The Hellenistic World

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell

Ch. XXV The Hellenistic World

History of the Greek speaking world can be divided into three periods:
1) The free City States (freedom and disorder)
2) The Macedonian domination (Hellenistic Age)
3) Under the Roman Empire

Alexander tried to meld Greek and barbarian customs into one. But the Greeks were not very impressed with Alexander whom they considered semi-Greek to begin with and not fans of barbarians at all.

After the death of Alexander the Hellenistic world was split into three separate dynasties between some of Alexander's generals: Antigonus controlled the European part, Ptolemy the African, and Seleucus controlled the Asiatic parts.

Ptolemies and the Seleucids ruled as military tyrannies. Ptolemy held sway in Egypt for a time, but it took only two centuries for the Seleucids to fall apart at the seams being gobbled up by Rome and Persia.

India even received a bit of Hellenization, but Asoka (264-28 BC) tried to proselytize the Greeks with Buddhism.

Babylonian and Syria (minus Judea) were completely Hellenized in the urban populations. Only in Judea where the Greeks and the Jews faced off did Hellenization meet stiff resistance.

While Hellenization brought wealth and some stability, it didn't guarantee any individual security. Small dynastic squabbles could up end a populace and its local gentry and leaders instantly. It is no wonder that the religious life of the age found the cult of the goddess Fortune or Luck to be very popular.

"There was widespread social discontent and fear of revolution. The wages of free labour fell,
presumably owing to the competition of eastern slave labour; and meantime the prices of
necessaries rose. One finds Alexander, at the outset of his enterprise, having time to make
treaties designed to keep the poor in their place" (Russell, 225). This was all done to discourage any revolution at a time when civil unrest was ready to burst because of the inequities.

While Hellenization dramatically impacted everywhere the Greeks conquered, the Greeks were themselves conquered in a way by the superstitions of the east. Astrology coming from Babylon took a preeminent role in Greek thought at the time to detriment of Greek thought.

The instability of the age led to a lack of virtue in men. When wealth is only acquired through adventurers despoiling others and that wealth can disappear just as quickly by a stronger adventurer then it becomes almost expected for men to turn bad. Menander notes, "So many cases I have known of men who, though not naturally rogues, became so, through misfortune, by constraint" (Russell, 228).