Readings for Ancient Greece 2 --
Unit 20, HellenisticPeriod [Text
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Hellenistic Suucessor states of Alexander's conquests
Contents
1. Hellenistic period (From Wikipedia)
2. Diadochi (From Wikipedia)
3. Alexander's Successors: The Diadochi
(From Livius)
3a. Chronology
of the Diadochi
(From Livius)
3b. Hellenistic
Period Timeline (From Ancient History
Encyclopedia)
4. Intellectual Pursuits of the
Hellenistic Age (Heilbrunn-MetMuseum)
5. Age of Enlightenment (From Wikipedia)
5a.
Philhellenism (From Wikipedia)
5b. What’s the
Difference Between the
Renaissance and the
Enlightenment?
(From Quora)
6. American
Enlightenment (From
Wikipedia)
Hellenistic period. Dionysus sculpture
from the Ancient Art Collection at Yale.
After Alexander the Great's
ventures in the Persian Empire,
Hellenistic kingdoms were established throughout south-west
Asia (Seleucid Empire, Kingdom of Pergamon),
north-east Africa (Ptolemaic Kingdom) and South Asia (Greco-Bactrian Kingdom,
Indo-Greek Kingdom).
This resulted in the export of Greek
culture and language to these new realms through
Greco-Macedonian colonization, spanning as far as
modern-day Pakistan. Equally, however, these
new kingdoms were influenced by the indigenous cultures,
adopting local practices where beneficial, necessary, or
convenient. Hellenistic culture thus represents a fusion
of the Ancient Greek world with that of the Near East,
Middle East, and Southwest Asia, and a departure from
earlier Greek attitudes towards "barbarian" cultures.[5]
The Hellenistic period was characterized by a new wave
of Greek colonization[6]
(as distinguished from that occurring in the 8th–6th
centuries BC) which established Greek cities and
kingdoms in Asia
and Africa.[7]
Those new cities were composed of Greek colonists who
came from different parts of the Greek world, and not,
as before, from a specific "mother city".[7]
The main cultural centers expanded from mainland Greece
to Pergamon, Rhodes, and new Greek colonies such
as Seleucia, Antioch, Alexandria and Ai-Khanoum. This mixture of
Greek-speakers gave birth to a common Attic-based dialect, known as
Koine Greek, which became the
lingua franca through
the Hellenistic world.
Scholars and
historians are divided as to what event signals the end
of the Hellenistic era. The Hellenistic period may be
seen to end either with the final conquest of the Greek
heartlands by Rome in 146 BC following
the Achean War, with the final
defeat of the Ptolemaic Kingdom at the
Battle of Actium in
31 BC, or even the move by Roman emperorConstantine the Great
of the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople in 330 AD.[8][9]
"Hellenistic" is distinguished from "Hellenic" in that
the first encompasses the entire sphere of direct
ancient Greek influence, while the latter refers to
Greece itself.
The word
originated from the German term hellenistisch,
from Ancient Greek Ἑλληνιστής (Hellēnistḗs, "one
who uses the Greek language"), from Ἑλλάς (Hellás,
"Greece"); as if "Hellenist" + "ic".
"Hellenistic"
is a modern word and a 19th-century concept; the idea of
a Hellenistic period did not exist in Ancient Greece. Although
words related in form or meaning, e.g. Hellenist
(Ancient Greek: Ἑλληνιστής, Hellēnistēs),
have been attested since ancient times,[10]
it was J. G.
Droysen in the mid-19th century, who in his
classic work Geschichte des Hellenismus, i.e.
History of Hellenism, coined the term Hellenistic
to refer to and define the period when Greek culture
spread in the non-Greek world after Alexander’s
conquest.[11]
Following Droysen, Hellenistic and related
terms, e.g. Hellenism, have been widely used in
various contexts; a notable such use is in Culture and Anarchy
by Matthew Arnold, where
Hellenism is used in contrast with Hebraism.[12]
The major
issue with the term Hellenistic lies in its convenience,
as the spread of Greek culture was not the generalized
phenomenon that the term implies. Some areas of the
conquered world were more affected by Greek influences
than others. The term Hellenistic also implies that the
Greek populations were of majority in the areas in which
they settled, while in many cases, the Greek settlers
were actually the minority among the native populations.
The Greek population and the native population did not
always mix; the Greeks moved and brought their own
culture, but interaction did not always occur.
Sources
While a few
fragments exist, there is no surviving historical work
which dates to the hundred years following Alexander's
death. The works of the major Hellenistic historiansHieronymus of Cardia
(who worked under Alexander, Antigonus I and other
successors), Duris of Samos and Phylarchus which were used by
surviving sources are all lost.[13]
The earliest and most credible surviving source for the
Hellenistic period is Polybius of Megalopolis (c.
200-118), a statesman of the Achaean League until 168 BC
when he was forced to go to Rome as a hostage.[13]
His Histories
eventually grew to a length of forty books, covering the
years 220 to 167 BC.
The most
important source after Polybius is Diodorus Siculus who
wrote his Bibliotheca historica
between 60 and 30 BC and reproduced some important
earlier sources such as Hieronymus, but his account of
the Hellenistic period breaks off after the battle of Ipsus (301).
Another important source, Plutarch's (c.50—c.120) Parallel Lives though more
preoccupied with issues of personal character and
morality, outlines the history of important Hellenistic
figures. Appian of Alexandria (late first
century AD-before 165) wrote a history of the Roman empire
that includes information of some Hellenistic kingdoms.
Ancient Greece
had traditionally been a fractious collection of
fiercely independent city-states. After the Peloponnesian War
(431–404 BC), Greece had fallen under a Spartan hegemony, in
which Sparta was pre-eminent but not
all-powerful. Spartan hegemony was succeeded by a Thebanone after the Battle of Leuctra (371
BC), but after the Battle of Mantinea
(362 BC), all of Greece was so weakened that no
one state could claim pre-eminence. It was against this
backdrop, that the ascendancy of Macedon began,
under king Philip II. Macedon
was located at the periphery of the Greek world, and
although its royal family claimed Greek descent, the
Macedonians themselves were looked down upon as
semi-barbaric by the rest of the Greeks. However,
Macedon had a relatively strong and centralised
government, and compared to most Greek states, directly
controlled a large area.
Philip II was
a strong and expansionist king and he took every
opportunity to expand Macedonian territory. In 352 BC he
annexed Thessaly and Magnesia. In 338 BC,
Philip defeated a combined Theban and Athenian army at
the Battle of
Chaeronea after a decade of desultory conflict. In
the aftermath, Philip formed the League of Corinth,
effectively bringing the majority of Greece under his
direct sway. He was elected Hegemon of the
league, and a campaign against the Achaemenid Empire of
Persia was planned. However, while this campaign was in
its early stages, he was assassinated.[4]
Alexander's empire at the time of its
maximum expansion.
After his
death, the huge territories Alexander had conquered
became subject to a strong Greek influence (hellenization) for the next
two or three centuries, until the rise of Rome in the west, and of Parthia in the east. As
the Greek and Levantine cultures mingled, the
development of a hybrid Hellenistic
culture began, and persisted even when isolated
from the main centres of Greek culture (for instance, in
the Greco-Bactrian
kingdom).
