Hellenistic Civilization - Essay Example

Hellenistic Civilization Introduction The Hellenistic period characterises the transformation of Greek society from isolated and contained s to a diverse, exposed, and sometimes vigorous culture that invaded the whole of Southwest Asia and eastern Mediterranean. Although the Hellenistic civilisation included diverse groups of people, Greek knowledge, norms, and culture governed the public domain of the period. Every feature of culture was largely influenced by Greek culture, with the Greek language chosen to be the Hellenistic civilisation’s official language (Cartledge 2011: 54). The literature and arts of the period were revolutionised consequently. Instead of the earlier focus on the Ideal, art works of the Hellenistic period placed greater value on the Real. Portrayals of man in literature and arts focused on the vigorous and usually comical topics that primarily depicted everyday life and the emotions of heroes, gods, and human beings (Heit 2007: 100). This essay discusses the Hellenistic civilisation based on the primary and secondary criteria identified by Gordon Childe and Charles Redman. Primary Characteristics of the Hellenistic Civilisation The Hellenistic era was marked by a new movement of Greek immigration and colonisation, as differentiated from that taking place in the 8th to 6th centuries B.C., which formed Greek dominions and cities in Africa and Asia. These newly built cities were peopled by Greek settlers who originated from various areas of the Greek world, as previously, from a particular ‘mother city’ (Naiden 2013: 394). The major cultural capitals grew from inland Greece to Rhodes, Pergamon, and newly acquired Greek colonies like Alexandria, Antioch, and Seleucia. This mix of Greek-speaking people paved the way for a collective Attic-based language, called Hellenistic Greek, which developed into the Hellenistic civilisation’s ‘lingua franca’ (Cartledge 2011: 38). In the Hellenistic era, even though the cities were not autonomous anymore, as they were in the Hellenic period, they were the capitals of trade and commerce. It was in these cities that the progenies of the Greco-Macedonian conquistadors became an expert group of merchants, soldiers, and leaders, which created an economic and cultural connection all over the region, although political union failed to endure the demise of Alexander. Among the aristocrats or the ruling class of the Greek world, the established allegiance to the polis had made commitment to the profession possible (Biers 1996: 74). Alexandria, the city established by Alexander, situated on the Mediterranean at the opening of the Nile, came to be the most famous capital of learning and trade. The library located in Alexandria became the reservoir for documenting a large number of the scientific and literary accomplishments of the period (Clarke 2008: 48). The social and economic structure of the Hellenistic civilisation, as well as the colonies it established throughout the Mediterranean, had numerous aspects similar to other agricultural communities. It is specifically similar to other civilisations wherein a conquering, hostile population settled down to agricultural communities. Hence, although 8th-century Greece relied certainly on agriculture, it had a ruling class dependent on ownership of huge manors and privileged position at the military (Clarke 2008: 72). Also, during this time a large number of farmers were autonomous, having their own areas of land and demanding some social and political privilege. However, in a general way, the Greek economy developed, especially as cities flourish and trade heightened. Social structure became consequently more intricate, and inequalities broadened (Maisels 1999: 97). As the cities were thinly populated, manufacturing and crafts were mainly performed by members of the household for domestic consumption or use. Yet, both material artefacts and literary documents show that there was some level of specialisation. Crafts worker or artisans are mentioned in the Homeric epics and the quality of artistry observed on objects, like ornamented pottery and metal crafts, was not possible to have been created by non-specialists (Buxton 1999: 63). However, in the absence of extensive manufacturing, protection from pirates and bandits, and a monetary process using coinage, markets were unavoidably small, focused on local goods, and definitely not interrelated into a price-establishing market economy (Heit 2007: 101). Trade was confined mainly to local transactions or commerce between the urban capital of city-states and the countryside. Farmers may embark their surplus products on a small vessel to trade them in a nearby city, but long-distance trade by sea was focused almost only on luxury goods, like intricately-ornamented pottery, jewellery, and valuable metals. Furthermore, gift exchanges according to social customs were as popular as detached exchanges for money (Heit 2007: 101-102). Generally, individuals who take part in ‘technical’ jobs on more than a part-time basis and looked for income from these transactions were viewed inferior and did not occupy prestigious status or position in the government and society (Cartledge 2011: 95). Majority of the people in the Hellenistic and Greek civilisation was pastoral or rural. As the Hellenistic civilisation developed and expanded, there was a normal inclination to specialise in or focus on cash crops, which would enable grain importation from places more suitable to its production, such as sections of North Africa, Sicily, and northern Middle East (Maisels 1999: 84). In continental Greece, production of grapes and olives for making of wine and cooking oil expand broadly. The products were highly suitable to soil conditions, yet they necessitated capital to build. To transform grapes and olives, farmers became hugely indebted and frequently failed; aristocratic landlords with larger amounts of resources converted more productively or profitably, purchasing the land of bankrupt farmers sooner or later (Biers 1996: 89). Hence, Mediterranean agriculture became remarkably market-driven. In comparison other agricultural civilizations, a somewhat small number of farmers produced merely for their personal use or own needs, with the exception of the early period prior to the full development of the civilisation (Naiden 2013: 418). Importation of staple foods was more widespread during the Hellenistic era. This was an apparent drive towards empire—to attempt to guarantee access to sufficient supplies of grain. The expansion of the Greek world was directed mainly at reservoirs of grain in Sicily and areas surrounding the Black Sea (Salzman 2012: 68). Massive land agriculture acquired greater impetus in the Hellenistic realms. Huge lands expand in the Middle East and Egypt, necessitating specialized financial and banking institutions. Components of this capitalistic agriculture influenced the history of the Mediterranean eventually under Arab and Roman rule. The process also contributed to the production of surpluses required for expanding Hellenistic civilisation and its city monuments (Biers 1996: 99). Cultural differences confounded and divided the Hellenistic civilisation. Peasants had in common faith in deities or gods and goddesses, but their religious festivities were mainly distinct or detached from the nobility or upper classes. Once in a while Greek peasants expressed their fascination with several of the more sentimental or affective religious traditions adopted from the Middle East, which offered more energy and vitality than the established celebrations of the Greek pantheon and sweetened the stressful responsibilities of work (Salzman 2012: 105). Diverse values and beliefs revealed and advanced the actual social conflicts of Hellenistic and Greek civilisations, especially as these civilisations became more market-oriented and huge estates confronted the peasant aspiration for autonomous property ownership (Clarke 2008: 117). Grassroots or mass uprisings failed in removing the propertied nobility, but they helped several of the political transformations in classical Greece and to the eventual collapse in the political order of the city-states and subsequent Hellenistic empires. Remarkably, situations for women progressed to a certain extent in the Hellenistic era, in an unusual pattern. Playwrights and artists started to pay greater attention to women and their situations (Clarke 2008: 125). Women within Hellenistic cities participated more easily and at will in public affairs, and a number of upper-class women acquired new roles, for instance, in creating cultural organisations. Several queens held almost absolute power, usually governing mercilessly. The mother of Sparta’s Hellenistic ruler, Cratesiclea, eagerly offered to become a captive to help build a treaty with stronger and more dominant state (Cartledge 2011: 82). As mentioned by Maisels (1999), Hellenistic women, more broadly, started to assume a dynamic and involved role in trade and commerce, although they still demanded men’s supervision over property. Secondary Characteristics of Hellenistic Civilisation The earliest and most essential of the Hellenistic philosophies were Stoicism and Epicureanism. Stoicism and Epicureanism share a number of characteristics. Both were focused on individual good, rather than of the society as a whole (Naiden 2013: 410). Both were worldly, refuting firmly the presence of any spiritual elements. Ultimately, both believe that abstractions and concepts are simply labels or names, or that merely specific objects are true, and that any idea or knowledge is rooted in the senses. Hellenistic philosophy hit the bottom in the thoughts of the Neo-Pythagoreans and Philo Judaeus. The advocates of the two philosophies were in total agreement in terms of their central principles, particularly in their mostly religious perspective. They have faith in a divine God that is totally incomprehensible to human mind. They regarded all things material and physical as sinful and immoral; the soul of a human being is locked in his/her body, from which a release can be achieved simply by means of arduous refutation and degradation of the flesh (Naiden 2013: 410-412). Their perspective was anti-intellectual and supernatural—truth originates only from revelation, not from reason or science. Hellenistic literature is importantly primarily