The world around the old.., p.70
The World around the Old Testament, page 70
The system of coexisting cities proved to be self-destroying: each city was eager to conduct its own petty politics with changing alliances and wars. Sparta’s victory in the Peloponnesian War was soon thwarted through Persian intervention. The king dictated “his” peace for Greece in 386, proposing “autonomy” for each city; this peace was soon broken by Sparta as well as by Boeotian Thebes. Then a splendid Theban victory (371) deprived Sparta of its prominence in Peloponnesus, but a collapse soon followed. Most of Greece was drawn into a “sacred war,” which really served to plunder the accumulated riches of the oracle at Delphi, including the gold of Gyges and Kroisos (356–346). In this context a new power emerged surprisingly at the margin of Greece: Macedonia, ruled by King Philip (359–336), the most resourceful and most successful statesman of the century.
What continued to thrive nevertheless was “education,” the definite spread of literacy with a rich production of books—notably, prose books for a growing reading public, a library that soon surpassed individual capacity. A literary society was in the making for the first time in cultural history. Amid political and military disasters the attraction of paideia was spreading in Greece and even beyond the borders of Greece.
A unique genius of thinking and writing in that epoch was Plato (428–347), who definitely inaugurated philosophy in Athens. As a prolific writer, he published “dialogues,” which normally introduce Socrates as the dominant partner. He also wrote a posthumous Apology in the name of Socrates—a high point of world literature. Plato’s theses evolve through critical dialogue, “dialectics,” toward establishing higher realms of being, “ideas.” His main work, The Republic (Politeia), leads from personal morality and the buildup of society toward a highest “sun” in the realm of thinking, the Good (agathon). The dialogue Timaios (Timaeus) seeks to derive the totality of the physical world from mathematical principles. Plato’s activities took place in a locality called the Akademia; he had no family and left the Academy as his personal foundation for the next centuries. Plato’s teachings and publications found wide resonance forthwith. Sensational, though unfortunate, were his dealings with the tyrants of Syracuse, where his friend Dion succeeded in overthrowing Dionysius (II) but was murdered before long (354). There remained Plato’s works, preserved in their totality. They have their place in every pilosophical library; philosophy since has been called “a series of footnotes to Plato.”38
Even more widespread was the influence of Aristotle (384–322), Plato’s independent pupil. Aristotle was a miracle of learning and analysis; his central subject was “nature” (physis) in all its aspects. His copious books on zoology remained unsurpassed throughout antiquity. But Aristotle also invented formal logic. The fragmentary book on “poetics” has stirred and dominated discussions on poetry, especially since the Renaissance. His lectures were edited as a series of logic, physics, and ethics—Aristotle’s terms. The lectures on what Aristotle called “first philosophy,” or also “being qua being,” were placed “after” (in Greek, metá) the lectures on “physics,” and hence got the name “metaphysics.” The very peak of Aristotle’s influence came in Islamic philosophy and, following this, in medieval Christian theology. Aristotle’s teaching had been done at a place called Lykeion, whence the word “lyceum” has entered many modern languages, with varying applications.
There now existed, for the next thousand years, two forms of higher education between which to choose, “philosophy” and “rhetoric.” Thanks to Plato, Athens remained the center for philosophy; schools of rhetoric came to flourish in many other cities, usually through personal success. It was by these schools that Greek language, “classical” Greek language, could live on in a seemingly unchanged form down to the fall of Constantinople (1453 CE).
While this ascent was happening in Greece, the “East,” in spite of the continuing concentration of power in the Persian Empire, was clearly suffering a loss of rank over against Greek innovations and Greek success. Already Darius had engaged Greek craftsmen to work on the reliefs of Persepolis. Persian kings began to rely on Greek doctors. Darius also adopted the Lydian-Greek invention of minting coins, golden Dareikoi, at least for the western satrapies; the king disposed of vast amounts of gold, collected from the tributes throughout his empire. More and more satrapies in the western part of the empire adopted purely Greek style in art and architecture and even in language. The Nereid monument from Xanthos, Lycia (400/370), is a highlight in the British Museum; the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, Caria, the funerary monument for the local satrap Maussolos (died 352), was later included in the list of “world miracles”; for its inauguration, Artemisia, the widow of Maussolos, organized a literary festival at Halicarnassus, in Greek.
