The Hellenistic world | myHistro

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The Hellenistic world

323BC

Legacy of Alexander the Great

During Archaic and Classical antiquity Greece had traditionally been a fractious collection of fiercely independent city-states. This changed in the second half of the 4th century BCE, when the Macedonian king Philip, ruler of the vast territories...

323BC

321BC

Alexander's successors

On the afternoon of 11 June 323 BCE, Alexander the Great, conqueror of the Persian Empire and a self-styled deity in his own right, died in the city of Babylon. He left behind a huge empire which was composed of many essentially independent...

321BC

319BC

Wars of the Diadochi

Actual war broke out between the successors when one of Alexander’s most influential generals, Ptolemy, stole Alexander's dead body and took it Egypt that he ruled as a satrap of the empire. Perdiccas was thereafter murdered by his own generals during...

319BC - 275BC

283BC

Ptolemaic Egypt

The kingdom founded in Egypt by Ptolemy had been the first state of the Hellenistic world to emerge from the post-Alexandrian chaos. The Egyptians soon accepted the Ptolemies as the successors to the pharaohs of independent Egypt...

283BC

277BC

Greece and Macedon

The quests of Alexander greatly widened the horizons of the Greeks, making the endless conflicts between the cities which had marked the 5th and 4th centuries BCE seem petty and unimportant. It led to a steady emigration, particularly of the young and...

277BC

261BC

Seleucid Empire

Following the carving up of Alexander's empire, Seleucus I, one of Perdiccas’ murderers, received Babylonia. From there, he created a new empire which expanded to include much of Alexander's eastern territories...

261BC

260BC

Hellenistic religion

There was much continuity in Greek religion: the traditional gods continued to be worshiped, and the same rites were practiced as before. Change in religious practices was, as a rule, caused by the addition of new customs from other countries, such as...

260BC

255BC

Hellenistic philiosophy

During the Hellenistic era, many different schools of thought developed in the Mediterranean world. Philosophy experienced an age of eclecticism, a new awakening of the diverse knowledge and theories present in Greek culture...

255BC

250BC

Hellenistic culture

In some fields Hellenistic culture thrived, particularly in its preservation of the past, as the states of the Hellenistic period were deeply fixated with the past and its seemingly lost glories...

250BC

245BC

Hellenistic science

The Hellenistic rulers considered themselves heirs to Greek culture and also science. Thus, while scientists had worked as isolated individuals in the previous centuries, during the Hellenistic period, institutions dependent from royal authority arose...

245BC

241BC

Greeks and Romans

In the west, the Greeks faced a new rival and foe that would eventually transform the whole Mediterranean region thoroughly. It was the small city state of Rome that had managed to consolidate his power as the ruler of most of Italy and now turned...

241BC

214BC

Rome reaches Greece

The Romans, engrossed in their struggles with Carthage in the west, showed only an occasional and limited interest in Greece proper. The circumstances surrounding the affairs in Illyria, however, made them concentrate their attention more and more on...

214BC

190BC

Roman success in Greece

In 202 BCE, Scipio Africanus defeated the armies of Hannibal at Zama and secured Roman victory in the Second Punic War. The Romans then began to re-assert their influence in the Balkans, and to curb the expansion of king Philip V, who was building a...

190BC

146BC

Rome subdues Greece

The relations between Rome and the Greek states became increasingly uncomfortable in the first decades of the 2nd century BCE. Anti-Roman sentiments were becoming more common, but the Romans did not face any dangerous enemies as the Macedonians and...

146BC

100BC

Hellenistic east

After the death of Antiochus IV, the Seleucid Empire became increasingly unstable. Frequent civil wars made central authority tenuous at best and meanwhile, the decay of the Empire's territorial possessions continued apace...

100BC

33BC

End of the Hellenistic world

By 146 BCE, Rome had secured its authority over Greece. Meanwhile, under Roman hegemony, Pergamum had become the arbiter of Asia Minor. It had gathered the spoils of the Seleucid monarchy and increased its domain...

33BC

Thinking..

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