It can be
argued that some of the changes across the Macedonian
Empire after Alexander's conquests and during the
rule of the Diadochi would have occurred
without the influence of Greek rule. As mentioned by Peter Green,
numerous factors of conquest have been merged under the
term Hellenistic
Period. Specific areas conquered by Alexander's
invading army, including Egypt and areas of Asia Minor
and Mesopotamia "fell" willingly
to conquest and viewed Alexander as more of a liberator
than a victor.[14]
In addition,
much of the area conquered would continue to be ruled by
the Diadochi, Alexander's generals
and successors. Initially the whole empire was divided
among them; however, some territories were lost
relatively quickly, or only remained nominally under
Macedonian rule. After 200 years, only much reduced and
rather degenerate states remained,[9]
until the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt by Rome.
When Alexander
the Great died (June 10, 323 BC), he left behind a huge
empire which was composed of many essentially autonomous
territories called satrapies.
Without a chosen successor there were immediate disputes
among his generals as to who should be king of Macedon.
These generals became known as the Diadochi (Greek: Διάδοχοι, Diadokhoi,
meaning "Successors").
Meleager and the
infantry supported the candidacy of Alexander's
half-brother, Philip Arrhidaeus,
while Perdiccas, the leading cavalry
commander, supported waiting until the birth of
Alexander's unborn child by Roxana. After the infantry stormed
the palace of Babylon, a compromise was arranged
– Arrhidaeus (as Philip III) should become king, and
should rule jointly with Roxana's child, assuming that
it was a boy (as it was, becoming Alexander IV).
Perdiccas himself would become regent (epimeletes)
of the empire, and Meleager his lieutenant. Soon,
however, Perdiccas had Meleager and the other infantry
leaders murdered, and assumed full control.[15]
The generals who had supported Perdiccas were rewarded
in the partition of Babylon
by becoming satraps of the various parts of the
empire, but Perdiccas' position was shaky, because, as
Arrian writes, "everyone was suspicious of him, and he
of them".[16]
The first of
the Diadochi
wars broke out when Perdiccas planned to marry
Alexander's sister Cleopatra
and began to question Antigonus I
Monophthalmus' leadership in Asia Minor.
Antigonus fled for Greece, and then, together with Antipater and Craterus (the satrap of Cilicia who had been in Greece
fighting the Lamian war)
invaded Anatolia. The rebels were
supported by Lysimachus, the satrap of Thrace and Ptolemy, the satrap of
Egypt. Although Eumenes, satrap of Cappadocia, defeated the rebels
in Asia Minor, Perdiccas himself was murdered by his own
generals Peithon, Seleucus, and Antigenes (possibly
with Ptolemy's aid) during his invasion of Egypt (c. 21
May to 19 June, 320).[17]
Ptolemy came to terms with Perdiccas's murderers, making
Peithon and Arrhidaeus regents in his
place, but soon these came to a new agreement with
Antipater at the Treaty
of Triparadisus. Antipater was made regent of the
Empire, and the two kings were moved to Macedon.
Antigonus remained in charge of Asia minor, Ptolemy
retained Egypt, Lysimachus retained Thrace and Seleucus I
controlled Babylon.
The second
Diadochi war began following the death of Antipater in 319 BC. Passing
over his own son, Cassander, Antipater had
declared Polyperchon his successor as
Regent. Cassander rose in revolt against Polyperchon
(who was joined by Eumenes) and was supported by
Antigonus, Lysimachus and Ptolemy. In 317, Cassander invaded Macedonia,
attaining control of Macedon, sentencing Olympias to death and capturing
the boy king Alexander IV, and
his mother. In Asia, Eumenes was betrayed by his own
men after years of campaign and was given up to
Antigonus who had him executed.
The Kingdoms of Antigonos and his
rivals circa 303 BC.
The third war
of the Diadochi broke out because of the growing power
and ambition of Antigonus. He began removing and
appointing satraps as if he were king and also raided
the royal treasuries in Ectabana, Persepolis and Susa,
making off with 25,000 talents.[18]
Seleucus was forced to flee to Egypt and Antigonus was
soon at war with Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Cassander. He
then invaded Phoenicia, laid siege to Tyre, stormed Gaza and began building a fleet.
Ptolemy invaded Syria and defeated Antigonus' son, Demetrius Poliorcetes,
in the Battle of Gaza of
312 BC which allowed Seleucus to secure
control of Babylonia, and the eastern
satrapies. In 310, Cassander had young King Alexander IV
and his mother Roxane murdered, ending the Argead
Dynasty which had ruled Macedon for several
centuries.
Antigonus then
sent his son Demetrius
to regain control of Greece. In 307 he took Athens,
expelling Demetrius
of Phaleron, Cassander's governor, and proclaiming
the city free again. Demetrius now turned his attention
to Ptolemy, defeating his fleet at the Battle of Salamis and taking
control of Cyprus. In the aftermath of this victory,
Antigonus took the title of king (basileus) and bestowed it
on his son Demetrius
Poliorcetes, the rest of the Diadochi soon
followed suit.[19]
Demetrius continued his campaigns by laying
siege to Rhodes and conquering most of Greece in
302, creating a league against Cassander's Macedon.
The decisive
engagement of the war came when Lysimachus invaded and
overran much of western Anatolia, but was soon isolated
by Antigonus and Demetrius near Ipsus in Phrygia. Seleucus arrived in time
to save Lysimachus and utterly crushed Antigonus at the
Battle of Ipsus in 301
BCE. Seleucus' war elephants proved decisive, Antigonus
was killed, and Demetrius fled back to Greece to attempt
to preserve the remnants of his rule there by
recapturing a rebellious Athens. Meanwhile, Lysimachus
took over Ionia, Seleucus took Cilicia, and Ptolemy captured Cyprus.
Kingdoms of the Diadochi after
the battle of Ipsus, c. 301 BC.
