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Model of the city of Pergamum.
Isis, Egyptian goddess, mother
of all and cleanser of sins.
Antigonus II, king of Macedonia
Power rivalries, war and authoritarian rule left the world much as it had been before Alexander, but in some other respects the world had changed. The trade and commerce that Alexander stimulated continued to expand. This expansion was stimulated by arms production and a demand for iron, by the building of new roads that made transport easier, by the creation of a common currency, and by Greek as the common language of business from the border of India to as far west as what is now the French port city of Marseille.
With an increase in trade came expanded mining, manufacturing and ship building. Freight carrying ships were built much larger, as much as five tons, using methods of construction first applied to warships. Egypt's port city of Alexandria became a center of imports and manufacturing. The Egyptians and Phoenicians produced and traded cotton cloth, and the Egyptians produced silk, paper, glass, jewelry, cosmetics, salt, wine and beer. In West Asia, large workshops appeared alongside the small family stores that were common there. The manufacture of woolens increased in West Asia, along with asphalt, petroleum, carpets, perfumes, bleach and pain relieving drugs.
Across what had been Alexander's empire, some privately owned businesses grew into large enterprises. With the increase in circulation of money, credit became more sophisticated. Money-changing grew into banking. Private banks began making loans. The use of checks appeared, and people could deposit their savings for safekeeping and collect interest, which was around ten to twelve percent annually. Many aristocrats - traditionally landowners - gave up their contempt for trade and enterprise and enthusiastically joined in the money making.
With Alexander's conquests also came significant cultural change. In West Asia and North Africa, well-to-do tradesmen, intellectuals and aristocrats who were neither Greek nor Macedonian, including those who were Jews, had begun developing an interest in things Greek - to the annoyance of those who believed that the old ways were best. From Marseille to India, Greek became the language of intellectuals. The Greek gymnasium became popular. It was a place for bathing and physical exercise - without clothes for the sake of freedom of movement in their exercises. The gymnasium was also a place for training in grammar, rhetoric and poetry. And those who passed through training at the gymnasium acquired a status similar to a modern college degree.
The increase in trade and travel enhanced an awareness of distance places. An increase in migrations from city to city and from the countryside to city cut people off from their old tribal ties and increased individualism. So too did the increase in commerce. A new cosmopolitanism was rising. Among city governments came a greater desire for cooperation with other cities, such as offering other cities freedom from import and export duties to encourage trade. Cities began offering other cities exchanges of citizenship. This occurred first between Athens and Rhodes, then between the Peloponnesian cities of Messene and Phigalea. The island of Paros offered exchanges of citizenship, as did Pergamum, Temnos, Miletus and others. Conflicts that previously might have erupted into war were now more inclined to be arbitrated, with the arbiters most often being a commission from a third city.
Common legal formalities appeared among various cities, and in place of trial by local juries an inter-city system developed in which commissions came from other cities to hear cases and settle lawsuits that would otherwise have been subject to local prejudices, politics and passions.
Greeks in Italy and in cities in West Asia and North Africa arose a new interest in science, art and literature - interests that remained largely unrestricted by those rulers who had succeeded Alexander, not because these rulers were libertarians but because they saw little threat in it to their rule. Some people read seriously, and many, including wives of the wealthy, read escapist works about life in the countryside with shepherds, shepherdesses, wooded valleys and true love.
Libraries collected serious works and grew in number. Pergamum had a great library. The library at Alexandria, Egypt, became the most famous. It accumulated as many as four hundred thousand scrolls and several thousand original works and copies, and it had a scientific museum that attracted people from afar. The academy that Plato had founded still flourished, and Athens remained a famous center of philosophy, but Pergamum and Alexandria eclipsed Athens as intellectual and commercial centers.
The observation of fact was becoming widely recognized as important, and science was studied divorced from philosophy and metaphysics. People trained for various professions, including engineering and medicine. In medicine, corpses were dissected and studied. Doctors discovered the difference between motor nerves and sensory nerves, and for various parts of the body they created names that would be used into modern times. Specialists advanced the study of plants and herbs. Manuals were written on agriculture and farm management. And, in mathematics, Euclid contributed to geometry by creating a system of proofs based on deduction.
Stimulated by what had been Alexander's expedition into Asia, map making and a study of geography improved. Pytheas of Marseille voyaged up the coast of Britain to Norway or Jutland and became the first Greek to hear of what today is called the Arctic Sea. One mapmaker, Eratosthenese, described the world as round and gave a reasonable figure as its circumference.
Philosophers and common people continued to believe that the sun revolved around the earth and that the earth was at the center of the moving heavenly bodies, but Hellenized astronomers began challenging these views. Astronomers calculated the movements of the sun, moon and planets with greater accuracy. Heraclides of Pontu discovered that the planets Venus and Mercury revolved around the sun. Then Aristarchus of Samos concluded that the sun was much larger than the earth, that the earth revolved around the sun and that the distance to the stars was enormous compared to the diameter of the earth's orbit around the sun. And other astronomers confirmed his views.
In the field of mechanics, Aristotle's school made advances in understanding levers, balances and wedges. In the mid 200s a Greek from Syracuse named Archimedes worked on the relative densities of bodies and the theoretical principles of levers. He invented the ratio pi. [note] And he invented numerous mechanical contrivances, including machines used in war.
Professions that required education belonged mainly to the sons of the wealthy. But, in the more progressive Hellenized cities of West Asia and North Africa, elementary schools for the children of common folk were established. Children learned reading, writing and arithmetic. They memorized lessons about the glories of Greek culture. They were taught "civilized" behavior - and, as in Greece centuries before, educators saw physical punishment as their only recourse against inadequate effort by their pupils.
In western Asia Minor an elementary school education was provided for girls and boys. The girls ended school at a younger age than did boys, who continued their education if their fathers cared to pay for it. But some women did acquire higher education, and a few became philosophers. In the 200's, women poets began to reappear. Aristodama of Smyrna toured Greece giving recitals and receiving many honors. A woman named Hestiaea acquired a reputation as a scholar, and women were painting.
From Greece through West Asia, a growing interest in knowledge brought turmoil in religion. Before Alexander, religions tended to be local, tribal or national. After Alexander, religions knew no frontiers. Religions traveled from city to city with the new migrants. Numerous eastern cults spread westward as far as Greece. In Greece the rise of individualism and a diminishing identity with the old Olympian gods was accompanied by some people adopting astrology and some people adopting asceticism and rejecting worldly society. Some Greeks adopted doctrines preoccupied with repentance, salvation, resurrection and life after death. Many often spoke of a goddess named Fortune. Across Greece and West Asia a few among the Hellenized responded to the new individualism and cosmopolitanism by abandoning religion. Some others decided that all the gods worshiped across the world were really Zeus, that Zeus was the universal god. Some worshiped new gods, such as the healing god called Asclepius, which appeared in such cities as Epidaurus in Peloponnesia, the island city of Cos, and in Pergamum. Greeks spread the worship of Dionysus as far east as the Indus Valley, and some eastern peoples had begun worshiping Dionysus by another name, including some Hebrews outside of Judah who worshiped Dionysus under the name of Sabazios.
The Hellenized in Syria adopted the god Hadad, who was described in the Old Testament as Rimmon. And Hadad was another god whom some called Zeus. In Syria a local stone goddess called Ahahita became the goddess Atargatis and Hadad's consort. She was both a Greek goddess and Syria's greatest of goddesses, and people came from all over Asia to be purified in her sacred pool of water.
Ptolemy the First attempted to bring Egyptians closer to his Hellenized followers by creating a new religious cult that drew from Egyptian mythology. He gave the Egyptian god Osiris a new temple in the Egyptian quarter of Alexandria and a new name, Serapis. Serapis was described as a member of a trinity of gods that included Isis, the mother of all and the cleanser of sins. Rounding out the trinity was the son of Isis and Serapis: Harpocrates.
Priests clad in white initiated people into Ptolemy's cult by baptism, submerging them in the Nile, or sacred water from the Nile,- which was believed to remove one's sins - a conversion that often evoked considerable emotion. The daily routine of the priests of this faith included the singing of hymns and sprinkling sacred water. Members of the cult believed that they would be judged after death, and they hoped that with death they would pass into an everlasting life.
To many native Egyptians this attempt by the Ptolemies to create a new religion from Egyptian mythology appeared as a lack of faith in their own gods, and most Egyptians rejected the new cult. But some Greek women in Egypt found in the worship of Isis an appeal that other fertility goddesses, virgin goddess warriors, and Aphrodite lacked. Isis was a mother and a bearer of children. She knew suffering and she offered her worshippers understanding. To women, Isis was a friend, and to them she was the glory of womanhood. She was said to have ordained that women should be loved by men, to have invented the marriage contract, that women should bear children and that children should love their parents. Isis’ unique qualities helped spread worship of her and Serapis through the Aegean, to Italy and the Western Mediterranean. And in centuries to come some of Isis’ statues would serve as images of the Madonna.
Alexander's conquest of Persia and Persia's subsequent rule by the Seleucid dynasty diminished the power and influence of the Zoroastrian priesthood, and in their new isolation, Zoroastrian priests devoted themselves to scholarship. They wished to date their prophet, Zarathustra, but with Zoroastrianism having adhered to oral history rather than writing, the priests had no writings to research. Instead they researched through writings of the Babylonians, believing that events about something as important as their prophet would surely have been recorded by the scribes of Babylon. They found a vague reference to a great event having taken place in Persian history in 539 BCE. This was the conquest of Babylon by Darius. But the Zoroastrian scholar/priests chose to interpret this great event as the time when Zarathustra received his revelation from the God Mazda - another instance of priestly writing interpreting events as they pleased.
In some cities, Alexander had favored the common people against local nobles, who were potential competitors with him for power. In some cities, he had backed the creation of councils to tackle local issues. And the monarchs who followed Alexander also supported popular participation in local government. But, with the passing of time, participation in local government by common people declined. The gap between the rich and poor widened. And local power and influence gravitated toward men of wealth.
City governments called on local men of wealth to help their city, and in prosperous times such merchants contributed to the construction of temples, gymnasiums, schools and other city buildings and to the construction of bridges, closed sewers and other civic projects. They paid for city festivals and ceremonial sacrifices to the gods, for banquets for local people, free meals for the hungry, and prizes for school children. They patronized the arts, and they contributed to city beautification that included a proliferation of fountains and statues. Many of the statues were of these patrons, to honor their services. Being free from the daily labors that burdened poorer folk, men of wealth had the time to serve as diplomats. And, in times of war, they contributed to supplying armies with war material.
While assemblies elected by the common citizenry continued to meet and pass decrees, real power passed into the hands of these men of wealth - as happened in Athens, where the courts, which had been controlled by common citizens, came under the control of wealthy magistrates. And as a result of their rise in influence, these men of wealth began paying less in taxes than did common people.
Aside from the misery and insecurity created by continuous warfare, there was in Hellenistic times a misery that was economic in its origins. The wealthy could afford an abundance of luxury goods, but for the multitude there was deprivation. The population was small compared to modern times, but not small relative to the amount of food being produced. In Greece and through the Middle East a bad harvest still meant famine. In Greece, hunger prevailed because the area was not exporting enough in minerals or manufactured goods to exchange for food. Greece was still dependent upon imports to keep people fed. And in the place of exports in goods, men were exporting themselves as soldiers.
Across Greece and West Asia, migration from the countryside to the cities created urban slums and overcrowding. With new supplies of slaves and an abundance of freemen looking for work came a drop in the wages, often while the price of food was rising. An abundance of slaves offered no incentives for creating devices that would replace muscle and sweat, and those who labored were physically burdened beyond their ability to stay fit.
Many people in normal times were barely able to survive, and often they became dependent on relief in the form of free grain. From the landless in the countryside came calls for land redistribution, and small landowners called for relief from their debts. The landless in the towns and cities had no trade organizations or labor movement to enhance their power. Strikes were not tolerated and almost impossible where there was slavery.
Mining was an especially hard occupation. Egypt's gold and quicksilver mines were worked by slaves, criminals and prisoners of war, including women, elderly men and children. Young men hacked the quartz loose. Older men broke the quartz into fragments. Children dragged the quartz to the grinders, powered by women who like others worked without rest, walking in circles and pushing levers that rotated a shaft. According to the Greek writer Agatharchides, relief came only with death, which these miners welcomed.
As it was in Athens in the time of Solon, many who were wealthy feared revolt by those who were miserable, and from a few who empathized with the miserable came dreams of a better society. Some dreamed of a "brotherhood of man." In dreaming about a better world, some looked back to what they thought was an unspoiled past, to what they imagined were virtuous barbarians living according to nature. Some put into writing their ideas about a harmonious society. A writer named Iambulus designed a society without class differences, a society in which people would be equal, sharing what they produced and taking turns in doing menial work. Iambulus saw his utopia as a democracy, and he saw people in his utopia acquiring equality in wisdom and relating to each other with love.
The most serious attempt at changing society came with hate and violence. In 279 BCE, a man named Apollondorus rode a wave of discontent that gave him power in the Macedonian port city of Cassanderia (formerly Potidaea). His followers vented their anger on the wealthy with physical violence, and they confiscated wealth and property. Apollondorus established a communist dictatorship, and with money taken from the rich he hired an army of mercenaries to defend the revolution. To have succeeded the revolution would have had to grow in power by spreading to other cities. Instead, after a few months, forces directed by the king of Macedonia, Antigonus II, who had been busy uniting Macedonia under his rule, overran Cassanderia and ended the revolution.
Among the Spartans debt had increased. A few people had bought up lands and had combined them into plantations - still worked by slaves. Sparta had no middle class as a buffer between rich and poor. As elsewhere in Greece, many landless Spartan men sold themselves abroad as mercenary soldiers, and by the mid-200s, with citizenship tied to the ownership of property, only 700 Spartans were fully enfranchised.
Sparta still had two kings, Agis IV and Leonidas. Agis proposed reforms. To increase the number of landowners and enfranchise more Spartans he proposed the cancellation of debts and a redistribution of lands into small units. Those with large holdings united behind Leonidas. Wishing to avoid civil war, Agis went into exile, where, in 241, he was murdered. Thirteen years later, Leonidas' son and heir, Cleomenes III, led a Spartan army in war alongside other Greek cities opposing Macedonia's attempt to renew hegemony in Greece. Concerned with military strength, Cleomenes decided that returning to the institutions of old Sparta would bring Sparta added military strength. When he returned with his army from one of his battles, he ousted Sparta's second king and installed one of his brothers in that position. Then he embarked upon his revolution. He abolished debts and divided the land into 4,000 lots for Spartans and 15,000 lots for those who had come to live in villages surrounding Sparta. He created a new constitution, and his reforms allowed Sparta's army to grow in size and morale.
Cleomenes encouraged reformers elsewhere in Greece. Across Greece, men of wealth and land responded with fear. They opposed reforms more than they did Macedonian hegemony, and they sought help from Macedonia. War erupted between Sparta and cities led by those resisting reforms. Cleomenes allied Sparta with other Peloponnesian cities. But the Macedonians annihilated Sparta's army, and for the first time a foreign army entered Sparta in triumph. Cleomenes fled to Egypt, and there he again took up what he saw as the cause of social justice. In Alexandria, he tried to raise a revolt, but he failed and took his own life.
Recommended Books
The Greek World After Alexander, 323-30 BC, by Graham Shipley, 2000
The Harvest of Hellenism, by F.E. Peters, 1971
From Alexander to Cleopatra: the Hellenistic World, by Michael Grant, 1982
Alexander to Actium: the Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age, by Peter Green, 1993
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