Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age / Edition 1

The Hellenistic Age, the three extraordinary centuries from the death of Alexander in 323 B. C. to Octavian's final defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium, has offered a rich and variegated field of exploration for historians, philosophers, economists, and literary critics. Yet few scholars have attempted the daunting task of seeing the period whole, of refracting its achievements and reception through the lens of a single critical mind. Alexander to Actium was conceived and written to fill that gap.

In this monumental work, Peter Green—noted scholar, writer, and critic—breaks with the traditional practice of dividing the Hellenistic world into discrete, repetitious studies of Seleucids, Ptolemies, Antigonids, and Attalids. He instead treats these successor kingdoms as a single, evolving, interrelated continuum. The result clarifies the political picture as never before. With the help of over 200 illustrations, Green surveys every significant aspect of Hellenistic cultural development, from mathematics to medicine, from philosophy to religion, from literature to the visual arts.

Green offers a particularly trenchant analysis of what has been seen as the conscious dissemination in the East of Hellenistic culture, and finds it largely a myth fueled by Victorian scholars seeking justification for a no longer morally respectable imperialism. His work leaves us with a final impression of the Hellenistic Age as a world with haunting and disturbing resemblances to our own. This lively, personal survey of a period as colorful as it is complex will fascinate the general reader no less than students and scholars.

ISBN-13: 9780520083493

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: University of California Press

Publication Date: 10-19-1993

Pages: 970

Product Dimensions: 7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.90(d)

Series: Hellenistic Culture and Society #1

Peter Green is Dougherty Centennial Professor of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin. A novelist and translator as well as a scholar, he is the author of many books, including The Laughter of Aphrodite: A Novel about Sappho of Lesbos (California, 1993).

Table of Contents

LIST OF MAPS
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PART ONE. ALEXANDER'S FUNERAL GAMES, 323-276 B.C.
1. Pcrdiccas, Eumcnes, Cassandcr, 323-316
2. Antigonus One-Eye's Bid for Empire, 316-301
3. Demetrius of Phaleron: The Philosopher-King in
Action
4. Zcno, Diogenes, Epicurus, and Political
Disenchantment
J. Theophrastus, Menander, and the Transformation of
Attic Comedy
6. The Politics of Royal Patronage: Early Ptolemaic
Alexandria
7. Early Hellenistic Art and Its Antecedents, 380-270:
Space, Pathos, Realism; or, The Horse as Critic
8. The Division of the Spoils, 301-276

PART TWO. THE ZENITH CENTURY, 276-222 B.C.
9. Ptolemy Philadelphos and Antigonus Gonatas,
276-239
10. The New Urban Culture: Alexandria, Antioch,
Pergamon
11. The Critic as Poet: Calli mach us, Aratus of Soli,
Lycophron
12. Kingship and Bureaucracy: The Government of the
Successor Kingdoms
13. Armchair Epic: Apollonius Rhodius and the Voyage
of Argo
14. Events in the West: Sicily, Magna Graecia, Rome
15. Urbanized Pastoralism, or vice versa: The Idylls of
Theocritus, the ,Wimes of Herod as
16. The Road to Sellasia, 239-222

PART THREE. PHALANX AND LEGION, 221-168 B.C.
17. Polybius and the New Era
18. Antiochus III, Philip V, and the Roman Factor,
221-196
19. The Spread of Hellenism: Exploration, Assimilation,
Colonialism; or, The Dog That Barked in the Night
20. Middle-Period Hellenistic Art, 270-150:
Si monumentum requiris ...
21. Production, Trade, Finance
22. The Individual and Society: Slavery, Revolution,
Utopias
23. Ruler Cults, Traditional Religion, and the Ambivalence
ofTyche
24. From Cynoscephalae to Pydna: The Decline and Fall of
Macedonia, 196-168
PART FOUH. THE BREAKING OF NATIONS, 167-116 B.C.
25. The Wilderness as Peace, 167-146
26. Mathematics and Astronomy: The Alternative
Immortality
27. Technological Developments: Science as Praxis
28. Hellenistic Medicine; or, The Eye Has Its Limitations
29. Hellenism and the Jews: An Ideological Resistance
Movement?
30. Ptolemaic and Seleucid Decadence and the Rise of
Parthia, 145-116

PART FIVE. ROME TRIUMPHANT, 116-30 B.C.
31. Mithridates, Sulla, and the Freedom of the Greeks,
116-80
32. Late Hellenistic Art, 150-30: The Mass Market in
Nostalgia
33. Foreign and Mystery Cults, Oracles, Astrology, Magic
34. Academics, Skeptics, Peripatetics, Cynics
35. The Garden of Epicurus
36. Stoicism: The Wide and Sheltering Porch
37. Caesar, Pompey, and the Last of the Ptolemies, 80-30

CHRONOLOGY
GENEALOGICAL TABLES
NOTES
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX Show More