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The Hellenistic Age: A Short History Peter Green

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The Hellenistic Age: A Short History

Peter Green

The Hellenistic Age: A Short History Peter Green The Hellenistic era witnessed the overlap of antiquity’s two great Western civilizations, the Greek and the Roman. This was the epoch of Alexander’s vast expansion of the Greco-Macedonian world, the rise and fall of his successors’ major dynasties in Egypt and , and, ultimately, the establishment of Rome as the first Mediterranean superpower.

The Hellenistic Age chronicles the years 336 to 30 BCE, from the days of Philip and Alexander of Macedon to the death of and the final triumph of Caesar’s heir, the young . Peter Green’s remarkably far-ranging study covers the prevalent themes and events of those centuries: the Hellenization of an immense swath of the known world–from Egypt to India–by Alexander’s conquests; the lengthy and chaotic partition of this empire by rival Macedonian marshals after Alexander’s death; the decline of the polis (city state) as the predominant political institution; and, finally, Rome’s moment of transition from republican to imperial rule.

Predictably, this is a story of war and power-politics, and of the developing fortunes of art, science, and statecraft in the areas where Alexander’s coming disseminated Hellenic culture. It is a rich narrative tapestry of warlords, libertines, philosophers, courtesans and courtiers, dramatists, historians, scientists, merchants, mercenaries, and provocateurs of every stripe, spun by an accomplished classicist with an uncanny knack for infusing life into the distant past, and applying fresh insights that make ancient history seem alarmingly relevant to our own times.

To consider the three centuries prior to the dawn of the common era in a single short volume demands a scholar with a great command of both subject and narrative line. The Hellenistic Age is that rare book that manages to coalesce a broad spectrum of events, persons, and themes into one brief, indispensable, and amazingly accessible survey.

The Hellenistic Age: A Short History Details

Date : Published April 3rd 2007 by Modern Library (first published 2007) ISBN : 9780679642794 Author : Peter Green Format : Hardcover 240 pages Genre : History, Nonfiction, Ancient History

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Bruce Reiter says

This is a great little book that covers the time period from Alexander to the fall of Egypt as the last Macedonian dynasty. It is only 130 pages with some good maps and an ancestral chart to keep track of the dynastic players. The author includes philosophic insights to include the scientific reasoning of the day and why those of us lower on the food chain are always concerned with ethics. The book is very readable. I was surprised at the wealth of the ancient world and have less good feeling about our republican form of government. Plunder has been and I guess continues to be the name of the game. I used to think Renaissance Italy was a bad place to be a leader or his/her offspring. Can't hold a candle to the machinations of the 300 years after Alexander.

Nicholas Bobbitt says

Green's introduction, where he gives a rundown of the sources he considers important and valuable to the study of the , is an excellent way to begin a book on the subject, especially as in his foreword he considers it a "concise treatment" of the period in question. This allows him to point readers in other directions if they find the subject interesting after reading his book. In the first chapter, Green does an excellent job of explaining Alexander's efforts to conquer and Asia, and their unintended consequences of setting the stage for the Hellenistic Age. Through the following chapters, Green attempts, with some success, to explain the period of warring claimants to Alexander's empire. This book succeeds in providing simple, easily understood facts about the period it attempts to provide a concise treatment of, meaning that it has succeeded at its job but not done much else. I am marginally more interested in following up in the sources he recommends throughout the book, but not enough to go out and find them at the moment. In all, the book is one I'll try to keep on my bookshelf until and unless I find a better overview of the period.

Mike says

As the title suggests ("A Short History") this treatment of the period from Alexander to Augustus sacrifices depth for brevity. Not being familiar with the subject I enjoyed this well-written introduction. Not only is the book a good first overview, it has plenty of notes geared towards further study and a short guide to further reading indicating what the author considers current best texts--as well as the usual bibliography.

After reading this I not longer think Oliver Stone's choice of Colin Farrell to play Alexander was a poor one.

Bonnie says

Good choice for a history text for one of my classes this semester. It was a great supplement to classwork; I enjoyed this one. Although I would have liked for many things to be explained with more detail, I understand that this was a book meant to be brief--and, thus, I've already purchased the much more comprehensive

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"From Alexander to Actium."

Christina Baehr says

Not a great read, but full of gems of information. For instance, the Greeks knew about a lot of technology that they didn’t bother to pursue or develop - including, amazingly, steam power! Why? Because they lived in a constant state of fear of their massive slave populations. Think about it, a water wheel could grind 150kg of wheat per day, as per against your slave grinding 7 kg. But what is that slave going to do all day if you get a water wheel?

Anatolikon says

Peter Green has crafted a very readable and well-rounded history of the Hellenistic Age in the eastern Mediterranean, from the death of Alexander to Rome's conquest of the squabbling Greek kingdoms. It is nice to see such an accessible, cheap volume put out by a major historian in the field. The reason that I don't give it 5 stars is because at times it feels extremely rushed. A lot of detail is sacrificed, and trying to follow some events is mind boggling.

While the book itself is good, the real reason to own this volume is for the appendices. There are some excellent tables depicting the very convoluted family trees of the various Hellenistic dynasties. The Ptolemy tree is an especially welcome addition. The maps are nothing terribly special, but there are a number of them and they're crisp, clear and easy to read. (The Aegean one is a little squished, but it is well-labeled.) The chronological table is also wonderful for making sense of this fast-paced era.

This book is more than worth its price tag for an introduction into the era. More advanced students will want to look at Dr. Green's 'Alexander to Actium', but this little book has a lot of good stuff inside.

Coyle says

The Hellenistic Age: A Short History is basically the, well, short version of Green's longer work (and magnum opus) Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age. Even more, this book has the benefit of being the result of 20 more years of scholarship and reflection on Green's part.

In the Introduction, Green discusses both terms, and the state of Hellenistic scholarship. In addition to the standing-Classical-world problem of lack of sources, Hellenistic scholarship also suffers from over- specialization. That is, there are all sorts of focused studies on coins, inscriptions, papyri, politics, and so on, but few comprehensive narrative studies. This book is an attempt to correct that lack.

Unfortunately, the Hellenistic Age (roughly from the death of Alexander through death of Mark Antony and Cleopatra) is one of the least understood and studied eras of the Classical period. This is unfortunate, because it is an era so much like our own. Huge nation states are regularly at war with each other, the poor are trampled by the rich, massive mechanized armies march across the landscape, and arts and sciences have functionally died. Even more, the politics of the day are a tangled nightmare of dynastic intrigue, backstabbing, and calling on powerful outsiders to solve local problems. Dr. Green untangles this mess in a way that makes this three hundred year stretch a delight to learn about. Not that the period itself is

PDF File: The Hellenistic Age: A Short 4 History... Read and Download Ebook The Hellenistic Age: A Short History... particularly delightful- all the nasty stuff that goes on today (extermination of minorities, persecution of the Jews, destruction of the environment) was going on then too, but without the softening influence of 2000 years of Christian history.

Recommended for those interested in Ancient history.

Daniel Morgan says this is a fascinating history of the Hellenistic kingdoms from Alexander to Rome. The book is a fast-paced run through the soap opera of dynastic politics, the cultural developments of the post classical era, and the relationship between the Hellenistic States and Rome. I really enjoyed reading this book, because now I understand how all of the different cities, Kings, philosophers, and ancient cultural movements fit together. is writing flows well, the transitions are so smooth that I barely notice them, and the author is very witty!

My only complaint is that sometimes the author uses obscure language. He makes references to Kipling poems, includes untranslated French sayings, and paraphrases old idioms. If you aren't already familiar with what he is referencing, the allusions will serve to confuse rather than help the reader make connections. Also, this is a minor complaint but the author uses the romanized versions of Greek words rather than the transliterated Greek and this bothers me.

If you are at all interested in a Game of Thrones style political history, the Hellenistic age, Alexander and Macedonia,or the rise of Rome, I would recommend reading this book.

Myke Cole says

An outstanding, highly accessible history of a greatly underserved period. There's a real dearth of strong scholarship on the time from 's death to Cleopatra VI's suicide, which is a shame, because this is some Game of Thrones shit right here. We're talking levels of intrigue, scheming, battles and romance that would make the Supranos look like a shitty, half-baked epic. Somebody desperately needs to make a TV series about this.

Anyway, Green manages to convey all this excitement with real ability, in language that is colloquial and resonant without being populist. The book is even more valuable as a sourcebook for amateur historians like myself. Green has done a fabulous job of illuminating his sources, and provides invaluable maps and genealogies that help the reader keep abreast of the incredibly complex dynastic relationships as they evolve over the years.

I'd recommend ensuring that you have a good grasp on Alexander's legacy before attempting this book, but once you do, it's the first book I recommend you read. You'll come away with an excellent grasp of the basic political, military, social, economic and religio-cultural history of the epoch. Highly recommended.

John-Paul says

This is "a short history" and not "a short introduction," and so Green's style is more of a rushed-review-of- stuff-you-already-know rather than, well, an introduction. I almost threw the book across the room when I

PDF File: The Hellenistic Age: A Short 5 History... Read and Download Ebook The Hellenistic Age: A Short History... read on page 14, "Alexander's conquest of the Achaemenid empire [...] this is a story that has been told well many times already, and I see no need to recount it in detail here." Fine, Prof. Green, I'll read your long-ass full-scale biography of Alexander. In the meantime, I'll finish this "short" book so I can really get a sense of crazy internecine fighting among Alexander's descendants and successors, because the only important thing one really needs to know about Alexander is that he didn't care about proper local administration.

There's good stuff, though. Green wants you to know that the Hellenization of much of what gets called "the ancient world" is (1) an unintended consequence of thoughtless military conquest; (2) more about political theology (i.e., semi-divine hereditary monarchs) with its attendant fratricide, incest, and moral depravity than it's about philosophy or art or "culture"; and (3) that the philosophy that rose in this period did so to accommodate imperial realities and not vice-versa. This last point is Green's big one, I think: Stoicism, Cynicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism are the varied outlooks one has when one has given up on politics, or one thinks that politics is about acclimating oneself to the ugliness of power politics. All of which is to say, as Green does a few times, that this was a totally horrible period for ordinary people, slaves and "free" alike, and that the intellectuals didn't do diddly-squat for them. The priests, meanwhile, just existed to support ruler-cults.

