EFFECT UPON NON-HELLENIC PEOPLES I. India.—In India (including the valleys of the Kabul and its northern tributaries, then inhabited by an Indian, not as now, by an Iranian, population), Alexander planted a number of Greek towns. Soon after 321 B.C. Macedonian supremacy beyond the Indus collapsed before the advance of the native Maurya dynasty, and about 303 B.C. large districts west of the Indus were ceded by Seleucus. But the Maurya dynasty broke up about 180 B.C., and at the same time the Greek rulers of Bactria began to lead expeditions across the Hindu-Kush. Menander, in the middle of the end century B.C., extended his rule to the Ganges. Then "Scythian" peoples from Central Asia gradually squeezed within ever-narrowing limits the Greek power in India. The last Greek prince, Hermaeus, seems to have succumbed about 3o B.C. Under the Roman empire, though Greek rule in India had disappeared, active commercial intercourse went on between India and the Hellenistic lands. How far, through these changes, did the Greek population settled by Alexander or his successors in India main tain their distinctive character? What influence did Hellenism, during the centuries in which it was in contact with India, exert upon the native mind? Only extremely qualified answers can be given to these questions. Capital data are possibly waiting under ground—the Kabul valley, for instance, is almost virgin soil f or the archaeologist—and any conclusion we can arrive at is merely provisional. If certain statements of classical authors were true, Hellenism in India flourished exceedingly. But the phil-Hellenic Brahmins in Philostratus' life of Apollonius had no real existence, and the statement of Dio Chrysostom that the Indians were familiar with Homer in their own tongue is a traveller's tale. India has yielded no Greek inscription except on the coins of the Greek kings and their Scythian successors. If we argue by prob ability from what we know of the conditions, we have to consider that the Greek rule in India was all through fighting for exist ence, and can have had little time or energy left for such things as art, science and literature. Perhaps we should rather think of the Hellenic colonists as resembling the Greeks found to-day dispersed over the nearer East, with interests mainly commercial, easily assimilating themselves to their environment. As to what India derived from Greece there has been a good deal of erudite debate. That the Indian drama took its origin from the Greek is still maintained by some scholars, though hardly proved. There is no doubt that Indian astronomy shows marked Hellenic fea tures, including actual Greek words borrowed. But by far the most signal borrowing is in the sphere of art. The stream of Bud dhist art which went out eastwards across Asia had its rise in North-West India, and the remains of architecture and sculpture unearthed in this region enable us to trace its development back to pure Greek types. How far to the east the distinctive influence of Greece went is shown by the seal-impressions with Athena and Eros types, the stucco reliefs and antefixes, and the frescoes found by Sir Marc Aurel Stein in the buried cities of Khotan. These remains belong to the period of the early and middle Roman empire, and were probably the work of Hellenized orientals rather than of Greeks ; but their Hellenic character is unmistakeable. According to Mr. E. B. Havell, there exist "paintings treasured as the most precious relics and rarely shown to Europeans, which closely resemble the Graeco-Buddhist art of India" in some of the oldest temples of Japan (Studio, vol. xxvii., 1903, p. 26).
Greek Kingdoms.—About 2 5o B.C. Bactria and Sogdiana broke away from the Seleucid empire; independent Greek kings reigned there till the country was conquered by nomads from Central Asia a century later. Alexander had settled large masses of Greeks in these regions. For estimating the amount and quality of Hellenism in Bactria during the i 8o years or so of Mace donian and Greek rule, we are reduced to building hypotheses upon the scantiest data. Mr. W. W. Tarn's careful survey leads to the conclusion that palpable evidences of an active Hellenism have not been found ; he inclines to think that the Greek king doms mainly took on the native Iranian colour. The coins, of course, are adduced on the other side, being not only Greek in type and legend, but (in many cases) of a peculiarly fine execu tion. (See BACTRIA and works there quoted.) The west of Iran slipped from the Seleucids in the course of the end century B.C., to be joined to the Parthian kingdom or fall under petty native dynasties. Soon after i 3o B.C. Babylonia, too, was conquered by the Parthian, and Mesopotamia before 88. Then the reconquest of the nearer East by Oriental dynasties was checked by the advance of Rome. Asia Minor and Syria remained substantial parts of the Roman empire until the Moham medan conquests of the 7th century A.D. began a new process of recoil on the part of the Hellenistic power. The greatest of all the Hellenic colonies stood here—almost on the site of Bag dad—Seleucia on the Tigris. It superseded Babylon as the indus trial focus of Babylonia and counted some Goo,000 inhabitants. In Mesopotamia, Pliny especially notes how the character of the country was changed when the old village life was broken in upon by new centres of population in the cities of Macedonian founda tion.
