Proposals as the closing event include the final conquest of the Greek heartlands by Rome in 146 BC following the Achaean War, the final defeat of the Ptolemaic Kingdom at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, and the move by Roman emperor Constantine the Great of the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople in AD 330. Scholars and historians are divided as to which event signals the end of the Hellenistic era. The religious sphere expanded to include new gods such as the Greco-Egyptian Serapis, eastern deities such as Attis and Cybele, and a syncretism between Hellenistic culture and Buddhism in Bactria and Northwest India.
In science, the works of the mathematician Euclid and the polymath Archimedes are exemplary. The Hellenistic period saw the rise of New Comedy, Alexandrian poetry, translation efforts such as the Septuagint, and the philosophies of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Pyrrhonism. Prosperity and progress in the arts, literature, theatre, architecture, music, mathematics, philosophy, and science characterize the era. This mixture gave rise to a common Attic-based Greek dialect, known as Koine Greek, which became the lingua franca throughout the ancient world.ĭuring the Hellenistic period, Greek cultural influence and power reached its peak in the Mediterrenean and beyond. Hellenistic culture thus represents a fusion of the ancient Greek world with that of Western Asian, Northeastern African, and Southwestern Asian. These new kingdoms were also influenced by the indigenous cultures, adopting local practices where beneficial, necessary, or convenient. This resulted in an influx of Greek colonists and the export of Greek culture and language to these new realms, spanning as far as modern-day India. "Hellenistic" is distinguished from "Hellenic" in that the latter refers to Greece itself, while the former encompasses all ancient territories under Greek influence, in particular the East after the conquests of Alexander the Great.Īfter the Macedonian invasion of the Achaemenid Empire in 330 BC and its disintegration shortly after, the Hellenistic kingdoms were established throughout south-west Asia ( Seleucid Empire, Kingdom of Pergamon), north-east Africa ( Ptolemaic Kingdom) and South Asia ( Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Indo-Greek Kingdom). The Ancient Greek word Hellas ( Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was gradually recognized as the name for Greece, from which the word Hellenistic was derived. In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt the following year.
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