ALEXANDER In the 5th century B.C. Greek cities dotted the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Black sea from Spain to Egypt and the Caucasus, and already Greek culture was beginning to pass beyond the limits of the Greek race. As early as the 7th century B.C., when Hellenism was still in a rudimentary stage, Greek merce naries came to be in request throughout the Nearer East. But as Hellenism developed, its social and intellectual life began to exercise a power of attraction. The proud old civilizations of the Euphrates and the Nile might ignore it, but the ruder bar barian peoples came in various degrees under its spell. In some cases an outlying colony would coalesce with a native population, and a fusion of Hellenism with barbarian customs take place.
The great developments of the century and a half before Alexander set the Greek people in a very different light before the world. In the sphere of material power the repulse of Xerxes greatly enhanced Greek military prestige. The kings of the East leant more than ever upon Greek mercenaries, whose superiority to barbarian levies was further brought home to them by the expedition of Cyrus. But the developments within the Hellenic sphere itself were also of great consequence for its expansion outwards. The political disunion of the Greeks was to some extent neutralized by the rise of Athens to a leading position in art, literature and philosophy, and by the fact that the Attic dialect attained a classical authority; if Hellenism was to be propagated in the world at large, it was obviously convenient that it should have some one definite form of speech to be its medium.
I. The Persians.—The ruling race of the East, the Persian, was but little open to the new culture. The military qualities of the Greeks were appreciated, and so, too, was Greek science, where it touched the immediately useful ; a Greek architect bridged the Bosporus for King Darius; Greek physicians were retained at the Persian court. Exactly how far Greek influence can be traced in the remains of Persian art, such as the palaces of Persepolis and Susa may be doubtful, but it is certain that the engraved gems for which there was a demand in the Persian empire were largely the work of Greek artists.
As early as the first half of the 4th century we find communities of Phoenician traders established in the Peiraeeus. In Cyprus, on the frontier between the Greek and Semitic worlds, a struggle for ascendancy went on. The Phoe nician element seems to have been dominant in the island, when Evagoras made himself king of Salamis in 412, and restored Hellenism with a strong hand. Even into the original seats of the Phoenicians Hellenism began to intrude. Abdashtart, king of Sidon (374-362 B.C.), called Straton by the Greeks, entered into close relations with the Greek states, and imitated the Hellenic princes of Cyprus.
The seats of the Greeks in the East touched peoples more or less nearly related to the Hel lenic stock, with native traditions not so far remote from those of the Greeks in a more primitive age, the Carians and the Lycians. The Carian princes of the 4th century B.C., Hecatomnus and especially Mausolus, modelled themselves upon the pattern of the Greek tyrant. The capital of Mausolus was a Greek city, Halicarnassus, and all that we can still trace of his great works of construction shows conformity to the pure Hellenic type. His famous sepulchre, the Mausoleum (the remains of it are now in the British Museum), was a monument upon which emi nent Greek sculptors worked in rivalry. In Lycia Greek influence is more limited. Here the native language maintains itself against Greek. The proper names are (if not native) mainly Persian. But the Greek language makes an occasional appearance; the coins are Greek in type ; above all, the monumental remains of Lycia show strong Greek influence, especially the well-known "Nereid Monument" in the British Museum, whose date is held to go back to the 5th century.
A brisk trade, which reached its highest point of development in the 4th century B.C., sprang up between the Scythian chieftains and the Greek colonists. The finds of Greek pottery, and still more of gold and silver ware, in the tombs of southern Russia, have been very con siderable. But in Scythia Greek influence appears to have been limited to the material sphere (see SCYTHIA). A similar trade connection, which also flourished most in the 4th century, sprang up between Greek merchants from the Black sea or the Adriatic and the inhabitants of the Danube lands. But in these regions the Greeks did less than the Celts and the Italians to introduce a higher civilization.
From the time of Psammetichus (d. 6 i o B.c. ) Greek mercenaries had been used to prop Pharaoh's throne, and Greek merchants had begun to find their way up the Nile and even to the oases. A Greek city, Naucratis (q.v.), was allowed to arise at the Bolbitinic mouth of the Nile. But the racial repug nance to the Greek probably kept the soul of the people more shut against Hellenic influences than was that of the other orientals.
In Macedonia the native chiefs had been attracted by Hellenic life, at any rate from the beginning of the 5th century, when Alexander I. persuaded the judges at Olympia that his house was of good Argive descent (Herodotus, v. 22). It was probably not until the reorganization of the kingdom by Archelaus
that Greek culture found any abundant entrance into Macedonia. Archelaus' palace was decorated by Zeuxis; Euripides spent there the end of his days. From that time a certain degree of literary culture was general among the Macedonian nobility; their names in the days of Philip are largely Greek; the Macedonian service was full of men from the Greek cities within Philip's dominions, and Philip chose Aristotle to be the educator of his son. How far the country generally might be regarded as Hellenized is a problem which involves the vexed question whether Macedonian is to be considered a dialect of Greek.
The process of Hellenization was carried out most completely in Sicily, where the distinction between native Sicels and Greek settlers faded out in the 4th century B.C.
In Italy the peoples of the south, who came into direct con tact with the Greek colonists, showed some proficiency in their imitations of Greek ceramic art and coinage, and they derived their alphabets, directly or indirectly, from Greek script. In Central Italy the Romans at first remained comparatively imper vious to Greek influence, but the Etruscans in the 6th and 5th centuries became partially Hellenized. It is a moot point how far their alphabet was copied from Greek models, but the depend ence of their art (architecture, sculpture, pottery, coins) is unmistakable.
In Gaul the native culture was little affected by Greek civiliza tion until the end of the 4th century B.C. But by 30o B.c. the Greek colony of Massilia had become an important focus of Hellenism. The Druids of Gaul adopted the Greek alphabet and scraps of Greek philosophic lore. Imitations of Greek coins (espe cially the pieces of Philip II. of Macedon) were struck even in the remote parts of the country, and rude copies of the Gallic pieces were in turn produced in Southern Britain.
In Spain the native art of the eastern districts came under Greek influence in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C., but the growing political ascendancy of Carthage in the peninsula proved unfavour able to the spread of this influence.
In North Africa the Carthaginians, albeit political enemies of the Greeks, did not remain untouched by Greek culture. By the 4th century they had begun to copy Greek architecture, sculpture and coinage, and to use Greek as a subsidiary tongue.