Hellenic Iranian Culture.—When the Parthians rent away prov inces from the Seleucid empire, the Greek cities did not cease to exist by passing under barbarian rule. Gradually, no doubt, the Greek colonies were absorbed, but the process was a long one. Seleucia on the Tigris is spoken of by Tacitus as being, in A.D. 36, "proof against barbarian influences." How important an element the Greek population of their realm seemed to the Par thian kings we can see by the fact that they claimed to be them selves champions of Hellenism. From the reign of Artabanus I. (128/7-123 B.c.) they bear the epithet of "Phil-Hellen" as a regular part of their title upon the coins. That the Parthian court itself was to some extent Hellenized is shown by the story that a Greek company of actors was performing the Bacchae before the king when the head of Crassus was brought in. Artavasdes, king of Armenia (54?-34 B.c.) composed Greek tragedies and histories. The Parthian princes were in many cases the children of Greek mothers who had been taken into the royal harems. Many of the Parthian princes resided temporarily, as hostages or refugees, in the Roman empire; but the nation at large looked with anything but favour upon too liberal an intro duction of foreign manners at the court.
Such slight notices in Western literature do not give us any penetrating view into the operation of Hellenism among the Iranians. As an expression of the Iranian mind we have the Avesta and the Pehlevi theological literature. Unfortunately, in a question of this kind the dating of our documents is the first matter of importance; and we can only assign dates to the differ ent parts of the Avesta by processes of fine-drawn conjecture. And even if we could date the Avesta securely, we could only prove borrowing by more or less close coincidences of idea, a tempting but uncertain method of enquiry. It is enough here to observe that Iran and Babylonia do, as a matter of fact, continually yield the explorer objects of workmanship either Greek or influenced by Greek models, belonging to the age after Alex ander, and that we may hence infer at any rate such an influence of Hellenism upon the tastes of the richer classes as would create a demand for these things.
Sassanian Evnpire.—If any vestige of Hellenism still survived under the Sassanian kings, our records do not show it. At the court a limited recognition might be given, as fashion veered, to the values prevalent in the Hellenistic world. Chosroes I. interested himself in Greek philosophy and received its profes sors from the West with open arms; according to one account, he had his palace at Ctesiphon built by Greeks. But the account of Chosroes' mode of action makes it plain that the Hellenism once planted in Iran had withered away; representatives of Greek learning and skill had all to be imported from across the frontier.
3. Asia Minor.—Greek Cities of the Diadochi.—Very dif ferent were the fortunes of Hellenism in those lands which became annexed to the Roman empire. In Asia Minor, we have seen how, even before Alexander, Hellenism had begun to affect the native races and Persian nobility. During Alexander's own reign, we cannot trace any progress in the Hellenization of the interior, nor can we prove here his activity as a builder of cities. But under the dynasties of his successors a great work of colonization went on as each rival dynasty of Greek or Macedonian kings endeavoured to secure its hold on the country by founding fresh Greek settlements. While new Greek cities were rising in the interior, the older Hellenism of the western coast grew in material splendour under the munificence of Hellenistic kings. Its centre of gravity to some extent shifted. Ephesus grew in greatness and wealth, and Smyrna rose again after an extinction of four cen turies. The great importance of Rhodes belongs to the days after Alexander, when it received the riches of the East from the trade-routes which debouched into the Mediterranean at Alex andria and Antioch. In Aeolis the centre of gravity moved to the Attalid capital, Pergamum. But the irruption of the Celts, beginning in 2 78-2 7 7 B.C., checked the Hellenization of the inte rior. Not only did the Galatian tribes take large tracts of the plateau in possession, but they were an element of perpetual unrest, which hampered and distracted the Hellenistic monarchies.
