Institutions and administrative developments
The great cities
The greatest of Alexander’s foundations became the greatest city of the Hellenistic world, Alexandria-by-Egypt. It was laid out in the typical Hellenistic grid pattern along a narrow strip between Lake Mareotis and the sea. Canopic Way ran the length of the city, finely paved and nearly 100 feet (30 metres) wide, with seven or more main roads parallel to it. Across it was the shorter Transverse Street, with at least 10 parallel major roads. The city was divided into five regions, known as Alpha, Beta (the Palace area), Gamma, Delta (the Jewish quarter), and Epsilon. The great buildings included the palace, Alexander’s tomb, the temple of the Muses, the academy and library, the zoological gardens, the temple of Serapis, the superb gymnasium, stadium, and racecourse, the theatre, and an artificial mound, the shrine of Pan, ascended by a spiral road. There were two harbours. The famous lighthouse lay on an offshore island. A canal to the Nile helped secure the water supply; there also were rainwater cisterns. The city wall was some 10 miles (16 km) long. It was a cosmopolitan city. The so-called Potter’s Oracle described the city as “a universal nurse, a city in which every human race has settled,” and Strabo called it “a universal reservoir.”
The great Seleucid capital Antioch on the Orontes stood safely some 11 miles (18 km) from the sea on a major trade route. Originally small, the grid plan with blocks roughly 390 feet (120 metres) by 115 feet (35 metres) was laid out from the first for the expansion over the plain, which eventually took place. A colonnaded street, in Roman times more than 88 feet (27 metres) in width (about one-third carriageway and one-third for each sidewalk), ran the city’s length. Aqueducts brought water from the mountains to flow in water conduits along the east-west streets and through terra-cotta pipes along the cross streets. Like Alexandria, the city was cosmopolitan, and Tacitus speaks of intermarriage between the ethnic groups. When Julia Domna held court, students came from Phoenicia, Palestine, Egypt, Cyprus, Arabia, Cilicia, and Cappadocia. It was a city noted for its luxurious living, as the magnificent mosaics of the Roman period from Antioch itself and the fashionable suburb of Daphne demonstrate. Antioch suffered severely from earthquakes and flooding; thus there was much rebuilding. The population was perhaps 500,000 at its largest.
It seems that Antioch was smaller than Seleuceia on the Tigris, the largest of all the Seleucid foundations, with 600,000 inhabitants according to Strabo. Little, however, is known about it, except that it was on a grid plan and had a stone wall on foundations of baked mud brick. In 143 bce it became an autonomous Greek city under Parthian control.
Pergamum, a small town before it became the capital of the Attalid dynasty, remains one of the most spectacular of ancient sites. The southern face of the acropolis was brilliantly terraced and carried two agoras, stoas, a gymnasium, palaestras, an odeum, temples, and other buildings. Near the top stood the great altar of Zeus with its mighty frieze (now in Berlin) of the battle of gods and giants, and the throne of Satan. The main street leads through a gate to the upper city. There one finds an imposing sanctuary of Athena, the famous library, and a temple of Trajan, on which excellent restoration work has been done. Below is a vertiginous theatre seating 10,000, with a removable stage building on a terrace leading to the Ionic temple, presumably of Dionysus. Much of the remainder of the upper city was occupied by the palace buildings and storehouses. Less can be discerned of the lower city, except for the sanctuary and hospital of Asclepius, founded about 400 bce but developed in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
The most evocative remains of all the ancient cities are those of Ephesus. It was moved to its longest-lasting site about 290 bce by Lysimachus and built mostly on a grid plan with a wall of more than 5.6 miles (9 km). Much of what is visible today dates from the Roman period. By the harbour, today far inland, are the great baths; a broad colonnaded street leads to the theatre, the scene of the silversmiths’ riotous protest against the apostle Paul. A cross street passes in front of the theatre, with a huge agora to the south and the imposing Library of Celsus, dedicated in 110 ce. From there the slightly eccentric Curetes Street runs eastward. On one side are wealthy houses with mosaics and frescoes, on the other the Baths of Scholasticia and the Temple of Hadrian. Further up the street is the colossal terrace that sustained a Temple of Domitian and leads on to the area of the State agora, the political, administrative, and religious centres, and a magnificent gymnasium. The great Temple of Artemis, a little way off, was one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
