Hellenistic Greece : Hellenistic civilization
The shift from "Hellenic" to "Hellenistic" in the history of the Mediterranean world represents the shift from a culture dominated by ethnic Greeks, however scattered geographically, to a culture dominated by Greek-speakers of whatever ethnicity, and from the political dominance of the city-state to that of larger monarchies. Furthermore, in this period the traditional Greek culture is changed by strong Eastern, especially Persian, influences.The usual periodization practiced by modern historians is to see the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC as dividing the Hellenic period from the Hellenistic. Alexander and the Macedonians conquered the eastern Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, and the Iranian plateau[?], and invaded India; 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 B.C. Most of the east was eventually overrun by the Parthians
Following the death of Alexander, there was a struggle for the succession, kown as the wars of the Diadochi[?] (Greek, successors), which ended in 281 BC resulting in the establishment of three large territorial states:
- the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt based at Alexandria
- the Seleucid dynasty in Syria based at Antioch
- the Antigonid dynasty in Macedonia and the mainland of Greece
And the crows are perched like a band of mourners
And the company waits till the calls come in;
And no market's near for his bones.html">bones and skin.
By the creek, and oft in the evening dim
At the ruined brace and the rotting whim.html">whim.
The floods rush high in the gully under,
Or the cattle down from the ranges blunder
Still the feeble horse.html">horse at the right hour wanders
And with hanging head by the bow he ponders
In the roofless huts and the ravaged mill,
Though the huts are dark and the stampers still:
As its shadows roll on the silver sands,
And the knocker's clang where the braceman stands.
See the old horse take, like a creature dreaming,
But the moonbeams full on the ruins streaming
Yet HE hears the sled in the smithy falling,
And the boy who stands by the anvil, calling;
As the wind sweeps by, and the hut doors close,
In the ghostly light, round the grey.html">grey.html">grey horse goes;
Hears again the voice that was dear to him,
As he works his shift by the broken whim.
He hears in the sluices the water rushing
When the early dawn in the east is blushing,
Now he pricks his ears, with a neigh replying
And he sways and sinks in the circle, dying;
And the bush creeps back on a worked-out claim,
On the timbers grey and a charred hut frame,
In the high rank grass by the dried-up course,
Are the bleaching bones of the old grey horse.
Like summer waves on sands of snow,
And wandering breezes kiss away
That drifts and floats and softly flies
Her laugh is fresh as foam that springs
And where the gleaming margin dries
.
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