The Hellenistic Age

This is Unit Five of Western Civilization One, part two of two: the culture of the Hellenistic kingdoms, the three schools that taught how to live under a king, the four procedures the exam tests, and the theme that holds the unit together. Part one ended with grid cities feeding the poor for peace. Carry the same idea through this part. Greek culture spread across the Middle East while Greek politics did not, and the anchor states it in its conclusion on philosophy. Women in the kingdoms held property and queens held power. Greeks adopted Isis and fused Serapis from Egyptian and Greek gods. The Library gathered the world's texts, and Euclid and Archimedes worked in kingdoms, not poleis. And the philosophers taught how to live under a king: Epicureans withdrew, Cynics mocked, Stoics served, and none asked Socrates' question about the good city, because the answer no longer mattered to anyone who could act on it. By the end you will be able to describe Hellenistic women and answer the sample question on Isis and Serapis. To distinguish the three schools and name the mathematicians and the Library. To read the map and classify a school. To compare polis with kingdom and sequence the period. And to state the theme.

Two entries on women and gods: the property and the queens with their caveats, and the fused gods that the exam's fourth sample question tests.

Seclusion loosened, with three caveats.

WC1 0416 Hellenistic Women: Property, Queens, and the Caveats

Classical Athenian seclusion loosened enormously. Women controlled property, lent and borrowed, managed inheritances, and queens like Olympias and Cleopatra the Seventh were praised for political skill, as the Macedonian norm of female autonomy spread with Macedonian rule. Aristotle's two-fifths of Spartan land in women's hands is the anchor's figure. The caveats: men still ran politics, law favored them, and birth ratios imply female infanticide.

Gods fused, and kings worshipped.

WC1 0417 Hellenistic Religion: Isis, Serapis, and the Ruler Cult

Greeks in the East adopted foreign cults and fused gods. Serapis, on the witness, combined Osiris and Apis with Zeus and Helios, and Ptolemy built him a temple in Alexandria; the cult of Isis spread across the Greek world; kings were worshipped as gods. The exam's fourth sample question asks for Isis and Serapis. This entry is witness-built, because the anchor has no section on Hellenistic religion.

Four entries on schools, science and the Library: withdraw and enjoy, mock it or accept it, the mathematicians who outran their technology, and the first research university.

Withdraw, and enjoy with refinement.

WC1 0418 Epicureans: Withdraw and Enjoy

Hellenistic philosophy turned from politics to personal ethics, how to live in tranquility. Epicurus taught withdrawal from public life; the gods, if any, are indifferent; death is final and so not to be feared; pleasure means refinement, not excess, sex yes and emotional love no, since love brings suffering. Epicurean did not mean gluttony; the modern sense inverts the school.

Mock it, or accept it as fate.

WC1 0419 Cynics and Stoics: Mock It or Accept It

Cynics like Diogenes held convention corrupting and nature the source of virtue. Stoics, an offshoot, taught fate and reason: fill your social role, serve in politics as part of a divine plan, bear trials without emotion. All three schools accommodated the status quo, by avoiding, mocking, or supporting it, and none asked Socrates' question about the good city. Greek thought spread without its politics.

Ideas that outran their technology.

WC1 0420 Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus

Euclid built geometry from axioms to theorems in a textbook used into the twentieth century. Archimedes applied it to engineering and war machines at Syracuse. Eratosthenes measured Earth's circumference within two hundred miles, the anchor's figure, and Hipparchus devised latitude and longitude. Aristarchus, on the witness, first proposed a sun-centered system. Ideas outran technology, and the anchor calls ancient technical change glacial.

Every text collected, and no culprit for the fire.

WC1 0421 The Library of Alexandria and the Museon

The Ptolemies funded the Library and the Museon, which the anchor calls the first research university in the West: every text collected and translated from every subject people, lecture halls, scholars in residence. Its destruction is contested, Caesar's forces or later fanatics, with no verdict. Do not assign the burning to one culprit; the anchor refuses to.

Two procedures: reading Alexander's route as a loop and the kingdoms as three blocks, and naming a school by its attitude to public life and to feeling.

A clockwise loop, then three blocks.

WC1 0422 Reading a Map of Alexander's Route and the Successor Kingdoms

For Alexander's route, trace a clockwise loop: Macedon, across to Anatolia, down the Syrian coast to Egypt, back up through Mesopotamia to Persia, east to the Indus, south along the coast to Babylon. For the kingdoms, three blocks: Macedon and Greece in the west, Egypt in the south, Syria to Persia in the east. The first battle on Persian soil is on the loop's first leg, the Granicus. The burned capital is on the leg into Persia, Persepolis. The cheapest wheat is the southern block, Ptolemaic Egypt. The kingdom that lost its eastern provinces first is the eastern block, the Seleucids. The block nearest Rome, which fell first, is Antigonid Macedon. The Indus lands belong to no kingdom by two eighty, so a Seleucid realm stopping at Persia is correct. Check whether the map is dated three twenty-three or two eighty.

Attitude to public life, attitude to feeling.

