The Legacy of Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic World

The Legacy of Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic World Gregory H. James Ancient Greece & Rome Professor Anthony Daly Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts 12/9/2011 Did the conquests and achievements of Alexander the Great and those of the Successor Kingdoms have any lasting effects on the peoples and cultures who were subjected to them? In under ten years, Alexander the Great destroyed an empire that took the great conqueror Cyrus the Great thirty years to build. Out of the ashes of the Persian Empire Alexander built his own, a vast territory stretching from Greece to the Indus River in modern- day Pakistan, Alexander ruled over one of the most ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse empires the world has ever known. Upon his death in 323 B.C., just one month shy of his thirty-third birthday, Alexander left behind not only an empire but a legacy that proved as equally monumental. While every great general and conqueror since, from Hannibal to Caesar and even Napoleon, has weighed his accomplishments against those of the Macedonian conqueror. However, the cultural legacy of Alexander has not merely been military in nature. Alexander’s conquests laid the foundation for the spread of Hellenism, a common cultural and philosophical background that would not be seen again until the spread of Christianity centuries later. “As a result of Alexander, Greek athletics would come to be performed in the burning heat of the Persian gulf; the tale of the Trojan horse would be told on the Oxus and among the natives of the Punjab; …Greeks would practice as Buddhists and Homer would be translated into an Indian language…”1 Moreover, the Successor Kingdoms, particularly the Seleucid Empire, the Ptolemaic Kingdom, and the Greek Kingdom of Bactria, also had a hand in shaping this Hellenistic legacy. For it would be the Ptolemies who would fulfill Alexander’s dream of a Hellenistic fusion culture and it would be the artisans of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom who would first depict Buddha as a man.2 Despite the great cultural achievements of the Hellenistic world, few have survived the centuries. Through the ravages of war and the slow decay of time, much of this ancient legacy has been reduced to dust and ruins. The conquests and achievements 1 Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1973), 25. 2 C. A. Robinson, Jr., “The Greeks in the Far East,” The Classical Journal 44, no. 7 (April, 1949): 410 1 of Alexander the Great and the Successor Kingdoms had profound effects during the Hellenistic era and in the immediate centuries after. However, these effects were mostly confined to the cities, and few of these have survived to the modern day. With the death of Alexander in 323 B.C., one of the largest empires the world had yet known hung in the balance. Over a span of ten years and ten thousand miles, Alexander and his army carved an empire into the very landscape of Asia. Alexander’s empire, however, was not merely of land or wealth but of the mind. The seed of Hellenic civilization was planted by Alexander throughout the soil of his empire. The Greek world would forever be transformed and the old polis system, once the cornerstone of Greek civilization, would never again be a viable means of governance in the Hellenic world. Though cities would remain as the political centers of Hellenic civilization, they were now more cultural centers rather than sovereign townships. “…in general the Hellenistic states were agglomerations of cities…”3 Greeks had had contact with much of the known world at this point, but the east, a common recurring theme in Greek literature since the time of Homer, remained relatively untouched. “Greek art had already reached to Paris; Greeks had worked as craftsmen near modern Munich or lived in the lagoons of the Adriatic south of Venice, but no Greek from the mainland had ever been east of Susa or visited the steps of central Asia…”4 All of this would change in the wake of Alexander’s inexorable march east. Greeks would travel to every corner of the empire and establish themselves in an ancient and seemingly alien world. “Interaction between Greek and non-Greek cultures is one of the constants of Greek history, and never was it more intense than in the Hellenistic period.”5 However, Alexander’s greatest and most lasting 3 C. Bradford Welles, “Alexander’s Historical Achievement,” Greece & Rome 12, no. 2 (Oct., 1965): 225. 4 Fox, 25. 5 S. M. Burstein, “The Hellenistic Fringe: The Case of Meroë,” in Hellenistic History and Culture, ed. Peter Green. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, Ltd., 1993), 38. 2 legacy in Greece, and the rest of Europe for that matter, was the change he brought about in the notion of monarchy. Prior to Alexander, the term “king” in Greece was more a description of an office rather than a title; one would be a king as one might be a general.6 After Alexander, the deification of rulers, the notions of the divine right of kings and absolute monarchy, would come to be mainstays for the next two millennia. “Its consequences were an absolutism such as Europe – and for that matter Asia – had never known before and has never ceased to know since.”7 Despite his presence in the region for almost ten years, Alexander’s imprint on Asia remains a paradoxical one. While the regions in question (Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Persia, etc…) undoubtedly benefited from the influx of Greek science and technology, little seems to have changed in the daily life of the local populations. Alexander’s major triumph in Asia was the founding of cities, most notably the city of Alexandria in Egypt, which still survives to this day. “Each Alexandria was a full-blooded city where men had to vote on Greek decrees and agree to Greek law…”8 Alexander is said to have founded some twenty cities throughout his lifetime. While they were intended to serve foremost as strategic bulwarks against barbarian tribes and local revolts, they also served as outposts of Greek culture and helped to knit together the fragile patchwork that was Alexander’s empire. In many ways, all that held the empire together were the cities. Perhaps he could have held the empire together; but the very fact that his military successes were so rapid and unabating meant that, in effect, his armies had only cut a narrow track through the Persian empire. His Asiatic ‘empire’ can even be represented, by way of caricature, as little more than a thin strip of conquered land winding across Asia and back, leaving whole regions almost completely untouched by his passing.9 6 Welles, 221. 7 William Scott Ferguson, Greek Imperialism (Kitchener, Ontario: Batoche Books, 2001), 76. 8 Fox, 488. 9 Graham Shipley, The Greek World After Alexander: 323-30 B.C. (New York: Routledge, 2000), 39. 3 In spite of his founding of cities, Alexander had little effect on the peoples whose lands his army marched through. Alexander may have had a grand unifying vision that sought to reconcile Greek and barbarian and bring the two together, but he was never able to translate that vision into governance. Much of the governing of Asia was left to Greek generals whom Alexander had installed as satraps (regional governors) in the model of the Persian government he had destroyed. However, these hard military men had little tolerance for Alexander’s fondness of eastern culture and worked mostly to keep open his supply lines. The Persian locals too, it must be remembered, possessed a sophisticated culture as old or even older than that of the Greeks and saw no good reason to relinquish it.10 “And yet the hellenization of Iran was not deep or wide enough for permanent results. It was competing with an alternative, the Iranian nobility to whom a town was more the sum of its great families than a self-governing citizenry in an expanse of royal land.”11 For Persians at the time, the family was life’s one continuing facet. No culture spread through cities and administrative officials could ever hope to change this. Though Alexander possessed grand ideas, the truth is that Alexander brought no substantive change to the lands of the east. “The territory was still subject under precisely the same conditions as under the Persian administration; the ruler was merely Macedonian and not Persian, as was his governor, who retained the Persian title of office.”12 The locals still paid taxes, and were undoubtedly conscripted in times of war as they had been while under Persian rule. The only difference now is that the person or persons ordering such things now had names in an unknown language. “At the time of his death, he had established no system, and with 10 Michael A. Flower, “Not Great Man History: Reconceptualizing a Course on Alexander the Great,” The Classical World 100, no. 4 (2007): 422. 11 Fox, 493. 12 A. B. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988): 229. 4 the news his world fell apart.”13 Much of what is known about the Hellenistic world would be built not by Alexander but by his successors. Though they would lack his military talent and grand vision, the Ptolemies and Seleucids and others would be tasked with governing the world Alexander left behind, albeit a more fractured and divided one. However, it should not be said that Alexander deserves no credit for what other men were able to accomplish.

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