Native Dynasties.—The minor dynasties of non-Greek origin, the native Bithynian and the two Persian dynasties in Pontus and Cappadocia, were Hellenized before the Romans drove the Seleu cid out of the country. In Bithynia the upper classes seem to have followed the fashion of the court ; the dynasty of Pontus was phil-Hellenic by ancestral tradition ; the dynasty of Cappa docia dated its conversion to Hellenism from the end century B.C.
Hellenism under Rome.—When Rome began to interfere in Asia Minor, its first action was to break the power of the Gauls (r 8g B.c.). In 133 Rome entered formally upon the heritage of the Attalid kingdom and became the dominant power in the Anatolian peninsula for 1,200 years. Under Rome the process of Hellenization, which the divisions and weakness of the Mace donian kingdoms had checked, went forward. The coast regions of the west and south the Romans found already Hellenized. In Lydia not a trace of the old language was left in Strabo's time ; in Lycia, the old language became obsolete in the early days of Macedonian rule. But inland, in Phrygia, Hellenism had as yet made little headway outside the Greek cities. It was not until the reign of Hadrian that city life on the Phrygian plateau became rich and vigorous, with its material circumstances of temples, theatres and baths. The lower classes at Lystra in St. Paul's time spoke Lycaonian (Acts xiv. r I). In Galatia the larger towns seem to have become Hellenized by the time of the Chris tian era, whilst the Celtic speech maintained itself in the country villages until the 4th century A.D. Cappadocia at the beginning of the Christian era was still comparatively townless, a country of large estates with a servile peasantry. Even in the 4th cen tury its Hellenization was still far from complete ; but Christianity had assimilated so much of the older Hellenic culture that the Church was now a main propagator of Hellenism in the backward regions. The native languages of Asia Minor all ultimately gave way to Greek. The effective Hellenization of Armenia did not take place until the 5th century.
Seleucid Empire.—The whole of Syria was brought under the Seleucid sceptre, together with Cilicia, by Antiochus III. (223– 1 87 B.c.). Under his son, Antiochus IV. (175-164), a fresh impulse was given to Syrian Hellenism. In 1 Maccabees he is represented as writing an order to all his subjects to forsake the ways of their fathers and conform to a single prescribed pattern, and though in this form the account can hardly be exact, it does no doubt represent the spirit of his action. Many cities exchanged their existing name for that of Antioch. With the ever-growing weakness of the Seleucid dynasty, the independence and activity of the cities increased, although they were less pro tected against military adventures and barbarian chieftains.
Roman Period.—When Pompey annexed Syria in 64 B.C. as a Roman province, he found it a chaos of city-states and petty principalities. The Nabataeans and the Jews above all had encroached upon the Hellenistic domain ; in the south the Jewish raids had spread desolation and left many cities practically in ruins. Under Roman protection Hellenism was secured from the barbarian peril, and Greek city life, with its political forms, its complement of festivities, amusements and intellectual exercise, went on more largely than before. The great majority of the Hellenistic remains in Syria belong to the Roman period. Such local dynasties as were suffered by the Romans to exist had, of course, a Hellenistic complexion. Especially was this the case with that of the Herods. Not only were such marks of Hellenism as a theatre introduced by Herod the Great (37-4 B.c.) at Jeru salem, but in the work of city-building this dynasty showed itself active. Sebaste (the old Samaria), Caesarea, Antipatris were built by Herod the Great, Tiberias by Herod Antipas (4 B.c. A.D. 39). In Syria, too, Hellenism under the Romans advanced upon new ground. Palmyra, of which we hear nothing before Roman times, is a notable instance.
Greek Culture in Syria.—In Syria we do not find the same disappearance of native languages and racial characteristics as in Asia Minor. Still less was this the case in Mesopotamia. At Doura-Europus on the middle Euphrates recent excavations have presented the picture of a Seleucid foundation, built and decorated in good Greek style, but unable to resist Semitic encroachments. By A.D. 30o even the people of the wealthier classes usually bear Semitic names. The lower classes at Antioch and no doubt in the cities generally, were in speech Aramaic or bilingual. The villages, of course, spoke Aramaic. The richer natives, on the other hand would become Hellenized in language and manners, and the "Syrian Code" of civil laws shows how far the social structure was modified by the Hellenic tradition. Of the Syrians who made their mark in Greek literature, some were of native blood; e.g., Lucian of Samosata, and several later poets and philosophers.
