The period between Alexander's death and the absorption of Greece into the Roman Empire is called the Hellenistic Age. During those two centuries, as Greece itself crumbled, Greek culture spread throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East. It did not come just from Greece, but from a place where the two greatest Mediterranean civilizations met: Alexandria.
That great Egyptian city boasted not only the Pharos Lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, but by far the world's greatest library. Ashurbanipal of Syria had founded the first true library three centuries earlier, but Alexandria's, with some 700,000 “books” (actually, scrolls), dwarfed all that had preceded it. No wonder, then, that Alexandria became a center of Hellenistic literature, with a new school of writers who perfected various forms of poetry.
Alexandria was the home of Euclid (YOO-klid; fl. c. 300 B. C.), who established such a thorough system of geometry that he is considered the father of the discipline; it would be more than 2,000 years before mathematicians would be able to improve on his ideas. Also in Alexandria were two of the leading anatomists (that is, scientists who study the human body) of the age: the surgeon Herophilus (huh-RAHF-uh-luhs; c. 335-c. 280 B. C.) and the physician Erasistratus (uhr-uh-SIS-truh-tuhs; fl. c. 250 b. c.), both of whom founded schools of anatomy in the city.
Of course, science also flourished in Greece, where one of the greatest inventors of all time, Archimedes (ahr-kuh-MEED-eez; c. 287-212 b. c.), developed such essential creations as the lever and the pulley. The astronomer Hipparchus (huh-PAHR-kuhs; fl. 146-127 b. c.) discovered a number of key ideas, including the procession of the equinoxes, whereby seasons change according to Earth's position relative to the Sun. Compiler of the first star list, he developed the use of latitude and longitude as ways of finding a position on Earth. He also fathered the mathematical discipline of trigonometry. Pytheas (PITH-ee-uhs; fl. 300
B. c.) was both a scientist and an explorer. He developed the first theories about the tides and their relation to the Moon, and he traveled to the western edge of the known world, around Spain and up toward Britain. He explored much of the Britain on foot.
The sculpture, Venus de Milo, was created in the Hellenic Age.
AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.
As Pytheas was venturing into the far West, Hellenism spread eastward. Its greatest political stronghold would be in the Greco-Bactrian kingdom north of India and Persia, which would also be the first semi-Western society known to the chinese. In India, chandragupta Maurya observed the example of Alexander and went on to conquer a vast empire that would rule for two centuries.
The influence of Hellenism can be seen in the region of Gandhara (guhn-DAHR-uh), on the borders of modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. The sculpture of Gandhara bore the imprint of a culture thousands of miles away. Early images of the Buddha, for instance, were modeled on statues of Apollo. It was clear that sculpture had come a long way from the kouroi of Archaic times, which were meant to be viewed only from the front. Figures of the Hellenistic Age were usually represented with their bodies turned, so that the viewer was forced to walk around each statue in order to fully see it. Two of the world's most famous sculptures, the Venus de Milo and Winged Victory, date from this era.
Increasingly ornate Greek styles of architecture, reflecting the corinthian order, spread throughout the East as well. Palmyra in Syria, for instance, looked like a city from classical Greece, only the style of its buildings was much more flowery than that of Athens in the Golden Age. Such buildings provided concrete evidence of the Greeks' impact, which they made almost wholly without the use of the sword. Long after Alexander and his troops departed, a little of Greece remained in the East, where it would become woven into the fabric of local culture.
World History
