Information AboutHellenistic |
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HISTORY Modern historians see the death of Alexander The Great in 323 BC as the beginning of the Hellenistic period. Alexander's armies conquered the eastern Mediterranean, Egypt , Mesopotamia , and the Iranian Plateau , Central Asia , and parts of India . Following Alexander's death, there was a struggle for the succession, known as the wars of the Diadochi (Greek for ''successors''). The struggle ended in 281 BC with the establishment of four large territorial states.
His successors held on to the territory west of the Tigris for some time and controlled the eastern Mediterranean until the Roman Republic took control in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. Most of the east was eventually overrun by the Parthia ns, but Hellenistic culture held on in distant locations, like the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom in Bactria , or the Indo-Greek Kingdom in northern India , or the Cimmerian Bosporus . Hellenistic culture remained dominant in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire until its Christianisation and transition to the Byzantine Empire . Hellenism made considerable inroads and in Monarch ies governed by kings of Persian , Armenian or Thracian origin, as was the case with Armenia , Bithynia and Cappadocia . The end of the Hellenistic period is generally seen as 31 BC , when the kingdom of Ptolemaic Egypt was utterly defeated by the Romans at the Battle Of Actium . Octavian (Augustus) defeated Marc Antony at Actium, as a result, Egypt's last ruler, Cleopatra , (circa 30 BC) committed suicide and her kingdom was annexed by Octavian . CULTURE The city of Pergamum became a major centre of book production, possessing a library of some 200,000 volumes, second only to the Library Of Alexandria . Athens retained its position as the most prestigious seat of higher education, especially in the domains of Philosophy and Rhetoric , with considerable libraries in her possession. The island of Rhodes boasted a famous finishing school for politics and diplomacy. Famous alumni of Athens and Rhodes were the Romans Cicero and Mark Antony respectively. Alexandria was arguably the second most important centre of Greek learning, boasting a Great Library with 700,000 volumes and a Small Library with 42,800. Antioch as well was founded as a metropolis and centre of Greek learning which retained its status into the Christian era. NOTES REFERENCES SEE ALSO
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