10. Alexander the Great and the Diadochs
The Persian Empire unexpectedly came to a sudden breakdown that changed the world. This was the work of Alexander, soon called Alexander the Great. His father, King Philip, had made Macedonia the dominant power across the whole of Greece through an ingenious mixture of diplomacy and military force; he was murdered in 336. Alexander, who had been a student of Aristotle, succeeded his father at the age of twenty, and in 334 he started the war against Persia on the flimsy pretext of revenge for Xerxes’s attack some 150 years before. With his Macedonian troops he launched an unstoppable campaign through Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, and back toward Babylonia, Persepolis, Bactria/Afghanistan, then even farther east to India, where his troops finally rebelled and forced him to draw back. Before this world empire had found proper organization, Alexander died in Babylon at the age of thirty-two (324). He left a baby son, who was murdered before long. His generals, who were wielding the military power, acted and counteracted as “successors” (diadochoi), securing their own departments of “conquered land”; within twenty years they all adopted the title of “king” (basileus). After incessant conflict, it was three states and dynasties that were established for some time: the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Seleucids in Syria (including Iraq), and the Antigonids in Macedonia.
The Greek cities had to come to terms somehow with the new powers. Greece proper had hardly taken part in Alexander’s exploits, and the Greeks never came to like Macedonians. There remained the conflicts and wars between various rulers, cities, and coalitions, rising and falling. In the second century the dynasty of Attalids made an impressive start in Asia Minor, with Pergamon for a capital. This was already under the aegis of the new Western power, Rome.
Figure 13.4. Alexander the Great attacks the chariot of Darius of Persia (mosaic, Naples) [Dave and Margie Hill/Wikimedia Commons]
11. Hellenism
The lasting consequence of Alexander’s campaigns was to make Greek civilization a world civilization with Greek cities, Greek books, and Greek as an international language—competing with Aramaic, the language of the Persian administration. Historians have come to call the post-Alexander epoch “Hellenistic.” The explosive change of power left the old Greek cities as minor relics between conquering kings, but Alexander had also begun to found cities of a Greek type all along his campaigns, and the diadochs were following suit. Soon the whole Eastern world was interspersed with Greek cities, some of which became world metropolises, such as Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch in Syria (today Antakya, Turkey). This represented a worldwide triumph of Greek civilization, through Egypt and across Asia as far as Persia and India, without ousting native traditions and dialects. It was Greek education in particular that proved attractive throughout the “inhabited” world (oikoumenē). Athens, especially, succeeded in upholding the prestige of philosophy; there, in addition to Plato’s Academy, other “schools” came to flourish: Aristotle’s Lyceum, Epicurus’s Garden, and especially the Stoa founded by Zenon and built up by Chrysippus—both of whom were immigrants from Cyprus. We know about many individuals not only from Greece and Asia Minor but also from Syria and even Carthage who came to study at Athens.
At Alexandria, the new capital of Egypt, the biggest library of Greek literature was installed by King Ptolemy I (d. 283), through royal subsidies, with a kind of Institute for Advanced Study for intellectuals called the Mouseion (Place of the Muses). Later Pergamon tried to follow suit. With royal sponsorship, astounding progress was achieved in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and other forms of science, at Alexandria and elsewhere. Euclid published his Elements (Stoicheia) of geometry, which was to remain the basis of mathematical theory and school practice for the next two thousand years. Astronomers described the planetary movements by “epicycles” and discussed a heliocentric system. Eratosthenes of Alexandria made the most exact measurement of the earth’s periphery. Archimedes of Syracuse, a unique genius of mathematics, worked with infinitesimals, discovered the geometric formulas for the surface (4πr2) and volume ([4/3]πr3) of spheres, and invented spirals in theory, and then transferred them to practical use—as pumps, winepresses, and screws. Apollonios of Perge developed the conic sections. Herophilos and Ersasistratos, doctors at Alexandria, revealed the existence and the functions of nerves through anatomy.
Then, in the course of the third century, a new power unexpectedly appeared in the West: Rome. It was Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, a relative of Alexander, who wished to enlarge his power and went west to assist Tarentum against Italiote neighbors. He attacked the Romans but ended with a grandiose failure (280–275). His disastrous victories have become proverbial; he returned to Greece and died in a local war (272). The Romans had already established their imperium (command) throughout Italy and went on to interfere in Sicily; this led to war with the Carthaginians, called Poeni in Latin, who controlled about half of Sicily. The First Punic War (264–253) ended with Sicily becoming the first provincia of the imperium Romanum, a territory administered by a Roman governor. Syracuse had sided with the Romans and thus, under Hiero, a tyrant bearing the title of “king,” flourished for a final time; but in the Second Punic War (218–202), Syracuse changed sides and was conquered by the Romans (212), with the killing of Archimedes that has remained famous.