The administration of Ptolemaic Egypt
Ptolemaic Egypt represented, in the words of the 20th-century historian Frank William Walbank, “a large-scale experiment in bureaucratic centralism and in mercantilism.” There was a constant need to import material not readily available at home, such as the timber and pitch required for warships and the mercantile fleet and also gold. Demetrius, chief executive of the mint in Alexandria, wrote to Ptolemy II’s finance minister, Apollonius, in 258 bce about the need to import as much gold as possible. The Ptolemies had a closed monetary system, which required all foreign traders on arrival to change their money. Exports included linen, papyrus, faience, and eventually glass (with a stringent quality control), and, when appropriate, grain. The administrators divided the country into more than 30 regions, or nomes, with smaller divisions into districts and villages. There was military government alongside a complex financial administration responsible for collecting rents and taxes. At the same time, the local finance offices were instructed (a document survives) to encourage the peasants, protect them from disaster, and ensure the sowing of the correct crops. The king, in theory, claimed all the land and let it to peasants on short leases, providing the seed-corn but requiring its equivalent to be returned. The oil-producing crops were state monopolies; so were mines, quarries, salt, nitre (saltpetre), and alum. Other areas of agriculture were controlled by license, taxation, and price-fixing. A surviving letter from a finance minister says, “No one has the right to do what he wants, but all is regulated for the best.” Perhaps it was not always as systematic, efficient, and incorrupt as it sounds or as some admirers have proposed. Nor was it all so new. The major change was the imposition of a Macedonian and Greek ruling class, who filled the upper ranks of the civil service. Egyptians held some of the lower posts, but only in the priesthoods could they retain wealth and influence. There was friction at times; for example, a camel driver complained of nonpayment because “I do not know how to behave like a Greek.”
Still, there were few slaves outside the cities, and double names attest the gradual acceptance of some Egyptians into the upper echelons of society. The remarkable Cleopatra VII, however, was the first sovereign to learn the native language. When all is said about defects in the administration, Egypt was, and remained, inordinately wealthy, and the Romans were delighted to secure its revenues and its grain.
The victories of Philip II and Alexander the Great were made possible by imaginative generalship and inspirational leadership combined with the use of elite troops that were specially trained and equipped. The Macedonian phalanx depended upon a long, heavy spear called a sarissa. The troops were organized in battalions of about 1,500 men forming 15 rows in depth. The 11 rows at the rear held their spears vertically, causing them to tower formidably above them. The four front rows held their spears horizontally so that all projected in front of the phalanx. For protective armour they wore helmets, leather corselets, and metal greaves (shin plates), and each carried a small round shield. The phalanx was virtually impregnable to a frontal attack but could not easily swerve or reverse. The heavy cavalry of the Companions carried a shorter spear and scimitar and wore metal helmets and breastplates. They advanced in the form of a spearpoint, or triangle, so as to break up the opposing line of battle. On the wings of the phalanx were fairly mobile troops: light cavalry, slingers and archers and javelin men, and light infantry.
The successors recruited large armies of 60,000 or even 100,000 men, including many mercenaries. By about 200 bce troops from Greece, Crete, and the Balkans had decreased in number and many more were recruited from the Syrian territories. The mercenaries were not normally trained for the phalanx but were supplementary to it. The employment of mercenaries increased the number of desertions and the amount of looting; this in turn led to the need for more stringent discipline in the field. At the same time, the armies were relatively free from the hatreds liable to arise between highly politicized national forces. Surrender on easy terms followed by ransom tended to be the order of the day.
