The Attalids ruled Pergamon until Attalus III bequeathed the kingdom to the Roman Republic in 133 BC[70] to avoid a likely succession crisis. Greek dedications, statues, architecture, and inscriptions have all been found. In Arabia, Bahrain, which was referred to by the Greeks as Tylos, the centre of pearl trading, when Nearchus came to discover it serving under Alexander the Great. In 4th-century BC Sicily the leading Greek city and hegemon was Syracuse. Their control over the Greek city states was intermittent, however, since other rulers, particularly the Ptolemies, subsidised anti-Macedonian parties in Greece to undermine the Antigonids' power. During the Hellenistic period the leading figure in Sicily was Agathocles of Syracuse (361–289 BC) who seized the city with an army of mercenaries in 317 BC. [13] Following Droysen, Hellenistic and related terms, e.g. Greece was a key province of the Roman Empire, and the Roman’s interest in Greek culture helped to circulate Greek art around the empire, especially in Italy, during the Hellenistic period and into the Imperial period of Roman hegemony . Chronologically speaking, Hellenistic Greece refers to the period in ancient Greek history from the fourth century BC until the Roman conquered Greece in 146 BC. Epicurus promoted atomism and an asceticism based on freedom from pain as its ultimate goal. Octavian, who later became the emperor Augustus, defeated Marc Antony’s fleet and, consequently, ended Ptolemaic rule. Classical city states such as Athens and Ephesus grew and even thrived in this period. In 267 BC, Ptolemy II persuaded the Greek cities to revolt against Antigonus, in what became the Chremonidian War, after the Athenian leader Chremonides. The west Balkan coast was inhabited by various Illyrian tribes and kingdoms such as the kingdom of the Dalmatae and of the Ardiaei, who often engaged in piracy under Queen Teuta (reigned 231–227 BC). He may have been attempting to Hellenize the region and unify his empire and the Jewish resistance to this eventually led to an escalation of violence. Towards the end 212 BC the country was divided into two kingdoms, Greater Armenia and Armenia Sophene, including Commagene or Armenia Minor. Athens. Parthia was a north-eastern Iranian satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire which later passed on to Alexander's empire. Though the Nabateans originally worshipped their traditional gods in symbolic form such as stone blocks or pillars, during the Hellenistic period they began to identify their gods with Greek gods and depict them in figurative forms influenced by Greek sculpture. The most famous member of the line was the last queen, Cleopatra VII, known for her role in the Roman political battles between Julius Caesar and Pompey, and later between Octavian and Mark Antony. Perseus was captured and taken to Rome, the Macedonian kingdom was broken up into four smaller states, and all the Greek cities who aided her, even rhetorically, were punished. After the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), Greece had fallen under a Spartan hegemony, in which Sparta was pre-eminent but not all-powerful. [137][failed verification] Similarly complex devices were also developed by other Muslim engineers and astronomers during the Middle Ages. Much of the eastern part of the empire was then conquered by the Parthians under Mithridates I of Parthia in the mid-2nd century BC, yet the Seleucid kings continued to rule a rump state from Syria until the invasion by the Armenian king Tigranes the Great and their ultimate overthrow by the Roman general Pompey. Passing over his own son, Cassander, Antipater had declared Polyperchon his successor as Regent. [59][61] These cities included newly founded colonies such as Antioch, the other cities of the Syrian tetrapolis, Seleucia (north of Babylon) and Dura-Europos on the Euphrates. In 192 BC, war broke out between Rome and the Seleucid ruler Antiochus III. [83][84] Out of this revolt was formed an independent Jewish kingdom known as the Hasmonaean Dynasty, which lasted from 165 BC to 63 BC. Carthage was a Phoenician colony on the coast of Tunisia. In geometry, Euclid’s elements became the standard all the way up to the 20th c. Technological developments from the Hellenistic period include cogged gears, pulleys, the screw, Archimedes' screw, the screw press, glassblowing, hollow bronze casting, surveying instruments, an odometer, the pantograph, the water clock, a water organ, and the Piston pump. Great adv…. : Second Diadochi war. Hellenistic-era warships grew from the trireme to include more banks of