Alexander the Great and Hellenistic Culture

Alexander the Great  Macedonia was a powerful kingdom to the north of the Greek city-states  Philip II reorganized the Macedonian army and adopted the phalanx system  Conquered all of the major Greek city-states except Sparta and became the new leader of Greece in 338 BC, he was assassinated in 336 BC  After his death, his son Alexander came to the throne ( BC) - Alexander was a great military leader and strategist

 Reestablished control in Greece due to a revolt  Thebes resisted and Alexander burned down the city and sold all the people into slavery  Decided to fulfill his father’s dream of conquering the Persian Empire  Destroyed the Persian army and emperor Darius III fled – he was later murdered by one of his own officers  After this victory, Alexander led his army deeper into Asia  Went and conquered parts of India  When his army refused to go any further, Alexander agreed to go home

 On his way back home, Alexander fell ill in the city of Babylon and died a few days later  He left no heir, so his generals began to fight for control  In the end the empire was divided among the three most powerful generals  Macedonia and Greece, Persian Empire, and Egypt  Legacy of Alexander  Created new cities, most of them named Alexandria  Built Alexandria as the Greek capital of Egypt – important city which had a famous library  Alexander envisioned a world in which many cultures would live together

 Made a conscious effort to bring people and ideas from different places together  Alexander married two Persian princesses  Encouraged Greeks to move to the Alexandria cities  Created a new type of culture  Blended elements of Greek civilization with ideas from Persia, Egypt, and Central Asia  Created the Hellenistic Era  Hellenistic means “to imitate the Greeks”  Expansion of Greek language and ideas to other parts of the world  Massive spread of Greek colonists to Asia

 Hellenistic Achievements - philosophers  Interest in Greek philosophy  Cynicism school of philosophy = cynics rejected ideas of pleasure and wealth  Instead people should live according to nature  Epicureans = people should seek out pleasure and avoid pain  Stoicism – great emphasis on reason, self-discipline, and emotional control  Stoics believed people should identify their proper role in society and strive to fulfill that role

 Hellenistic Achievements – Science and Math  Euclid = formulated many of the ideas about geometry that are still used and learned today  Eratosthenes = determined the world was round and calculated its circumference  Archimedes of Syracuse = one of the greatest inventors of the ancient world  Established the value of pi, developed a compound pulley that could lift heavy loads, and used levers and pulleys to lift a ship out of the water  Alexander’s empire fell apart soon after his death, and the different Hellenistic kingdoms were shortly conquered by the Romans