Alexander was a great master of siegecraft. He used saps and mines, timbered galleries, catapults and stone throwers, siege towers, scaling ladders, and covers for such operations as filling up ditches or bringing battering rams to bear. These new devices were countered by better walls, towers, ditches, and outworks so that in general the besiegers had to rely on treason, bribery, stratagem, or on starving out the besieged town. Demetrius and Philip V were the only two of the successors who gained much reputation in siege work.
The fleets of the Hellenistic age were smaller in number of boats than those of the Classical period, but the battleships were larger. Ptolemy II’s fleet of 336 was smaller than that of Athens in its war with Sparta. The quinquereme, however, was now the standard battleship, and its crew was about double that of the trireme. Even larger vessels were used, such as a 16-oarer with two banks of oars and eight men to an oar. The Macedonian king Antigonus Gonatas had a flagship of the 18-oar type. One even hears of a 40-oarer. In general, the Macedonian navy dominated the Aegean and the Egyptians the rest of the eastern Mediterranean. There were, however, many fluctuations, and Rhodes was never negligible.
Wherever Hellenization was strong, there tended to be support for the institution of the city-state as well as a measure of synoecism, or gathering of smaller communities in a new polis. The Alexandrias were followed by countless towns, to which were given names such as Antiocheia, Seleucias, Laodicea, Ptolemais, Demetrias, or Cassandreia. Some townships that were not essentially Greek, such as Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, Aradus, and Sardis, were nonetheless treated as cities, except for the towns of Mesopotamia. Non-Greek immigrants into Greek cities might be granted their own administrative system rather than being absorbed into the general citizenship; for example, the Jews in Alexandria had their own ethnarch and Council of Elders.
Some of the successors were hostile to the Greeks, notably Antipater and Cassander. All were liable to impose conscription and taxation, though occasionally immunity was granted. The kings exercised control through a resident representative (epistatēs) in the cities, though this was generally handled delicately and diplomatically. Sometimes, however, they preferred to support a puppet dictator. The rights of minting coinage were severely restricted. The apparatus of civic government, however, remained, and, under the Seleucids, decrees were passed by council and assembly in city after city. During the periods of relative freedom in mainland Greece, there was sometimes democracy, and the Ptolemies maintained democracy in Cos. Yet the kings generally, and the Romans after them, encouraged autocratic or oligarchic government. Most cities in mainland Greece and some others, such as Rhodes, Cyzicus, and Byzantium, retained rights of foreign policy, including military action. They also acted to maintain the grain supply, sometimes by the public purchase of grain and its cheap sale or free distribution. The same freedom made possible the remarkable developments in federal government already noted. This in turn led to a great increase in the use of arbitration in the settlement of disputes, which was obligatory within the confederacies or among those cities directly dependent on the monarch and not infrequent outside.
The encouragement by the overlord, whether Greek or Roman, meant changes in the political patterns. These can be seen reflected in Roman times in the works of Plutarch (who, however, idealizes the past to such an extent that one cannot be sure of him as a contemporary witness) or of the Greek rhetorician and philosopher Dion Chrysostom. Plutarch preferred monarchy and was opposed to extending the franchise to all the free population; interestingly, though, he favoured some kind of party system, so that there is more than one policy to choose from. The changes meant a more or less settled ruling class in the cities. There was now no room for demagogy because there was no deme that it made any difference to court. Where the politically ambitious had scope was in deputations to the kings or, later, the Roman emperors. Nonetheless, the path of the ruling class was not always strewn with roses. Its members were expected to bear the brunt of public expenditure, which in the harsher times of the later empire could become burdensome. In questions addressed to an oracle, found at Oxyrhynchus and dating from the late 3rd century ce, the inquiries “Am I to become ambassador?” and “Am I to become a senator?” are not very different from the question “Am I to become bankrupt”? They were dictated by fear, not ambition. Similarly, there are some amusing records of council meetings that show nominees eager to wriggle out of an office that might become expensive, while the others blocked their paths of escape and applauded the patriotism of acceptance.