oars and larger numbers of rowers and soldiers as in the Quadrireme and Quinquereme. More recently, though, it has been seen as a time when artists, writers and thinkers built on the art, literature and philosophy of the 5th and 4th centuries, but introduced many innovations of their own. The great centers of Hellenistic culture were Alexandria and Antioch, capitals of Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria respectively. A crippling treaty was imposed on Antiochus, with Seleucid possessions in Asia Minor removed and given to Rhodes and Pergamum, the size of the Seleucid navy reduced, and a massive war indemnity invoked. Additionally, he may have accurately calculated the distance from the Earth to the Sun and invented the leap day. The Indo-Greek kingdom appears to have lingered on in western Punjab until about AD 10, at which time it was finally ended by the Indo-Scythians. Rome now demanded that the Achaean League, the last stronghold of Greek independence, be dissolved. In 307 BC he took Athens, expelling Demetrius of Phaleron, Cassander's governor, and proclaiming the city free again. The Hellenistic states of Asia and Egypt were run by an occupying imperial elite of Greco-Macedonian administrators and governors propped up by a standing army of mercenaries and a small core of Greco-Macedonian settlers. The Odrysian Kingdom of Thrace: Orpheus Unmasked (Oxford Monographs on Classical Archaeology) by Z. H. Archibald,1998. The word Hellenistic is inspired by the word Hellazein, which basically meant to identify with the Greeks. Sparta remained hostile to the Achaeans, and in 227 BC Sparta's king Cleomenes III invaded Achaea and seized control of the League. [23] Lysimachus, who had seized Macedon and Thessaly for himself, was forced into war when Seleucus invaded his territories in Asia Minor and was defeated and killed in 281 BC at the Battle of Corupedium, near Sardis. After Alexander's death he was defeated by Eumenes and crucified in 322 BC, but his son, Ariarathes II managed to regain the throne and maintain his autonomy against the warring Diadochi. [86] In about 155 (or 165) BC he seems to have been succeeded by the most successful of the Indo-Greek kings, Menander I. Menander converted to Buddhism, and seems to have been a great patron of the religion; he is remembered in some Buddhist texts as 'Milinda'. Hellenistic Greece became a time of substantial maturity of the sciences. In 198 BC, during the Second Macedonian War Philip was decisively defeated at Cynoscephalae by the Roman proconsul Titus Quinctius Flamininus and Macedon lost all its territories in Greece proper. Hellenistic art is the art of the Hellenistic period generally taken to begin with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and end with the conquest of the Greek world by the Romans, a process well underway by 146 BCE, when the Greek mainland was taken, and essentially ending in 30 BCE with the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt following the Battle of Actium. Mithridates, himself of mixed Persian and Greek ancestry, presented himself as the protector of the Greeks against the 'barbarians' of Rome styling himself as "King Mithridates Eupator Dionysus"[73] and as the "great liberator". During the Hellenistic period the importance of Greece proper within the Greek-speaking world declined sharply. The Odrysians used Greek as the language of administration[38] and of the nobility. In 255 BC, Antigonus defeated the Egyptian fleet at Cos and brought the Aegean islands, except Rhodes, under his rule as well. Philosophy and other intellectual pursuits, which developed in great strides during the Hellenistic period, provided a means of exploring one's emotions and seeing the world and it was during this time that philosophers such as Epicurus (341-270 B.C.E.) [25] A large number of the Macedonian population had also been resettled abroad by Alexander or had chosen to emigrate to the new eastern Greek cities. Pliny the Elder, after having described the sculpture of the classical period, says: Cessavit deinde ars ("then art disappeared"). The years of constant campaigning had taken their toll however, and Alexander died in 323 BC. A pretext for war was provided by Philip's refusal to end his war with Attalid Pergamum and Rhodes, both Roman allies. The Nabatean Kingdom was an Arab state located between the Sinai Peninsula and the Arabian Peninsula. The Numidian royal monument at Chemtou is one example of Numidian Hellenized architecture. Up to two thirds of the population emigrated, and the Macedonian army could only count on a levy of 25,000 men, a significantly smaller force than under Philip II.