After
Cassander's death in 298 BCE, however, Demetrius, who
still maintained a sizable loyal army and fleet, invaded
Macedon, seized the Macedonian throne (294) and
conquered Thessaly and most of central
Greece (293-291).[20]
He was defeated in 288 BC when Lysimachusof Thrace and Pyrrhus of Epirus
invaded Macedon on two fronts, and quickly carved up the
kingdom for themselves. Demetrius fled to central Greece
with his mercenaries and began to build support there
and in the northern Peloponnese. He once again laid
siege to Athens after they turned on him, but then
struck a treaty with the Athenians and Ptolemy, which
allowed him to cross over to Asia minor and wage war on
Lysimachus' holdings in Ionia, leaving his son Antigonus
Gonatas in Greece. After initial successes, he was
forced to surrender to Seleucus in 285 and later died in
captivity.[21]
Lysimachus, who had seized Macedon and Thessaly for
himself, was forced into war when Seleucus invaded his
territories in Asia minor and was defeated and killed in
281 BCE at the Battle of Corupedium,
near Sardis. Seleucus then attempted to
conquer Lysimachus' European territories in Thrace and
Macedon, but he was assassinated by Ptolemy
Ceraunus ("the thunderbolt"), who had taken refuge
at the Seleucid court and then had himself acclaimed as
king of Macedon. Ptolemy was killed when Macedon was invaded by
Gauls in 279, his head stuck on a spear and the
country fell into anarchy. Antigonus II Gonatas invaded
Thrace in the summer of 277 and defeated a large force
of 18,000 Gauls. He was quickly hailed as king of
Macedon and went on to rule for 35 years.[22]
During the
Hellenistic period the importance of Greece
proper within the Greek-speaking world declined
sharply. The great centers of Hellenistic
culture were Alexandria and Antioch, capitals of Ptolemaic
Egypt and Seleucid
Syria respectively. The conquests of Alexander
greatly widened the horizons of the Greek world, making
the endless conflicts between the cities which had
marked the 5th and 4th centuries BC seem petty and
unimportant. It led to a steady emigration, particularly
of the young and ambitious, to the new Greek empires in
the east. Many Greeks migrated to Alexandria, Antioch
and the many other new Hellenistic cities founded in
Alexander's wake, as far away as modern Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Independent
city states were unable to compete with Hellenistic
kingdoms and were usually forced to ally themselves to
one of them for defense, giving honors to Hellenistic
rulers in return for protection. One example is Athens, which had been decisively
defeated by Antipater in the Lamian war
(323-322) and had its port in the Piraeus garrisoned by Macedonian
troops who supported a conservative oligarchy.[23]
After Demetrius
Poliorcetes captured Athens in 307 and restored
the democracy, the
Athenians honored him and his father Antigonus by
placing gold statues of them on the agora and granting them the title of
king. Athens later allied itself to Ptolemaic
Egypt to throw off Macedonian rule, eventually
setting up a religious cult for the Ptolemaic kings and
naming one of the cities phyles in honor of Ptolemy for his
aid against Macedon. In spite of the Ptolemaic monies
and fleets backing their endeavors, Athens and Sparta were defeated by Antigonus II
during the Chremonidean War
(267-261). Athens was then occupied by Macedonian
troops, and run by Macedonian officials.
Sparta remained independent, but it
was no longer the leading military power in the Peloponnese. The Spartan king
Cleomenes III (235–222 BCE)
staged a military coup against the conservative ephors and
pushed through radical social and land reforms in order
to increase the size of the shrinking Spartan citizenry
able to provide military service and restore Spartan
power. Sparta's bid for supremacy was crushed at the Battle of Sellasia (222) by the Achaean
league and Macedon, who restored the power of the ephors.
Other city states
formed federated
states in self-defense, such as the Aetolian League (est. 370
BCE), the Achaean League (est. 280
BCE), the Boeotian
league, the "Northern League" (Byzantium, Chalcedon, Heraclea Pontica and Tium)[24]
and the "Nesiotic
League" of the Cyclades. These federations
involved a central government which controlled foreign policy and military
affairs, while leaving most of the local governing to
the city states, a system termed sympoliteia.
In states such as the Achaean league, this also involved
the admission of other ethnic groups into the federation
with equal rights, in this case, non-Achaeans.[25]
The Achean league was able to drive out the Macedonians
from the Peloponnese and free Corinth, which duly joined
the league.
One of the few
city states who managed to maintain full independence
from the control of any Hellenistic kingdom was Rhodes. With a skilled navy to
protect its trade fleets from pirates and an ideal
strategic position covering the routes from the east
into the Aegean, Rhodes prospered during the Hellenistic
period. It became a center of culture and commerce, its
coins were widely circulated and its philosophical
schools became one of the best in the mediterranean.
After holding out for one
year under siege by Demetrius Poliorcetes (305-304
BCE), the Rhodians built the Colossus of Rhodes to
commemorate their victory. They retained their
independence by the maintenance of a powerful navy, by
maintaining a carefully neutral posture and acting to
preserve the balance of power between the major
Hellenistic kingdoms.[26]
Initially
Rhodes had very close ties with the Ptolemaic kingdom.
Rhodes later became a Roman ally against the Seleucids,
receiving some territory in Caria for their role in the Roman–Seleucid War
(192–188 BCE). Rome eventually turned on Rhodes and
annexed the island as a Roman province.
Antigonus II,
a student of Zeno of Citium, spent most
of his rule defending Macedon against Epirus and cementing Macedonian
power in Greece, first against the Athenians in the Chremonidean War, and
then against the Achaean League of Aratus of Sicyon. Under
the Antigonids, Macedonia was often short on funds, the
Pangaeum mines were no
longer as productive as under Philip II, the wealth from
Alexander's campaigns had been used up and the
countryside pillaged by the Gallic
invasion.[27]
A large number of the Macedonian population had also
been resettled abroad by Alexander or had chosen to
emigrate to the new eastern Greek cities. Up to two
thirds of the population emigrated, and the Macedonian
army could only count on a levy of 25,000 men, a
significantly smaller force than under Philip II.[28]
Antigonus II
ruled until his death in 239 BC. His son Demetrius
II soon died in 229 BC, leaving a child (Philip V)
as king, with the general Antigonus
Doson as regent. Doson led Macedon to victory in
the war against the Spartan king Cleomenes III, and occupied
Sparta.
Philip V, who came to
power when Doson died in 221 BC, was the last Macedonian
ruler with both the talent and the opportunity to unite
Greece and preserve its independence against the "cloud
rising in the west": the ever-increasing power of Rome.
He was known as "the darling of Hellas". Under his
auspices the Peace of Naupactus (217 BC) brought the
latest war between Macedon and the Greek leagues (the social war
220-217) to an end, and at this time he controlled all
of Greece except Athens, Rhodes and Pergamum.
In 215 BC
Philip, with his eye on Illyria, formed an alliance with
Rome's enemy Hannibal of Carthage, which led to Roman
alliances with the Achaean League, Rhodes and
Pergamum. The First Macedonian War
broke out in 212 BC, and ended inconclusively in 205 BC.
Philip continued to wage war against Pergamon and Rhodes
for control of the Aegean (204-200 BCE) and ignored
Roman demands for non-intervention in Greece by invading
Attica. In 198 BC, during the Second Macedonian War
Philip was decisively defeated at Cynoscephalae by
the Roman proconsul Titus Quinctius
Flamininus and Macedon lost all its territories in
Greece proper. Greece was now thoroughly brought into
the Roman sphere of influence,
though it retained nominal autonomy. The end of
Antigonid Macedon came when Philip V's son, Perseus, was
defeated and captured by the Romans in the Third Macedonian War
(171–168 BCE).
The Odrysian
Kingdom was a union of Thracian
tribes under the kings of the powerful Odrysian tribe
centered around the region of Thrace. Various parts of Thrace
were under Macedonian rule under Philip II of Macedon,
Alexander the Great, Lysimachus, Ptolemy II,
and Philip V but were also often ruled by their own
kings. The Thracians and Agrianes were widely used by
Alexander as peltasts and
light cavalry, forming about
one fifth of his army.[35]
The Diadochi also used Thracian mercenaries in their
armies and they were also used as colonists. The
Odrysians used Greek as the language of
administration[36]
and of the nobility. The nobility also adopted Greek
fashions in dress, ornament and military
equipment, spreading it to the other tribes.[37]
Thracian kings were among the first to be Hellenized.[38]
After 278 BC
the Odrysians had a strong competitor in the CelticKingdom of Tylis ruled by the kings
Comontorius and Cavarus, but in 212 BC they
conquered their enemies and destroyed their capital.