Slavery was virtually universal but varied in its incidence. On the whole, though there were numerous exceptions, Greeks did not enslave Greeks; their slaves came predominantly from Anatolia and Syria, Thrace, the Danube basin, and southern Russia. The main sources were war and piracy, fostered by the work of the slave-dealers. The great centres of the slave trade were Byzantium and Ephesus, but, from the middle of the 2nd century bce to the middle of the 1st, Delos became the dominant market. In the Greek east, slaves were numerous in the cities; it should, however, be noted that they could hold relatively responsible jobs. There were comparatively few slaves in the countryside. Under the early Roman Empire the supply dwindled with the control of piracy and a long period of peace. Liberal legislation by Claudius in the 1st century ce and by Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius in the 2nd gave increasing protection and rights to slaves. The price of slaves rose, which implies that often they could be afforded only for skilled work. In the 3rd century, with frontier wars and brigandage resurgent, the prices dropped somewhat, but demand still outstripped supply. The breeding of slaves continued, and the sale of newborn babies was legalized and that of older children, though illegal, was widespread.
Alexander’s conquests had four major effects on the economy. In the first instance, it released a large quantity of silver and gold from the treasuries of Persia. The immediate result was a sharp rise in prices, but, as the surplus funds were absorbed into capital, prices began to fall. Second, the integration of quarreling city-states into a single empire removed some of the obstructions to mutual trade. Third, Philip had already adopted the Attic standard for gold, and Alexander adopted it for silver as well. The successors in general followed, though the Ptolemies preferred the Phoenician standard. The complex needs of money-changing were thus greatly reduced. These two standards held good until some time in the 1st century bce, when the Roman challenge to them triumphed. Finally, and most obviously, the extension of empire meant an extension of trade routes; China became open to trade for the first time and East Africa, Arabia, and India became more easily accessible than before.
The Egyptian trade was mainly by sea, featuring the port of Berenice on the Red Sea, while Alexandria was established as one of the greatest mercantile centres on the Mediterranean. Toward the end of the 2nd century bce an Indian at Alexandria explained to Ptolemy VII the secret of the monsoon, which greatly facilitated the sea passage to India and enhanced the importance of Coptos on the upper Nile. The Egyptians also had an eye to the land routes. This explains their desire to command the Phoenician ports, which were not only the terminus of one land route but also producers of woven stuffs and fine dyes.
The key point for Seleucid trade was Seleucia on the Tigris. In one direction, the route led to Antioch on the Orontes with branches to Ephesus and Damascus. In the other, there were three routes to India, two by land and one by sea. Alexander’s foundation of Alexandria in Areia was important to the trade. Dura Europus on the Euphrates was a fort protecting the lines of trade; it was retained by the Romans. The caravan cities, such as Petra and Palmyra (formerly Tadmor), flourished on the trade. The advance of Chinese military power from Turkistan in the 2nd century bce fostered the trade with China along the famous Silk Road through central Asia. The Chinese exported silk and other textiles, bamboo, and iron and imported vines and other trees and plants, as well as wine, olives, woolen goods, and artwork (which affected Chinese artistic style). The demand for luxury goods in the prosperous days of the early Roman Empire increased the trade with China, India, and Arabia, and an embassy from Marcus Aurelius actually reached China by way of Annam.
Early in the Hellenistic age, the Greek navigator, geographer, and astronomer Pytheas of Massalia (now Marseille) embarked on one of the most remarkable feats of exploration. Evading the Phoenician outposts, he slipped through the Strait of Gibraltar, sailed north along the coasts of the Iberian Peninsula and France, crossed over to Cornwall, continued around the north of Britain and on to Helgoland, and then returned. The Phoenicians, however, allowed no other ship to pass Gibraltar and the only tangible result of Pytheas’s voyage was an increase in the trade in Cornish tin by overland routes through France.
