the various Italian races from the 5th century

were directly or indirectly learnt from the Greeks. The peoples of the

south (Lucanians, Bruttians, Mamertines) show a Greek principle of

nomenclature (Mommsen, _Unterital. Dialekt_, p. 240 f.). The Pythagorean

philosophy, whose seat was in southern Italy, won adherents among the

native chiefs (Cic. _De senec._ 12, cf. Dio Chrys. _Orat. Cor._ 37, S

24). From the Greeks of southern Gaul Hellenic influences penetrated the

Celtic races so far that imitations of Greek coins were struck even on

the coasts of the Atlantic.

II. AFTER ALEXANDER THE GREAT.--When we review generally the extent to

which Hellenism had penetrated the outer world in the middle of the 4th

century B.C., it must be admitted that it had not seriously affected any

but the more primitive races which dwelt upon the borders of the

Hellenic lands, and here it would seem, with the doubtful exception of

the Macedonians, to have been an affair rather of the courts than of the

life of the people. On the other hand it must be taken into account that

Hellenism had as yet only been a very short while in the world. What

would have happened had it continued to depend upon its spiritual force

only for propagation we cannot say. Everything was changed when by the

conquests of Alexander (334-323) it suddenly rose to material supremacy

in all the East as far as India, and when cities of Greek speech and

constitution were planted by the might of kings at all the cardinal

points of intercourse within those lands. 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. 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; in the East Rome acted as a Hellenistic

power, and if, when the legions had thundered past, the brooding East

"plunged in thought again," that thought was largely directed by the

Greek schoolmaster who followed in the legions' train. From our present

point of view we may therefore regard this work of Hellenism as one

continuous process, initiated by the Macedonians and carried on under

Roman protection, and ask in the first place what the institution of a

Greek city implied.

_The Character of the New Greek Cities._--The citizen bodies at the

outset were really of Greek or Macedonian blood--soldiers who had served

in the royal armies, or men attracted from the older Greek cities to the

new lands thrown open to commerce. To fix their European soldiery upon

the new soil was an obvious necessity for the Macedonian chiefs who had

set up kingdoms among the barbarians, and the lots of the veterans

(except in Egypt) were naturally attached to various urban centres. The

cities, of course, drew in numbers beside of the people of the land;

Alexander is specially said to have incorporated large bodies of natives

in some of the new cities of the Eastern provinces (Arr. iv. 4, 1; Diod.

xvii. 83, 2; Curtius ix. 10, 7). It may generally be taken for granted

that the lower strata of the city-populations was mainly native; to be

included in the city population was not, however, to be included in the

citizen body, and it remains a question how far the latter admitted

members of other than European origin (Beloch iii. [i.] 414). The

statements, for instance, of Josephus that the Jews were given full

citizen rights in the new foundations are probably false (Willrich,

_Juden und Griechen vor der makkabaischen Erhebung_, 1895, p. 19 f.).

The social organization of the citizen-body conformed to the regular

Hellenic type with a division into _phylae_ and, in Egypt, at any rate,

into _demi_ (Liban. Or. xix. 62; Satyrus, frag. 21 = _F.H.G._ iii. 164;

Sir W. M. Ramsay, _Cities and Bishoprics_, i. 60; Kenyon, _Archiv f.

Papyr._ ii. 74; Jonguet, _Bull. corr. hell._ xxi., 1897, 184 f.;

Liebenam, _Stadteverwaltung_, 220 f.). The cities appear equally

Hellenic in their political organs and functions with _boule_ and

_demos_ and popularly elected magistrates. Life was filled with the

universal Hellenic interests, which centred in the gymnasium and the

religious festivals, these last including, of course, not only athletic

contests but performances of the classical dramas or later imitations of

them. The wandering sophist and rhetorician would find a hearing no less

than the musical artist. The language of the upper classes was Greek;

and the material background of building and decoration, of dress and

furniture, was of Greek design. A greater regularity in the street-plans

seems to have distinguished the new cities from the older slowly grown

cities of the Greek lands, just as it distinguishes the cities of the

New World to-day from those of Europe. Alexandria and Antioch were both

traversed from end to end by one long straight street, crossed by

shorter ones at right angles; Nicaea was a square from the centre of

which all the four gates could be seen at the ends of the intersecting

thoroughfares (Strabo xii. 565); similar characteristics are noted in

the rebuilt Smyrna (ib. xiv. 646).

Sometimes the Greek city was not an absolutely new foundation, but an

old Oriental city, re-colonized and transformed. And in such cases the

old name was often replaced by a Greek one. Thus Celaenae in Phrygia

became Apamea; Haleb (Aleppo) in Syria became Beroea; Nisibis in

Mesopotamia, Antioch; Rhagae (Rai) in Media, Europus. In some cases the

old name was left unchallenged, e.g. Thyatira, Damascus and Samaria.

Even where there was no new foundation the older cities of Phoenicia and

Syria became transformed from the overwhelming prestige of Hellenic

culture. In Tyre and Sidon, no less than in Antioch or Alexandria, Greek

literature and philosophy were seriously cultivated, as we may see by

the great names which they contributed. The process by which Hellenism

thus leavened an older city we may trace with peculiar vividness in the

case of Jerusalem; we see there the younger generation captivated by its

ideals, the appearance of gymnasium and theatre, the eager adoption of

Greek political forms (1 Macc. i. 13 f.; 2 Macc. 4., 10 f.).

A. _Characteristics of Hellenism after Alexander._--To the number of

Greek city-states existing before Alexander were now therefore added

those which extended Hellas as far as India. With the enormous extension

of Greek territory a great shifting took place in the old centres of

gravity. What changes in the character of Greek culture did the new

conditions of the world bring about?

Government.

Hellenism had been the product of the free life of the Greek city-state,

and after Chaeronea the great days of the city-state were past. Not that

all liberty was everywhere extinguished. Under Alexander himself the

Greek states were restive, and Aetolia unsubdued; and, with the break-up

of the empire at Alexander's death, there was once more scope for the

action of the individual cities among the rival great powers. In the

history of the next two or three centuries the cities are by no means

ciphers. Rhodes takes a great part in _Weltpolitik_, as a sovereign ally

of one or other of the royal courts. In Greece itself the overlordship

to which the Macedonian king aspires is imperfect in extent and only

maintained to that extent by continual wars. The Greek states on their

side show that they are capable even of progressive political

development, the needs of the time being met by the federal system, by

larger unions of equal members than the leading cities of the past would

have tolerated, with their extreme unwillingness to forego the least

shred of sovereign independence. The Achaean and Aetolian Leagues are

independent powers, which the Macedonian can indeed check by garrisons

in Corinth, Chalcis and elsewhere, but which keep a field clear for

Hellenic freedom within their borders. Sparta also is a power which can

cross swords with the Macedonian king, and Cleomenes III. aspires to

unite the Peloponnesus under his headship. As to the cities outside

Greece, within or around the royal realms, Seleucid, Ptolemaic or

Attalid, their degree of freedom probably differed widely according to

circumstances. At one end of the scale, cities of old renown, e.g.

Lampsacus or Smyrna, could still make good their independence against

Antiochus III. at the beginning of the 2nd century B.C. At the other end

of the scale the cities which were royal capitals, e.g. Alexandria,

Antioch and Pergamum, were normally controlled altogether by royal

nominees. At Pergamum indeed and (at any rate after Antiochus IV.) at

Antioch, forms of self-government subsisted upon which, of course, the

court had its hand, whilst at Alexandria even such forms were wanting.

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. Even now the old forms were long

religiously respected. Formally, the most illustrious Greek states,

Athens, for instance, or Marseilles, or Rhodes, were not subjects of

Rome, but free allies. Even in the case of _civitates stipendiariae_

(tribute-paying states), municipal autonomy, subject indeed to

interference on the part of the Roman governor, was allowed to go on.