Western
Mediterranean
Southern Italy
(Magna Graecia) and
south-eastern Sicily had been colonized by the
Greeks during the 8th century. In 4th century Sicily the
leading Greek city and hegemon was Syracuse. During the
Hellenistic period the leading figure in Sicily was Agathocles of Syracuse
(361 – 289 BCE) who seized the city with an army of
mercenaries in 317 BCE. Agathocles extended his power
throughout most of the Greek cities in Sicily, fought a
long war with the Carthaginians,
at one point invading Tunisia in 310 and defeating a
Carthaginian army there. This was the first time a
European force had invaded the region. After this war he
controlled most of south-east Sicily and had himself
proclaimed king, in imitation of the Hellenistic
monarchs of the east.[39]
Agathocles then invaded Italy (c. 300 BCE) in defense of
Tarentum against the Bruttians and
Romans, but was unsuccessful.
Gallo-Greek inscription: "Segomaros,
son of Uillū, citizen[40]
(toutious) of Namausos, dedicated this sanctuary to Belesama"
Greeks in pre-Roman
Gaul were mostly limited to the Mediterranean
coast of Provence. The first Greek colony
in the region was Massalia, which became one of
the largest trading ports of Mediterranean by the 4th
century BCE with 6,000 inhabitants. Massalia was also
the local hegemon,
controlling various coastal Greek cities like Nice
and Agde. The coins minted in Massalia
have been found in all parts of Ligurian-Celtic Gaul. Celtic coinage was
influenced by Greek designs,[41]
and Greek letters can be found on various Celtic coins,
especially those of Southern France.[42]
Traders from Massalia ventured inland deep into France
on the Rivers Durance and Rhône, and established overland
trade routes deep into Gaul,
and to Switzerland and Burgundy. The Hellenistic period
saw the Greek alphabet spread into southern Gaul from
Massalia (3rd and 2nd centuries BCE) and according to Strabo, Massalia was also a center
of education, where Celts went to learn Greek.[43]
A staunch ally of Rome, Massalia retained its
independence until it sided with Pompey in 49 BCE and was then taken
by Caesar's forces.
In 281 Pyrrhus (nicknamed "the
eagle", aetos) invaded southern Italy to aid the
city state of Tarentum. Pyrrhus
defeated the Romans in the Battle of Heraclea and
at the Battle of Asculum.
Though victorious, he was forced to retreat due to heavy
losses, hence the term "Pyrrhic victory". Pyrrhus
then turned south and invaded Sicily but was
unsuccessful and returned to Italy. After the Battle of
Beneventum (275 BCE) Pyrrhus lost all his Italian
holdings and left for Epirus.
Pyrrhus then went to war
with Macedonia in 275, deposing Antigonus II Gonatas
and briefly ruling over Macedonia and Thessaly until
285. Afterwards he invaded southern Greece, and was
killed in battle against Argos in 272 BCE. After the death of
Pyrrhus, Epirus remained a minor power. In 233 BCE the
Aeacid royal family was deposed and a federal state was
set up called the Epirote League. The league
was conquered by Rome in the Third Macedonian War
(171–168 BCE).
Hellenistic
Middle east
The
Hellenistic states of Asia and Egypt were run by an
occupying imperial elite of Greco-Macedonian
administrators and governors propped up by a standing
army of mercenaries and a small core of Greco-Macedonian
settlers.[44]
Promotion of immigration from Greece was important in
the establishment of this system. Hellenistic monarchs
ran their kingdoms as royal estates and most of the
heavy tax revenues went into the military and
paramilitary forces which preserved their rule from any
kind of revolution. Macedonian and Hellenistic monarchs
were expected to lead their armies on the field, along
with a group of privileged aristocratic companions or
friends (hetairoi, philoi) which dined and drank
with the king and acted as his advisory council.[45]
Another role that was expected the monarch fill was that
of charitable patron of his people, this public
philanthropy could mean building projects and handing
out gifts but also promotion of Greek
culture and religion.
Ptolemy, a somatophylax,
one of the seven bodyguards who served as Alexander the Great's
generals and deputies, was appointed satrap of Egypt after Alexander's death in 323
BC. In 305 BC, he declared himself King Ptolemy I, later
known as "Soter" (saviour) for his role in helping the
Rhodians during the siege
of Rhodes. Ptolemy built new cities such as Ptolemais Hermiou in upper Egypt and settled his
veterans throughout the country, especially in the
region of the Faiyum. Alexandria, a major center of
Greek culture and trade, became his capital city. As
Egypt's first port city, it was the main grain exporter
in the Mediterranean.
The Egyptians begrudgingly accepted
the Ptolemies as the successors to the pharaohs of independent Egypt,
though the kingdom went through several native revolts.
The Ptolemies took on the traditions of the Egyptian Pharaohs,
such as marrying their siblings (Ptolemy II
was the first to adopt this custom), having themselves
portrayed on public monuments in Egyptian style and
dress, and participating in Egyptian religious life. The
Ptolemaic ruler cult portrayed the Ptolemies as gods,
and temples to the Ptolemies were erected throughout the
kingdom. Ptolemy I even created a new god, Serapis, who was combination of
two Egyptian gods: Apis and Osiris, with attributes of Greek gods.
Ptolemaic administration was, like the Ancient Egyptian
bureaucracy, highly centralized and focused on squeezing
as much revenue out of the population as possible though
tariffs, excise duties, fines, taxes and so forth. A
whole class of petty officials, tax farmers, clerks and
overseers made this possible. The Egyptian countryside
was directly administered by this royal bureaucracy.[46]
External possessions such as Cyprus and Cyrene were run
by strategoi, military commanders appointed by
the crown.
Under Ptolemy II,
Callimachus, Apollonius of Rhodes,
Theocritus and a host of other
poets made the city a center of Hellenistic literature.
Ptolemy himself was eager to patronise the library,
scientific research and individual scholars who lived on
the grounds of the library. He and his successors also
fought a series of wars with the Seleucids, known as the
Syrian wars,
over the region of Coele-Syria. Ptolemy IV
won the great battle of Raphia (217
BCE) against the Seleucids, using native Egyptians
trained as phalangites.
However these Egyptian soldiers revolted, eventually
setting up a native breakaway Egyptian state in the Thebaid between 205-186/5 BCE,
severely weakening the Ptolemaic state.[47]
Ptolemy's
family ruled Egypt until the Roman
conquest of 30 BC. All the male rulers of the dynasty
took the name Ptolemy. Ptolemaic queens, some of whom
were the sisters of their husbands, were usually called
Cleopatra, Arsinoe or Berenice. The most famous member
of the line was the last queen, Cleopatra
VII, known for her role in the Roman political
battles between Julius Caesar and Pompey, and later between Octavian
and Mark Antony. Her suicide at
the conquest by Rome marked the end of Ptolemaic rule in
Egypt though Hellenistic culture continued to thrive in
Egypt throughout the Roman and Byzantine periods until
the Muslim conquest.