In general the Romans made transport, whether by land or sea, safer and swifter. The Greek Epictetus could say, “Caesar has procured us a profound peace. There are no wars, no battles, no massive brigandage, no piracy; we may travel at all hours and sail from East to West.” An inscription from Hierapolis in Phrygia dating from the imperial period tells how an operator named Flavius Zeuxis passed Cape Taīnaron no fewer than 72 times.
The economy of mainland Greece declined during the Hellenistic age, though standards rose briefly about 260 bce, and there were pockets of prosperity, such as the Boeotian city of Tanagra, famous for its terra-cotta figurines. The general picture is one of poverty, unemployment, falling wages, depopulation, and emigration. The forests were stripped, the land neglected, and smallholdings swallowed up in large estates, which, however, were underdeveloped. The Athenian silver mines at Laurium were depleted, though they reopened briefly at the end of the 3rd century bce. Demand for fine painted pottery had ceased. Athenian wine was of poor quality. Olive oil, however, continued to command a market, so much so that a law of 125 ce reserved one-third of the production to indigenous use; but, as the historian Moses I. Finley argued, olive oil alone would hardly meet the balance of payments. The centres of Hellenic prosperity had shifted with the movement of Hellenism from Athens, Corinth, Sparta, and Árgos to Alexandria, Rhodes, Pergamum, and Antioch.
Within the Mediterranean basin, trade was mostly in essentials or things regarded as such. Metals ranked highest in importance: there was silver from Spain, copper from Cyprus, iron from the Black Sea coast and later China, and tin from Cornwall. Food also was important: grain came from Egypt, North Africa, Crimea, and perhaps Babylonia. In other areas there was some specialization: Athens was noted for honey as well as olive oil, Byzantium for fish, Jericho for dates, and Damascus for prunes. Textiles were prominent: linen arrived from Egypt, a kind of silk from Tyre and true silk from China, and woolen goods from Miletus. Timber came from the forests of Anatolia and the north, marble for building from Páros and Athens, granite from Egypt: some docks constructed in Delos about 130 bce are of Egyptian granite.
The prosperity of Egypt, “the gift of the Nile,” was rooted in agriculture. The land lent itself to the cultivation of wheat, barley and sorghum, flax, vegetables (including lentils, beans, chickpeas, and onions), the date palm, and papyrus, as well as the raising of animals, such as horses, donkeys, goats, cattle, poultry, and fish.
Strabo gives a vivid picture of the resources of the Seleucid kingdom. He speaks of the rich yields of barley and the varied uses of the products of the palm—for food, drink, sweetening, fuel, and weaving. Mesopotamia is “good pastureland, and rich in vegetation, evergreens, and spice.” Rice was introduced into Persia from India, and the vine from Greece.
Similarly Strabo identifies the specialties of different regions of Anatolia. He mentions the fruit trees, vines, and olives of Melitene; the stone, timber, and pastures around Mazaca; the orchards of Cappadocia, and its mineral resources in red ochre, crystal, onyx, and mica; the market gardens of Sinope and beyond them olive groves and timber forests; the cattle and cheese of Bithynia; the styrax, producing gum and wood for spears, of the Taurus Mountains; and the superb wools of Laodicea and Colossae.
One figure suffices to indicate the huge economic expansion during the Hellenistic age. The customs revenue of Rhodes in about 170 bce was five times that of Athens in 400, with almost certainly the identical rate of 2 percent. It would be hard to demonstrate more clearly that the Hellenistic world operated in a totally different dimension.
It was in the Hellenistic age that the grid plan came into its own, in the numerous new foundations, and some of the refoundations, such as Priene.