On the other hand there was a Syriac-speaking church as early as the 2nd century, and with the spread of Christianity Syriac asserted itself against Greek. The Syriac literature which we possess is all Christian. But where Greek gave place to Syriac, Hellenism was not thereby effaced. It was to some extent the passing over of the Hellenic tradition into a new medium. There was an extensive translation of Greek works into Syriac during the next centuries, handbooks of philosophy and science for the most part.
Through the Hellenistic Jews, Greek influences reached Jerusa lem itself, though their effect upon the Aramaic-speaking Rabbin ical schools was naturally not so pronounced. The large number of Greek words, however, in the language of the Mishnah and the Talmud is a significant phenomenon. The attitude of the Rabbinical doctors to a Greek education does not seem to have been hostile until the time of Hadrian. The sect of the Essenes probably shows an intermingling of the Greek with other lines of tradition among the Jews of Palestine.
From the Ptolemaic kingdom Hellenism early travelled up the Nile into Aethiopia. Ergamenes, the king of the Aethiopians in the time of the second Ptolemy, who had received a Greek educa tion and cultivated philosophy, broke with the native priesthood, and from that time traces of Greek influence continue to be found in the monuments of the Upper Nile. When Aethiopia became a Christian country in the 4th century, its connection with the Hellenistic world became close.
7. Hellenism in the West.—Whilst in the East Hellenism had been sustained by the political supremacy of the Greeks, in Italy Graecia capta had only the inherent power and charm of her culture wherewith to win her way. Even before Alexander, as we saw, Hellenism had affected the peoples of Italy, but it was not until the Greeks of South Italy and Sicily were brought under the supremacy of Rome in the 3rd century B.C. that the stream of Greek influence entered Rome in any volume. It was now that the Greek freedman, L. Livius Andronicus, laid the founda tion of a new Latin literature by his translation of the Odyssey, and that the Greek dramas were recast in a Latin mould. The first Romans who set about writing history wrote in Greek. At the end of the 3rd century there was a circle of enthusiastic phil-Hellenes among the Roman aristocracy, led by Titus Quinc tius Flamininus, who in Rome's name proclaimed the autonomy of the Greeks in 196. In the middle of the 2nd century B.C. Roman Hellenism centred in the circle of Scipio Aemilianus, which included men like Polybius and the philosopher Panaetius. The visit of the three great philosophers, Diogenes, Critolaus and Carneades in 155, was an epoch-making event in the history of Hellenism at Rome. Opposition there could not fail to be, and in 161 a senatus consultum ordered all Greek philosophers and rhetoricians to leave the city. The effect of such measures was, of course, transient. Even though the opposition found so doughty a champion as the elder Cato (censor in 184), it was ultimately of no avail. The Italians did not indeed surrender themselves passively to the Greek tradition. In different departments of culture the degree of their independence was different. The mere fact that they produced a literature in Latin argues a power of creation as well as receptivity. The great Latin poets were imi tators indeed, but mere imitators they were no more than Petrarch or Milton. On the other hand, even where the creative origi nality of Rome was most pronounced, as in the sphere of law, there were elements of Hellenic origin. It has been often pointed out how the Stoic philosophy especially helped to shape Roman jurisprudence.
While the upper classes in Italy absorbed Greek influences by their education, the lower strata of the population of Rome became largely Hellenized by the actual influx on a vast scale of Greeks and Hellenized Asiatics, brought in for the most part as slaves, and coalescing as freedmen with the citizen body. The early Christian Church in Rome, to which St. Paul addressed his epistle, was Greek-speaking, and continued to be so until far into the 3rd century. In the western Mediterranean a Greek ele ment was introduced wherever the Romans fostered town life and thus invited the Greek trader and professional man. This later process of Hellenization is especially noticeable in North Africa, where the native king, Juba (under Augustus) actively encouraged it. But in the West the Latin language everywhere ousted the Greek as a spoken tongue, and the prevalent culture was Italian rather than Hellenic.
