DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.67683#0195
CHAPTER VIII
GREEK PERIOD (3)
The Fourth Century and Hellenistic Age. 400 to First Century b.c.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The disastrous Peloponnesian War that left Greece drained of her
strength brought Athens politically to a secondary place. Sparta
and then Thebes took the leadership, both unsuccessfully, until
Philip of Macedon, shrewdly playing upon mutual jealousies,
brought the country to subjection and a semblance of unity.
The work of his son Alexander was to spread Hellenic culture,
by his conquests, over large areas of the East. Athens was no
longer the center of this civilization, nor even continental Greece;
but the great cities of Asia Minor and Egypt — Ephesus, Rhodes,
Pergamon, and Alexandria.
Another result of the Peloponnesian War was to turn the Greek
from his ideal of the state to that of the individual. “Know
thyself,’’ Socrates had taught as he went about daily among the
people in the streets, the agora, and the gymnasium and by
questioning endeavored to help them gain “wisdom,’’ that is,
to distinguish between right and wrong conduct in their own
lives. Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, following the lead
of Socrates, began talking and writing skeptically of the old
religious faith, and intellectual freedom began. Scientists began
to pry critically into the nature of things, measuring with fair
accuracy the circumference and diameter of the earth, long since
known to be spherical, and discovering many facts about geome-
try, the natural sciences, and medicine.
While Greece had been growing, flowering, and decaying,
Rome, in the Italian peninsula, had been slowly developing.
Gradually she had conquered Italy, Sicily, and Carthage, and
then, partly through circumstance and partly through desire for
expansion, she came eastward, defeated the Macedonian power,
and made Greece a Roman province. While this was a political
victory, it was not a cultural one. Hellenic ideas continued to
dominate both in the East and also in the West, though deeply
modified by the taste of the victors; and even under new condi-
tions furnished many of the fundamentals of medieval culture.
117
GREEK PERIOD (3)
The Fourth Century and Hellenistic Age. 400 to First Century b.c.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The disastrous Peloponnesian War that left Greece drained of her
strength brought Athens politically to a secondary place. Sparta
and then Thebes took the leadership, both unsuccessfully, until
Philip of Macedon, shrewdly playing upon mutual jealousies,
brought the country to subjection and a semblance of unity.
The work of his son Alexander was to spread Hellenic culture,
by his conquests, over large areas of the East. Athens was no
longer the center of this civilization, nor even continental Greece;
but the great cities of Asia Minor and Egypt — Ephesus, Rhodes,
Pergamon, and Alexandria.
Another result of the Peloponnesian War was to turn the Greek
from his ideal of the state to that of the individual. “Know
thyself,’’ Socrates had taught as he went about daily among the
people in the streets, the agora, and the gymnasium and by
questioning endeavored to help them gain “wisdom,’’ that is,
to distinguish between right and wrong conduct in their own
lives. Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, following the lead
of Socrates, began talking and writing skeptically of the old
religious faith, and intellectual freedom began. Scientists began
to pry critically into the nature of things, measuring with fair
accuracy the circumference and diameter of the earth, long since
known to be spherical, and discovering many facts about geome-
try, the natural sciences, and medicine.
While Greece had been growing, flowering, and decaying,
Rome, in the Italian peninsula, had been slowly developing.
Gradually she had conquered Italy, Sicily, and Carthage, and
then, partly through circumstance and partly through desire for
expansion, she came eastward, defeated the Macedonian power,
and made Greece a Roman province. While this was a political
victory, it was not a cultural one. Hellenic ideas continued to
dominate both in the East and also in the West, though deeply
modified by the taste of the victors; and even under new condi-
tions furnished many of the fundamentals of medieval culture.
117