The great buildings of the Classical age had been predominantly religious; those of the Hellenistic age were predominantly secular, though it will not do in the ancient world to make a rigid distinction between the two. The chief characteristic of Hellenistic temple architecture was the predilection for the Corinthian style, which came into its own with the Temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens, begun in 174 bce. Many Hellenistic temples were of immense size; this one is 135 feet (41 metres) by 354 feet (108 metres) on the stylobate. The oracular temple of Apollo at Didyma is 168 feet (51 metres) by 359 feet (109 metres) on the stylobate. Another colossal temple was built at Cyzicus in the 2nd century ce, with columns of more than 6.5 feet (2 metres) in diameter; it displaced the temple of Artemis at Ephesus as one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
Some of the theatres were similarly colossal. Hieron II’s 3rd-century modifications of the rock-cut theatre in Syracuse and the theatres at Megalopolis and Ephesus accommodated more than 20,000 people. There were changes of design, initiated at Athens with the emergence of New Comedy, which eliminated the chorus from a significant part in the drama. The result was the introduction of a high shallow stage, removable for revivals of the ancient plays and therefore of wood. Later the proscenium was built in from the first, and eventually it was constructed of stone, as at Oropus in about 200 bce; at Athens the change was deferred until about 150 bce. The Roman-built theatres are distinguishable by the fact that the auditorium is a perfect semicircle. The orchestra was often expanded for gladiatorial and wild animal fights and correspondingly surrounded by a high wall; at Stobi, Tyndaris, and Corinth this was more than 9.8 feet (3 metres) in height. Roman theatres were often built standing free rather than fitted into a hillside: the magnificent theatre at Aspendus is an example. The best-preserved theatre of the Roman Hellenistic world is at Bostra Traiani in present-day Syria.
All stadiums by definition ought to have the course of a given length, though, curiously, they vary by more than 30 feet (9 metres). The stadium at Athens was built in the shape of a U with one flat end and one rounded; it was reconstructed in Pentelic marble in 143 ce by the millionaire benefactor Herodes Atticus. The great stadiums at Aphrodisias and Nysa in Anatolia and at Laodicea in Syria belong to the Roman period and are rounded at both ends. The one at Aphrodisias seated 30,000 people and is excellently preserved. The gymnasium and palaestra tended in the Hellenistic period to be more formalized in plan and structure.
The palaces of the Greek period have not survived. Remaining houses show increasing elaboration and luxury. Examples from the 3rd century may be seen in Priene, consisting normally of a block of four rooms with a pillared entrance opening on to a courtyard. In some of the wealthier houses, rooms are found on three sides of the court, and there may be columns opening onto an entrance corridor on the fourth. This structure developed into a peristyle house already found in Olynthus in the 4th century. Delos has a variety of peristyle houses built on irregular plans; generally one finds a great water cistern and often spectacular mosaics. In southern Italy the Greek population developed its own style of house, whose court in Pompeii blended with that of the peristyle structure. These houses presented to the street generally bare walls. The typical house is symmetrical about its long axis. A short hall reaches an atrium, or lofty court with an impluvium, or cistern, at its centre.
Hellenistic sculpture, often of a very high quality, is notable for its variety. Alexander’s pothos, or yearning for something unattained, was a mood that became expressed in the art. Lysippus, Alexander’s favourite sculptor, had produced a seminal statue, the Apoxyomenos (also called The Scraper), a figure of an athlete standing with one arm extended and the other pulled across his body to scrape sweat from his body. The viewer has to move around it because no single viewpoint is satisfactory. Eutychides, a pupil of Lysippus, carried the principle further in his portrayal of The Fortune of Antioch. Vastly more complex, and showing the search for an original subject, is the brilliant and brutal The Punishment of Dirce by Apollonius and Tauriscus of Tralles. Laocoön, a portrayal of anguish, shows the figure of the priest Laocoön and his two sons in the grip of two snakes. The sculpture, in immobile stone, is bursting with dynamism and energy.
Pergamum was one of the great centres of sculpture. There Attalus I commemorated his victory over the Gauls with a huge monumental group on a circular base. The altar of Zeus at Pergamum bore a frieze 364 feet (111 metres) long portraying the battle of the gods and giants; muscular superhuman figures are rendered in dynamic, agonized conflict.