WC1 0423 Classifying a Hellenistic School: Epicurean, Cynic, Stoic

Given a way of life, ask two questions: what is the attitude to public life, and what is the attitude to feeling. Epicurean: withdraw, seek calm pleasure, avoid pain. Cynic: mock, strip away convention, live by nature. Stoic: serve, do your duty within fate, master emotion. A man who holds office because a divine order assigned it and accepts his son's death without tears is Stoic. A teacher in a garden who avoids the assembly and says the gods do not care is Epicurean. A philosopher in a barrel who insults a king and calls titles corruptions is Cynic. A widow managing her estate quietly who holds that death ends everything is Epicurean. Only the Stoics taught engagement in politics, and none of the three tried to change the state: Cynics mocked it, Epicureans left it, Stoics served it.

Two more procedures: the polis and the kingdom compared on who rules, what a citizen is, what a city is and what language means, and the period sequenced on three anchors.

Four features, and where sovereignty sat.

WC1 0424 Polis and Hellenistic Kingdom Compared: Citizen, King, City, Language

Compare polis and kingdom on four features with paired answers. Who rules: the polis by an assembly of citizens, the kingdom by a Macedonian king worshipped as a god. What a citizen is: the basic member with a vote, against an elite mark held in several cities. What a city is: the state itself, against a grid-planned outpost of Greek rule over a non-Greek population. What language means: a dialect of one people, against koine as the tongue of state over Aramaic and local speech. A lawmaker chosen by lot is the polis; free food for the poor to keep the peace is the kingdom; a ruler cult is the kingdom; a decision by the whole body of male citizens is the polis. The polis did not vanish, since Greek cities inside the kingdoms kept councils for local matters. The contrast is where sovereignty sat, with the citizens or with the king.

Three anchors, and the traps between them.

WC1 0425 Sequencing Macedon to Rome, 359 to 30 BCE

Fix three anchors: Philip's accession in three fifty-nine, Alexander's death in three twenty-three, and Cleopatra's death in thirty. Before three twenty-three is conquest, from three twenty-three to two eighty is the wars of the generals, and after is the kingdoms declining toward Rome. Chaeronea in three thirty-eight, the crossing in three thirty-four and Persepolis in three thirty are conquest, in that order. Three kingdoms by two eighty ends the generals' phase. Parthia breaks away in two forty-seven, before Rome's arrival; Corinth destroyed and Macedon reduced by one forty-six is Rome arriving; Pompey ends the Seleucid remnant in sixty-three and Cleopatra dies in thirty. Two traps: Chandragupta's treaty about three ten falls in the generals' phase, and the Antigonids fell to Rome first, west to east, so the kingdom Rome took first is Macedon.

One capstone entry: the hidden theme of every Hellenistic question, followed through the chapter from Chaeronea to the Stoics.

Everything went east except the citizen assembly.

WC1 0426 Alexander's Empire Without Alexander: Culture Went East, Politics Stayed Home

The exam's Hellenistic questions have one hidden theme, and the anchor states it: Greek culture spread across the Middle East while Greek politics did not. Philip ended the polis at Chaeronea in three thirty-eight, and from then on Greeks lived under kings. Alexander conquered Persia in twelve years and ruled it as Persia had been ruled, keeping the satrapies, marrying his officers to Persian women, and dying in Babylon in three twenty-three as a Great King, not a citizen of anything. His generals made three kingdoms by two eighty, each a monarchy over a non-Greek majority, governed by a Greek minority through inherited Persian methods. What went east was everything the Classical Age had made except its politics: cities on grids with theaters and gymnasia; koine as the language of state from Egypt to the Indus; the Library gathering the world's texts, with Euclid, Archimedes and Eratosthenes working in kingdoms, not poleis; Isis adopted and Serapis fused, the sample question's case; women holding property and queens holding power. And the philosophers taught how to live under a king: Epicureans withdrew, Cynics mocked, Stoics served, and none asked Socrates' question about the good city, because the answer no longer mattered to anyone who could act on it. Citizenship became an ornament held in several cities at once. The polis had been the state; the Hellenistic city was an outpost. The exam does not ask whether this was a loss, and the course does not say. It asks facts inside the theme, what koine was, who ruled Egypt, which school taught duty, why Serapis existed, what the Library did. The anchor's larger claims, the welfare state, the Silk Road's beginning, the first research university, and its judgment that Alexander deserves the Great, are its own, attributed. The record is the twelve years and the three centuries after them.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe Hellenistic women controlling property and queens praised for skill, with the caveats that men ran politics and birth ratios imply infanticide, and answer the sample question: Isis and Serapis. You can distinguish Epicureans who withdrew, Cynics who mocked and Stoics who served, name Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes and Hipparchus, and describe the Library with no culprit for its burning. You can read Alexander's route as a loop and the kingdoms as three blocks, and classify a school by its attitude to public life and to feeling. You can compare polis with kingdom on who rules, citizen, city and language, and sequence the period on three anchors from Philip to Cleopatra, west to east as Rome arrived. And you can state the theme, culture went east and politics stayed home, which is this unit's one idea. Unit six opens on the power that ended all three kingdoms, Rome, and the republic that conquered the Mediterranean before it conquered itself.