Part 48

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 Seleucid out of the country. In Bithynia the upper classes seem to have followed the fashion of the court (Beloch iii. [i.], 278); the dynasty of Pontus was phil-hellenic by ancestral tradition; the dynasty of Cappadocia, the most conservative, dated its conversion to Hellenism from the time when a Seleucid princess came to reign there early in the 2nd century B.C. as the wife of Ariarathes V. (Diod. xxxi. 19. 8). But Hellenism in Cappadocia was for centuries to come still confined to the castles of the king and the barons, and the few towns.

Hellenism under Roman sway.

When Rome began to interfere in Asia Minor, its first action was to break the power of the Gauls (189 B.C.). In 133 Rome entered formally upon the heritage of the Attalid kingdom and became the dominant power in the Anatolian peninsula for 1200 years. Under Rome the process of Hellenization, which the divisions and weakness of the Macedonian 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 (Strabo xiv. 631); in Lycia, the old language became obsolete in the early days of Macedonian rule (see Kalinka, _Tituli Asiae minoris_, i. 8). But inland, in Phrygia, Hellenism had as yet made little headway outside the Greek cities. Even the Attalids had not effected much here (Korte, _Athen. Mitth._ xxiii., 1898, p. 152), and under the Romans, the penetration of the interior by Hellenism was slow. It was not till the reign of Hadrian that city life on the Phrygian plateau became rich and vigorous, with its material circumstances of temples, theatres and baths. Among the villages of the north and east of Phrygia, Hellenism "was only beginning to make itself felt in the middle of the 3rd century A.D." (Ramsay in Kuhn's _Zeitsch. f. vergleich. Sprachforschung_, xxviii., 1885, p. 382). Gravestones in this region as late as the 4th century curse violators in the old Phrygian speech. The lower classes at Lystra in St Paul's time spoke Lycaonian (Acts xiv. 11). In that part of Phrygia, which by the settlement of the Celtic invaders became Galatia, the larger towns seem to have become Hellenized by the time of the Christian era, whilst the Celtic speech maintained itself in the country villages till the 4th century A.D. (Jerome, Preface to Comment, in _Epist. ad Gal._ book ii.; see J. G. C. Anderson, _Journ. of Hell. Stud._ xix., 1899, p. 312 f.). Cappadocia at the beginning of the Christian era was still comparatively townless (Strabo xii. 537), a country of large estates with a servile peasantry. Even in the 4th century 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 (unless Phrygian lingered on in parts till the Turkish invasions; see Mordtmann, _Sitzungsb. d. bayer. Ak._ 1862, i. p. 30; K. Holl in _Hermes_, xliii., 1908, p. 240 f.). The effective Hellenization of Armenia did not take place till the 5th century, when the school of Mesrop and Sahak gave Armenia a literature translated from, or imitating, Greek books (Gelzer in I. v. Muller's _Handbuch_, vol. ix. Abt. i. p. 916.)

Seleucid empire.

Roman period.