[26]. Antigonus fled for Greece, and then, together with Antipater and Craterus (the satrap of Cilicia who had been in Greece fighting the Lamian war) invaded Anatolia. The Hellenistic influence in Iran was significant in terms of scope, but not depth and durability—unlike the Near East, the Iranian–Zoroastrian ideas and ideals remained the main source of inspiration in mainland Iran, and was soon revived in late Parthian and Sasanian periods.[76]. The defeat of the Greek cities by Philip and Alexander also taught the Greeks that their city-states could never again be powers in their own right, and that the hegemony of Macedon and its successor states could not be challenged unless the city states united, or at least federated. Antigonus II ruled until his death in 239 BC, and his family retained the Macedonian throne until it was abolished by the Romans in 146 BC. The Hellenistic period may be seen to end either with the final conquest of the Greek heartlands by Rome in 146 BC following the Achaean War, with the final defeat of the Ptolemaic Kingdom at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, or even the move by Roman emperor Constantine the Great of the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople in AD 330. The Bosporan Kingdom was a multi-ethnic kingdom of Greek city states and local tribal peoples such as the Maeotians, Thracians, Crimean Scythians and Cimmerians under the Spartocid dynasty (438–110 BC). [56][57][58][59] At the height of its power, it included central Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, today's Turkmenistan, Pamir, and parts of Pakistan. The cities were defeated and Athens lost her independence and her democratic institutions. In the early 2nd century BC, the Galatians became allies of Antiochus the Great, the last Seleucid king trying to regain suzerainty over Asia Minor. Despite being ruled by a dynasty which was a descendant of the Persian Achaemenid Empire it became hellenized due to the influence of the Greek cities on the Black Sea and its neighboring kingdoms. Cappadocia, a mountainous region situated between Pontus and the Taurus mountains, was ruled by a Persian dynasty. Still, Greek influence remained strong throughout many of those lands. It only lasted about 200 years, from 336 BC to 146 BC, which is the time period that begins with Alexander's death and ends when the Romans came to town and began conquering the people around the Mediterranean. In consequence, the Hellenistic Period is usually accepted to begin in 323 BCE with Alexander's death and ends in 31 BCE with the conquest of the last Hellenistic kingdom by Rome, the Lagid kingdom of Egypt. [129] Eratosthenes measured the Earth's circumference with remarkable accuracy. After this war he controlled most of south-east Sicily and had himself proclaimed king, in imitation of the Hellenistic monarchs of the east. His descendant, Attalus I, defeated the invading Galatians and proclaimed himself an independent king. Bolos of Mendes made developments in alchemy and Theophrastus was known for his work in plant classification. His vast empire split up between his leading generals, who established royal dynasties over the separate kingdoms. [145] The 18th century terms Baroque and Rococo have sometimes been applied to the art of this complex and individual period. The poetry of Virgil, Horace and Ovid were all based on Hellenistic styles. The religious ideas in Greece itself and the western part of the Alexandrian Empire, however, changed very slowly, because the Greeks, now masters of the world, felt no need for change. – 145 B.C Lesson 1 Philip II of Macedonia 2. During the following years Rome was drawn deeper into Greek politics, since the defeated party in any dispute appealed to Rome for help. John Boardman, "The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity", Princeton University Press, 1993, p.130: "The Indian king's grandson, Asoka, was a convert to Buddhism. Ancient Greece Hellenistic. Some of gold and silver with openwork designs of stylised birds have a similar distribution to the Mramorac bracelets and may also have been produced under Greek influence.". Lewis, D. M., John Boardman, and Simon Hornblower. Scholars and historians are divided as to which event signals the end of the Hellenistic era. [41] Agathocles then invaded Italy (c. 300 BC) in defense of Tarentum against the Bruttians and Romans, but was unsuccessful. This presented Antiochus III with a pretext to invade Greece and 'liberate' it from Roman influence, thus starting the Roman-Syrian