Hellenistic Era

In 336 BC, Alexander III succeeded his father Philip II to become King of Macedonia. Alexander took up Philip’s plan to invade the Persian empire and within twelve years, he had conquered as far as the steppes of Russia, Afghanistan, and the Punjab in the Indian subcontinent. Alexander's brief reign ushered in what’s known as the Hellenistic Age. City states were no longer able to play powerful roles in international politics as Athens and Sparta had done in the fifth century. They gave way to federations such as the Achaean League.

Greek became the ‘lingua franca’ of culture and political administration throughout the Hellenistic world. The other primary legacy of Alexander, indirectly, was the survival of Greek literature, belonging to the fourth century and earlier. This was achieved mainly through the establishment by the first Ptolemy of the Museum and Library at Alexandria. Scholars working there acquired the library of Aristotle from the Lyceum. They also established the most authentic possible texts from Homer and Hesiod onwards. Stoicism arose as a new philosophical creed appropriate to the needs of a more cosmopolitan age and Epicureanism achieved a wide following.

The Hellenistic period saw considerable achievements in science. There were some technical improvements with practical benefits. Archimedes of Syracuse is credited with the ‘Archimedean screw’ for raising water and the compound pulley, as well as exclaiming ‘eureka!’ (‘I have found it’) when he realized how the water was displaced when he stepped into a bath.

The Romans had long known about the Greeks. The legendary history of Rome’s founding is linked to Greek tradition. Its founders, Romulus and Remus, were said to be descendants of Trojan Aeneas who had survived the fall of Troy to the Greeks. He then set sail on his own odyssey in search of his destination, Rome.

Since the fourth century BC, the Romans had been gaining control of more and more of the Italian peninsula but it was not until the third century that they came into any significant contact with Greeks. The chief power on the Greek mainland was the kingdom of Macedon. On four occasions between 214 and 146 BC, Rome was forced to engage in wars with Macedonia which ended with the whole region being placed under Roman rule. As a warning to other cities, Rome destroyed the Greek city of Corinth, which had been a centre of anti-Roman activity since 149 BC. The population was killed or sold into slavery.

Roman influence spread but as the Roman poet Horace proclaimed “Conquered Greece took its captor captive” and Greece became ‘Graecia Capta’ (‘Roman Greece’). The polis of Corinth which had been destroyed in the mid-second century BC was re-founded as a Roman city. Its inhabitants were Latin-speaking Romans but within two generations, Greek was once again the dominant language.

By the first century BC, Greece was one of the many provinces of the Roman empire and its provincial name was Achaea. The ‘Pax Romana’ (‘Roman peace’) brought considerable change to the lives of Greeks. Under the Roman administrative structure, the internal structure of the ‘polis’ was altered. The Romans encouraged an oligarchic form of government in the Greek cities. A small oligarchy was easier to control than an unpredictable democracy. Local affairs continued to be conducted by Greeks holding official positions and serving on city councils. They kept order, raised funds for necessary local expenditure and raised taxes for Rome. But local administration came under the immediate supervision of the Roman governor.

Hellenism continued to develop under Roman tutelage. Over the course of two and a half centuries, Rome conquered Greek cities while absorbing Hellenistic culture resulting in a hybrid Graeco-Roman culture.