_Boule_ and _demos_ long continued to function. The old catchword,

"autonomy of the Hellens," was still heard and indeed was solemnly

proclaimed by Nero at the Isthmian games of A.D. 67. But during the

first centuries of the Christian era, this municipal autonomy, by a

process which can only be imperfectly traced in detail, decayed. The

_demos_ first sank into political annihilation and the council, no

longer popularly elected but an aristocratic order, concentrated the

whole administration in its hands. By the end of the 2nd century A.D.,

claims made by the imperial government upon the municipal senate are

more and more changing membership of the order from an honour into an

intolerable burden, and financial disorganization is calling on imperial

officials in one place after another to undertake the business of

government. After Diocletian and under the Eastern Empire the Greek

world is organized on the principles of a vast bureaucracy.

Social changes.

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 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. A new

standard of sumptuousness and splendour was set up in the richest

stratum of society. This material elaboration of life was furthered by

the existence of Hellenistic courts, where the great ministers amassed

fabulous riches (e.g. Dionysius, the state secretary of Antiochus IV.,

Polyb. xxxi. 3, 16; Hermias, the chief minister of Seleucus III., and

Antiochus III., Polyb. v. 50. 2; cf. Plutarch, _Agis_ 9), and of huge

cities like Alexandria, Antioch and the enlarged Ephesus. It is

significant that whereas the earlier Greeks had used precious stones

only as a medium for the engraver's art, unengraven gems, valuable for

their mere material, now came to be used in profusion for adornment.

Already before Alexander pan-hellenic feeling had in various ways

overridden the internal divisions of the Greek race, but now, with the

vast mingling of Greeks of all sorts in the newly-conquered lands, a

generalized Greek culture in which the old local characteristics were

merged, came to overspread the world. The gradual supersession of the

old dialects by the Koine the common speech of the Greeks, a

modification of the Attic idiom coloured by Ionic, was one obvious sign

of the new order of things (see GREEK LANGUAGE).

Art and literature.

In its artistic, its literary, its spiritual products the age after

Alexander gave evidence of the change. In no department did activity

immediately stop; but the old freshness and creative exuberance was

gone. Artistic pleasure, grown less delicate, required the stimulus of a

more sensational effect or a more striking realism, as we may see by the

Pergamene and Rhodian schools of sculpture, by the bas-reliefs with the

_genre_ subjects drawn from the life of the countryside, or, in

literature by the sort of historical writing which became popular with

Cleitarchus and Duris, by the studied emotional or rhetorical point of

Callimachus, and by the portrayal of country life in Theocritus. At the

same time, artists and men of letters were now addressing themselves in

most cases, not to their fellow-citizens in a free city, but to kings

and courtiers, or the educated class generally of the Greek world. In

those departments of intellectual activity which demand no high ideal

faculty, in the study of the world of fact, the centuries immediately

following Alexander witnessed notable advance. Scientific research might

prosper, just as poetry withered, under the patronage of kings, and such

research had now a vast amount of new material at its disposal and could

profit by the old Babylonian and Egyptian traditions. The medical

schools, especially that of Alexandria, really enlarged knowledge of the

animal frame. Knowledge of the earth gained immensely by the Macedonian

conquests. The literary schools of Alexandria and Pergamum built up

grammatical science, and brought literary and artistic criticism to a

fine point. If indeed the earlier ages had been those of creative and

spontaneous life, the Hellenistic age was that of conscious criticism

and book-learning. The classical products were registered, studied,

assorted and commented upon. Men travelled and read more. Books were in

demand and were multiplied. Libraries became a feature of the age, the

kings leading the way as collectors, of books, especially the rival

dynasties of Egypt and Pergamum. The library attached to the Museum at

Alexandria is said to have contained at the time of its destruction in

47 B.C. as many as 700,000 rolls (Aul. Gell. vi. 17. 3). Even smaller

cities, like Aphrodisias in Caria, had public libraries for the

instruction of their youth (Le Bas, III. No. 1618).

With the general decay of ancient civilization under the Roman empire,

even scientific research ceased, and though there were literary

revivals, like that connected with the new Atticism under the Antonine

emperors, these were mainly imitative and artificial, and even learning

became at last under the Byzantine emperors a jejune and formal

tradition (see GREEK LITERATURE).

Religion and philosophy.

The diffusion of the Greek race far from the former centres of its life,

the mingling of citizens of many cities, the close contact between Greek

and barbarian in the conquered lands--all this had made the old

sanctions of civic religion and civic morality of less account than

ever. New guides of life were needed. The Stoic philosophy, with its

cosmopolitan note, its fixed dogmas and plain ethical precepts, came

into the world at the time of the Macedonian conquests to meet the needs

of the new age. Its ideas became popular among ordinary men as the older

philosophies had never been. The Stoic or Cynic preacher, attacking the

ways of society, in pungent, often coarse, phrase, became a familiar

figure of the Greek market-place (P. Wendland, _Beitrage zur Gesch. d.

griech. Philosophie_, 1895).

Although the cults of the old Greek deities in the new cities, with

their splendid apparatus of festivals and sacrifice might still hold the

multitude, men turned ever in large numbers to alien religions, felt as

more potent because strange, and the various gods of Egypt and the East

began to find larger entrance in the Greek world. Even in the old Greek

religion before Alexander there had been large elements of foreign

origin, and that the Greeks should now do honour to the gods of the

lands into which they came, as we find the Cilician and Syrian Greeks

doing to Baal-tars and Baal-marcod and the Egyptian Greeks to the gods

of Egypt, was only in accordance with the primitive way of thinking. But

it was a sign of the times when Serapis and Isis, Osiris and Anubis

began to take place among the popular deities in the old Greek lands.

The origin of the cult of Serapis, which Ptolemy I. found, or

established, in Egypt is disputed; the familiar type of the god is the

invention of a Greek artist, but the name and religion came from

somewhere in the East (see discussion under SERAPIS). Before the end of

the 2nd century B.C. there were temples of Serapis in Athens, Rhodes,

Delos and Orchomenos in Boeotia. Under the Roman empire the cult of

Isis, now furnished with an official priesthood and elaborate ritual,

became really popular in the Hellenistic world. King Asoka in the 3rd

century B.C. sent Buddhist missionaries from India to the Mediterranean

lands; their preaching has, it is true, left little or no trace in our

Western records. But other religions of Oriental origin penetrated far,

the worship of the Phrygian Great Mother, and in the 2nd century A.D.

the religion of the Mithras (Lafaye, _Culte des divinites alexandrines_,

1884; Roscher, articles "Anubis," "Isis," &c.; F. Cumont, _Mysteres de

Mithra_, Eng. trans., 1903; _Les Religions orientales dans le paganisme

romain_, 1906).

The Jews, too, by the time of Christ were finding in many quarters an

open door. Besides those who were ready to go the whole length and

accept circumcision, numbers adopted particular Jewish practices,

observing the Sabbath, for instance, or turned from polytheism to the

doctrine of the One God. The synagogues in the Gentile cities had

generally attached to them, in more or less close connexion a multitude

of those "who feared God" and frequented the services (Schurer, _Gesch.

d. jud. Volks_, iii. 102-135).

Christianity.

Among the religions which penetrated the Hellenistic world from an

Eastern source, one ultimately overpowered all the rest and made that

world its own. The inter-action of Christianity and Hellenism opens

large fields of inquiry. The teaching of Christ Himself contained, as it

is given to us, no Hellenic element; so far as He built with older

material, that material was exclusively the sacred tradition of Israel.

So soon, however, as the Gospel was carried in Greek to Greeks, Hellenic

elements began to enter into it, in the writings, for instance, of St

Paul, the appeal to what "nature" teaches would be generally admitted to

be the adoption of a Greek mode of thought. It was, of course,

impossible that speaking in Greek and living among Greeks, Christians

should not to some extent use current conceptions for the expression of

their faith. There was, at the same time, in the early Church a powerful

current of feeling hostile to Greek culture, to the wisdom of the world.

What the attitude of the New People should be to it, whether it was all

bad, or whether there were good things in it which Christians should

appropriate, was a vital question that always confronted them. The great

Christian School of Alexandria represented by Clement and Origen

effected a durable alliance between Greek education and Christian

doctrine. In proportion as the Christian Church had to go deeper into

metaphysics in the formulation of its belief as to God, as to Christ, as

to the soul, the Greek philosophical terminology, which was the only

vehicle then available for precise thought, had to become more and more

an essential part of Christianity. At the same time Christian ethics

incorporated much of the current popular philosophy, especially large

Stoical elements. In this way the Church itself, as we shall see, became

a propagator of Hellenism (see Hatch, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1888;

Wendland, "Christentum u. Hellenismus" in _Neue Jahrb. f. kl. Alt._ ix.

1902, p. 1 f.; and _Die hellenistisch-romische Kultur in ihren

Beziehungen zu Judentum u. Christentum_, 1907).

B. _Effect upon non-Hellenic Peoples._--Hellenism secured by the

Macedonian conquest _points d'appui_ from the Mediterranean to India,

and brought the system of commerce and intercourse into Greek hands.

What effect did it produce in these various countries? What effect again

in the lands of the West which fell under the sway of Rome?

Greek cities.

Greek art.

(i.) _India._--In India (including the valleys of the Kabul and its

northern tributaries, then inhabited by an Indian, not, as now, by an

Iranian, population) Alexander planted a number of Greek towns.

Alexandria "under the Caucasus" commanded the road from Bactria over the

Hindu-Kush; it lay somewhere among the hills to the north of Kabul,

perhaps at Opian near Charikar (MacCrindle, _Ancient India_, p. 87, note

4); that it is the city meant by "Alasadda the capital of the Yona

(Greek) country" in the Buddhist Mahavanso, as is generally affirmed,

seems doubtful (Tarn, loc. cit. below, p. 269, note 7). We hear of a

Nicaea in the Kabul valley itself (near Jalalabad?), another Nicaea on

the Hydaspes (Jhelum) where Alexander crossed it, with Bucephala (see

BUCEPHALUS) opposite, a city (unnamed) on the Acesines (Chenab) (Arr.

vi. 29, 3), and a series of foundations strung along the Indus to the

sea. Soon after 321, Macedonian supremacy beyond the Indus collapsed

before the advance of the native Maurya dynasty, and about 303 even

large districts west of the Indus were ceded by Seleucus. But the

chapter of Greek rule in India was not yet closed. The Maurya dynasty

broke up about 180 B.C., and at the same time the Greek rulers of

Bactria began to lead expeditions across the Hindu-Kush. Menander in the

middle of the 2nd century B.C. extended his rule from the Hindu-Kush to

the Ganges. Then "Scythian" peoples from central Asia, Sakas and

Yue-chi, having conquered Bactria, gradually squeezed within

ever-narrowing limits the Greek power in India. The last Greek prince,

Hermaeus, seems to have succumbed about 30 B.C. It was just at this time

that the Graeco-Roman world of the West was consolidated as the Roman

Empire, and, though Greek rule in India had disappeared, active

commercial intercourse went on between India and the Hellenistic lands.

How far, through these changes, did the Greek population settled by

Alexander or his successors in India maintain their distinctive

character? What influence did Hellenism during the centuries in which it

was in contact with India exert upon the native mind? Only extremely

qualified answers can be given to these questions. Capital data are

possibly waiting there under ground--the Kabul valley for instance is

almost virgin soil for the archaeologist--and any conclusion we can

arrive at is merely provisional. If certain statements of classical

authors were true, Hellenism in India flourished exceedingly. But the

phil-hellenic Brahmins in Philostratus' life of Apollonius had no

existence outside the world of romance, and the statement of Dio

Chrysostom that the Indians were familiar with Homer in their own tongue

(_Or._ liii. 6) is a traveller's tale. India, the sceptical observe, has

yielded no Greek inscription, except, of course, on the coins of the

Greek kings and their Scythian rivals and successors. To what extent can

it be inferred from legends on coins that Greek was a living speech in

India? Perhaps to no large extent outside the Greek courts. The fact,

however, that the Greek character was still used on coins for two

centuries after the last Greek dynasty had come to an end shows that the

language had a prestige in India which any theory, to be plausible, must

account for. If we argue by probability from what we know of the

conditions, we have to consider that the Greek rule in India was all

through fighting for existence, and can have had "little time or energy

left for such things as art, science and literature" (Tarn, _loc. cit._

p. 292), and it is pointed out that a casual reference to the Greeks in

an Indian work contemporary with Menander characterizes them as

"viciously valiant Yonas." How long is it probable that Greek colonies

planted in the midst of alien races would have remained distinct? Mr

Tarn builds much upon the fact that the descendants of the Greek

Branchidae settled by Xerxes in central Asia had become bilingual in six

generations (Curt. vii. 5, 29). But the Greek race before Alexander had

not its later prestige, and we must consider such a sentiment as leads

the Eurasian to-day to cling to his Western parentage, so that the

instance of the Branchidae cannot be used straight away for the time

after Alexander. Certainly, had the Greek colonies in India been active

political bodies, we could hardly have failed to find some trace of

them, in civic architecture or in inscriptions, by this time. Perhaps we

should rather think of them as resembling the Greeks found to-day

dispersed over the nearer East with interests mainly commercial, easily

assimilating themselves to their environment. A notice derived from

Agatharchides (about 140 B.C.) possibly refers to the activity of these

Indian Greeks in the sea-borne trade of the Indian Ocean (Muller, _Geog.

Graeci min._ i. p. 191; cf. Diod. iii. 47. 9). As to what India derived

from Greece there has been a good deal of erudite debate. That the

Indian drama took its origin from the Greek is still maintained by some

scholars, though hardly proved. There is no doubt that Indian astronomy

shows marked Hellenic features, including actual Greek words borrowed.

But by far the most signal borrowing is in the sphere of art. The stream

of Buddhist art which went out eastwards across Asia had its rise in

North-West India, and the remains of architecture and sculpture

unearthed in this region enable us to trace its development back to pure

Greek types. It remains, of course, a question whether the tradition was

transmitted by the Greek dynasties from Bactria or by intercourse with

the Roman empire; the latter seems now almost certain; but the fact of

the influence is equally striking on either theory. How far to the east

the distinctive influence of Greece went is shown by the

seal-impressions with Athena and Eros types found by Dr Stein in the

buried cities of Khotan (_Sand-buried Ruins of Khotan_, p. 396), and

according to Mr E. B. Havell, there exist "paintings treasured as the

most precious relics and rarely shown to Europeans, which closely

resemble the Graeco-Buddhist art of India" in some of the oldest temples

of Japan (_Studio_, vol. xxvii. 1903, p. 26).

See A. A. Macdonell, _History of Sanskrit Literature_ (1900) p. 411

f., and the references on p. 452; V. A. Smith, _Early History of

India_ (1904); Grunwedel, _Buddhist Art in India_ (Eng. trans., edited

by Dr Burgess, 1901); W. W. Tarn, "Notes on Hellenism in Bactria and

India" in _Journ. of Hell. Studies_, xxii. (1902); Foucher, _L'Art

greco-bouddhique du Gandhara_ (1905).

Greek cities.

(ii.) _Iran and Babylonia._--The colonizing activity of Alexander and

his successors found a large field in Iran where, up till his time,

hardly any walled towns seem to have existed. Cities now arose in all

its provinces, superseding in many cases native market places and

villages, and holding the vantage-points of commerce. Media, Polybius

says, was defended by a chain of Greek cities from barbarian incursion

(x. 27. 3); in the neighbourhood of Teheran seem to have stood Heraclea

and Europus. In Eastern Iran the cities which are its chief places

to-day then bore Greek names, and looked upon Alexander or some other

Hellenic prince as their founder. Khojend, Herat, Kandahar were

Alexandrias, Merv was an Alexandria till it changed that name for

Antioch. When the farther provinces broke away under independent Greek

kings, a Eucratidea and a Demetrias attested their glory. Even in a town

definitely barbarian like Syrinca in 209 B.C. there was a resident

mercantile community of Greeks (Polyb. x. 31). The bulk of Greek

historical literature having perished, and in the absence of both

archaeological data from Iran, we can only speculate on the inner life

of these Greek cities under a strange sky. One precious document is the

decree of Antioch in Persis (about 206 B.C.) cited in a recently

discovered inscription (Kern, _Inschr. v. Magnesia_, No. 61;

Dittenberger, _Orient. gr. Inscr._ i. No. 233). This shows us the normal

organs of a Greek city, _boule_, _ecclesia_, _prytaneis_, &c., in full

working, with the annual election of magistrates, and ordinary forms of

public action. But more than this, it throws a remarkable light upon the

solidarity of the Hellenic Dispersion. The citizen body had been

increased some generations before by colonists from Magnesia-on-Meander

sent at the invitation of Antiochus I. The Magnesians are instigated by

pan-hellenic enthusiasm. And we see a brisk diplomatic intercourse

between the scattered Greek cities going on. It is especially the local

religious festivals which bind them together. Antioch in Persis, of

course, sends athletes to the great games of Greece, but in this decree

it determines to take part in the new festival being started in honour

of Artemis at Magnesia. The loyalty, too, expressed towards the Seleucid

king implies a predominant interest in pan-hellenic unity, natural in

colonies isolated among barbarians. A list is given (fragmentary) of

other Greek cities in Babylonia and beyond from which similar decrees

had come.

Greek kingdoms.

In the middle of the 3rd century B.C. Bactria and Sogdiana broke away

from the Seleucid empire; independent Greek kings reigned there till the

country was conquered by nomads from Central Asia (Sacae and Yue-chi) a

century later. Alexander had settled large masses of Greeks in these

regions (Greeks, it would seem, not Macedonians), whose attempts to

return home in 325 and 323 had been frustrated, and it may well be that

a racial antagonism quickened the revolt against Macedonian rule in 250.

The history of these Greek dynasties is for us almost a blank, and for

estimating the amount and quality of Hellenism in Bactria during the 180

years or so of Macedonian and Greek rule, we are reduced to building

hypotheses upon the scantiest data. Probably nothing important bearing

on the subject has been left out of view in W. W. Tarn's learned

discussion (_Journ. of Hell. Stud._ xxii., 1902, p. 268 f.), and his

result is mainly negative, that palpable evidences of an active

Hellenism have not been found; he inclines to think that the Greek

kingdoms mainly took on the native Iranian colour. The coins, of course,

are adduced on the other side, being not only Greek in type and legend,

but (in many cases) of a peculiarly fine and vigorous execution; and

excellence in one branch of art is thought to imply that other branches

flourished in the same _milieu_. Tarn suggests that they may be a

"sport," a spasmodic outbreak of genius (see BACTRIA and works there

quoted). In these outlying provinces the national Iranian sentiment

seems to have been most intense, and it is interesting to see that under

Alexander Hellenism appeared as "belligerent civilization," in the

attempt to suppress practices like the exposure of the dying to the dogs

(an exaggeration of Zoroastrianism) and, possibly also, abhorrent forms

of marriage (Strabo xi. 517; Porphyr. _De abstin._ 4. 21; Plut. _De

fort. Al._ 5).

The west of Iran slipped from the Seleucids in the course of the 2nd

century B.C. to be joined to the Parthian kingdom, or fall under petty

native dynasties. Soon after 130 Babylonia too was conquered by the

Parthian, and Mesopotamia before 88. Then the reconquest of the nearer

East by Oriental dynasties was checked by the advance of Rome. Asia

Minor and Syria remained substantial parts of the Roman Empire till the

Mahommedan conquests of the 7th century A.D. began a new process of

recoil on the part of the Hellenistic power. In Babylonia, also, in

Susiana and Mesopotamia, Hellenism had been established in a system of

cities for 200 years before the coming of the Parthian. The greatest of

all of them stood here--almost on the site of Bagdad--Seleucia on the

Tigris. It superseded Babylon as the industrial focus of Babylonia and

counted some 600,000 inhabitants (_plebs urbana_) according to Pliny,

_N.H._ vi. S 122 (cf. Joseph. _Arch._ xviii. S 372, 374; for coins,

probably of Seleucia, with the type of Tyche issued in the years A.D.

43-44 see Wroth, _Coins of Parthia_, p. xlvi.). The list of other Greek

cities known to us in these regions is too long to give here (see

Droysen, _loc. cit._, and E. Schwartz in Kern's _Inschr. v. Magnesia_,

p. 171 f.). In Mesopotamia, Pliny especially notes how the character of

the country was changed when the old village life was broken in upon by

new centres of population in the cities of Macedonian foundation (Pliny,

_N.H._ vi. S 117; cf. K. Regling, "Histor. geog. d. mesopot.

Parallelograms," in Lehmann's _Beitrage_, i. p. 442 f.).

Hellenic-Iranian culture.

We do not look in vain for notable names in Hellenistic literature and

philosophy produced on an Asiatic soil. Diogenes, the Stoic philosopher

(head of the school in 156 B.C.), was a "Babylonian," i.e. a citizen of

Seleucia on the Tigris; so too was Seleucus, the mathematician and

astronomer, being possibly a native Babylonian; Berossus, who wrote a

Babylonian history in Greek (before 261 B.C.) was a Hellenized native.

Apollodorus, Strabo's authority for Parthian history (c. 80 B.C.?), was

from the Greek city of Artemita in Assyria. When the Parthians rent away

provinces from the Seleucid empire, the Greek cities did not cease to

exist by passing under barbarian rule. Gradually no doubt the Greek

colonies were absorbed, but the process was a long one. In 140 and 130

B.C. those of Iran were ready to rise in support of the Seleucid invader

(Joseph. _Arch._ xiii. S 184; Justin xxxviii. 10.6-8). Just so, Crassus

in 53 B.C. found a welcome in the Greek cities of Mesopotamia. Seleucia

on the Tigris is spoken of by Tacitus as being in A.D. 36 "proof against

barbarian influences and mindful of its founder Seleucus" (_Ann._ vi.

42). How important an element the Greek population of their realm seemed

to the Parthian kings we can see by the fact that they claimed to be

themselves champions of Hellenism. From the reign of Artabanus I.

(128/7-123 B.C.) they bear the epithet of "Phil-hellen" as a regular

part of their title upon the coins. Under the later reigns the Tyche

figure (the personification of a Greek city) becomes common as a coin

type (Wroth, _Coins of Parthia_, pp. liii., lxxiv.). The coinage may, of

course, give a somewhat one-sided representation of the Parthian

kingdom, being specially designed for the commercial class, in which the

population of the Greek cities was, we may guess, predominant. The state

of things which prevails in modern Afghanistan, where trade is in the

hands of a class distinct in race and speech (Persian in this case) from

the ruling race of fighters is very probably analogous to that which we

should have found in Iran under the Parthians.[2] That the Parthian

court itself was to some extent Hellenized is shown by the story, often

adduced, that a Greek company of actors was performing the _Bacchae_

before the king when the head of Crassus was brought in. This single

instance need not, it is true, show a Hellenism of any profundity; still

it does show that certain parts of Hellenism had become so essential to

the lustre of a court that even an Arsacid could not be without them.