Following
division of Alexander's empire, Seleucus I Nicator received Babylonia. From there, he
created a new empire which expanded to include much of
Alexander's near eastern
territories.[48][49][50][51]
At the height of its power, it included central Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, today's
Turkmenistan, Pamir, and parts of Pakistan. It included a diverse
population estimated at fifty to sixty million people.[52]
Under Antiochus I
(c. 324/3 – 261 BC), however, the unwieldy empire was
already beginning to shed territories. Pergamum
broke away under Eumenes I who defeated a
Seleucid army sent against him. The kingdoms of
Cappadocia, Bithynia and Pontus were all practically
independent by this time as well. Like the Ptolemies, Antiochus I
established a dynastic religious cult, deifying his
father Seleucus I.
Seleucus, officially said to be descended from Apollo,
had his own priests and monthly sacrifices. The erosion
of the empire continued under Seleucus II,
who was forced to fight a civil war (239-236) against
his brother Antiochus Hierax and was
unable to keep Bactria, Sogdiana and
Parthia from breaking away. Hierax
carved off most of Seleucid Anatolia for himself, but
was defeated, along with his Galatian allies, by Attalus I of Pergamon who now
also claimed kingship.
The Hellenistic world c. 200 BCE.
The vast
Seleucid Empire was, like Egypt, mostly dominated by a
Greco-Macedonian political elite.[51][53][54][55]
The Greek population of the cities who formed the
dominant elite were reinforced by emigration from Greece.[51][53]
These cities included newly founded colonies such as Antioch, the other cities of the Syrian tetrapolis, Seleucia (north of Babylon) and Dura-Europos on the Euphrates. These cities retained
traditional Greek city state institutions such as
assemblies, councils and elected magistrates, but this
was a facade for they were always controlled by the
royal Seleucid officials. Apart from these cities, there
were also a large number of Seleucid garrisons (choria),
military colonies (katoikiai) and Greek villages
(komai) which the Seleucids planted throughout
the empire to cement their rule. This 'Greco-Macedonian'
population (which also included the sons of settlers who
had married local women) could make up a phalanx of
35,000 men (out of a total Seleucid army of 80,000)
during the reign of Antiochos
III. The rest of the army was made up of native
troops.[56]Antiochus
III the great conducted several vigorous campaigns
to retake all the lost provinces of the empire since the
death of Seleucus I. After being defeated by Ptolemy IV's
forces at Raphia (217),
Antiochus III led a long campaign to the east to subdue
the far eastern breakaway provinces (212-205) including
Bactria, Parthia, Ariana, Sogdiana, Gedrosia and Drangiana. He was successful,
bringing back most of these provinces into at least
nominal vassalage
and receiving tribute from their rulers.[57]
After the death of Ptolemy IV
(204), Antiochus took advantage of the weakness of Egypt
to conquer Coele-Syria in the fifth Syrian war
(202-195).[58]
He then began expanding his influence into Pergamene
territory in Asia and crossed into Europe, fortifying Lysimachia on the
hellespont, but his expansion into Anatolia and Greece was abruptly
halted after a decisive defeat at the Battle of Magnesia (190
BCE). In the Treaty of Apamea which
ended the war, Antiochus lost all of his territories in
Anatolia west of the Taurus and was forced to pay a
large indemnity of 15,000 talents.[59]
After the
death of Lysimachus, one of his
officers, Philetaerus, took control of
the city of Pergamum in
282 BC along with Lysimachus' war chest of 9,000 talents
and declared himself loyal to Seleucus I
while remaining de facto independent. His
descendant, Attalus I, defeated the invading
Galatians and proclaimed himself
an independent king. Attalus I (241–197BC), was a
staunch ally of Rome against Philip V of Macedon
during the first and secondMacedonian Wars. For his
support against the Seleucids
in 190 BCE, Eumenes II was rewarded with
all the former Seleucid domains in Asia Minor.
Eumenes II turned Pergamon into a centre of culture and
science by establishing the library of Pergamum
which was said to be second only to the library of Alexandria[61]
with 200,000 volumes according to Plutarch. It included a reading
room and a collection of paintings. Eumenes II also
constructed the Pergamum Altar with friezes
depicting the Gigantomachy
on the acropolis of the city. Pergamum was
also a center of parchment (charta pergamena)
production. The Attalids ruled Pergamon until Attalus III bequeathed the
kingdom to the Roman Republic in
133 BC[62]
to avoid a likely succession crisis.
The Celts who
settled in Galatia came through Thrace under the leadership of
Leotarios and Leonnorios circa 270 BC. They
were defeated by Seleucus I
in the 'battle of the Elephants', but were still able to
establish a Celtic territory in central Anatolia. The Galatians were well
respected as warriors and were widely used as
mercenaries in the armies of the successor states. They
continued to attack neighboring kingdoms such as Bithynia and Pergamon, plundering and
extracting tribute. This came to an end when they sided
with the renegade Seleucid prince Antiochus Hierax who
tried to defeat Attalus, the ruler of Pergamon (241–197 BC). Attalus
severely defeated the Gauls, forcing them to confine
themselves to Galatia. The theme of the Dying Gaul (a famous
statue displayed in Pergamon) remained a favorite in
Hellenistic art for a generation signifying the victory
of the Greeks over a noble enemy. In the early 2nd
century BC, the Galatians became allies of Antiochus
the Great, the last Seleucid king trying to regain
suzerainty over Asia Minor. In 189 BC, Rome sent Gnaeus Manlius Vulso
on an expedition against the Galatians. Galatia was
henceforth dominated by Rome through regional rulers
from 189 BC onward.
After their
defeats by Pergamon and Rome the Galatians slowly became
hellenized and they were called "Gallo-Graeci" by the
historian Justin[63]
as well as Ἑλληνογαλάται
(Hellēnogalátai) by Diodorus Siculus in his Bibliotheca
historica v.32.5, who wrote that they were "called
Helleno-Galatians because of their connection with the
Greeks."[64]
The Bithynians
were a Thracian people living in northwest Anatolia.
After Alexander's conquests the region of Bithynia came
under the rule of the native king Bas, who defeated
Calas, a general of Alexander the Great, and maintained
the independence of Bithynia. His son, Zipoetes I of Bithynia
maintained this autonomy against Lysimachus and Seleucus I,
and assumed the title of king (basileus) in 297
BCE. His son and successor, Nicomedes I,
founded Nicomedia, which soon rose to
great prosperity, and during his long reign (c. 278 – c.
255 BCE), as well as those of his successors, the
kingdom of Bithynia held a considerable place among the
minor monarchies of Anatolia. Nicomedes also invited the
Celtic Galatians into Anatolia as mercenaries, and they
later turned on his son Prusias I, who defeated them in
battle. Their last king, Nicomedes IV, was unable to
maintain himself against Mithridates VI of Pontus, and,
after being restored to his throne by the Roman Senate,
he bequeathed his kingdom by will to the Roman republic
(74 BCE).
Cappadocia, a
mountainous region situated between Pontus and the
Taurus mountains, was ruled by an Iranian dynasty. Ariarathes I
(332–322 BCE) was the satrap of Cappadocia under the
Persians and after the conquests of Alexander he
retained his post. After Alexander's death he was
defeated by Eumenes and crucified in 322 BCE, but his
son, Ariarathes II managed to regain the throne and
maintain his autonomy against the warring Diadochi.