(iv.) _Syria._--In Syria, which with Cilicia and Mesopotamia, formed the central part of the Seleucid empire, the new colonies were especially numerous. Alexander himself had perhaps made a beginning with Alexandria-by-Issus (mod. Alexandretta), Samaria, Pella (the later Apamea), Carrhae, &c. Antigonus founded Antigonia, which was absorbed a few years later by Antioch, and after the fall of Antigonus in 301, the work of planting Syria with Greek cities was pursued effectively north of the Lebanon by the house of Seleucus, and, less energetically, south of the Lebanon by the house of Ptolemy. In the north of Syria four cities stood pre-eminent above the rest, (1) Antioch on the Orontes, the Seleucid capital; (2) Seleucia-in-Pieria near the mouth of the Orontes, which guarded the approach to Antioch from the sea; (3) Apamea (mod. Famia), on the middle Orontes, the military headquarters of the kingdom; and (4) Laodicea "on sea" (_ad mare_), which had a commercial importance in connexion with the export of Syrian wine. Of the Ptolemaic foundations in Coele-Syria only one attained an importance comparable with that of the larger Seleucid foundations, Ptolemais on the coast, which was the old Semitic Acco transformed (mod. Acre). The group of Greek cities east of the Jordan also fell within the Ptolemaic realm during the 3rd century B.C., though their greatness belonged to a somewhat later day. The whole of Syria was brought under the Seleucid sceptre, together with Cilicia, by Antiochus III. the Great (223-187 B.C.). Under his son, Antiochus IV. Epiphanes (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. Other facts there are which point the same way. We now find a sudden issue of bronze money by a large number of the cities of the kingdom in their own name--an indication of liberties extended or confirmed. Many of them exchange their existing name for that of Antioch (Adana, Tarsus, Gadara, Ptolemais), Seleucia (Mopsuestia, Gadara) or Epiphanea (Oeniandus, Hamath). At Antioch itself great public works were carried out, such as were involved in the addition of a new quarter to the city, including, we may suppose, the civic council chamber which is afterwards spoken of as being here. With the ever-growing weakness of the Seleucid dynasty, the independence and activity of the cities increased, although, if, on the one hand, they were less suppressed by a strong central government, they were less protected against military adventurers and barbarian chieftains. Accordingly, 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, the cities were soon rebuilt and Hellenism secured from the barbarian peril. 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 (37-34 B.C.) at Jerusalem, 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). The reclaiming of the wild district of Hauran for civilization and Hellenistic life was due in the first instance to the house of Herod (Schurer, _Gesch. d. jud. Volk._ 3rd ed., ii. p. 12 f.). 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.

As to the effect of this network of Greek cities upon the aboriginal population of Syria, we do not find here the same disappearance of native languages and racial characteristics as in Asia Minor. Still less was this the case in Mesopotamia, where a strong native element in such a city as Edessa is indicated by its epithet [Greek: mixobarbaros]. The old cults naturally went on, and at Carrhae (Harran) even survived the establishment of Christianity. The lower classes at Antioch, and no doubt in the cities generally, were in speech Aramaic or bilingual; we find Aramaic popular nicknames of the later Seleucids (K. O. Muller, _Antiq. Ant._ p. 29). The villages, of course, spoke Aramaic. The richer natives, on the other hand, those who made their way into the educated classes of the towns, and attained official position, would become Hellenized in language and manners, and the "Syrian Code" shows how far the social structure was modified by the Hellenic tradition (Mitteis, _Reichsrecht und Volksrecht in den ost. Provinzen des rom. Kaiserreichs_, 1891; Arnold Meyer, _Jesu Muttersprache_, 1896). Of the Syrians who made their mark in Greek literature, some were of native blood, e.g. Lucian of Samosata.

One may notice the great part taken by natives of the Phoenician cities in the history of later Greek philosophy, and in the poetic movement of the last century B.C., which led to fresh cultivation of the epigram. Greek, in fact, held the field as the language of literature and polite society. Possibly at places like Edessa, which for some 350 years (till A.D. 216) was under a dynasty of native princes, Aramaic was cultivated as a literary language. There was a Syriac-speaking church here 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._ We must remember the marked Hellenic elements in Christian theology. The earliest Syriac work which we possess, the book "On Fate," produced in the circle of the heretic Bardaisan or Bardesanes (end of the 2nd century), largely follows Greek models. There was an extensive translation of Greek works into Syriac during the next centuries, handbooks of philosophy and science for the most part. The version of Homer into Syriac verses made in the 8th century has perished, all but a few lines (R. Duval, _La Litt. syriaque_, 1900, p. 325).

The Jews.

(v.) _The relation of the Jews to Hellenism_ in the first century and a half of Macedonian rule is very obscure, since the statements made by later writers like Josephus, as to the visit of Alexander to Jerusalem or the privileges conferred upon the Jews in the new Macedonian realms are justly suspected of being fiction. It has been maintained that Greek influence is to be traced in parts of the Old Testament assigned to this period, as, for instance, the Book of Proverbs; but even in the case of Ecclesiastes, the canonical writing whose affinity with Greek thought is closest, the coincidence of idea need not necessarily prove a Greek source. The one solid fact in this connexion is the translation of the Jewish Law into Greek in the 3rd century B.C., implying a Jewish Diaspora at Alexandria, so far Hellenized as to have forgotten the speech of Palestine. Early in the 2nd century B.C. we see that the priestly aristocracy of Jerusalem had, like the well-to-do classes everywhere in Syria, been carried away by the Hellenistic current, its strength being evidenced no less by the intensity of the conservative opposition embodied in the party of the "Pious" (Assideans, _Hasidim_).