Artavasdes, king of Armenia (54?-34 B.C.) composed Greek tragedies and

histories (Plut. _Crass._ 33). Then the prestige of the Roman Empire,

with its prevailingly Hellenistic culture, must have told powerfully.

The Parthian princes were in many cases the children of Greek mothers

who had been taken into the royal harems (Plut. _Crass._ 32). Musa, the

queen-mother, whose head appears on the coins of Phraataces (3/2

B.C.-A.D. 4) had been an Italian slave-girl. Many of the Parthian

princes resided temporarily, as hostages or refugees, in the Roman

Empire; but one notes that the nation at large looked with anything but

favour upon too liberal an introduction of foreign manners at the court

(Tac. _Ann._ ii. 2).

Such slight notices in Western literature do not give us any penetrating

view into the operation of Hellenism among the Iranians. As an

expression of the Iranian mind we have the Avesta and the Pehlevi

theological literature. Unfortunately in a question of this kind the

dating of our documents is the first matter of importance, and it seems

that we can only assign dates to the different parts of the Avesta by

processes of fine-drawn conjecture. And even if we could date the Avesta

securely, we could only prove borrowing by more or less close

coincidences of idea, a tempting but uncertain method of inquiry. Taking

an opinion based on such data for what it is worth, we may note that

Darmesteter believed in the influence of the later Greek philosophy

(Philonian and Neo-platonic) as one of those which shaped the Avesta as

we have it (_Sacred Books of the East_, iv. 54 f.), but we must also

note that such an influence is emphatically denied by Dr L. Mills

(_Zarathushtra and the Greeks_, Leipzig, 1906). Outside literature, we

have to look to the artistic remains offered by the region to determine

Hellenic influence. But here, too, the preliminary classification of the

documents is beset with doubt. In the case of small objects like gems

the place of manufacture may be far from the place of discovery. The

architectural remains are solidly _in situ_, but we may have such vast

disagreement as to date as that between Dieulafoy and M. de Morgan with

respect to domed buildings of Susa, a disagreement of at least five

centuries. It is enough then here to observe that Iran and Babylonia do,

as a matter of fact, continually yield the explorer objects of

workmanship either Greek or influenced by Greek models, belonging to the

age after Alexander, and that we may hence infer at any rate such an

influence of Hellenism upon the tastes of the richer classes as would

create a demand for these things.

For gems see "Gobineau" in the _Rev. archeol._, vols. xxvii., xxviii.

(1874); Menant, _Recherches sur la glyptique orientale_, ii. 189 f.;

E. Babelon, _Catalogue des camees de la Bibl. Nat._ (1897), p. 56; A.

Furtwangler, _Die antiken Gemmen_, pp. 165, 369 ff.; Figurines:

Heuzey, _Fig. ant. du Louvre_ (1883) p. 3; J. P. Peters, _Nippur_, ii.

128; Military standard: Heuzey, _Comptes rendus de l'Acad. d. Inscr._

(1895) p. 16; _Rev. d'Assyr._ v. (1903), p. 103 f. Alabaster vase:

Sykes, _Ten Thousand Miles in Persia_, p. 445. In the case of the

architectural remains, the Greek tradition is obvious at Hatra

(Jacquerel, _Rev. archeol._, 1897 [ii.], 343 f.), and in the relics of

the temple at Kingavar (Dieulafoy, _L'Art antique de la Perse_, v. p.

10 f.).

Sassanian empire.

If any vestige of Hellenism still survived under the Sassanian kings,

our records do not show it. The spirit of the Sassanian monarchy was

more jealously national than that of the Arsacid, and alien grafts could

hardly have flourished under it. Of course, if Darmesteter was right in

seeing a Greek element in Zoroastrianism, Greek influence must still

have operated under the new dynasty, which recognized the national

religion. But, as we saw, the Greek influence has been authoritatively

denied. At the court a limited recognition might be given, as fashion

veered, to the values prevalent in the Hellenistic world. The story of

Hormisdas in Zosimus is suggestive in this connexion (Zosim. _Hist.

nov._ ii. 27). Chosroes I. interested himself in Greek philosophy and

received its professors from the West with open arms (Agath. ii. 28 f.);

according to one account, he had his palace at Ctesiphon built by Greeks

(Theophylact. Simocat. v. 6).

But the account of Chosroes' mode of action makes it plain that the

Hellenism once planted in Iran had withered away; representatives of

Greek learning and skill have all to be imported from across the

frontier.

For Hellenism in Babylonia and Iran, see the useful article of M.

Victor Chapot in the _Bull. et memoires de la Soc. Nat. des

Antiquaires de France_ for 1902 (published 1904), p. 206 f., which

gives a conspectus of the relevant literature.

(iii.) _Asia Minor._--Very different were the fortunes of Hellenism in

those lands which became annexed to the Roman Empire.

Greek cities of the Diadochi.

In Asia Minor, we have seen how, even before Alexander, Hellenism had

begun to affect the native races and Persian nobility. During

Alexander's own reign, we cannot trace any progress in the Hellenization

of the interior, nor can we prove here his activity as a builder of

cities. But under the dynasties of his successors a great work of

city-building and colonization went on. Antigonus fixed his capital at

the old Phrygian town of Celaenae, and the famous cities of Nicaea and

Alexandria Troas owed to him their first foundation, each as an

Antigonia; they were refounded and renamed by Lysimachus (301-281 B.C.).

Then we have the great system of Seleucid foundations. Sardis, the

Seleucid capital in Asia Minor, had become a Greek city before the end

of the 3rd century B.C. The main high road between the Aegean coast and

the East was held by a series of new cities. Going west from the

Cilician Gates we have Laodicea Catacecaumene, Apamea, the Phrygian

capital which absorbed Celaenae, Laodicea on the Lycus,

Antioch-on-Meander, Antioch-Nysa, Antioch-Tralles. To the south of this

high road we have among the Seleucid foundations Antioch in Pisidia

(colonized with Magnesians from the Meander) and Stratonicea in Caria;

in the region to the north of it the most famous Seleucid colony was

Thyatira. Along the southern coast, where the houses of Seleucus and

Ptolemy strove for predominance, we find the names of Berenice, Arsinoe

and Ptolemais confronting those of Antioch and Seleucia. With the rise

of the Attalid dynasty of Pergamum, a system of Pergamene foundation

begins to oppose the Seleucid in the interior, bearing such names as

Attalia, Philetaeria, Eumenia, Apollonis. 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. Its centres of

gravity to some extent shifted. There was a tendency towards

concentration in large cities of the new type, which caused many of the

lesser towns, like Lebedus, Myus or Colophon, to sink to insignificance,

while Ephesus grew in greatness and wealth, and Smyrna rose again after

an extinction of four centuries. The great importance of Rhodes belongs

to the days after Alexander, when it received the riches of the East

from the trade-routes which debouched into the Mediterranean at

Alexandria and Antioch. In Aeolis, of course, the centre of gravity

moved to the Attalid capital, Pergamum. It was the irruption of the

Celts, beginning in 278-277 B.C., which checked the Hellenization of the

interior. Not only did the Galatian tribes take large tracts towards the

north of the plateau in possession, but they were an element of

perpetual unrest, which hampered and distracted the Hellenistic

monarchies. The wars, therefore, in which the Pergamene kings in the

latter part of the 3rd century stemmed their aggressions, had the glory

of a Hellenic crusade.