In 255 B.C.,
Ariarathes III took the title of king and married
Stratonice, a daughter of Antiochus II, remaining an
ally of the Seleucid kingdom. Under Ariarathes IV,
Cappadocia came into relations with Rome, first as a foe
espousing the cause of Antiochus
the Great, then as an ally against Perseus of
Macedon and finally in a war against the Seleucids.
Ariarathes V also waged war with Rome against
Aristonicus, a claimant to the throne of Pergamon, and
their forces were annihilated in 130 BCE. This defeat
allowed Pontus to invade and conquer the kingdom.
The Kingdom of Pontus was a
Hellenistic kingdom on the southern coast of the Black Sea. It was founded by Mithridates I in
291 BC and lasted until its conquest by the Roman
Republic in 63 BC. Despite being ruled by a dynasty
which was a descendant of the Persian Achaemenid Empire it
became hellenized due to the influence of the Greek
cities on the Black Sea and its neighboring kingdoms.
Pontic culture was a mix of Greek and Iranian elements,
the most hellenized parts of the kingdom were on the
coast, populated by Greek colonies such as Trapezus and Sinope, which became the
capital of the kingdom. Epigraphic evidence also shows
extensive Hellenistic influence in the interior. During
the reign of Mithridates II, Pontus was allied with the
Seleucids through dynastic marriages. By the time of
Mithridates VI Eupator, Greek was the official language
of the kingdom though Anatolian languages continued to
be spoken.
The kingdom
grew to its largest extent under Mithridates
VI, who conquered Colchis, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Bithynia, Lesser Armenia, the Bosporan Kingdom, the
Greek colonies of the Tauric Chersonesos and for a brief
time the Roman province of Asia. Mithridates
VI, himself of mixed Persian and Greek ancestry,
presented himself as the protector of the Greeks against
the 'barbarians' of Rome styling himself as "King
Mithridates Eupator Dionysus."[65]
and as the "great liberator". Mithridates also depicted
himself with the anastole hairstyle of Alexander
and used the symbolism of Herakles whom
the Macedonian kings claimed descent from. After a long
struggle with Rome in the Mithridatic wars, Pontus was
defeated, part of it was incorporated into the Roman
Republic as the province Bithynia and Pontus and the
eastern half survived as a client kingdom.
Orontid Armenia formally
passed to the empire of Alexander the Great following
his conquest of Persia. Alexander appointed an Orontid
named Mithranes to govern Armenia. Armenia later became
a vassal state of the Seleucid Empire, but it
maintained a considerable degree of autonomy, retaining
its native rulers. Towards the end 212 BC the country
was divided into two kingdoms, Greater Armenia and
Armenia Sophene including Commagene or
Armenia Minor. The kingdoms became so independent from
Seleucid control that Antiochus III the
Great waged war on them during his reign and
replaced their rulers.
After the
Seleucid defeat at the Battle of Magnesia in
190 BC, the kings of Sophene and Greater Armenia
revolted and declared their independence, with Artaxias becoming the first
king of the Artaxiad dynasty of
Armenia in 188. During the reign of the Artaxiads,
Armenia went through a period of hellenization. Numismatic
evidence shows Greek artistic styles and the use of the
Greek language. Some coins describe the Armenian kings
as "Philhellenes".
During the reign of Tigranes the Great
(95–55 BC), the kingdom of Armenia reached its greatest
extent, containing many Greek cities including the
entire Syrian tetrapolis. Cleopatra, the wife of
Tigranes the Great,
invited Greeks such as the rhetor Amphicrates and the
historian Metrodorus of Scepsis
to the Armenian court, and - according to Plutarch -
when the Roman general Lucullus seized the Armenian
capital Tigranocerta, he found a troupe of Greek actors
who had arrived to perform plays for Tigranes.[66]
Tigranes' successor Artavasdes
II even composed Greek tragedies himself.
Coin of Phraates IV with
Hellenistic titles such as Euergetes, Epiphanes and
Philhellene
(admirer of the Greeks)
Parthia was a north-eastern
Iranian satrapy of the
Achaemenid
empire which later passed on to Alexander's
empire. Under the Seleucids, Parthia was governed by
various Greek satraps such
as Nicanor and Philip (satrap). In 247
BC, following the death of Antiochus II Theos, Andragoras,
the Seleucid governor of Parthia, proclaimed his
independence and began minting coins showing himself
wearing a royal diadem and claiming kingship. He ruled
until 238 BCE when Arsaces, the leader
of the Parni tribe conquered Parthia,
killing Andragoras and inaugurating the Arsacid Dynasty. Antiochus
III recaptured Arsacid controlled territory in
209 BC from Arsaces II.
Arsaces II sued for peace became a vassal of the
Seleucids and it was not until the reign of Phraates I (168–165 BCE), that
the Arsacids would again begin to assert their
independence.[67]
During the
reign of Mithridates I of
Parthia, Arsacid control expanded to include Herat (in 167 BC), Babylonia (in 144 BC), Media (in 141 BC), Persia (in 139 BC), and large parts
of Syria (in the 110s BC). The
Seleucid–Parthian wars
continued as the Seleucids invaded Mesopotamia under Antiochus VII Sidetes
(r. 138–129 BC), but he was eventually killed by a
Parthian counterattack. After the fall of the Seleucid
dynasty, the Parthians fought frequently against
neighbouring Rome in the Roman–Parthian Wars
(66 BC – 217 AD). Abundant traces of Hellenism continued
under the Parthian empire. The Parthians used Greek as
well as their own Parthian language (though lesser than
Greek) as languages of administration and also used
Greek drachmas as coinage. They enjoyed Greek theater
and Greek art influenced Parthian art. The Parthians
continued worhipping Greek gods syncretized together with
Iranian deities. Their rulers established ruler cults in
the manner of Hellenistic kings and often used
Hellenistic royal epithets.
Al-Khazneh in Petra shows the Hellenistic
influences on the Nabatean capital city
The Nabatean
Kingdom was an Arab state located between the
Sinai Peninsula and the Arabian Peninsula. Its
capital was the city of Petra, an important trading city on
the incense
route. The Nabateans resisted the attacks of Antigonous and
were allies of the Hasmoneans in their struggle against
the Seleucids,
but later fought against Herod the
great. The hellenization of the Nabateans occured
relatively late in comparison to the surrounding
regions. Nabatean material culture does not
show any Greek influence until the reign of Aretas III Philhellene in the
1st century BCE.[68]
Aretas captured Damascus and built the Petra pool
complex and gardens in the Hellenistic style. Though the
Nabateans originally worshipped their traditional gods
in symbolic form such as stone blocks or pillars, during
the Hellenistic period they began to identify their gods
with Greek gods and depict them in figurative forms
influenced by Greek sculpture.[69]
Nabatean art shows Greek influences and paintings have
been found depicting Dionysian scenes.[70]
They also slowly adopted Greek as a language of commerce
along with Aramaic and Arabic.