Under Antiochus IV. Epiphanes (176-165) the Hellenistic aristocracy contrived to get Jerusalem converted into a Greek city; the gymnasium appeared, and Greek dress became fashionable with the young men. But when Antiochus, owing to political developments, interfered violently at Jerusalem, the conservative opposition carried the nation with them. The revolt under the Hasmonaean family (Judas Maccabaeus and his brethren) followed, ending in 143-142 in the establishment of an independent Jewish state under a Hasmonaean prince. But whilst the old Hellenistic party had been crushed the Hasmonaean state was of the nature of a compromise. The Mosaic Law was respected, but Hellenism still found an entrance in various forms. The first Hasmonaean "king," Aristobulus I. (104-103), was known to the Greeks as Phil-hellen. He and all later kings of the dynasty bear Greek names as well as Hebrew ones, and after Jannaeus Alexander (103-76) the Greek legends are common on the coins beside the Hebrew. Herod, who supplanted the Hasmonaean dynasty (37-34 B.C.) made, outside Judaea, a display of Phil-hellenism, building new Greek cities and temples, or bestowing gifts upon the older ones of fame. His court, at the same time, welcomed Greek men of letters like Nicolaus of Damascus. Even in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, he erected a theatre and an amphitheatre. We have already noticed the work done by the Herodian dynasty in furthering Hellenism in Syria (see Schurer, _Gesch. des judisch. Volkes_, vols. i. and ii.). Meanwhile a great part of the Jewish people was living dispersed among the cities of the Greek world, speaking Greek as their mother-tongue, and absorbing Greek influences in much larger measure than their brethren of Palestine. These are the Jews whom we find contrasted as "Hellenists" with the "Hebrews" in Acts. They still kept in touch with the mother-city, and indeed we hear of special synagogues in Jerusalem in which the Hellenists temporarily resident there gathered (Acts vi. 9). A large Jewish literature in Greek had grown up since the translation of the Law in the 3rd century. Beside the other canonical books of the Old Testament, translated in many cases with modifications or additions, it included translations of other Hebrew books (Ecclesiasticus, Judith, &c.), works composed originally in Greek but imitating to some extent the Hebraic style (like Wisdom), works modelled more closely on the Greek literary tradition, either historical, like 2 Maccabees, or philosophical, like the productions of the Alexandrian school, represented for us by Aristobulus and Philo, in which style and thought are almost wholly Greek and the reference to the Old Testament a mere pretext; or Greek poems on Jewish subjects, like the epic of the elder Philo and Ezechiel's tragedy, _Exagoge_. It included also a number of forgeries, circulated under the names of famous Greek authors, verses fathered upon Aeschylus or Sophocles, or books like the false Hecataeus, or above all the pretended prophecies of ancient Sibyls in epic verse. These frauds were all contrived for the heathen public, as a means of propaganda, calculated to inspire them with respect for Jewish antiquity or turn them from idols to God.

For Jewish Hellenism see Schurer, _op. cit._ iii.; Susemihl, _Gesch. der griech. Lit. in der Alexandrinerzeit_, ii. 601 f.; Willrich, _Juden und Griechen_ (1895), _Judaica_ (1900); Hastings' _Dict. of the Bible_, art. "Greece"; _Encyclop. Biblica_, art. "Hellenism"; Pauly-Wissowa, art. "Aristobulus (15)"; also the work of P. Wendland cited above.

Through the Hellenistic Jews, Greek influences reached Jerusalem itself, though their effect upon the Aramaic-speaking Rabbinical 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 Rabbinic doctors to a Greek education does not seem to have been hostile till 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.

See Schurer ii. 42-67, 583; S. Krauss, _Griech. u. latein. Lehnworter im Talmud_ (1898); _Jewish Encyclopedia_, art. "Greek Language."

Ptolemaic kingdom.