Native dynasties.

The minor dynasties of non-Greek origin, the native Bithynian and the

two Persian dynasties in Pontus and Cappadocia, were Hellenized before

the Romans drove the Seleucid out of the country. In Bithynia the upper

classes seem to have followed the fashion of the court (Beloch iii. [i.],

278); the dynasty of Pontus was phil-hellenic by ancestral tradition;

the dynasty of Cappadocia, the most conservative, dated its conversion

to Hellenism from the time when a Seleucid princess came to reign there

early in the 2nd century B.C. as the wife of Ariarathes V. (Diod. xxxi.

19. 8). But Hellenism in Cappadocia was for centuries to come still

confined to the castles of the king and the barons, and the few towns.

Hellenism under Roman sway.

When Rome began to interfere in Asia Minor, its first action was to

break the power of the Gauls (189 B.C.). In 133 Rome entered formally

upon the heritage of the Attalid kingdom and became the dominant power

in the Anatolian peninsula for 1200 years. Under Rome the process of

Hellenization, which the divisions and weakness of the Macedonian

kingdoms had checked, went forward. The coast regions of the west and

south the Romans found already Hellenized. In Lydia "not a trace" of the

old language was left in Strabo's time (Strabo xiv. 631); in Lycia, the

old language became obsolete in the early days of Macedonian rule (see

Kalinka, _Tituli Asiae minoris_, i. 8). But inland, in Phrygia,

Hellenism had as yet made little headway outside the Greek cities. Even

the Attalids had not effected much here (Korte, _Athen. Mitth._ xxiii.,

1898, p. 152), and under the Romans, the penetration of the interior by

Hellenism was slow. It was not till the reign of Hadrian that city life

on the Phrygian plateau became rich and vigorous, with its material

circumstances of temples, theatres and baths. Among the villages of the

north and east of Phrygia, Hellenism "was only beginning to make itself

felt in the middle of the 3rd century A.D." (Ramsay in Kuhn's _Zeitsch.

f. vergleich. Sprachforschung_, xxviii., 1885, p. 382). Gravestones in

this region as late as the 4th century curse violators in the old

Phrygian speech. The lower classes at Lystra in St Paul's time spoke

Lycaonian (Acts xiv. 11). In that part of Phrygia, which by the

settlement of the Celtic invaders became Galatia, the larger towns seem

to have become Hellenized by the time of the Christian era, whilst the

Celtic speech maintained itself in the country villages till the 4th

century A.D. (Jerome, Preface to Comment, in _Epist. ad Gal._ book ii.;

see J. G. C. Anderson, _Journ. of Hell. Stud._ xix., 1899, p. 312 f.).

Cappadocia at the beginning of the Christian era was still comparatively

townless (Strabo xii. 537), a country of large estates with a servile

peasantry. Even in the 4th century its Hellenization was still far from

complete; but Christianity had assimilated so much of the older Hellenic

culture that the Church was now a main propagator of Hellenism in the

backward regions. The native languages of Asia Minor all ultimately gave

way to Greek (unless Phrygian lingered on in parts till the Turkish

invasions; see Mordtmann, _Sitzungsb. d. bayer. Ak._ 1862, i. p. 30; K.

Holl in _Hermes_, xliii., 1908, p. 240 f.). The effective Hellenization

of Armenia did not take place till the 5th century, when the school of

Mesrop and Sahak gave Armenia a literature translated from, or

imitating, Greek books (Gelzer in I. v. Muller's _Handbuch_, vol. ix.

Abt. i. p. 916.)

Seleucid empire.

Roman period.

(iv.) _Syria._--In Syria, which with Cilicia and Mesopotamia, formed the

central part of the Seleucid empire, the new colonies were especially

numerous. Alexander himself had perhaps made a beginning with

Alexandria-by-Issus (mod. Alexandretta), Samaria, Pella (the later

Apamea), Carrhae, &c. Antigonus founded Antigonia, which was absorbed a

few years later by Antioch, and after the fall of Antigonus in 301, the

work of planting Syria with Greek cities was pursued effectively north

of the Lebanon by the house of Seleucus, and, less energetically, south

of the Lebanon by the house of Ptolemy. In the north of Syria four

cities stood pre-eminent above the rest, (1) Antioch on the Orontes, the

Seleucid capital; (2) Seleucia-in-Pieria near the mouth of the Orontes,

which guarded the approach to Antioch from the sea; (3) Apamea (mod.

Famia), on the middle Orontes, the military headquarters of the kingdom;

and (4) Laodicea "on sea" (_ad mare_), which had a commercial importance

in connexion with the export of Syrian wine. Of the Ptolemaic

foundations in Coele-Syria only one attained an importance comparable

with that of the larger Seleucid foundations, Ptolemais on the coast,

which was the old Semitic Acco transformed (mod. Acre). The group of

Greek cities east of the Jordan also fell within the Ptolemaic realm

during the 3rd century B.C., though their greatness belonged to a

somewhat later day. The whole of Syria was brought under the Seleucid

sceptre, together with Cilicia, by Antiochus III. the Great (223-187

B.C.). Under his son, Antiochus IV. Epiphanes (175-164), a fresh impulse

was given to Syrian Hellenism. In 1 Maccabees he is represented as

writing an order to all his subjects to forsake the ways of their

fathers and conform to a single prescribed pattern, and though in this

form the account can hardly be exact, it does no doubt represent the

spirit of his action. Other facts there are which point the same way. We

now find a sudden issue of bronze money by a large number of the cities

of the kingdom in their own name--an indication of liberties extended or

confirmed. Many of them exchange their existing name for that of Antioch

(Adana, Tarsus, Gadara, Ptolemais), Seleucia (Mopsuestia, Gadara) or

Epiphanea (Oeniandus, Hamath). At Antioch itself great public works were

carried out, such as were involved in the addition of a new quarter to

the city, including, we may suppose, the civic council chamber which is

afterwards spoken of as being here. With the ever-growing weakness of

the Seleucid dynasty, the independence and activity of the cities

increased, although, if, on the one hand, they were less suppressed by a

strong central government, they were less protected against military

adventurers and barbarian chieftains. Accordingly, when Pompey annexed

Syria in 64 B.C. as a Roman province, he found it a chaos of city-states

and petty principalities. 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. Such local dynasties as were

suffered by the Romans to exist had, of course, a Hellenistic

complexion. Especially was this the case with that of the Herods. Not

only were such marks of Hellenism as a theatre introduced by Herod the

Great (37-34 B.C.) at Jerusalem, but in the work of city-building this

dynasty showed itself active. Sebaste (the old Samaria), Caesarea,

Antipatris were built by Herod the Great, Tiberias by Herod Antipas (4

B.C.-A.D. 39). The reclaiming of the wild district of Hauran for

civilization and Hellenistic life was due in the first instance to the

house of Herod (Schurer, _Gesch. d. jud. Volk._ 3rd ed., ii. p. 12 f.).

In Syria, too, Hellenism under the Romans advanced upon new ground.

Palmyra, of which we hear nothing before Roman times, is a notable

instance.

Greek culture in Syria.

As to the effect of this network of Greek cities upon the aboriginal

population of Syria, we do not find here the same disappearance of

native languages and racial characteristics as in Asia Minor. Still less

was this the case in Mesopotamia, where a strong native element in such

a city as Edessa is indicated by its epithet [Greek: mixobarbaros]. The

old cults naturally went on, and at Carrhae (Harran) even survived the

establishment of Christianity. The lower classes at Antioch, and no

doubt in the cities generally, were in speech Aramaic or bilingual; we

find Aramaic popular nicknames of the later Seleucids (K. O. Muller,

_Antiq. Ant._ p. 29). The villages, of course, spoke Aramaic. The richer

natives, on the other hand, those who made their way into the educated

classes of the towns, and attained official position, would become

Hellenized in language and manners, and the "Syrian Code" shows how far

the social structure was modified by the Hellenic tradition (Mitteis,

_Reichsrecht und Volksrecht in den ost. Provinzen des rom.

Kaiserreichs_, 1891; Arnold Meyer, _Jesu Muttersprache_, 1896). Of the

Syrians who made their mark in Greek literature, some were of native

blood, e.g. Lucian of Samosata.

One may notice the great part taken by natives of the Phoenician cities

in the history of later Greek philosophy, and in the poetic movement of

the last century B.C., which led to fresh cultivation of the epigram.

Greek, in fact, held the field as the language of literature and polite

society. Possibly at places like Edessa, which for some 350 years (till

A.D. 216) was under a dynasty of native princes, Aramaic was cultivated

as a literary language. There was a Syriac-speaking church here as early

as the 2nd century, and with the spread of Christianity Syriac asserted

itself against Greek. The Syriac literature which we possess is all

Christian.

_But where Greek gave place to Syriac, Hellenism was not thereby

effaced. It was to some extent the passing over of the Hellenic

tradition into a new medium._ We must remember the marked Hellenic

elements in Christian theology. The earliest Syriac work which we

possess, the book "On Fate," produced in the circle of the heretic

Bardaisan or Bardesanes (end of the 2nd century), largely follows Greek

models. There was an extensive translation of Greek works into Syriac

during the next centuries, handbooks of philosophy and science for the

most part. The version of Homer into Syriac verses made in the 8th

century has perished, all but a few lines (R. Duval, _La Litt.

syriaque_, 1900, p. 325).

The Jews.

(v.) _The relation of the Jews to Hellenism_ in the first century and a

half of Macedonian rule is very obscure, since the statements made by

later writers like Josephus, as to the visit of Alexander to Jerusalem

or the privileges conferred upon the Jews in the new Macedonian realms

are justly suspected of being fiction. It has been maintained that Greek

influence is to be traced in parts of the Old Testament assigned to this

period, as, for instance, the Book of Proverbs; but even in the case of

Ecclesiastes, the canonical writing whose affinity with Greek thought is

closest, the coincidence of idea need not necessarily prove a Greek

source. The one solid fact in this connexion is the translation of the

Jewish Law into Greek in the 3rd century B.C., implying a Jewish

Diaspora at Alexandria, so far Hellenized as to have forgotten the

speech of Palestine. Early in the 2nd century B.C. we see that the

priestly aristocracy of Jerusalem had, like the well-to-do classes

everywhere in Syria, been carried away by the Hellenistic current, its

strength being evidenced no less by the intensity of the conservative

opposition embodied in the party of the "Pious" (Assideans, _Hasidim_).

Under Antiochus IV. Epiphanes (176-165) the Hellenistic aristocracy

contrived to get Jerusalem converted into a Greek city; the gymnasium

appeared, and Greek dress became fashionable with the young men. But

when Antiochus, owing to political developments, interfered violently at

Jerusalem, the conservative opposition carried the nation with them. The

revolt under the Hasmonaean family (Judas Maccabaeus and his brethren)

followed, ending in 143-142 in the establishment of an independent

Jewish state under a Hasmonaean prince. But whilst the old Hellenistic

party had been crushed the Hasmonaean state was of the nature of a

compromise. The Mosaic Law was respected, but Hellenism still found an

entrance in various forms. The first Hasmonaean "king," Aristobulus I.

(104-103), was known to the Greeks as Phil-hellen. He and all later

kings of the dynasty bear Greek names as well as Hebrew ones, and after

Jannaeus Alexander (103-76) the Greek legends are common on the coins

beside the Hebrew. Herod, who supplanted the Hasmonaean dynasty (37-34

B.C.) made, outside Judaea, a display of Phil-hellenism, building new

Greek cities and temples, or bestowing gifts upon the older ones of

fame. His court, at the same time, welcomed Greek men of letters like

Nicolaus of Damascus. Even in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, he erected

a theatre and an amphitheatre. We have already noticed the work done by

the Herodian dynasty in furthering Hellenism in Syria (see Schurer,

_Gesch. des judisch. Volkes_, vols. i. and ii.). Meanwhile a great part

of the Jewish people was living dispersed among the cities of the Greek

world, speaking Greek as their mother-tongue, and absorbing Greek

influences in much larger measure than their brethren of Palestine.

These are the Jews whom we find contrasted as "Hellenists" with the

"Hebrews" in Acts. They still kept in touch with the mother-city, and

indeed we hear of special synagogues in Jerusalem in which the

Hellenists temporarily resident there gathered (Acts vi. 9). A large

Jewish literature in Greek had grown up since the translation of the Law

in the 3rd century. Beside the other canonical books of the Old

Testament, translated in many cases with modifications or additions, it

included translations of other Hebrew books (Ecclesiasticus, Judith,

&c.), works composed originally in Greek but imitating to some extent

the Hebraic style (like Wisdom), works modelled more closely on the

Greek literary tradition, either historical, like 2 Maccabees, or

philosophical, like the productions of the Alexandrian school,

represented for us by Aristobulus and Philo, in which style and thought

are almost wholly Greek and the reference to the Old Testament a mere

pretext; or Greek poems on Jewish subjects, like the epic of the elder

Philo and Ezechiel's tragedy, _Exagoge_. It included also a number of

forgeries, circulated under the names of famous Greek authors, verses

fathered upon Aeschylus or Sophocles, or books like the false Hecataeus,

or above all the pretended prophecies of ancient Sibyls in epic verse.

These frauds were all contrived for the heathen public, as a means of

propaganda, calculated to inspire them with respect for Jewish antiquity

or turn them from idols to God.

For Jewish Hellenism see Schurer, _op. cit._ iii.; Susemihl, _Gesch.

der griech. Lit. in der Alexandrinerzeit_, ii. 601 f.; Willrich,

_Juden und Griechen_ (1895), _Judaica_ (1900); Hastings' _Dict. of the

Bible_, art. "Greece"; _Encyclop. Biblica_, art. "Hellenism";

Pauly-Wissowa, art. "Aristobulus (15)"; also the work of P. Wendland

cited above.

Through the Hellenistic Jews, Greek influences reached Jerusalem itself,

though their effect upon the Aramaic-speaking Rabbinical schools was

naturally not so pronounced. The large number of Greek words, however,

in the language of the Mishnah and the Talmud is a significant

phenomenon. The attitude of the Rabbinic doctors to a Greek education

does not seem to have been hostile till the time of Hadrian. The sect of

the Essenes probably shows an intermingling of the Greek with other

lines of tradition among the Jews of Palestine.

See Schurer ii. 42-67, 583; S. Krauss, _Griech. u. latein. Lehnworter

im Talmud_ (1898); _Jewish Encyclopedia_, art. "Greek Language."

Ptolemaic kingdom.

(vi.) _In Egypt_ the Ptolemies were hindered by special considerations

from building Greek cities after the manner of the other Macedonian

houses. One Greek city they found existing, Naucratis; Alexander had

called Alexandria into being; the first Ptolemy added Ptolemais as a

Greek centre for Upper Egypt. They seem to have suffered no other

community in the Nile Valley with the independent life of a Greek city,

for the Greek and Macedonian soldier-colonies settled in the Fayum or

elsewhere had no political self-existence. And even at Alexandria

Hellenism was not allowed full development. Ptolemais, indeed, enjoyed

all the ordinary forms of self-government, but Alexandria was governed

despotically by royal officials. In its population, too, Alexandria was

only semi-Hellenic; for besides the proportion of Egyptian natives in

its lower strata, its commercial greatness drew in elements from every

quarter; the Jews, for instance, formed a majority of the population in

two out of the five divisions of the city. At the same time the

prevalent tone of the populace was, no doubt, Hellenistic, as is shown

by the fact that the Jews who settled there acquired Greek in place of

Aramaic as their mother-tongue, and in its upper circles Alexandrian

society under the Ptolemies was not only Hellenistic, but notable among

the Hellenes for its literary and artistic brilliance. The state

university, the "Museum," was in close connexion with the court, and

gave to Alexandria the same pre-eminence in natural science and literary

scholarship which Athens had in moral philosophy.

Probably in no other country, except Judaea, did Hellenism encounter as

stubborn a national antagonism as in Egypt. The common description of

"the Oriental" as indurated in his antagonism to the alien conqueror

here perhaps has some truth in it. The assault made upon the Macedonian

devotee in the temple of Serapis at Memphis "because he was a Greek" is

significant (_Papyr. Brit. Mus._ i. No. 44; cf. Grenfell, _Amherst

Papyr._ p. 48). And yet even here one must observe qualifications The

papyri show us habitual marriage of Greeks and native women and a

frequent adoption by natives of Greek names. It has even been thought

that some developments of the Egyptian religion are due to Hellenistic

influence, such as the deification of Imhotp (Bissing, _Deutsche

Literaturzeitung_, 1902, col. 2330) or the practice of forming voluntary

religious associations (Otto, _Priester und Tempel_, i. 125). The

worship of Serapis was patronized by the court with the very object of

affording a mixed cultus in which Greek and native might unite. In

Egypt, too, the triumph of Christianity brought into being a native

Christian literature, and if this was in one way the assertion of the

native against Hellenistic predominance, one must remember that Coptic

literature, like Syriac, necessarily incorporated those Greek elements

which had become an essential part of Christian theology.

Ethiopia.

From the Ptolemaic kingdom Hellenism early travelled up the Nile into

Ethiopia. Ergamenes, the king of the Ethiopians in the time of the

second Ptolemy, "who had received a Greek education and cultivated

philosophy," broke with the native priesthood (Diod. iii. 6), and from

that time traces of Greek influence continue to be found in the

monuments of the Upper Nile. When Ethiopia became a Christian country in

the 4th century, its connexion with the Hellenistic world became closer.

Greek culture in the Roman world.

(vii.) _Hellenism in the West._--Whilst in the East Hellenism had been

sustained by the political supremacy of the Greeks, in Italy _Graecia

capta_ had only the inherent power and charm of her culture wherewith to

win her way. At Carthage in the 3rd century the educated classes seem

generally to have been familiar with Greek culture (Bernhardy,

_Grundriss d. griech. Lit._ S 77). The philosopher Clitomachus, who

presided over the Academy at Athens in the 2nd century, was a

Carthaginian. Even before Alexander, as we saw, Hellenism had affected

the peoples of Italy, but it was not till the Greeks of south Italy and

Sicily were brought under the supremacy of Rome in the 3rd century B.C.

that the stream of Greek influence entered Rome in any volume. It was

now that the Greek freedman, L. Livius Andronicus, laid the foundation

of a new Latin literature by his translation of the _Odyssey_, and that

the Greek dramas were recast in a Latin mould. The first Romans who set

about writing history wrote in Greek. At the end of the 3rd century

there was a circle of enthusiastic phil-hellenes among the Roman

aristocracy, led by Titus Quinctius Flamininus, who in Rome's name

proclaimed the autonomy of the Greeks at the Isthmian games of 196. In

the middle of the 2nd century Roman Hellenism centred in the circle of

Scipio Aemilianus, which included men like Polybius and the philosopher

Panaetius. The visit of the three great philosophers, Diogenes the

"Babylonian," Critolaus and Carneades in 155, was an epoch-making event

in the history of Hellenism at Rome. Opposition there could not fail to

be, and in 161 a _senatus consultum_ ordered all Greek philosophers and

rhetoricians to leave the city. The effect of such measures was, of

course, transient. Even though the opposition found so doughty a

champion as the elder Cato (censor in 184), it was ultimately of no

avail. The Italians did not indeed surrender themselves passively to the

Greek tradition. In different departments of culture the degree of their

independence was different. The system of government framed by Rome was

an original creation. Even in the spheres of art and literature, the

Italians, while so largely guided by Greek canons, had something of

their own to contribute. The mere fact that they produced a literature

in Latin argues a power of creation as well as receptivity. The great

Latin poets were imitators indeed, but _mere_ imitators they were no

more than Petrarch or Milton. On the other hand, even where the creative

originality of Rome was most pronounced, as in the sphere of Law, there

were elements of Hellenic origin. It has been often pointed out how the

Stoic philosophy especially helped to shape Roman jurisprudence

(Schmekel, _Philos. d. mittl. Stoa_, p. 454 f.).

Whilst the upper classes in Italy absorbed Greek influences by their

education, by the literary and artistic tradition, the lower strata of

the population of Rome became largely hellenized by the actual influx on

a vast scale of Greeks and hellenized Asiatics, brought in for the most

part as slaves, and coalescing as freedmen with the citizen body. Of the

Jewish inscriptions found at Rome some two-thirds are in Greek. So too

the early Christian church in Rome, to which St Paul addressed his

epistle, was Greek-speaking, and continued to be till far into the 3rd

century.

The middle ages.

Islam.

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 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. It

was a small number of monkish communities whose care of those narrow

channels prevented their ever drying up altogether. 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. 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; the popular mistake

lies in supposing that the Hellenistic tradition thereby came to an end.

The Mahommedan conquerors found a considerable part of it taken over,

as we saw, by the Syrian Christians, and Greek philosophical and

scientific classics were now translated from Syriac into Arabic. These

were the starting-points for the Mahommedan schools in these subjects.

Accordingly we find that Arabian philosophy (q.v.), mathematics,

geography, medicine and philology are all based professedly upon Greek

works (Brockelmann, _Gesch. d. arabischen Literatur_, 1898, vol. i.; R.

A. Nicholson, _A Literary History of the Arabs_, 1907, pp. 358-361).

Aristotle in the East no less than in the West was the "master of them

that know"; and Moslem physicians to this day invoke the names of

Hippocrates and Galen. The Hellenistic strain in Mahommedan civilization

has, it is true, flagged and failed, but only as that civilization as a

whole has declined. 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;

BACTRIA, &c.

Different elements (literature, philosophy, art, &c.) are dealt with

in works dealing specially with these subjects, among which those of

Susemihl, Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Erwin Rohde and E. Schwartz are of

especial importance for the literature; those of Schreiber and

Strzygowski for the later Greek art.

Sketches of Hellenistic civilization generally are found in J. P.

Mahaffy's _Greek Life and Thought_ (1887), _The Greek World under

Roman Sway_ (1890); _The Silver Age of the Greek World_ (1906); Julius

Kaerst, _Gesch. d. hellenist. Zeitalters_ (Band ii., publ. 1909); and

in Beloch's _Griechische Geschichte_, vol. iii. (for the century

immediately succeeding Alexander). R. von Scala's "The Greeks after

Alexander," in Helmolt's _History of the World_ (vol. v.), covers the

whole period from Alexander to the end of the Byzantine Empire. P.

Wendland's _Hellenistisch-romische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zu

Judentum u. Christentum_ (1907) is an illuminating monograph, giving a

conspectus of the material. For Hellenistic Egypt, Bouche-Leclercq,

_Histoire des Lagides_, vol. iii. (1906). (E. R. B.)