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, in literature and in philosophy. In Athens the Hellenic genius was focussed, its tendencies drawn together and combined; nor was it a circumstance of small moment that the Attic dialect attained, for prose, a classical authority; for 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.
1. The Persians.—The ruling race of the East, the Persian, was but little open to the influences of 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 captain was entrusted by Darius with the exploration of the Indus; a Greek architect bridged the Bosporus for him; Greek physicians (e.g. Democedes, Ctesias) were retained for enormous fees at the Persian court. The brisk diplomatic intercourse between the Great King and the Greek states in the 4th century may have produced effects that were not merely political. We certainly find among those members of the Persian aristocracy, who came by residence in Asia Minor into closer contact with the Greeks, some traces of interest in the more ideal side of Hellenism. A man like the younger Cyrus invited Greek captains to his friendship for something more than their utility in war, and procured Greek hetaerae for something more than sensual pleasure. There is the Mithradates who presented the Academy with a statue of Plato by Silanion, not improbably identical (though the supposition implies a correction in the text of Diogenes Laërtius) with that Mithradates who, together with his father Ariobarzanes, received the citizenship of Athens (Dem. xxiii. 141, 202). Exactly how far Greek influence can be traced in the remains of Persian art, such as the royal palaces of Persepolis and Susa may be doubtful (see Gayet, L’Art persan; R. Phené Spiers, Architecture East and West, p. 245 f.), 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 (Furtwängler, Antike Gemmen, iii. p. 116 f.).
2. The Phoenicians.—As early as the first half of the 4th century we find communities of Phoenician traders established in the Peiraeus (C.I.A. ii. 86). In Cyprus, on the frontier between the Greek and Semitic worlds, a struggle for ascendancy went on. The Phoenician 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. The words of Isocrates (even allowing for their rhetorical colour) give us a vivid insight into what such a process meant. “Before Evagoras established his rule, they were so hostile and exclusive, that those of their rulers were actually held to be the best who were the fiercest adversaries of the Greeks; but now such a change has taken place, that it is a matter of emulation who shall show himself the most ardent phil-hellen, that for the mothers of their children most of them choose wives from amongst us, and that they take pride in having Greek things about rather than native, in following the Greek fashion of life, whilst our masters of the fine arts and other branches of culture now resort to them in greater numbers than were once to be found in those quarters they specially frequented” (Isoc. 199 = Evag. §§ 49, 50). Even into the original seats of the Phoenicians Hellenism began to intrude. Evagoras at one time (about 386) made himself master of Tyre (Isoc. Evag. § 62; Diod. xv. 2, 4). His grandson Evagoras II. is found as governor of Sidon for the Persian king 349–346. (Babelon, Perses Achéménides, p. cxxii.; cf. Diod. xvi. 46, 3).
Abdashtart, king of Sidon (374–362 B.C.), called Straton by the Greeks, had already entered into close relations with the Greek states, and imitated the Hellenic princes of Cyprus (Athen. xii. 531; C.I.A. ii. 86; Corp. inscr. Semit. i. 114). The Phoenician colonists in Sardinia purchased or imitated the work of Greek artists (Furtwängler, Antike Gemmen, iii. 109).
3. The Carians and Lycians.—The seats of the Greeks in the East touched peoples more or less nearly related to the Hellenic stock, with native traditions not so far remote from those of the Greeks in a more primitive age, the Carians and the Lycians. It came about in the last century preceding Alexander that the first of these peoples was organized as a strong state under native princes, the line founded by Hecatomnus of Mylasa. Hecatomnus made himself master of Caria in the first decade of the 4th century, but it was under his son Mausolus, who succeeded him in 377–376 that the house rose to its zenith. These Carian princes ruled as satraps for the Great King, but they 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 and adornment 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 the most eminent Greek sculptors of the time worked in rivalry (Plin. N.H. xxxvi. 5, § 30; Vitruv. vii. 13). His court gave a welcome to the vagrant Greek philosopher (Diog. Laërt. viii. 8, § 87). Even the Carian town of Mylasa now shows the forms of a Greek city and records its public decrees in Greek (C.I.G. 2691 c, d, e = Michel 471). In Lycia, which in spite of “the son of Harpagus” and King Pericles, had never been brought under one man’s rule, the Greek influence is more limited. Here, for the most part in the inscriptions, the native language maintains itself against Greek. The proper names are (if not native) mainly Persian. But the Greek language makes an occasional appearance; Greek names are borne by others beside Pericles. The coins are Greek in type. And 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 (Gardner, Handbook of Gk. Sculp. p. 344).
4. South Russia.—Hellenic influences continued to penetrate the Scythian peoples from the Greek colonies of the Black Sea, at any rate in the matter of artistic fabrication. Our evidence is the actual objects recovered from the soil. (See Scythia.)
5. Egypt.—From the time of Psammetichus (d. 610 B.C.) Greek mercenaries had been used to prop Pharaoh’s throne. At the same time 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 repugnance to the Greek, which forbade an Egyptian even to eat an animal which had been carved with a Greek’s knife (Hdt. ii. 41), probably kept the soul of the people more shut against Hellenic influences than was that of the other races of the East.
6. Macedonia.—In Macedonia the native chiefs had been attracted by the rich Hellenic life at any rate from the beginning of the 5th century, when Alexander I., surnamed “Phil-hellen,” persuaded the judges at Olympia that the Temenid house was of good Argive descent (Hdt. v. 22). And, although their enemies might stigmatize them as barbarians, the Macedonian kings maintained that they were not Macedonians, but Greeks (cf. ἀνὴρ Ἕλλην Μακεδόνων ὕπαρχος, Hdt. v. 20). It was not probably till the reorganization of the kingdom by Archelaus (413–399) that Greek culture found any abundant entrance into Macedonia. Now all that was most brilliant in Greek literature and Greek art was concentrated in the court of Aegae; the palace was decorated by Zeuxis; Euripides spent there the end of his days. From that time, no doubt, 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. The values recognized at the court would naturally be recognized in noble families generally, and Philip chose Aristotle to be the educator of his son. How far the country generally may be regarded as Hellenized is a problem which involves the vexed question what right the Macedonian people itself has to be classed among the Hellenes, and Macedonian to be considered a dialect of Greek.[1] As the literary and official language, Greek alone would seem to have had any status.
- ↑ See, among recent writers, on one side Kaerst, Gesch. des hellenist. Zeitalters, pp. 97 f., and on the other Beloch, Griech. Gesch., iii. [i.] 1-9; Kretschmer, Einleitung in die Gesch. d. griech. Sprache, p. 283 f.; O. Hoffmann, Die Makedonen, ihre Sprache u. ihr Volkstum (1906).