An aspect of the Hellenistic search for variety was the use of the genre subject, such as a boy with a goose, a drunken old hag, a boy pulling a thorn from his foot. The attractive terra-cotta figurines from Tanagra and Myrina offer a fine selection of scenes from ordinary life, such as a grossly fat nurse with a bulbous nose holding a baby in her lap, a boy wearing a dunce’s cap, two women gossiping, or acrobats in all manner of attitudes. The search for variety, paradoxically, also took the form of a return to the Classical style. Examples are the Venus de Milo, whose face recalls the manner of the 4th-century sculptor Praxiteles, and the Belvedere Torso, modeled on a 4th-century sculpture but with a muscular twist that marks it as Hellenistic.
Portraiture was a natural accompaniment of the courts. Rulers were finely portrayed not just in statues but on coins. Some of the finest of these come from the outlying kingdoms of Bactria and India. The portraits do not always flatter; the monarchs appear podgy or scrawny, broken-nosed or hook-nosed. Full statues were rarer. Portraits were not confined to rulers. The statue of Demosthenes in Copenhagen, taut and intense, is copied from a 3rd-century original by Polyeuctus, sculpted well after the orator’s death. Philosophers were often depicted; although it is possible to distinguish individuals, a philosopher type is imposed on them.
In literature, just as in the arts, one finds a combination of novelty and commonplace types and themes. In the New Comedy at Athens, of which Menander (c. 342–c. 292 bce) was the leading exponent, the theme is no longer fantasy but real life. The plays are not uproarious, as those of Aristophanes can be, but they are filled with quiet good humour. Besides Menander, there was Herodas (3rd century bce), who in his Mimiambi (Mimes) sketched episodes from life. The philosopher Theophrastus (c. 372–c. 287 bce) produced a minor masterpiece, Characters, in which he depicted some 30 sketches of questionable character types such as the Stupid Man, who cannot remember where he lives, and the Tactless Man, who makes a misogynistic speech at a wedding.
Some writers took a deeper interest in psychology. The poet Apollonius of Rhodes (b. c. 296 bce) wrote an epic on the Argonauts, in which he closely observed the psychology of Medea at her first experience of love; his sensitive and romantic rendition influenced the Roman poet Virgil in his portrayal of the ill-fated love between Dido and Aeneas. Theocritus (c. 300–c. 260 bce), who came from Sicily but lived mostly in Cos and Alexandria, examined in his second idyll the love-hate relationship of a girl to her unfaithful lover. The world of Theocritus is a world of pastoral artifice having little to do with the real hardships of country life, but the details are exquisitely noticed.
Alexandria was noted for its learning. The poet Callimachus (c. 305–c. 240 bce), who was attached to the city’s famous library, wrote poetry of polished craft and allusive scholarship. His great work Aetia (“Causes”) is a rare miscellany, a long poem made up of short sections. Callimachus, immensely influential, has quality.
The major contributions to prose literature fall in the Roman period, though the novel developed earlier in Alexandria. Ingenious and exciting plots are combined with stereotyped characters. Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe is perhaps the best of such works of prose fiction. Another important development was the rhetoric of the movement known as the Second Sophistic, which belongs mainly to the 2nd century ce. Its finest practitioner was Dio Chrysostom (c. 40–c. 110 ce). Herodes Atticus (c. 101–177 ce) and the flowery Marcus Antonius Polemon (c. 88–144 ce) had much influence; more survives from the dull, Athens-loving hypochondriac Publius Aelius Aristides (c. 117–after 181 ce) and the facile Maximus of Tyre (c. 125–185 ce). Greater than any of these is the Syrian Lucian (c. 120–after 180 ce), a satirist and brilliant entertainer, who spared neither gods nor humans.
