Hellenistic Culture Subtopics The definition of Hellenism and

Hellenistic Culture

Subtopics: • The definition of Hellenism and the Hellenistic Age • The cultural capital of Hellenism: Alexandria • A symbolic figure of Hellenistic culture: Callimachus • Changing patterns of the ancient Greek culture • The Hellenistic science

The definition of Hellenism and Hellenistic Age 1 • Now the concept of Hellenism is attempted to interprete. Gustav Droysen, the great German historian in the 19 th century established the concept of Hellenism, as a historical period. He was interested in the problem of the unification of the Greek city-states in the 4 th century BC. • Droysen lived in the age of German unification process in the second part of the 19 th century – it was the birth of German nation state –, and it is not surprising that historiography concentrated on the emergence of Macedonia with its all consequences. Macedonia was an analogy of Prussia for him. He was interested in Macedonian success’s experience because he wanted to promote the Prussian success for the German unification process.

The definition of Hellenism and Hellenistic Age 2 • Droysen’s historiography represented the changing concepts of reception/perception of ancient history. • At the beginning of the 19 th century, German neo-humanists, Humboldt, Goethe and Schiller still highly estimated the Athenian „golden age” with its political, literal and artistic innovations but Droysen’s interest turned to the results of the ancient great powers. • While the representatives of German neo-humanism discovered the artistic results of the „golden age”, and respected the Athenian citystate, as an ideal implementation of community, Droysen rather concentrated on the problems of politics and power.

The definition of Hellenism and Hellenistic Age 3 • Alexander the Great occupied the Pesian Empire which is the starting point of Hellenism. • Droysen and his colleagues established the concept of Hellenism which can be interpreted as a cultural diffusion towards Near Eastern countries, and special mixture of Greek and oriental cultures. • Hellenism involved the concept that the vital Greek culture had strong impact on old eastern/oriental cultures as far as India. • However, modern historiography in the last decades called the attention to the fact that the Greek influence wasn’t so strong in the eastern countries. • Only the Eastern-Mediterranean basin and the Near East can be seen as an exception where Hellenistic effects had been survived until early middle ages.

The definition of Hellenism and Hellenistic Age 4 • At the beginning of the Hellenistic Age new monarchies with large territories as successors of Alexander the Great has been established relying on Macedonian army and relying on Greek settlers against native inhabitants. • Hellenistic rulers supported the Greeks to found new cities in the Near East. • Some hundreds of thousands of Greeks emigrated from the Greek homeland to the Near East and significantly have transformed oriental cultures. • Greek citizens were able to maintain their identity only with the help of schooling education which resulted in increasing significance of the Hellenistic schooling education.

The cultural capital of Hellenism: Alexandria 1 • The Hellenistic civilization was a cosmopolitan worldwide civilization, and its cultural character had been reshaped as well comparint with the Archaic and Classical age. • Alexandria was the leading cultural center of the Hellenistic world. Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great. He had founded a lot of towns during his crusade, and there were about 7 -8 cities which were called Alexandria. It inherited the name of the great conqueror. Some decades later Alexandria became the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt which was a successor of Alexandros’s empire. • Alexandria was a typical metropolis, the first in the Greek Hellenistic world. It had about one million inhabitants with complex multicultural environment.

The cultural capital of Hellenism: Alexandria 2 • Not only Egyptian natives and immigrated Greeks and Macedonians but the Hellenized Jews lived in the capital. • This is the reason why Alexandria became the place where the Jews firstly translated the Old Testement to Greek language – it was the so-called Septaquint or Septaquint Bible (in some languages Septaquinta), this name is in connection with number seventy because the tradition said that 70 translators translated the text, and they made the same translation independently from each other only relying on the divine revelation and suggestion of the God. And later after Christ in 2 -3 th century AD. Alexandria was the first high-level educational center of Christians in the Eastern Mediterranean basin.

The cultural capital of Hellenism: Alexandria 3 • Returning to the ancient world the Ptolemaic dynasty did much to make Alexandria an intellectual, cultural, and scientific center. They established a library, and museum, undoubtedly the greatest seat of learning in the Hellenistic world. • It was the largest library of the ancient world. The official name of these institutions was Museion – it is a place for Musas – and we inherited the word museum as a place for collection of interesting things and historical or cultural memories but museum had broader meaning in Alexandria because it included the library and it was aplace for research as well. • At the state’s expense the rulers maintained a number of distinguished scholars and poets. Hellenistic rulers supported not only natural sciences but philological researches as well.

A symbolic figure of Hellenistic culture: Callimachus 1 • Now the characteristic features of Hellenistic culture is attempted to dscribe. We have already spoken about the importance of schoolingeducation and the educational character – and so-called educational humanism – of Hellenistic Age. • Now we are depicting the new style and character of Hellenistic culture in the most general and broadest meaning in comparison with Classical Age with characterizing a symbolic figure, Callimachus in the Hellenistic Age who lived in Alexandria. • With the help of Callimachus figure and character some crucial aspects and characteristic features of Hellenistic cultures can be classified.

A symbolic figure of Hellenistic culture: Callimachus 2 • Perhaps Callimachus can represent perfectly the spirit of Hellenism. • He was a poet who lived in Alexandria, in the capital of Hellenistic Macedonian kings of Egypt. • He was a leader of Alexandrian cultural institutions which was established by the kings. His social position was high enough. • Differing from the poets of the Athenian „golden age” he didn’t express the opinion of a community but he served his ruler. • He had to be involved in the affairs of the Alexandrian library which was an important part of the Museion.

A symbolic figure of Hellenistic culture: Callimachus 3 • Callimachus was the first poeta doctus – it means an educated poet – in the history of European literature. • He was permanently searching the particular and exceptional versions of the myths, which weren’t well-known for everybody, and wanted to include them into his poems. • His poetic style and behaviour was at the borderline of a poet and a scholar or philologist. • He has some hymns which are really difficult readings for everyday public. Callimachus used long, complicated and detailed descriptions in his poems. It was a polished and distilled high poetry with its all characteristics, for example with exceptional mythological details.

A symbolic figure of Hellenistic culture: Callimachus 4 • There was a typical topic for him to write a poem about the tress of the Egyptian queen, Berenice. • It was a votive present given by the queen for gods and was taken on the altar, but it disappeared. There was a terrible scandal in the royal court. Finally a royal astronomer and Callimachus together solved the problem. The astronomer revealed a constellation of stars in the sky which was similar to a tress, and Callimachus wrote a poem that the tress was transformed by gods as a new constellation of stars because the gods highly respected the queen’s tress and wanted to preserve it forever. • Callimachus’s example excellently refers to reshaping character of the ancient Greeek literature after the Golden Age.

A symbolic figure of Hellenistic culture: Callimachus 5 • Callimachus was a poet of a king’s court in a metropolis in Alexandria not in small-size city states as Athenian artists and writers. • He wasn’t interested in the problems between individual and community or the changeable and terrible fate of mankind as Classical tragedy did it. He wrote about personal problems of the royal family. • Moreover he had poems – hymns – on gods with rare and special myths and detailed descriptions. • His poetic behaviour had a secondary or reflective urban character with its scholar attitude.

Changing patterns of the ancient Greek culture 1 • Callimachus had a written poetry. Hellenistic period was the age of written culture after long period of oral culture. • Homeric epics were typical embodiment/manifestation of oral poetry in 8 th century BC. • The Greek literature began to change in the Classical Age from an oral to a written culture but some aspects of oral culture had been survived until the end of the Classical period. • In the Hellenistic Age Callimachus wrote his poems in a volume, his colleagues in Alexandria worked on/prepared written edition of Homeric epics. • Their work demonstrates that the Greek culture became a written culture in the Hellenistic Age.

Changing patterns of the ancient Greek culture 2 • They were the first philologists of the European civilization. • The age of Hellenism was the birth of philology in the history of European civilization and it took place in Alexandria. • Rhetoric education had been changed a lot as well. • Originally rhetorics was mainly an oral culture which can be interpreted as a form of democratic public discussion. • By Hellenism it had been transformed a well-arranged theory with everyday schooling practices. • Hellenistic rulers weren’t interested in rhetorics, as public form of discussion but they supported newly founded citiees and schools in these towns.

Changing patterns of the ancient Greek culture 3 • It is also interesting to see how the comedy had been changed. • In the Golden Age Aristophanes’s comedies preferred public problems with harsh and rude jokes – it was a consequence of oral culture – but in the case of Menander who was a comedy writer in Athens in the age of Hellenism only privacy and private life with fine jokes and irony became the topics of his comedies.

Hellenistic science 1 • The Hellenistic culture achieved its greatest results in the field of sciences. • In the Archaic and Classical Age the philosophy was the most important field where new innovations emerged, but it was the science in the Hellenistic period. • Now we are dealing with Hellenistic sciences which had its flourishing period in Alexandria between 4 th century BC. and 3. century AD.

Hellenistic science 2 Aristarchus • The most famous of the Hellenistic astronomers was Aristarchus of Samos (at the end of the 4 th century B. C. ), who was educated in Aristotle’s school. Aristarchus concluded that the sun is far larger than the moon, and that the stars are enormously distant from the earth. • He argued against Aristotle’s concept that the earth is the center of the universe. • Aristarchus established the heliocentric theory that the earth and planets revolve around the sun. • His work is more impressive because he lacked even a primitive telescope. Aristarchus had only the human eyes and brain but it was more than enough for him.

Hellenistic science 3 Aristarchus • Unfortunately Aristarchus’s theories did not convince the ancient world. • In the second century AD. Claudius Ptolemy, a mathematician and astronomer in Alexandria accepted Aristotle’s theory of the earth as the center of the universe, and their view/opinion prevailed for 1400 years. • Aristarchus’s heliocentric theory was resurrected by the brilliant Polish Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus in the Renaissance (in the 16 th century).

Hellenistic science 4 Euclid • In the field of geometry Hellenistic scientists discovered little that was new, but Euclid (about 300 BC. ), a mathematician who lived in Alexandria, compiled a valuable textbook of existing knowledge with a strict structure of method. Definitions, axioms were based one on another. • Mainly this method was completely new, and the whole Western science inherited it as the basis of the method of natural sciences. • The Elements of Geometry had immense influence on the European civilization, and it rapidly became the standard introduction to geometry.

Hellenistic science 5 Euclid • Generations of students, from the Hellenistic period to the present, have learned the foundations of geometry from it. • Moreover it became the ground for Christian scholasticism which put emphasis on well disciplined, logical argumentation after Boethius, the Christian philosopher who firstly advised to use Euclid’s method even in the field of theology in the 6 th century A. D.

Hellenistic science 6 Archimedes • The greatest scientist of the Hellenistic period was Archimedes in the 3 th century B. C. who was a clever inventor as well. • He lived in Syracuse in Sicily and watched Rome as emerging power in the Mediterranean. When the Romans besieged Syracuse in the Second Punic War, Archimedes invented a lot of machines to attack and to destroy the Roman army. • His catapults threw rocks large enough to sink Roman ships and disrupt battle lines. • The Romans highly respected Archimedes, as Plutarch, the Greek biographer some centuries later reported. • In the Hellenistic period the practical applications of principles of mechanics were primarily military for the building of artillery.

Hellenistic science 7 Archimedes • Archimedes was far more interested in pure mathematics than in practical inventions. His mathematic research, covering many fields, was his greatest contribution to science. Archimedes dealt with basic principles of the mechanics. • He once said that if he were given a fix place to stand, he could move the world. • With his treatise On Floating bodies he founded the science of hydrostatics. • We know his statement about the weight of the body in water. Weight of the body is less in water just with the weight of the water which is crowded out by the body.

Hellenistic science 8 Archimedes • Archimedes worked out a system to express large numbers, a difficult matter considering the deficiencies and weaknesses of Greek numerical notation. The Greeks denoted numbers with elements of their alphabetic script.

Hellenistic science 9 Eratosthenes • Archimedes was willing to share his work with others, among them Eratosthenes (in the 3 th century BC. ), a man with the almost universal interests in the Hellenistic Age. From his native city, Kyrene (it was a Greek-founded town) in North Africa, Eratosthenes travelled to Athens, where he studied philosophy and mathematics. • He refused to join any of the philosophical schools, because he was interested in too many things to follow any particular dogma. His way of thinking was eclectic, taking doctrines from many of schools. In philosophy Eratosthenes was influenced by Zeno, but Stoicism could not satisfy his mathematical and geographical interest. • Besides his scientific work, he devoted time to poetry, in which he showed genuine talent, and he wrote a book on Athenian comedy.

Hellenistic science 10 Eratosthenes • Around 245 BC. King Ptolemy, the ruler of Egypt invited Eratosthenes to Alexandria. • Eratosthenes came to Alexandria to become a librarian of the royal library, a position of great prestige. • While there he continued his mathematical work, and by letter maintained the friendship with Archimedes. Unlike his friend, Archimedes, Eratosthenes did not devote his life entirely to mathematics, although he never lost his interest in it. • He used mathematics to geographical studies for which he is most famous. He calculated the circumference of the earth geometrically, estimating it as about 24. 675 miles. He was not wrong by much: the earth is actually 24860 miles in circumference.

Hellenistic science 11 Eratosthenes • Using geographical information gained by Alexander the Great’s conquest, Eratosthenes tried to fit the East into Greek geographical knowledge. • Although for some reason he ignored the Western Mediterranean and Europe, he declared that a ship could sail from Spain either around Africa to India or directly westward to India. • The great days of Western exploration and sailors such as Vasco da Gama and Magellan finally proved Eratosthenes’ theories.

Hellenistic science 12 Eratosthenes • Renassiance geography inherited from some Hellenistic geographers that the Earth is spherical, and Eratosthenes estimated exactly the circumference but renaissance scholars also inherited the ancient tradition which supposed a much larger Asia than modern geography. • To compare a larger Asia with the right circumference on a spherical Earth – this was the reason that Columbus was brave enough to go westward to India. He supposed it could be a short travel. Without this combination of the right circumference and the geographical mistake about a larger Asia he never would have initiated his route which resulted in discovery of America.

Hellenistic science 13 Eratosthenes • Eratosthenes was called by contemporary scholars as “beta” because his interest covered almost everything from poetry, literature and mathematics to geography but he was only the second best in every field of studies – as his contemporaries said who were really envious. But he was the most universal scholar in the Hellenistic world with brilliant personal capacities. • He firstly called himself as a philologist in the history of European civilization. The word refers to a man who likes the words, likes studying the words. Later this word meant a systematic critical attitude toward literal texts, and philology became an academic discipline, but originally he meant his love towards every field of academic disciplines and studies.