It remains only to glance at the ultimate destinies of Hellenism in West and East. In the Latin West, knowledge of Greek, first hand acquaintance with the Greek classics, became rarer and rarer as general culture declined, until in the dark ages (after the 5th century) it existed practically nowhere but in Ireland. In Latin literature, however, a great mass of Hellenistic tradition was maintained in currency, wherever culture of any kind continued to exist. Then the stream began to rise again, first with the influx of the learning of the Spanish Moors, then with the new know ledge of Greek brought from Constantinople in the 14th century. With the Renaissance and the new learning, Hellenism came in again in flood, to form a chief part of that great river on which the modern world is being carried forward. In the East it is popu larly thought that Hellenism, as an exotic, withered altogether away. This view is superficial. Ultimately the Greek East was absorbed by Islam ; the popular mistake lies in supposing that the Hellenistic tradition thereby came to an end. The Moham medan conquerors found a considerable part of it taken over, as we saw, by the Syrian Christians, and Greek philosophical and scientific classics were now translated from Syriac into Arabic. These were the starting-points for the Mohammedan schools in these subjects. Accordingly we find the Arabian philosophy (q.v.), mathematics, geography, medicine and philology are all based pro fessedly upon Greek works. Aristotle in the East no less than in the West was the "master of them that know"; the geography and astronomy of Claudius Ptolemaeus had canonical authority in Islam and in Christendom alike ; and Muslim physicians to this day invoke the names of Hippocrates and Galen. The Hellenistic strain in Mohammedan civilization has, it is true, flagged and failed, but only as that civilization as a whole has declined.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-(a) General books on Hellenism: W. W. Tarn, Bibliography.-(a) General books on Hellenism: W. W. Tarn, Hellenistic Civilisation (1927), a good select bibliography ; J. B. Bury and others, The Hellenistic Age (1923) ; J. P. Mahaffy, The Progress of Hellenism in Alexander's Empire (19o5), and The Silver Age of the Greek World (1906) ; J. Kaerst, Geschichte des Hellenismus (1917 26) ; K. J. Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, vol. iv. part 1 (19?5) Th. Birt, Alexander der Grosse and das Weltgriechentum (1924) ; P. Jouguet, L'imperialisme macedonien et l'hellenisation de l'Orient (1926), good bibliography.
(b) Literature: F. Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur in der Alexandrinerzeit (1891-92) ; U. v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Hellenistische Dichtung in der Zeit des Kallimachos (1924) ; and the various general works on Greek literature.
(c) Art and Architecture: G. Dickins, Hellenistic Sculpture (1920) ; tI. W. Lawrence, Later Greek Sculpture (1927) ; E. Pfuhl, Master pieces of Greek Drawing and Painting, trans. J. D. Beazley (1926) ; A. v. Gerkan, Griechische Stddteanlagen (1924) .
(d) Law: L. Mitteis, Reichsrecht and Volksrecht in den ostlichen Provinzen des romischen Kaiserreiches (1891) .
(e) Hellenism in India: Sir Vincent Smith, History of India, esp. ch. 5-9 (1904) ; The Cambridge History of India, vol. i., esp. ch. 17, 22 and 26 (1922) ; W. W. Tarn, "Hellenism in Bactria and India," Journal of Hellenic Studies (1902) ; G.. N. Banerjee, Hellenism in Ancient India (2nd ed., 192o) , useful for bibliographies; A. A. Mac donell, History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 411 ff. (1900) ; Sir Marc Aurel Stein, Serindia, esp. vol. i. and iv. (1921) ; A. Foucher, The Beginnings of Buddhist Art, esp. ch. 4 (Eng. trans., 1917) .
(f) Influence on Jews and Christians: E. Schiirer, History of the Jewish People, esp. vol. i. and v. (Eng. trans. 1885-9o) ; P. Wend land, Die hellenistisch-romische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zum Judentum and Christentum (2nd ed., 1912) ; art. on Hellenism in the Jewish Encyclopaedia; various articles in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics and Dictionary of the Bible.
See also works quoted in articles GREECE, History; ROME, History;