Historical Essay: Two Views On Hellenism Preparation

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Alexander the Great
In the year 336 B.C., Alexander the Great became the leader of the Greeks within the Greek Kingdom of Macedonia. After thirteen years, Alexander died, however, he had built an empire that stretched from Greece all the way to India. It is however, the changes that followed his death that are of importance as these were quite significant in the direction the Greeks took and even the rest of the empires around. It was the great campaigns that he held when he was alive that would come to change the world at a subtle level.
His death ushered in the Hellenistic Age, which was preceded by the Classical Age. This was a time that saw the Greeks and the Romans incorporated as an integral unit through the exchange of the cultures spreading from the eastern parts of the Mediterranean to even Asia. Some of the changes included the fact that, the Greeks language became widespread across the world. Politically, when Alexander died, his empire was divided up into three parts, these were, Egypt which is where General Ptolemy started his Dynasty referred to as the Ptolemid Dynasty. Near the East was the Seleucid Dynasty which was started by Seleucus and the Antigonid Dynasty which covered Greece and Macedonia and ruled by Antigonus. Using the wealth the empire had amassed over the years, the empires were able to set up cultural programs in the various regions. This helped create the brewing grounds for the cultural mix that resulted. There some changes relative to religion such as Zoroastrianism as well as Mithraism. There was also the case of the Greeks becoming lingua franca. In reference to education, science and innovations, there were some significant developments such as, the Greek Eratosthenes calculating the circumference of the earth, Euclid compiling the geometry text, Archimedes calculating the pi among many others. In areas such as philosophy, there were elements such as Epicurus establishing the elements of moral philosophies of Stoicism as well as Epicureanism. Art and literature also had a brush of new ideas such as comedy along with pastoral idyll form in poetry which was largely associated with Theocritus. Aspects such as personal biography came up, as more and more people wanted to tell their stories according to their point of view and ...