Other writers, worthy enough, must receive passing mention: they are the geographers Strabo (c. 64 bce–after 21 ce) and Ptolemy and Pausanias (both 2nd century ce), the historians Diodorus Siculus of Sicily (1st century bce), Arrian (2nd century ce), Appian of Alexandria (2nd century ce) and Dio Cassius (2nd–3rd century ce), the voluminous Jewish writers Philo Judaeus and Flavius Josephus (c. 37–100 ce), the vastly miscellaneous Athenaeus (c. 200 ce), the historian and teacher of rhetoric Dionysius of Halicarnassus (fl. late 1st century bce), and the unknown writer (conventionally known as Longinus) of a major work On the Sublime (1st century ce), with his acute observations about Homer and Sappho, Demosthenes and Thucydides, and even about “the Jewish lawgiver” in Genesis, the first book of the Bible.
Science and medicine
The three great areas of Hellenistic scholarship were medicine, astronomy, and mathematics. Alexandria attracted Herophilus (fl. 3rd century bce) from Chalcedon, who refused to stand in awe of the accepted medical dogmas and was distinguished in systematic anatomy, and the notable physiologist Erasistratus (fl. 3rd century bce) from Ceos, who realized that the heart is the motor for the circulatory system and deduced the existence of capillaries. Philinus (fl. 3rd century bce) from Cos founded the empirical school, trusting clinical observation rather than theory. In the 1st century bce Asclepiades of Bithynia, who worked in Rome and was a great believer in hygiene, was claimed the founder of the rival methodist school, based on Epicurean atomism. In the 2nd century emerged the towering figure of Galen of Pergamum (c. 129–199/216 ce), whose authority later was second only to that of Aristotle.
In astronomy the first great advances were due to Aristarchus of Samos in the early 3rd century bce. He was the pioneer of the theory that the Sun is at the centre of the universe. His greatest achievement lay in his method for determining the sizes and distance of the Sun and the Moon, though his observational technique was inadequate for correct results. Later in the century Eratosthenes of Cyrene, a typical polymath, calculated the Earth’s circumference by an excellent method, though his good result was due to the mutual canceling out of two errors.
In mathematics the key figures are Euclid (fl. c. 300 bce), Archimedes (c. 287–212 bce), and Apollonius of Perga (fl. late 3rd century bce). Euclid, whose Elements served as a basic textbook of geometry for 2,000 years, was both a systematizer and original mathematician. Archimedes preferred to concentrate on particular problems, working in the realms of geometry, physics, and mechanics, and he formulated the science of hydrostatics. Apollonius of Perga was the great authority on conics. One other significant mathematician was Heron of Alexandria (fl. 1st century ce), who actually devised a simple steam engine but treated it as a mere toy.
The philosophers of the period pursued autarkeia (self-sufficiency), or nonattachment. The most extreme position was taken by the Cynics, whose archetype was Diogenes of Sinope (c. 400–325 bce). Behind his rejection of traditional allegiances lay a profound concern with moral values. What matters to human beings, he taught, was not social status or nationality but individual well-being, achieved by a reliance on one’s natural endowments. He was followed by the attractive couple Crates (c. 365–285 bce) and Hipparchia. Zeno of Citium (335–263 bce), founder of the Stoics, began from there. To the Stoics nothing is good but virtue, nothing bad but vice; all else is indifferent. The Stoics were pantheists. They believed that all is in the hands of God; indeed, God is all. Moreover, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, and human beings only have to accept and give praise. Zeno was succeeded by a religious genius named Cleanthes (331–232 bce) and he by the great systematizer Chrysippus (c. 280–207 bce). The 2nd century produced Panaetius (c. 185–109 bce), who smoothed away some of the sharper Stoic paradoxes for the Romans, and the 1st brought Poseidonius (c. 135–50 bce), another mediator between East and West.
Epicurus (341–270 bce), an Athenian contemporary of Zeno, stood poles apart in thought from the stoics. In opposition to their moralism he taught that the goal of life is pleasure, a position for which he has been much maligned. In fact, he advocated the simple life as being the most pleasurable and said that it was impossible to live pleasurably without being wise, just, and honest.John Ferguson The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica