Chapter XX: Part 20

I. THE EXPANSION OF HELLENISM BEFORE ALEXANDER.--In the 5th century B.C. Greek cities dotted the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea from Spain to Egypt and the Caucasus, and already Greek culture was beginning to pass beyond the limits of the Greek race. Already in the 7th century B.C., when Hellenism was still in a rudimentary stage, the citizens of the Greek city-states had been known to the courts of Babylon and Egypt as admirable soldiers, combining hardihood with discipline, and Greek mercenaries came to be in request throughout the Nearer East. But as Hellenism developed, its social and intellectual life began to exercise a power of attraction. The proud old civilizations of the Euphrates and the Nile might ignore it, but the ruder barbarian peoples in East and West, on whose coasts the Greek colonies had been planted, came in various degrees under its spell. In some cases an outlying colony would coalesce with a native population, and a fusion of Hellenism with barbarian customs take place, as at Emporium in Spain (Strabo iii. p. 160) and at Locri in S. Italy (Polyb. xii. 5. 10). Perinthus included a Thracian phyle. The stories of Anacharsis and Scylas (Herod, iv. 76-80) show how the leading men of the tribes in contact with the Greek colonies in the Black Sea might be fascinated by the appeal which the exotic culture made to mind and to eye.

The great developments of the century and a half before Alexander set the Greek people in a very different light before the world. In the sphere of material power the repulse of Xerxes and the extension of Athenian or Spartan supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean were large facts patent to the most obtuse. The kings of the East leant more than ever upon Greek mercenaries, whose superiority to barbarian levies was sensibly brought home to them by the expedition of Cyrus. But the developments within the Hellenic sphere itself were also of great consequence for its expansion outwards. The political disunion of the Greeks was to some extent neutralized by the rise of Athens to a leading position in art, in literature and in philosophy. In Athens the Hellenic genius was focussed, its tendencies drawn together and combined; nor was it a circumstance of small moment that the Attic dialect attained, for prose, a classical authority; for if Hellenism was to be propagated in the world at large, it was obviously convenient that it should have some one definite form of speech to be its medium.

1. _The Persians._--The ruling race of the East, the Persian, was but little open to the influences of the new culture. The military qualities of the Greeks were appreciated, and so, too, was Greek science, where it touched the immediately useful; a Greek captain was entrusted by Darius with the exploration of the Indus; a Greek architect bridged the Bosporus for him; Greek physicians (e.g. Democedes, Ctesias) were retained for enormous fees at the Persian court. The brisk diplomatic intercourse between the Great King and the Greek states in the 4th century may have produced effects that were not merely political. We certainly find among those members of the Persian aristocracy, who came by residence in Asia Minor into closer contact with the Greeks, some traces of interest in the more ideal side of Hellenism. A man like the younger Cyrus invited Greek captains to his friendship for something more than their utility in war, and procured Greek hetaerae for something more than sensual pleasure. There is the Mithradates who presented the Academy with a statue of Plato by Silanion, not improbably identical (though the supposition implies a correction in the text of Diogenes Laertius) with that Mithradates who, together with his father Ariobarzanes, received the citizenship of Athens (Dem. xxiii. 141, 202). Exactly how far Greek influence can be traced in the remains of Persian art, such as the royal palaces of Persepolis and Susa may be doubtful (see Gayet, _L'Art persan_; R. Phene Spiers, _Architecture East and West_, p. 245 f.), but it is certain that the engraved gems for which there was a demand in the Persian empire were largely the work of Greek artists (Furtwangler, _Antike Gemmen_, iii. p. 116 f.).

2. _The Phoenicians._--As early as the first half of the 4th century we find communities of Phoenician traders established in the Peiraeus (_C.I.A._ ii. 86). In Cyprus, on the frontier between the Greek and Semitic worlds, a struggle for ascendancy went on. The Phoenician element seems to have been dominant in the island when Evagoras made himself king of Salamis in 412, and restored Hellenism with a strong hand. The words of Isocrates (even allowing for their rhetorical colour) give us a vivid insight into what such a process meant. "Before Evagoras established his rule, they were so hostile and exclusive, that those of their rulers were actually held to be the best who were the fiercest adversaries of the Greeks; but now such a change has taken place, that it is a matter of emulation who shall show himself the most ardent phil-hellen, that for the mothers of their children most of them choose wives from amongst us, and that they take pride in having Greek things about rather than native, in following the Greek fashion of life, whilst our masters of the fine arts and other branches of culture now resort to them in greater numbers than were once to be found in those quarters they specially frequented" (Isoc. 199 = _Evag._ SS 49, 50). Even into the original seats of the Phoenicians Hellenism began to intrude. Evagoras at one time (about 386) made himself master of Tyre (Isoc. _Evag._ S 62; Diod. xv. 2, 4). His grandson Evagoras II. is found as governor of Sidon for the Persian king 349-346. (Babelon, _Perses Achemenides_, p. cxxii.; cf. Diod. xvi. 46, 3).

Abdashtart, king of Sidon (374-362 B.C.), called Straton by the Greeks, had already entered into close relations with the Greek states, and imitated the Hellenic princes of Cyprus (_Athen._ xii. 531; _C.I.A._ ii. 86; _Corp. inscr. Semit._ i. 114). The Phoenician colonists in Sardinia purchased or imitated the work of Greek artists (Furtwangler, _Antike Gemmen_, iii. 109).

3. _The Carians and Lycians._--The seats of the Greeks in the East touched peoples more or less nearly related to the Hellenic stock, with native traditions not so far remote from those of the Greeks in a more primitive age, the Carians and the Lycians. It came about in the last century preceding Alexander that the first of these peoples was organized as a strong state under native princes, the line founded by Hecatomnus of Mylasa. Hecatomnus made himself master of Caria in the first decade of the 4th century, but it was under his son Mausolus, who succeeded him in 377-376 that the house rose to its zenith. These Carian princes ruled as satraps for the Great King, but they modelled themselves upon the pattern of the Greek tyrant. The capital of Mausolus was a Greek city, Halicarnassus, and all that we can still trace of his great works of construction and adornment shows conformity to the pure Hellenic type. His famous sepulchre, the Mausoleum (the remains of it are now in the British Museum), was a monument upon which the most eminent Greek sculptors of the time worked in rivalry (Plin. _N.H._ xxxvi. 5, S 30; Vitruv. vii. 13). His court gave a welcome to the vagrant Greek philosopher (Diog. Laert. viii. 8, S 87). Even the Carian town of Mylasa now shows the forms of a Greek city and records its public decrees in Greek (_C.I.G._ 2691 c, d, e = Michel 471). In Lycia, which in spite of "the son of Harpagus" and King Pericles, had never been brought under one man's rule, the Greek influence is more limited. Here, for the most part in the inscriptions, the native language maintains itself against Greek. The proper names are (if not native) mainly Persian. But the Greek language makes an occasional appearance; Greek names are borne by others beside Pericles. The coins are Greek in type. And above all the monumental remains of Lycia show strong Greek influence, especially the well-known "Nereid Monument" in the British Museum, whose date is held to go back to the 5th century (Gardner, _Handbook of Gk. Sculp._ p. 344).

4. _South Russia._--Hellenic influences continued to penetrate the Scythian peoples from the Greek colonies of the Black Sea, at any rate in the matter of artistic fabrication. Our evidence is the actual objects recovered from the soil. (See SCYTHIA.)

5. _Egypt._--From the time of Psammetichus (d. 610 B.C.) Greek mercenaries had been used to prop Pharaoh's throne. At the same time Greek merchants had begun to find their way up the Nile and even to the Oases. A Greek city Naucratis (q.v.) was allowed to arise at the Bolbitinic mouth of the Nile. But the racial repugnance to the Greek, which forbade an Egyptian even to eat an animal which had been carved with a Greek's knife (Hdt. ii. 41), probably kept the soul of the people more shut against Hellenic influences than was that of the other races of the East.

6. _Macedonia._--In Macedonia the native chiefs had been attracted by the rich Hellenic life at any rate from the beginning of the 5th century, when Alexander I., surnamed "Phil-hellen," persuaded the judges at Olympia that the Temenid house was of good Argive descent (Hdt. v. 22). And, although their enemies might stigmatize them as barbarians, the Macedonian kings maintained that they were not Macedonians, but Greeks (cf. [Greek: aner Hellen Makedonon hyparchos], Hdt. v. 20). It was not probably till the reorganization of the kingdom by Archelaus (413-399) that Greek culture found any abundant entrance into Macedonia. Now all that was most brilliant in Greek literature and Greek art was concentrated in the court of Aegae; the palace was decorated by Zeuxis; Euripides spent there the end of his days. From that time, no doubt, a certain degree of literary culture was general among the Macedonian nobility; their names in the days of Philip are largely Greek; the Macedonian service was full of men from the Greek cities within Philip's dominions. The values recognized at the court would naturally be recognized in noble families generally, and Philip chose Aristotle to be the educator of his son. How far the country generally may be regarded as Hellenized is a problem which involves the vexed question what right the Macedonian people itself has to be classed among the Hellenes, and Macedonian to be considered a dialect of Greek.[1] As the literary and official language, Greek alone would seem to have had any status.

7. _In the West: the Native Races of Sicily._--Italy and the south of Gaul had not remained unaffected by the neighbourhood of the Greek colonies. Under the rule of the elder and younger Dionysius in the 4th century, the hellenization of the Sicels in the interior of Sicily seems to have become complete (Freeman, _History of Sicily_, ii. 387, 388, 422-424; Beloch, _Griech. Gesch._ iii. [i.] 261).

The alphabets used by the various Italian races from the 5th century were directly or indirectly learnt from the Greeks. The peoples of the south (Lucanians, Bruttians, Mamertines) show a Greek principle of nomenclature (Mommsen, _Unterital. Dialekt_, p. 240 f.). The Pythagorean philosophy, whose seat was in southern Italy, won adherents among the native chiefs (Cic. _De senec._ 12, cf. Dio Chrys. _Orat. Cor._ 37, S 24). From the Greeks of southern Gaul Hellenic influences penetrated the Celtic races so far that imitations of Greek coins were struck even on the coasts of the Atlantic.

II. AFTER ALEXANDER THE GREAT.--When we review generally the extent to which Hellenism had penetrated the outer world in the middle of the 4th century B.C., it must be admitted that it had not seriously affected any but the more primitive races which dwelt upon the borders of the Hellenic lands, and here it would seem, with the doubtful exception of the Macedonians, to have been an affair rather of the courts than of the life of the people. On the other hand it must be taken into account that Hellenism had as yet only been a very short while in the world. What would have happened had it continued to depend upon its spiritual force only for propagation we cannot say. Everything was changed when by the conquests of Alexander (334-323) it suddenly rose to material supremacy in all the East as far as India, and when cities of Greek speech and constitution were planted by the might of kings at all the cardinal points of intercourse within those lands. The values honoured by the rulers of the world must naturally impress themselves upon the subject multitudes. The Macedonian chiefs found their pride in being champions of Hellenism. Of Alexander there is no need to speak. The courts of his successors in Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt were Greek in language and atmosphere. All kings liked to win the good word of the Greeks by munificence bestowed upon Greek cities and Greek institutions. All of them in some degree patronized Greek art and letters, and some sought fame for themselves as authors. Even the barbarian courts, their neighbours or vassals, were swayed by the dominant fashion to imitation. But by the courts alone Hellenism could never have been propagated far. Greek culture had been the product of the city-state, and Hellenism could not be dissevered from the city. It was upon the system of Greek and Macedonian cities, planted by Alexander and his successors, that their work rested, and though their dynasties crumbled, their work remained. Rome, when it stepped into their place, did no more than safeguard its continuance; in the East Rome acted as a Hellenistic power, and if, when the legions had thundered past, the brooding East "plunged in thought again," that thought was largely directed by the Greek schoolmaster who followed in the legions' train. From our present point of view we may therefore regard this work of Hellenism as one continuous process, initiated by the Macedonians and carried on under Roman protection, and ask in the first place what the institution of a Greek city implied.

_The Character of the New Greek Cities._--The citizen bodies at the outset were really of Greek or Macedonian blood--soldiers who had served in the royal armies, or men attracted from the older Greek cities to the new lands thrown open to commerce. To fix their European soldiery upon the new soil was an obvious necessity for the Macedonian chiefs who had set up kingdoms among the barbarians, and the lots of the veterans (except in Egypt) were naturally attached to various urban centres. The cities, of course, drew in numbers beside of the people of the land; Alexander is specially said to have incorporated large bodies of natives in some of the new cities of the Eastern provinces (Arr. iv. 4, 1; Diod. xvii. 83, 2; Curtius ix. 10, 7). It may generally be taken for granted that the lower strata of the city-populations was mainly native; to be included in the city population was not, however, to be included in the citizen body, and it remains a question how far the latter admitted members of other than European origin (Beloch iii. [i.] 414). The statements, for instance, of Josephus that the Jews were given full citizen rights in the new foundations are probably false (Willrich, _Juden und Griechen vor der makkabaischen Erhebung_, 1895, p. 19 f.). The social organization of the citizen-body conformed to the regular Hellenic type with a division into _phylae_ and, in Egypt, at any rate, into _demi_ (Liban. Or. xix. 62; Satyrus, frag. 21 = _F.H.G._ iii. 164; Sir W. M. Ramsay, _Cities and Bishoprics_, i. 60; Kenyon, _Archiv f. Papyr._ ii. 74; Jonguet, _Bull. corr. hell._ xxi., 1897, 184 f.; Liebenam, _Stadteverwaltung_, 220 f.). The cities appear equally Hellenic in their political organs and functions with _boule_ and _demos_ and popularly elected magistrates. Life was filled with the universal Hellenic interests, which centred in the gymnasium and the religious festivals, these last including, of course, not only athletic contests but performances of the classical dramas or later imitations of them. The wandering sophist and rhetorician would find a hearing no less than the musical artist. The language of the upper classes was Greek; and the material background of building and decoration, of dress and furniture, was of Greek design. A greater regularity in the street-plans seems to have distinguished the new cities from the older slowly grown cities of the Greek lands, just as it distinguishes the cities of the New World to-day from those of Europe. Alexandria and Antioch were both traversed from end to end by one long straight street, crossed by shorter ones at right angles; Nicaea was a square from the centre of which all the four gates could be seen at the ends of the intersecting thoroughfares (Strabo xii. 565); similar characteristics are noted in the rebuilt Smyrna (ib. xiv. 646).

Sometimes the Greek city was not an absolutely new foundation, but an old Oriental city, re-colonized and transformed. And in such cases the old name was often replaced by a Greek one. Thus Celaenae in Phrygia became Apamea; Haleb (Aleppo) in Syria became Beroea; Nisibis in Mesopotamia, Antioch; Rhagae (Rai) in Media, Europus. In some cases the old name was left unchallenged, e.g. Thyatira, Damascus and Samaria. Even where there was no new foundation the older cities of Phoenicia and Syria became transformed from the overwhelming prestige of Hellenic culture. In Tyre and Sidon, no less than in Antioch or Alexandria, Greek literature and philosophy were seriously cultivated, as we may see by the great names which they contributed. The process by which Hellenism thus leavened an older city we may trace with peculiar vividness in the case of Jerusalem; we see there the younger generation captivated by its ideals, the appearance of gymnasium and theatre, the eager adoption of Greek political forms (1 Macc. i. 13 f.; 2 Macc. 4., 10 f.).

A. _Characteristics of Hellenism after Alexander._--To the number of Greek city-states existing before Alexander were now therefore added those which extended Hellas as far as India. With the enormous extension of Greek territory a great shifting took place in the old centres of gravity. What changes in the character of Greek culture did the new conditions of the world bring about?

Government.

Hellenism had been the product of the free life of the Greek city-state, and after Chaeronea the great days of the city-state were past. Not that all liberty was everywhere extinguished. Under Alexander himself the Greek states were restive, and Aetolia unsubdued; and, with the break-up of the empire at Alexander's death, there was once more scope for the action of the individual cities among the rival great powers. In the history of the next two or three centuries the cities are by no means ciphers. Rhodes takes a great part in _Weltpolitik_, as a sovereign ally of one or other of the royal courts. In Greece itself the overlordship to which the Macedonian king aspires is imperfect in extent and only maintained to that extent by continual wars. The Greek states on their side show that they are capable even of progressive political development, the needs of the time being met by the federal system, by larger unions of equal members than the leading cities of the past would have tolerated, with their extreme unwillingness to forego the least shred of sovereign independence. The Achaean and Aetolian Leagues are independent powers, which the Macedonian can indeed check by garrisons in Corinth, Chalcis and elsewhere, but which keep a field clear for Hellenic freedom within their borders. Sparta also is a power which can cross swords with the Macedonian king, and Cleomenes III. aspires to unite the Peloponnesus under his headship. As to the cities outside Greece, within or around the royal realms, Seleucid, Ptolemaic or Attalid, their degree of freedom probably differed widely according to circumstances. At one end of the scale, cities of old renown, e.g. Lampsacus or Smyrna, could still make good their independence against Antiochus III. at the beginning of the 2nd century B.C. At the other end of the scale the cities which were royal capitals, e.g. Alexandria, Antioch and Pergamum, were normally controlled altogether by royal nominees. At Pergamum indeed and (at any rate after Antiochus IV.) at Antioch, forms of self-government subsisted upon which, of course, the court had its hand, whilst at Alexandria even such forms were wanting. Between the two extremes there was variation not only between city and city, but, no doubt, in one and the same city at different times. In Syria the independent action of the cities greatly increased during the last weakness of the Seleucid monarchy. With the extension of the single strong rule of Rome over this Hellenistic world, the conditions were changed. Just as the Macedonian conquest, whilst increasing the domain of Greek culture, had straitened Greek liberty, so Rome, whilst bringing Hellenism finally into secure possession of the nearer East, extinguished Greek freedom altogether. Even now the old forms were long religiously respected. Formally, the most illustrious Greek states, Athens, for instance, or Marseilles, or Rhodes, were not subjects of Rome, but free allies. Even in the case of _civitates stipendiariae_ (tribute-paying states), municipal autonomy, subject indeed to interference on the part of the Roman governor, was allowed to go on. _Boule_ and _demos_ long continued to function. The old catchword, "autonomy of the Hellens," was still heard and indeed was solemnly proclaimed by Nero at the Isthmian games of A.D. 67. But during the first centuries of the Christian era, this municipal autonomy, by a process which can only be imperfectly traced in detail, decayed. The _demos_ first sank into political annihilation and the council, no longer popularly elected but an aristocratic order, concentrated the whole administration in its hands. By the end of the 2nd century A.D., claims made by the imperial government upon the municipal senate are more and more changing membership of the order from an honour into an intolerable burden, and financial disorganization is calling on imperial officials in one place after another to undertake the business of government. After Diocletian and under the Eastern Empire the Greek world is organized on the principles of a vast bureaucracy.

Social changes.

With this long process of political decline from Alexander to Diocletian correspond the inner changes in the temper of the Hellenic and Hellenistic peoples. There were, of course, marked differences between one region and another. But certain general characteristics distinguished at once Greek society after the Macedonian conquests from the society of the earlier age. When the vast field of the East was opened to Hellenic enterprise and the bullion of its treasuries flung abroad, fortunes were made on a scale before unparalleled. A new standard of sumptuousness and splendour was set up in the richest stratum of society. This material elaboration of life was furthered by the existence of Hellenistic courts, where the great ministers amassed fabulous riches (e.g. Dionysius, the state secretary of Antiochus IV., Polyb. xxxi. 3, 16; Hermias, the chief minister of Seleucus III., and Antiochus III., Polyb. v. 50. 2; cf. Plutarch, _Agis_ 9), and of huge cities like Alexandria, Antioch and the enlarged Ephesus. It is significant that whereas the earlier Greeks had used precious stones only as a medium for the engraver's art, unengraven gems, valuable for their mere material, now came to be used in profusion for adornment. Already before Alexander pan-hellenic feeling had in various ways overridden the internal divisions of the Greek race, but now, with the vast mingling of Greeks of all sorts in the newly-conquered lands, a generalized Greek culture in which the old local characteristics were merged, came to overspread the world. The gradual supersession of the old dialects by the Koine the common speech of the Greeks, a modification of the Attic idiom coloured by Ionic, was one obvious sign of the new order of things (see GREEK LANGUAGE).

Art and literature.

In its artistic, its literary, its spiritual products the age after Alexander gave evidence of the change. In no department did activity immediately stop; but the old freshness and creative exuberance was gone. Artistic pleasure, grown less delicate, required the stimulus of a more sensational effect or a more striking realism, as we may see by the Pergamene and Rhodian schools of sculpture, by the bas-reliefs with the _genre_ subjects drawn from the life of the countryside, or, in literature by the sort of historical writing which became popular with Cleitarchus and Duris, by the studied emotional or rhetorical point of Callimachus, and by the portrayal of country life in Theocritus. At the same time, artists and men of letters were now addressing themselves in most cases, not to their fellow-citizens in a free city, but to kings and courtiers, or the educated class generally of the Greek world. In those departments of intellectual activity which demand no high ideal faculty, in the study of the world of fact, the centuries immediately following Alexander witnessed notable advance. Scientific research might prosper, just as poetry withered, under the patronage of kings, and such research had now a vast amount of new material at its disposal and could profit by the old Babylonian and Egyptian traditions. The medical schools, especially that of Alexandria, really enlarged knowledge of the animal frame. Knowledge of the earth gained immensely by the Macedonian conquests. The literary schools of Alexandria and Pergamum built up grammatical science, and brought literary and artistic criticism to a fine point. If indeed the earlier ages had been those of creative and spontaneous life, the Hellenistic age was that of conscious criticism and book-learning. The classical products were registered, studied, assorted and commented upon. Men travelled and read more. Books were in demand and were multiplied. Libraries became a feature of the age, the kings leading the way as collectors, of books, especially the rival dynasties of Egypt and Pergamum. The library attached to the Museum at Alexandria is said to have contained at the time of its destruction in 47 B.C. as many as 700,000 rolls (Aul. Gell. vi. 17. 3). Even smaller cities, like Aphrodisias in Caria, had public libraries for the instruction of their youth (Le Bas, III. No. 1618).

With the general decay of ancient civilization under the Roman empire, even scientific research ceased, and though there were literary revivals, like that connected with the new Atticism under the Antonine emperors, these were mainly imitative and artificial, and even learning became at last under the Byzantine emperors a jejune and formal tradition (see GREEK LITERATURE).

Religion and philosophy.

The diffusion of the Greek race far from the former centres of its life, the mingling of citizens of many cities, the close contact between Greek and barbarian in the conquered lands--all this had made the old sanctions of civic religion and civic morality of less account than ever. New guides of life were needed. The Stoic philosophy, with its cosmopolitan note, its fixed dogmas and plain ethical precepts, came into the world at the time of the Macedonian conquests to meet the needs of the new age. Its ideas became popular among ordinary men as the older philosophies had never been. The Stoic or Cynic preacher, attacking the ways of society, in pungent, often coarse, phrase, became a familiar figure of the Greek market-place (P. Wendland, _Beitrage zur Gesch. d. griech. Philosophie_, 1895).

Although the cults of the old Greek deities in the new cities, with their splendid apparatus of festivals and sacrifice might still hold the multitude, men turned ever in large numbers to alien religions, felt as more potent because strange, and the various gods of Egypt and the East began to find larger entrance in the Greek world. Even in the old Greek religion before Alexander there had been large elements of foreign origin, and that the Greeks should now do honour to the gods of the lands into which they came, as we find the Cilician and Syrian Greeks doing to Baal-tars and Baal-marcod and the Egyptian Greeks to the gods of Egypt, was only in accordance with the primitive way of thinking. But it was a sign of the times when Serapis and Isis, Osiris and Anubis began to take place among the popular deities in the old Greek lands. The origin of the cult of Serapis, which Ptolemy I. found, or established, in Egypt is disputed; the familiar type of the god is the invention of a Greek artist, but the name and religion came from somewhere in the East (see discussion under SERAPIS). Before the end of the 2nd century B.C. there were temples of Serapis in Athens, Rhodes, Delos and Orchomenos in Boeotia. Under the Roman empire the cult of Isis, now furnished with an official priesthood and elaborate ritual, became really popular in the Hellenistic world. King Asoka in the 3rd century B.C. sent Buddhist missionaries from India to the Mediterranean lands; their preaching has, it is true, left little or no trace in our Western records. But other religions of Oriental origin penetrated far, the worship of the Phrygian Great Mother, and in the 2nd century A.D. the religion of the Mithras (Lafaye, _Culte des divinites alexandrines_, 1884; Roscher, articles "Anubis," "Isis," &c.; F. Cumont, _Mysteres de Mithra_, Eng. trans., 1903; _Les Religions orientales dans le paganisme romain_, 1906).

The Jews, too, by the time of Christ were finding in many quarters an open door. Besides those who were ready to go the whole length and accept circumcision, numbers adopted particular Jewish practices, observing the Sabbath, for instance, or turned from polytheism to the doctrine of the One God. The synagogues in the Gentile cities had generally attached to them, in more or less close connexion a multitude of those "who feared God" and frequented the services (Schurer, _Gesch. d. jud. Volks_, iii. 102-135).

Christianity.

Among the religions which penetrated the Hellenistic world from an Eastern source, one ultimately overpowered all the rest and made that world its own. The inter-action of Christianity and Hellenism opens large fields of inquiry. The teaching of Christ Himself contained, as it is given to us, no Hellenic element; so far as He built with older material, that material was exclusively the sacred tradition of Israel. So soon, however, as the Gospel was carried in Greek to Greeks, Hellenic elements began to enter into it, in the writings, for instance, of St Paul, the appeal to what "nature" teaches would be generally admitted to be the adoption of a Greek mode of thought. It was, of course, impossible that speaking in Greek and living among Greeks, Christians should not to some extent use current conceptions for the expression of their faith. There was, at the same time, in the early Church a powerful current of feeling hostile to Greek culture, to the wisdom of the world. What the attitude of the New People should be to it, whether it was all bad, or whether there were good things in it which Christians should appropriate, was a vital question that always confronted them. The great Christian School of Alexandria represented by Clement and Origen effected a durable alliance between Greek education and Christian doctrine. In proportion as the Christian Church had to go deeper into metaphysics in the formulation of its belief as to God, as to Christ, as to the soul, the Greek philosophical terminology, which was the only vehicle then available for precise thought, had to become more and more an essential part of Christianity. At the same time Christian ethics incorporated much of the current popular philosophy, especially large Stoical elements. In this way the Church itself, as we shall see, became a propagator of Hellenism (see Hatch, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1888; Wendland, "Christentum u. Hellenismus" in _Neue Jahrb. f. kl. Alt._ ix. 1902, p. 1 f.; and _Die hellenistisch-romische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zu Judentum u. Christentum_, 1907).

B. _Effect upon non-Hellenic Peoples._--Hellenism secured by the Macedonian conquest _points d'appui_ from the Mediterranean to India, and brought the system of commerce and intercourse into Greek hands. What effect did it produce in these various countries? What effect again in the lands of the West which fell under the sway of Rome?

Greek cities.

Greek art.

(i.) _India._--In India (including the valleys of the Kabul and its northern tributaries, then inhabited by an Indian, not, as now, by an Iranian, population) Alexander planted a number of Greek towns. Alexandria "under the Caucasus" commanded the road from Bactria over the Hindu-Kush; it lay somewhere among the hills to the north of Kabul, perhaps at Opian near Charikar (MacCrindle, _Ancient India_, p. 87, note 4); that it is the city meant by "Alasadda the capital of the Yona (Greek) country" in the Buddhist Mahavanso, as is generally affirmed, seems doubtful (Tarn, loc. cit. below, p. 269, note 7). We hear of a Nicaea in the Kabul valley itself (near Jalalabad?), another Nicaea on the Hydaspes (Jhelum) where Alexander crossed it, with Bucephala (see BUCEPHALUS) opposite, a city (unnamed) on the Acesines (Chenab) (Arr. vi. 29, 3), and a series of foundations strung along the Indus to the sea. Soon after 321, Macedonian supremacy beyond the Indus collapsed before the advance of the native Maurya dynasty, and about 303 even large districts west of the Indus were ceded by Seleucus. But the chapter of Greek rule in India was not yet closed. The Maurya dynasty broke up about 180 B.C., and at the same time the Greek rulers of Bactria began to lead expeditions across the Hindu-Kush. Menander in the middle of the 2nd century B.C. extended his rule from the Hindu-Kush to the Ganges. Then "Scythian" peoples from central Asia, Sakas and Yue-chi, having conquered Bactria, gradually squeezed within ever-narrowing limits the Greek power in India. The last Greek prince, Hermaeus, seems to have succumbed about 30 B.C. It was just at this time that the Graeco-Roman world of the West was consolidated as the Roman Empire, and, though Greek rule in India had disappeared, active commercial intercourse went on between India and the Hellenistic lands. How far, through these changes, did the Greek population settled by Alexander or his successors in India maintain their distinctive character? What influence did Hellenism during the centuries in which it was in contact with India exert upon the native mind? Only extremely qualified answers can be given to these questions. Capital data are possibly waiting there under ground--the Kabul valley for instance is almost virgin soil for the archaeologist--and any conclusion we can arrive at is merely provisional. If certain statements of classical authors were true, Hellenism in India flourished exceedingly. But the phil-hellenic Brahmins in Philostratus' life of Apollonius had no existence outside the world of romance, and the statement of Dio Chrysostom that the Indians were familiar with Homer in their own tongue (_Or._ liii. 6) is a traveller's tale. India, the sceptical observe, has yielded no Greek inscription, except, of course, on the coins of the Greek kings and their Scythian rivals and successors. To what extent can it be inferred from legends on coins that Greek was a living speech in India? Perhaps to no large extent outside the Greek courts. The fact, however, that the Greek character was still used on coins for two centuries after the last Greek dynasty had come to an end shows that the language had a prestige in India which any theory, to be plausible, must account for. If we argue by probability from what we know of the conditions, we have to consider that the Greek rule in India was all through fighting for existence, and can have had "little time or energy left for such things as art, science and literature" (Tarn, _loc. cit._ p. 292), and it is pointed out that a casual reference to the Greeks in an Indian work contemporary with Menander characterizes them as "viciously valiant Yonas." How long is it probable that Greek colonies planted in the midst of alien races would have remained distinct? Mr Tarn builds much upon the fact that the descendants of the Greek Branchidae settled by Xerxes in central Asia had become bilingual in six generations (Curt. vii. 5, 29). But the Greek race before Alexander had not its later prestige, and we must consider such a sentiment as leads the Eurasian to-day to cling to his Western parentage, so that the instance of the Branchidae cannot be used straight away for the time after Alexander. Certainly, had the Greek colonies in India been active political bodies, we could hardly have failed to find some trace of them, in civic architecture or in inscriptions, by this time. Perhaps we should rather think of them as resembling the Greeks found to-day dispersed over the nearer East with interests mainly commercial, easily assimilating themselves to their environment. A notice derived from Agatharchides (about 140 B.C.) possibly refers to the activity of these Indian Greeks in the sea-borne trade of the Indian Ocean (Muller, _Geog. Graeci min._ i. p. 191; cf. Diod. iii. 47. 9). As to what India derived from Greece there has been a good deal of erudite debate. That the Indian drama took its origin from the Greek is still maintained by some scholars, though hardly proved. There is no doubt that Indian astronomy shows marked Hellenic features, including actual Greek words borrowed. But by far the most signal borrowing is in the sphere of art. The stream of Buddhist art which went out eastwards across Asia had its rise in North-West India, and the remains of architecture and sculpture unearthed in this region enable us to trace its development back to pure Greek types. It remains, of course, a question whether the tradition was transmitted by the Greek dynasties from Bactria or by intercourse with the Roman empire; the latter seems now almost certain; but the fact of the influence is equally striking on either theory. How far to the east the distinctive influence of Greece went is shown by the seal-impressions with Athena and Eros types found by Dr Stein in the buried cities of Khotan (_Sand-buried Ruins of Khotan_, p. 396), and according to Mr E. B. Havell, there exist "paintings treasured as the most precious relics and rarely shown to Europeans, which closely resemble the Graeco-Buddhist art of India" in some of the oldest temples of Japan (_Studio_, vol. xxvii. 1903, p. 26).

See A. A. Macdonell, _History of Sanskrit Literature_ (1900) p. 411
f., and the references on p. 452; V. A. Smith, _Early History of
India_ (1904); Grunwedel, _Buddhist Art in India_ (Eng. trans., edited
by Dr Burgess, 1901); W. W. Tarn, "Notes on Hellenism in Bactria and
India" in _Journ. of Hell. Studies_, xxii. (1902); Foucher, _L'Art
greco-bouddhique du Gandhara_ (1905).

Greek cities.

(ii.) _Iran and Babylonia._--The colonizing activity of Alexander and his successors found a large field in Iran where, up till his time, hardly any walled towns seem to have existed. Cities now arose in all its provinces, superseding in many cases native market places and villages, and holding the vantage-points of commerce. Media, Polybius says, was defended by a chain of Greek cities from barbarian incursion (x. 27. 3); in the neighbourhood of Teheran seem to have stood Heraclea and Europus. In Eastern Iran the cities which are its chief places to-day then bore Greek names, and looked upon Alexander or some other Hellenic prince as their founder. Khojend, Herat, Kandahar were Alexandrias, Merv was an Alexandria till it changed that name for Antioch. When the farther provinces broke away under independent Greek kings, a Eucratidea and a Demetrias attested their glory. Even in a town definitely barbarian like Syrinca in 209 B.C. there was a resident mercantile community of Greeks (Polyb. x. 31). The bulk of Greek historical literature having perished, and in the absence of both archaeological data from Iran, we can only speculate on the inner life of these Greek cities under a strange sky. One precious document is the decree of Antioch in Persis (about 206 B.C.) cited in a recently discovered inscription (Kern, _Inschr. v. Magnesia_, No. 61; Dittenberger, _Orient. gr. Inscr._ i. No. 233). This shows us the normal organs of a Greek city, _boule_, _ecclesia_, _prytaneis_, &c., in full working, with the annual election of magistrates, and ordinary forms of public action. But more than this, it throws a remarkable light upon the solidarity of the Hellenic Dispersion. The citizen body had been increased some generations before by colonists from Magnesia-on-Meander sent at the invitation of Antiochus I. The Magnesians are instigated by pan-hellenic enthusiasm. And we see a brisk diplomatic intercourse between the scattered Greek cities going on. It is especially the local religious festivals which bind them together. Antioch in Persis, of course, sends athletes to the great games of Greece, but in this decree it determines to take part in the new festival being started in honour of Artemis at Magnesia. The loyalty, too, expressed towards the Seleucid king implies a predominant interest in pan-hellenic unity, natural in colonies isolated among barbarians. A list is given (fragmentary) of other Greek cities in Babylonia and beyond from which similar decrees had come.

Greek kingdoms.

In the middle of the 3rd century B.C. Bactria and Sogdiana broke away from the Seleucid empire; independent Greek kings reigned there till the country was conquered by nomads from Central Asia (Sacae and Yue-chi) a century later. Alexander had settled large masses of Greeks in these regions (Greeks, it would seem, not Macedonians), whose attempts to return home in 325 and 323 had been frustrated, and it may well be that a racial antagonism quickened the revolt against Macedonian rule in 250. The history of these Greek dynasties is for us almost a blank, and for estimating the amount and quality of Hellenism in Bactria during the 180 years or so of Macedonian and Greek rule, we are reduced to building hypotheses upon the scantiest data. Probably nothing important bearing on the subject has been left out of view in W. W. Tarn's learned discussion (_Journ. of Hell. Stud._ xxii., 1902, p. 268 f.), and his result is mainly negative, that palpable evidences of an active Hellenism have not been found; he inclines to think that the Greek kingdoms mainly took on the native Iranian colour. The coins, of course, are adduced on the other side, being not only Greek in type and legend, but (in many cases) of a peculiarly fine and vigorous execution; and excellence in one branch of art is thought to imply that other branches flourished in the same _milieu_. Tarn suggests that they may be a "sport," a spasmodic outbreak of genius (see BACTRIA and works there quoted). In these outlying provinces the national Iranian sentiment seems to have been most intense, and it is interesting to see that under Alexander Hellenism appeared as "belligerent civilization," in the attempt to suppress practices like the exposure of the dying to the dogs (an exaggeration of Zoroastrianism) and, possibly also, abhorrent forms of marriage (Strabo xi. 517; Porphyr. _De abstin._ 4. 21; Plut. _De fort. Al._ 5).

The west of Iran slipped from the Seleucids in the course of the 2nd century B.C. to be joined to the Parthian kingdom, or fall under petty native dynasties. Soon after 130 Babylonia too was conquered by the Parthian, and Mesopotamia before 88. Then the reconquest of the nearer East by Oriental dynasties was checked by the advance of Rome. Asia Minor and Syria remained substantial parts of the Roman Empire till the Mahommedan conquests of the 7th century A.D. began a new process of recoil on the part of the Hellenistic power. In Babylonia, also, in Susiana and Mesopotamia, Hellenism had been established in a system of cities for 200 years before the coming of the Parthian. The greatest of all of them stood here--almost on the site of Bagdad--Seleucia on the Tigris. It superseded Babylon as the industrial focus of Babylonia and counted some 600,000 inhabitants (_plebs urbana_) according to Pliny, _N.H._ vi. S 122 (cf. Joseph. _Arch._ xviii. S 372, 374; for coins, probably of Seleucia, with the type of Tyche issued in the years A.D. 43-44 see Wroth, _Coins of Parthia_, p. xlvi.). The list of other Greek cities known to us in these regions is too long to give here (see Droysen, _loc. cit._, and E. Schwartz in Kern's _Inschr. v. Magnesia_, p. 171 f.). In Mesopotamia, Pliny especially notes how the character of the country was changed when the old village life was broken in upon by new centres of population in the cities of Macedonian foundation (Pliny, _N.H._ vi. S 117; cf. K. Regling, "Histor. geog. d. mesopot. Parallelograms," in Lehmann's _Beitrage_, i. p. 442 f.).

Hellenic-Iranian culture.

We do not look in vain for notable names in Hellenistic literature and philosophy produced on an Asiatic soil. Diogenes, the Stoic philosopher (head of the school in 156 B.C.), was a "Babylonian," i.e. a citizen of Seleucia on the Tigris; so too was Seleucus, the mathematician and astronomer, being possibly a native Babylonian; Berossus, who wrote a Babylonian history in Greek (before 261 B.C.) was a Hellenized native. Apollodorus, Strabo's authority for Parthian history (c. 80 B.C.?), was from the Greek city of Artemita in Assyria. When the Parthians rent away provinces from the Seleucid empire, the Greek cities did not cease to exist by passing under barbarian rule. Gradually no doubt the Greek colonies were absorbed, but the process was a long one. In 140 and 130 B.C. those of Iran were ready to rise in support of the Seleucid invader (Joseph. _Arch._ xiii. S 184; Justin xxxviii. 10.6-8). Just so, Crassus in 53 B.C. found a welcome in the Greek cities of Mesopotamia. Seleucia on the Tigris is spoken of by Tacitus as being in A.D. 36 "proof against barbarian influences and mindful of its founder Seleucus" (_Ann._ vi. 42). How important an element the Greek population of their realm seemed to the Parthian kings we can see by the fact that they claimed to be themselves champions of Hellenism. From the reign of Artabanus I. (128/7-123 B.C.) they bear the epithet of "Phil-hellen" as a regular part of their title upon the coins. Under the later reigns the Tyche figure (the personification of a Greek city) becomes common as a coin type (Wroth, _Coins of Parthia_, pp. liii., lxxiv.). The coinage may, of course, give a somewhat one-sided representation of the Parthian kingdom, being specially designed for the commercial class, in which the population of the Greek cities was, we may guess, predominant. The state of things which prevails in modern Afghanistan, where trade is in the hands of a class distinct in race and speech (Persian in this case) from the ruling race of fighters is very probably analogous to that which we should have found in Iran under the Parthians.[2] That the Parthian court itself was to some extent Hellenized is shown by the story, often adduced, that a Greek company of actors was performing the _Bacchae_ before the king when the head of Crassus was brought in. This single instance need not, it is true, show a Hellenism of any profundity; still it does show that certain parts of Hellenism had become so essential to the lustre of a court that even an Arsacid could not be without them. Artavasdes, king of Armenia (54?-34 B.C.) composed Greek tragedies and histories (Plut. _Crass._ 33). Then the prestige of the Roman Empire, with its prevailingly Hellenistic culture, must have told powerfully. The Parthian princes were in many cases the children of Greek mothers who had been taken into the royal harems (Plut. _Crass._ 32). Musa, the queen-mother, whose head appears on the coins of Phraataces (3/2 B.C.-A.D. 4) had been an Italian slave-girl. Many of the Parthian princes resided temporarily, as hostages or refugees, in the Roman Empire; but one notes that the nation at large looked with anything but favour upon too liberal an introduction of foreign manners at the court (Tac. _Ann._ ii. 2).

Such slight notices in Western literature do not give us any penetrating view into the operation of Hellenism among the Iranians. As an expression of the Iranian mind we have the Avesta and the Pehlevi theological literature. Unfortunately in a question of this kind the dating of our documents is the first matter of importance, and it seems that we can only assign dates to the different parts of the Avesta by processes of fine-drawn conjecture. And even if we could date the Avesta securely, we could only prove borrowing by more or less close coincidences of idea, a tempting but uncertain method of inquiry. Taking an opinion based on such data for what it is worth, we may note that Darmesteter believed in the influence of the later Greek philosophy (Philonian and Neo-platonic) as one of those which shaped the Avesta as we have it (_Sacred Books of the East_, iv. 54 f.), but we must also note that such an influence is emphatically denied by Dr L. Mills (_Zarathushtra and the Greeks_, Leipzig, 1906). Outside literature, we have to look to the artistic remains offered by the region to determine Hellenic influence. But here, too, the preliminary classification of the documents is beset with doubt. In the case of small objects like gems the place of manufacture may be far from the place of discovery. The architectural remains are solidly _in situ_, but we may have such vast disagreement as to date as that between Dieulafoy and M. de Morgan with respect to domed buildings of Susa, a disagreement of at least five centuries. It is enough then here to observe that Iran and Babylonia do, as a matter of fact, continually yield the explorer objects of workmanship either Greek or influenced by Greek models, belonging to the age after Alexander, and that we may hence infer at any rate such an influence of Hellenism upon the tastes of the richer classes as would create a demand for these things.

For gems see "Gobineau" in the _Rev. archeol._, vols. xxvii., xxviii.
(1874); Menant, _Recherches sur la glyptique orientale_, ii. 189 f.;
E. Babelon, _Catalogue des camees de la Bibl. Nat._ (1897), p. 56; A.
Furtwangler, _Die antiken Gemmen_, pp. 165, 369 ff.; Figurines:
Heuzey, _Fig. ant. du Louvre_ (1883) p. 3; J. P. Peters, _Nippur_, ii.
128; Military standard: Heuzey, _Comptes rendus de l'Acad. d. Inscr._
(1895) p. 16; _Rev. d'Assyr._ v. (1903), p. 103 f. Alabaster vase:
Sykes, _Ten Thousand Miles in Persia_, p. 445. In the case of the
architectural remains, the Greek tradition is obvious at Hatra
(Jacquerel, _Rev. archeol._, 1897 [ii.], 343 f.), and in the relics of
the temple at Kingavar (Dieulafoy, _L'Art antique de la Perse_, v. p.
10 f.).

Sassanian empire.

If any vestige of Hellenism still survived under the Sassanian kings, our records do not show it. The spirit of the Sassanian monarchy was more jealously national than that of the Arsacid, and alien grafts could hardly have flourished under it. Of course, if Darmesteter was right in seeing a Greek element in Zoroastrianism, Greek influence must still have operated under the new dynasty, which recognized the national religion. But, as we saw, the Greek influence has been authoritatively denied. At the court a limited recognition might be given, as fashion veered, to the values prevalent in the Hellenistic world. The story of Hormisdas in Zosimus is suggestive in this connexion (Zosim. _Hist. nov._ ii. 27). Chosroes I. interested himself in Greek philosophy and received its professors from the West with open arms (Agath. ii. 28 f.); according to one account, he had his palace at Ctesiphon built by Greeks (Theophylact. Simocat. v. 6).

But the account of Chosroes' mode of action makes it plain that the Hellenism once planted in Iran had withered away; representatives of Greek learning and skill have all to be imported from across the frontier.

For Hellenism in Babylonia and Iran, see the useful article of M.
Victor Chapot in the _Bull. et memoires de la Soc. Nat. des
Antiquaires de France_ for 1902 (published 1904), p. 206 f., which
gives a conspectus of the relevant literature.

(iii.) _Asia Minor._--Very different were the fortunes of Hellenism in those lands which became annexed to the Roman Empire.

Greek cities of the Diadochi.