War (192–188 BC). Peter Green, on the other hand, writes from the point of view of late-20th-century liberalism, his focus being on individualism, the breakdown of convention, experiments, and a postmodern disillusionment with all institutions and political processes. It included a diverse population estimated at fifty to sixty million people. Her suicide at the conquest by Rome marked the end of Ptolemaic rule in Egypt though Hellenistic culture continued to thrive in Egypt throughout the Roman and Byzantine periods until the Muslim conquest. The mlecchas are wedded to the creations of their own fancy",[90] such as flying machines that are generally called vimanas. In 317 BC, Cassander invaded Macedonia, attaining control of Macedon, sentencing Olympias to death and capturing the boy king Alexander IV, and his mother. Developments in painting included experiments in chiaroscuro by Zeuxis and the development of landscape painting and still life painting. This was a very short period in history. They continued to attack neighboring kingdoms such as Bithynia and Pergamon, plundering and extracting tribute. Illyrians on the coast of the Adriatic were under the effects and influence of Hellenisation and some tribes adopted Greek, becoming bilingual[31][32][33] due to their proximity to the Greek colonies in Illyria. University of California Press. However, Greek urban civilisation seems to have continued in Bactria after the fall of the kingdom, having a hellenising effect on the tribes which had displaced Greek rule. The Greeks valued their local independence too much to consider actual unification, but they made several attempts to form federations through which they could hope to reassert their independence. The Ptolemaic kingdom was now the city's main ally, supporting it with troops, monies and material in multiple conflicts. Antigonus then sent his son Demetrius to regain control of Greece. During the reign of Mithridates II, Pontus was allied with the Seleucids through dynastic marriages. The scholars at the libraries in Alexandria and Pergamon focused on the collection, cataloging, and literary criticism of classical Athenian works and ancient Greek myths. Greeks continued being an important part of the cultural world of India for generations. They were scholar poets, writing not only poetry but treatises on Homer and other archaic and classical Greek literature.[108]. The Hellenistic period covers the period of Mediterranean history between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in 31 BC[1] and the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt the following year. After their defeats by Pergamon and Rome the Galatians slowly became hellenized and they were called "Gallo-Graeci" by the historian Justin[71] as well as Ἑλληνογαλάται (Hellēnogalátai) by Diodorus Siculus in his Bibliotheca historica v.32.5, who wrote that they were "called Helleno-Galatians because of their connection with the Greeks."[72]. Mithridates was finally defeated by Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) in 65 BC. Although the Hellenistic kingdoms were essent… The Cambridge Companion to the Hellenistic World, 2007, p. 44. The Achaeans, while nominally subject to Ptolemy, were in effect independent, and controlled most of southern Greece. [101] The core of Carthage's military was the Greek-style phalanx formed by citizen hoplite spearmen who had been conscripted into service, though their armies also included large numbers of mercenaries. [78] Nabatean art shows Greek influences and paintings have been found depicting Dionysian scenes. Antigonus II, a student of Zeno of Citium, spent most of his rule defending Macedon against Epirus and cementing Macedonian power in Greece, first against the Athenians in the Chremonidean War, and then against the Achaean League of Aratus of Sicyon. He ruled until 238 BC when Arsaces, the leader of the Parni tribe conquered Parthia, killing Andragoras and inaugurating the Arsacid Dynasty. Poor generalship by the Romans enabled him to hold out for three years, but in 168 BC the Romans sent Lucius Aemilius Paullus to Greece, and at Pydna the Macedonians were crushingly defeated. By the 2nd century BC, the kingdom of Numidia also began to see Hellenistic culture influence its art and architecture. He was elected Hegemon of the league, and a campaign against the Achaemenid Empire of Persia was planned. The image of Alexander the Great was also an important artistic theme, and all of the diadochi had themselves depicted imitating Alexander's youthful look. 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