During the
Hellenistic period, Judea became a frontier region
between the Seleucid Empire and Ptolemaic
Egypt and therefore was often the frontline of the
Syrian wars, changing hands several times during these
conflicts.[71]
Under the Hellenistic kingdoms, Judea was ruled by the
hereditary office of the High Priest of Israel
as a Hellenistic vassal. This period also saw the rise
of a Hellenistic Judaism,
which first developed in the Jewish diaspora of
Alexandria and Antioch, and then spread to Judea. The
major literary product of this cultural syncretism is
the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible from Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic to Koiné Greek.
The reason for the production of this translation seems
to be that many of the Alexandrian Jews had lost the
ability to speak Hebrew and Aramaic.[72]
Between 301
and 219 BCE the Ptolemies ruled Judea in relative peace,
and Jews often found themselves working in the Ptolemaic
administration and army, which led to the rise of a
Hellenized Jewish elite class (e.g. the Tobiads). The wars of Antiochus
III brought the region into the Seleucid empire;
Jerusalem fell to his control in 198 and the Temple was
repaired and provided with money and tribute.[73]Antiochus IV Epiphanes
sacked Jerusalem and looted the Temple in 169 BCE after
disturbances in Judea during his abortive invasion of
Egypt. Antiochus then banned key Jewish religious rites and traditions
in Judea. He may have been attempting to Hellenize the
region and unify his empire and the Jewish resistance to
this eventually led to an escalation of violence.
Whatever the case, tensions between pro and
anti-Seleucid Jewish factions led to the 174–135 BCE Maccabean Revolt of Judas Maccabeus (whose
victory is celebrated in the Jewish festival of Hanukkah).
Modern
interpretations see this period as a civil war between
Hellenized and orthodox forms of Judaism.[74][75]
Out of this revolt was formed an independent Jewish
kingdom known as the Hasmonaean
Dynasty, which lasted from 165 BCE to 63 BCE. The
Hasmonean Dynasty eventually disintegrated in a civil war, which coincided with civil wars in Rome.
The last Hasmonean ruler, Antigonus II
Mattathias, was captured by Herod and executed in
37 BCE. In spite of originally being a revolt against
Greek overlordship, the Hasmonean kingdom and also the Herodian kingdom which
followed gradually became more and more hellenized. From
37 BCE to 6 CE, the Herodian dynasty,
Jewish-Roman client kings ruled Judea. Herod the Great
considerably enlarged the Temple (see Herod's
Temple), making it one of the largest religious
structures in the world. The style of the enlarged
temple and other Herodian architecture
shows significant Hellenistic architectural influence.
The Greco-Bactrian kingdom at its
maximum extent (c. 180 BC).
Silver coin depicting Demetrius I of
Bactria (reigned c. 200–180 BC), wearing an
elephant scalp, symbol of his conquests in India.
The Greek
kingdom of Bactria began as a breakaway satrapy of the
Seleucid empire, which, because of the size of the
empire, had significant freedom from central control.
Between 255-246 BCE, the governor of Bactria, Sogdiana and
Margiana (most of present-day Afghanistan), one Diodotus, took this process to
its logical extreme and declared himself king. Diodotus
II, son of Diodotus, was overthrown in about 230 BC by Euthydemus, possibly the
satrap of Sogdiana, who then started his own dynasty. In
c. 210 BC, the Greco-Bactrian kingdom was invaded by a
resurgent Seleucid empire under Antiochus
III. While victorious in the field, it seems
Antiochus came to realise that there were advantages in
the status quo (perhaps sensing that Bactria could not
be governed from Syria), and married one of his
daughters to Euthydemus's son, thus legitimising the
Greco-Bactria dynasty. Soon afterwards the
Greco-Bactrian kingdom seems to have expanded, possibly
taking advantage of the defeat of the Parthian king Arsaces II by
Antiochus.
According to Strabo, the Greco-Bactrians seem to
have had contacts with China through the silk road
trade routes (Strabo, XI.XI.I). Indian sources also
maintain religious contact between Buddhist monks and
the Greeks, and some Greco-Bactrians did convert to Buddhism. Demetrius, son and
successor of Euthydemus, invaded north-western India in
180 BC, after the destruction of the Mauryan empire
there; the Mauryans were probably allies of the
Bactrians (and Seleucids). The exact justification for
the invasion remains unclear, but by about 175 BC, the
Greeks ruled over parts of north-western India. This
period also marks the beginning of the obfuscation of
Greco-Bactrian history. Demetrius possibly died about
180 BC; numismatic evidence suggest the existence of
several other kings shortly thereafter. It is probable
that at this point that the Greco-Bactrian kingdom split
into several semi-independent regions for some years,
often warring amongst themselves. Heliocles was the last
Greek to clearly rule Bactria, his power collapsing in
the face of central Asian tribal invasions (Scythian and
Yuezhi), by about 130 BCE. However,
Greek urban civilisation seems to have continued in
Bactria after the fall of the kingdom, having a
hellenising effect on the tribes which had displaced
Greek-rule. The Kushan Empire which followed
continued to use Greek on their coinage and Greeks
continued being influential in the empire.
The separation
of the Indo-Greek
kingdom from the Greco-Bactrian
kingdom resulted in an even more isolated
position, and thus the details of the Indo-Greek kingdom
are even more obscure than for Bactria. Many supposed
kings in India are known only because of coins bearing
their name. The numismatic evidence together with
archaeological finds and the scant historical records
suggest that the fusion of eastern and western cultures
reached its peak in the Indo-Greek kingdom.
After
Demetrius' death, civil wars between Bactrian kings in
India allowed Apollodotus I (from c.
180/175 BCE) to make himself independent as the first
proper Indo-Greek king (who did not rule from Bactria).
Large numbers of his coins have been found in India, and
he seems to have reigned in Gandhara as well as western Punjab.
Apollodotus I was succeeded by or ruled alongside Antimachus II, likely the
son of the Bactrian king Antimachus I.[79]
In about 155 (or 165) BC he seems to have been succeeded
by the most successful of the Indo-Greek kings, Menander I. Menander converted
to Buddhism, and seems to have been
a great patron of the religion; he is remembered in some
Buddhist texts as 'Milinda'. He also expanded the
kingdom further east into Punjab, though these conquests
were rather ephemeral.
After the
death of Menander (c. 130 BC), the Kingdom appears to
have fragmented, with several 'kings' attested
contemporaneously in different regions. This inevitably
weakened the Greek position, and territory seems to have
been lost progressively. Around 70 BC, the western
regions of Arachosia and Paropamisadae were lost to
tribal invasions, presumably by those tribes responsible
for the end of the Bactrian kingdom. The resulting Indo-Scythian kingdom seems
to have gradually pushed the remaining Indo-Greek
kingdom towards the east. The Indo-Greek kingdom appears
to have lingered on in western Punjab until about 10 AD
when finally ended by the Indo-Scythians.
After
conquering the Indo-Greeks, the Kushan
empire took over Greco-Buddhism, the Greek
language, Greek script,
Greek coinage and artistic styles. Greeks continued
being an important part of the cultural world of India
for generations. The depictions of the Buddha appear to
have been influenced by Greek culture: Buddha
representations in the Ghandara period often showed
Buddha under the protection of Herakles.[80]
Several
references in Indian literature praise the knowledge of
the Yavanas or the
Greeks. The Mahabharata compliments them
as "the all-knowing Yavanas" (sarvajnaa yavanaa) i.e.