So yeah, thanks to Alexander being a strategic genius (but otherwise a drunken maniac) we all now get to read Plato and Aristotle, and the New Testament is in Greek, but this is incidental because really the period from 336 BCE - 30 AD is pretty much Insane Clowns Fighting for Legitimacy while the Rest of the World Starves and Works to Death, until Octavian finally implements double-entry bookkeeping. PS It was also bad for the Jews. (Judas Maccabeus is mentioned once but not much is made of his story. Jesus is not mentioned at all. And IN NO WAY SHOULD THIS PERIOD BE VIEWED AS "PRE-" ANYTHING, BECAUSE NOTHING IMPORTANT HAPPENED AROUND 30 AD-NO-I-MEAN-CE THAT MIGHT AFFECT THE WAY ONE VIEWS THE PERIOD JUST BEFORE IT. MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE HERE.)

The book has some really useful timelines and genealogical charts at the end. I dare you to look at the genealogy of the Ptolemies without vomiting.

Michael Lewyn says

Sometimes this book is a bit overloaded with names and dates, but it is still interesting, and tells a coherent story: between the death of Alexander the Great and the rise of the Roman Empire, Alexander's various commanders split up his empire, murdered all of the decreased emperor's family, and then created dynasties that busily murdered their own family members until the Romans cleaned up the mess. Ordinary people were not heavily affected by this except during when they were being enslaved during wars (which happened quite often, since the ever-shifting rivalries among the kings led to lots of wars).

Green believes that for people who weren't kings or slaves, this was a profoundly conservative age: intellectuals tended to believe that everything worth doing had been said during the Golden Age of Athens a century or two earlier, and so were not overly creative. Economic thought was backwards because intellectuals and kings disdained trade (however, I wonder whether attitudes would have made a difference in a low-tech, pre-Industrial Revolution world).

David R. says

The book may be a "Short History" of the 300 or so years between the epic conquests of Alexander and the

PDF File: The Hellenistic Age: A Short 6 History... Read and Download Ebook The Hellenistic Age: A Short History... final elimination of Ptolemaic Egypt, but Green's work is no light saunter through the topic. This one's rich in detail and deserves a slow, careful read. But the benefits are manifold: a decent understanding of how the Hellenistic world shook out after Alexander, how it ultimately collapsed, and lots of Green's wonderful, academically puckish language. This one is probably for a serious student, but it is worth the read.

Elizabeth Sulzby says

The best and most well documented book on the Hellenistic Age, starting with Alexander the Great (and his father, Philip) of Macedonia and through the many "successors." This book goes through the first century "CE" without getting sidetracked into the life of Jesus. Green does reference beyond 30 CE into the limited contemporary books, documents, and historical writings looking back from the first 3 centuries CE. This very short book (130 pp. running text, plus 69 pages of maps, ancestry trees, readings used and those useful for beginners and advanced readers, glossaries, indices, etc.). The pages are tightly packed with information but still engaged me throughout. Since so many documents from the centuries covered have come available in the 205h and 21st Centuries CE, Green's book should be standard for texts or references for interested readers. It's a slow read because of the tightly packed text and documentation, but it's also possible to read it rapidly as a "story."

The era after Alexander through Augustus is a period during which oral, written, and political/empire building has been missing. I really needed an overview such as this promised to be, but I found it much more, due to Green's careful documentation. It is a source book that I expect to return to often. I also read historical novels of this period and was glad to find out some events used in them were at least partially historically based. I was disappointed in Green's lack of tying the historical sources to what was in the Alexandria libraries. Strong points of his documentation materials that are referenced by contemporaries, where old manuscripts (mostly on papyrus), or exist only as fragments, and even how actively libraries and circles of scholars operated. I want to know all the documents that were in the main library of Alexandria, how many are available from other sources, and how many are still missing.

Jenine says

This was a good bedtime book. After a few minutes trying to keep the Seleucid leaders straight I was usually ready to sleep. But given some daylight reading and a bit of concentration I found it rewarding. The author writes with great confidence. How can he know the motivations of these schemers? I often wondered. But I believed his version.

Clayton says

Seleucus II has his eye on taking Cilicia but his mother Cleopatra's second stepson Eumenes is moving a detachment across Syria to engage with Ptolemy IV who is currently putting down a rebellion by his second wife Cleopatra's uncle's cousin Antipater, who is about to corner the Bactrian wheat market, which will be a disaster for Craterus' army that's trying to take Thracia back from Ptolemy II's sister-wife Cleopatra, who is ruling the city in tandem with Meleager's father's cousin Perdiccas, who has struck a deal with the Tigran of Armenia because Arrhidaeus V is going to marry his brother's son's cousin's daughter Cleopatra, even though she was betrothed to Seleucus III after he killed his wife Cleopatra during a battle in the Hellespont because her friend's secretary's assistant wrote a mocking verse about Ptolemy MMCII and his sister-wife Cleopatra

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