for the explanation it provides on the characteristics of the civilisation. Almost all of the writings revealed slight originality or profundity of knowledge. The major forms of Hellenistic poetry were the mime, the pastoral, and the drama. Drama was largely comedy, signified mostly by the literary works of Menander (Buxton 1999: 92). His plays were totally distinct from the literary works of Aristophanes. They were characterised by naturalism instead of satire, by fixation with the unpleasant aspect of life instead of intellectual or political subjects. Their leading subject was romantic love. The most remarkable writer of mimes and pastorals was Theocritus of Syracuse. His pastorals give tribute to the beauty of life in the countryside and romanticise the simple, ordinary desires of rural people (Heit 2007: 99). In contrast, the mimes depict in vibrant discourse the aspirations, quarrels, and diverse affairs of the bourgeoisie in the major cities (Buxton 1999: 93). The area of prose literature was governed by the writers of utopias, the biographers, and the historians. Even though majority of the biographies were of a cheery and tale-telling appeal, their remarkable appeal clearly reveals the literary preferences of the period. Hellenistic education started with basic literacy, which is reading and writing, and advanced through the reading of Latin and Greek writers, literary analysis, and, especially, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy (Wallbank 1993: 191). Even more important was the fame of the Utopias, or vivid depictions of perfect states (Clarke 2008: 129). Almost all of them portrayed a society of economic and social equality, unaffected by conflict, oppression, and greed, on a make-believe island or in some unfriendly, unknown place. Usually in these utopias money was regarded to be strange, trade was not allowed, all property was owned by everybody, and all males were obliged to use their hands in creating the necessities of life (Clarke 2008: 129-30). It is perhaps rational to assume that the abundance of these Utopian works was an immediate outcome of the degradation and inequality of Hellenistic civilisation and an awareness of the demand for change. Hellenistic art retained a small number of premium Greek arts. Instead of the restraint, balance, and humanism which had typified the sculpture and architecture of the Golden Age, features of voluptuousness, sensationalism, and exaggerated realism at this point became widespread. The noble and plain Ionic and Doric shrines facilitated the rise of elegant public monuments and structures suggestive of wealth and power, expensive mansions, and extravagant palaces (Cartledge 2011: 114). A classic illustration was Alexandria’s extraordinary lighthouse. Sculpture also showed inclinations in the path of romanticism and overindulgence. Numerous of the statues were massive and several of them nearly outrageous. Intense sentimentality and disreputable realism were characteristics usual to the majority. Lysippos’s choice to restore massive importance into public works and sculpture could have been motivated by a revival of fascination in and of Oriental influence. Alexander and his advocates may have been impressed by the ancient colossal monuments of Persia, Babylon, and Egypt and have sought to restore a certain degree of that splendor in the West (Pollitt 1986: 49). Some of the examples of this form of sculpture are the fresco of the Great Alter of Zeus at Pergamum with its huge deities, fierce animals, and crossbreed creatures blended in distressed struggled to embody the fight of Greeks with Gauls (Salzman 2012: 108). However, in no way every Hellenistic sculpture was surreal, weird, and emotional. According to Maisels (1999), a number of it was characterised by composure and peace and sympathy for human misery suggestive of the finest work of the popular 4th-century artists. Among the Hellenistic dominions, trading in goods and staple foods for mass consumption was highly vital at the onset. The Greek cities required train, and consequently Egypt and the Seleucids purchased massive volumes of produced goods from Greece (Koester 1995: 88). However, the rulers were willing to make their kingdoms self-supporting in terms of raw materials and commonly bought produced goods, particularly textiles and weapons. Hence, although trade within these countries kept on thriving, their desire for independence became a hindrance to trade between these kingdoms. Total autonomy was never attained. Expensive clothing, ceramic products, olive oil, and luxury wine continued to be the foundation of long-distance trade in the Hellenistic age (Koester 1995: 88). Conclusions The Hellenistic world is controversial because of the intricacy of its political structure and the new essence of its broadly expanded culture. The Hellenistic civilisation was basically Greek. Literary masterpieces were created in Greece and were inspired wholly by Greek ideas, poetic techniques, and forms. Art and architecture were also essentially Greek, as well as their philosophy. The sciences, on the other hand, were largely influenced by Near Eastern culture. 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