(vi.) _In Egypt_ the Ptolemies were hindered by special considerations from building Greek cities after the manner of the other Macedonian houses. One Greek city they found existing, Naucratis; Alexander had called Alexandria into being; the first Ptolemy added Ptolemais as a Greek centre for Upper Egypt. They seem to have suffered no other community in the Nile Valley with the independent life of a Greek city, for the Greek and Macedonian soldier-colonies settled in the Fayum or elsewhere had no political self-existence. And even at Alexandria Hellenism was not allowed full development. Ptolemais, indeed, enjoyed all the ordinary forms of self-government, but Alexandria was governed despotically by royal officials. In its population, too, Alexandria was only semi-Hellenic; for besides the proportion of Egyptian natives in its lower strata, its commercial greatness drew in elements from every quarter; the Jews, for instance, formed a majority of the population in two out of the five divisions of the city. At the same time the prevalent tone of the populace was, no doubt, Hellenistic, as is shown by the fact that the Jews who settled there acquired Greek in place of Aramaic as their mother-tongue, and in its upper circles Alexandrian society under the Ptolemies was not only Hellenistic, but notable among the Hellenes for its literary and artistic brilliance. The state university, the "Museum," was in close connexion with the court, and gave to Alexandria the same pre-eminence in natural science and literary scholarship which Athens had in moral philosophy.

Probably in no other country, except Judaea, did Hellenism encounter as stubborn a national antagonism as in Egypt. The common description of "the Oriental" as indurated in his antagonism to the alien conqueror here perhaps has some truth in it. The assault made upon the Macedonian devotee in the temple of Serapis at Memphis "because he was a Greek" is significant (_Papyr. Brit. Mus._ i. No. 44; cf. Grenfell, _Amherst Papyr._ p. 48). And yet even here one must observe qualifications The papyri show us habitual marriage of Greeks and native women and a frequent adoption by natives of Greek names. It has even been thought that some developments of the Egyptian religion are due to Hellenistic influence, such as the deification of Imhotp (Bissing, _Deutsche Literaturzeitung_, 1902, col. 2330) or the practice of forming voluntary religious associations (Otto, _Priester und Tempel_, i. 125). The worship of Serapis was patronized by the court with the very object of affording a mixed cultus in which Greek and native might unite. In Egypt, too, the triumph of Christianity brought into being a native Christian literature, and if this was in one way the assertion of the native against Hellenistic predominance, one must remember that Coptic literature, like Syriac, necessarily incorporated those Greek elements which had become an essential part of Christian theology.

Ethiopia.

From the Ptolemaic kingdom Hellenism early travelled up the Nile into Ethiopia. Ergamenes, the king of the Ethiopians in the time of the second Ptolemy, "who had received a Greek education and cultivated philosophy," broke with the native priesthood (Diod. iii. 6), and from that time traces of Greek influence continue to be found in the monuments of the Upper Nile. When Ethiopia became a Christian country in the 4th century, its connexion with the Hellenistic world became closer.

Greek culture in the Roman world.

(vii.) _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. At Carthage in the 3rd century the educated classes seem generally to have been familiar with Greek culture (Bernhardy, _Grundriss d. griech. Lit._ S 77). The philosopher Clitomachus, who presided over the Academy at Athens in the 2nd century, was a Carthaginian. Even before Alexander, as we saw, Hellenism had affected the peoples of Italy, but it was not till 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 foundation 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 Quinctius Flamininus, who in Rome's name proclaimed the autonomy of the Greeks at the Isthmian games of 196. In the middle of the 2nd century 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 the "Babylonian," 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 system of government framed by Rome was an original creation. Even in the spheres of art and literature, the Italians, while so largely guided by Greek canons, had something of their own to contribute. The mere fact that they produced a literature in Latin argues a power of creation as well as receptivity. The great Latin poets were imitators indeed, but _mere_ imitators they were no more than Petrarch or Milton. On the other hand, even where the creative originality 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 (Schmekel, _Philos. d. mittl. Stoa_, p. 454 f.).

Whilst the upper classes in Italy absorbed Greek influences by their education, by the literary and artistic tradition, 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. Of the Jewish inscriptions found at Rome some two-thirds are in Greek. So too the early Christian church in Rome, to which St Paul addressed his epistle, was Greek-speaking, and continued to be till far into the 3rd century.

The middle ages.

Islam.