Right after their victory over Carthage, the Romans began to interfere directly in Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt. Before long this brought about the end of Macedonia (168), organized as a provincia (148); in 168 the Romans also stopped the campaign of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV against Egypt, by a simple order of the Roman general. In Asia Minor the kingdom of Pergamon cultivated an alliance with Rome and thus reached its climax, documented by the grandiose Altar of Zeus; the country was donated to Rome by testament in 133 and became Asia provincia. The last Seleucid was deposed by Pompey in 63; Ptolemaic Egypt ended with the death of Cleopatra in 31.
The triumphal progress of the Roman Empire had a surprising consequence: Rome itself became progressively hellenized. Already by 240 Rome adopted theater, comoedia, with texts translated and adapted from Greek. The texts of Plautus and Terence survive. Aemilius Paulus, who conquered Macedonia in 168, was reported to have been overcome by the statue of the Pheidiasian Zeus in the temple at Olympia; he took one thousand hostages from Greece to Rome. One of these, Polybius of Megalopolis, remained in Rome and became an esteemed friend to one of the foremost Roman families, the Scipiones; he wrote the best history of his “Roman” century. In 155 Athens sent a delegation to Rome to have some local problem decided by the senate; for ambassadors the Athenians chose three philosophers, the presidents of the schools of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoa. Carneades of Cyrene, head of the Academy, had an overwhelming success in Rome with some public lectures (in Greek no doubt), which were acclaimed by the Roman youth in search of modernism. Greece, though defeated and eclipsed, had nevertheless “caught” the victor, as Horace put it.39
12. Israel: Conflicts of Hellenization
The province of Yehud remained largely unnoticed within the Persian Empire, simply because there were no problems. Herodotus, with all his worldwide interests, does not once mention Israel or Jerusalem. Alexander, on his way from Syria to Egypt and back, did not stop at Jerusalem—even if later Jewish and Christian texts tried to fill the void with invented details.40 It is with Aristotle’s pupils that we find the first substantial reports in Greek literature about Jews (Ioudaioi), on account of their special religious rituals. Theophrastus, Aristotle’s pupil and successor, was himself elaborating a fundamental criticism of animal sacrifice, in a book On Piety, and in this context he noted the peculiar position of the Jews.41 Among Syrians, Theophrastus writes, the Jews do sacrifice animals, but they do not feast on them; they burn them whole at night, while fasting and “conversing with each other about the divine; for they are a race of philosophers.” They also observe the stars, and they call to God in prayers. For Greeks, animal sacrifice always meant feasting: “If someone should order us to sacrifice in the same way, we would give up this practice,” Theophrastus comments. He does not mention the special taboo on pork in the text we have; probably this rule was generally known, but not too astonishing amid all kinds of local customs. Today it remains one of the foremost taboos, also having been taken up in Islam.
There was a rising emigration of Jews during the Persian period throughout the Hellenistic world, especially toward the big cities. The main recipient was Alexandria. Jews kept their identity through the strict rules of daily life, celebrating the Sabbath and abhorring pork, and having a local meeting house (Gk. synagōgē)—the only temple was in Jerusalem. More difficult to preserve was Hebrew, the sacred language; Alexandrians spoke Greek or Egyptian, and in the Seleucid area Aramaic had a good standing. Thus in third-century Alexandria, Greek translations of the sacred Scriptures were needed. Legend makes this an effort of seventy translators, organized by King Ptolemy II (285–246); guided by God, they arrived at one text. Reality was more complex. The Greek Bible was completed at some point, by the first century BCE certainly, and was known as the work of the “Seventy” translators, the Septuagint.42
Crisis, however, broke out in Yehud itself. The Seleucid king Antiochus IV (175–164) had adopted the title Epiphanēs, “Representing Divine Evidence,” probably following his Egyptian relatives. The historian Polybius, his contemporary, commented that this king should rather have been called Epimanēs, “the Mad One.”43 Antiochus’s idea was to homogenize his kingdom toward a common Hellenic civilization and hence to abolish the peculiar Jewish customs, which, in his view, expressed “hatred of humanity” (misanthrōpia).44 Quarrels were going on in Jerusalem between traditionalists and hellenizing modernists. One stumbling block for integration was circumcision, especially vis-à-vis the practice of nude sports. Antiochus, suffering from his forced retreat from Egypt (168), transferred his energy to Jerusalem. We are told that he entered the temple, violating the Mosaic law, and made it a sanctuary of Greek Zeus—that he had a pig sacrificed on the altar in front of the temple, had the blood sprayed across the sacred books, and forced the high priest and other Jews to eat pork.45 This started a fierce revolt, which the Seleucids proved unable to suppress. The leading family of the Jewish insurgents was the Maccabees; their history survives in Greek, incorporated into the Septuagint. The rebels conquered Jerusalem and reinstalled the Mosaic cult (165). In the following decades there were ups and downs, but the Jews finally succeeded in securing Israel/Ioudaia as an independent state, run by the high priest and his council. This council is called the Sanhedrin, still a Greek term (synedrion, “session”): Jews remained part of a Hellenistic world.
Just in the years of Antiochus, it seems, a strange book appeared, written partly in Hebrew, with its central piece in Aramaic—purportedly the story of a certain Daniel (“My judge is God”) from the time of Nebuchadnezzar, but evidently reflecting the contemporary situation of about 165. The Aramaic chapters imaginatively describe the sequence of four world monarchies: a statue of four metals—gold, silver, bronze, and iron—with feet of clay, or else four animals—a lion, bear, and panther, succeeded by a monster with ten horns.46 This evidently refers to the Assyrian, Median, Persian, and Greek Empires in succession, ending with the split power of the diadochs; they all are to be followed by an absolutely new beginning, the rule of God himself, as “the Son of Man” comes down from the clouds of heaven. Perhaps this book was a gift from Jews in Babylon for the reopening of the temple in Jerusalem (165/4); the Aramaic parts may be older. Soon afterward, once Antiochus had disappeared, it seemed suitable to skip the Medes and to find the real monster of power in the Roman Empire. The enormous impact of the book of Daniel may be seen in those instances when Jesus called himself the Son of Man; Christians, in consequence, accepted the four monarchies as the final revelation about world history, to be followed by the end of the world. Hence, the Holy Roman Empire had its fictional existence until 1806 CE.
Real history was more complicated. A man of Idumaean (i.e., Arab) origin with a Greek name, Herodes, gained power in Judea and became “king” by approbation of Rome (37–4 BCE); he successfully steered his state through the Roman revolutions and became a friend of Augustus, always acknowledging Roman supremacy. After his death, anti-Hellenic and anti-Roman attitudes spread all the more in Palestine, which finally led to rebellion, war, and the destruction of Jerusalem (70 CE). This meant the final separation of Judaism and Hellenism. Judaism survived in exile, with centers in Galilee and in Babylon.
13. Toward the “End of Antiquity”
By the epoch of Augustus, the whole of the Greek world had become part of the Roman Empire. This was not at all the end of Greece; on the contrary, the eastern part of the empire became all the more Greek. No one would speak Latin there but soldiers and jurists. Thanks to the peace guaranteed by the empire, Greeks had in fact a much better life in their cities than in the bellicose times before. Many of them could live on their “education,” since men of power as well as whole cities wished to have brilliant Greeks for company, for advice, and for show. Rhetoric thus opened careers, and science made further progress. The great comprehensive works on astronomy, geography, and music were written at Alexandria’s Mouseion by Ptolemy (ca. 100–170 CE); and a library of medical knowledge was left by Galen (129–199 CE). These and further books were to dominate science for the next thousand years, especially in Arabic translations. In the fourth century CE the cultural revolution of Christianity took place, with Constantinople (Istanbul) as the new center. Yet Christianity had long met with Greek literature and philosophy and continued to produce a plethora of Greek books in the best style, while Eastern Christianity also gave rise to native church languages such as Syriac (a form of Aramaic), Coptic, Gothic, Armenian, and Georgian. Greek language and literature were still based on the continuing school system, bound to the seemingly immutable grammar and vocabulary of the “classical” past. Conscious of the continuity with the Roman Empire, the Greeks called themselves Rhomaioi; modern historians speak of the Byzantine epoch. This went on until the final Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 CE. The decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire, mainly through Germanic tribes, is not the topic of this essay, nor is the Eastern onslaught of Muslims, of Arabs, and of Turks. Restored in the nineteenth century, Greece both boasts and suffers from a glorious past amid the problems of modernity.