"The Yavanas, O king, are all-knowing; the Suras are
particularly so. The mlecchas are wedded to the
creations of their own fancy."[81]
and the creators of flying machines that are generally
called vimanas.[12]
The "Brihat-Samhita" of the mathematician Varahamihira
says: "The Greeks, though impure, must be
honored since they were trained in sciences and therein,
excelled others....." .[82]
Hellenistic
culture was at its height of world influence in the
Hellenistic period. Hellenism or at least Philhellenism reached most
regions on the frontiers of the Hellenistic kingdoms.
Though some of these regions were not ruled by Greeks or
even Greek speaking elites, certain Hellenistic
influences can be seen in the historical record and material culture of these
regions. Other regions had established contact with
Greek colonies before this period, and simply saw a
continued process of Hellenization and
intermixing.
Before the
Hellenistic period, Greek colonies had been established
on the coast of the Crimean and Taman
peninsulas. The Bosporan Kingdom was a
multi-ethnic kingdom of Greek city states and local
tribal peoples such as the Maeotians, Thracians, Crimean Scythians and Cimmerians under the Spartocid dynasty (438–110
BCE). The Spartocids were a hellenized Thracian family
from Panticapaeum. The Bosporans
had long lasting trade contacts with the Scythian
peoples of the Pontic-Caspian
steppe, and Hellenistic influence can be seen in
the Scythian settlements of the Crimea, such as in the Scythian Neapolis.
Scythian pressure on the Bosporan kingdom under
Paerisades V led to its eventual vassalage under the
Pontic king Mithradates
VI for protection, circa 107 BCE. It later became
a Roman client state. Other Scythians on the steppes of Central Asia came into
contact with Hellenistic culture through the Greeks of
Bactria. Many Scythian elites purchased Greek products
and some Scythian art shows Greek
influences. At least some Scythians seem to have become
Hellenized, because we know of conflicts between the
elites of the Scythian kingdom over the adoption of
Greek ways. These Hellenized Scythians were known as the
"young Scythians".[84]
The peoples around Pontic Olbia, known as the
Callipidae, were intermixed and Hellenized
Greco-Scythians.[85]
Statuette of Nike, Greek goddess
of victory, from Vani, Georgia (country)
The Greek
colonies on the west coast of the Black sea,
such as Istros, Tomi and Callatis traded with the ThracianGetae who occupied modern day Dobruja. From the sixth century
BCE on, the multiethnic people in this region gradually
intermixed with each other, creating a Greco-Getic
populace.[86]
Numismatic evidence shows that Hellenic influence
penetrated further inland. Getae in Wallachia and Moldavia coined Getic tetradrachms, Getic imitations
of Macedonian coinage.[87]
The ancient Georgian kingdoms had
trade relations with the Greek city states on the Black sea
coast such as Poti
and Sukhumi. The kingdom of Colchis, which later became a
Roman client state, received Hellenistic influences from
the Black sea Greek colonies.
In Arabia, Bahrain, which was referred to by
the Greeks as Tylos, the centre of pearl trading,
when Nearchus came to discover it
serving under Alexander the Great.[88]
The Greek admiral Nearchus is believed to have been
the first of Alexander's commanders to visit these
islands. It is not known whether Bahrain was part of the
Seleucid Empire, although
the archaeological site at Qalat Al
Bahrain has been proposed as a Seleucid base in
the Persian Gulf.[89]
Alexander had planned to settle the eastern shores of
the Persian Gulf with Greek colonists, and although it
is not clear that this happened on the scale he
envisaged, Tylos was very much part of the Hellenised
world: the language of the upper classes was Greek
(although Aramaic was in everyday use), while Zeus was
worshipped in the form of the Arabian sun-god Shams.[90]
Tylos even became the site of Greek athletic contests.[91]
Carthaginian hoplite (Sacred Band, end
of the 4th century BC)
Carthage was a Phoenician colony on the coast
of Tunisia. Carthaginian culture came
into contact with the Greeks through Punic colonies
in Sicily and through their widespread
Mediterranean trade network. While the Carthaginians
retained their Punic culture
and language, they did adopt some Hellenistic ways, one
of the most prominent of which was their military
practices. In 550 BCE, Mago I of Carthage
began a series of military reforms which included
copying the army of Timoleon, Tyrant
of Syracuse.[92]
The core of Carthage's military was the Greek-style phalanx formed by citizen hoplite spearmen who had been conscripted
into service, though their armies also included large
numbers of mercenaries. After their defeat in the first
Punic war, Carthage hired a Spartan mercenary
captain, Xanthippus of Carthage
to reform their military forces. Xanthippus reformed the
Carthaginian military along Macedonian army
lines.
By the second
century BCE, the kingdom of Numidia also began to see
Hellenistic culture influence its art and architecture.
The Numidian royal monument at Chemtou is one example of Numidian
Hellenized architecture. Reliefs on the monument also
shows the Numidians had adopted Greco-Macedonian type
armor and shields for their soldiers.[93]
Ptolemaic
Egypt was the center of Hellenistic influence in Africa
and Greek colonies also thrived in the region of Cyrene, Libya. The kingdom
of Meroë was in constant contact with
Ptolemaic Egypt and Hellenistic influences can be seen
in their art and archeology. There was a temple to Serapis, the Greco-Egyptian god.
Eastern hemisphere at the end of the
2nd century BC.
Rise of Rome
Widespread
Roman interference in the Greek world was probably
inevitable given the general manner of the ascendency of
the Roman Republic. This
Roman-Greek interaction began as a consequence of the
Greek city-states located along the coast of southern
Italy. Rome had come to dominate the Italian peninsula,
and desired the submission of the Greek cities to its
rule. Although they initially resisted, allying
themselves with Pyrrhus of Epirus, and
defeating the Romans at several battles, the Greek
cities were unable to maintain this position and were
absorbed by the Roman republic. Shortly afterwards, Rome
became involved in Sicily, fighting against the Carthaginians in the First Punic War. The end
result was the complete conquest of Sicily, including
its previously powerful Greek cities, by the Romans.
Roman
entanglement in the Balkans began when Illyrian
piratical raids on Roman merchants led to invasions of
Illyria (the First
and, Second
Illyrian Wars). Tension between Macedon and Rome
increased when the young king of Macedon, Philip V, harbored one
of the chief pirates, Demetrius of Pharos[94]
(a former client of Rome). As a result, in an attempt to
reduce Roman influence in the Balkans, Philip allied
himself with Carthage after Hannibal had dealt the Romans a
massive defeat at the Battle of Cannae (216 BC)
during the Second Punic War. Forcing
the Romans to fight on another front when they were at a
nadir of manpower gained Philip the lasting enmity of
the Romans; the only real result from the somewhat
insubstantial First Macedonian War
(215–202 BC).
Once the Second Punic War had been
resolved, and the Romans had begun to regather their
strength, they looked to re-assert their influence in
the Balkans, and to curb the expansion of Philip. A
pretext for war was provided by Philip's refusal to end
his war with AttalidPergamum, and
Rhodes, both Roman allies.[95]
The Romans, also allied with the Aetolian League of Greek
city-states (which resented Philip's power), thus
declared war on Macedon in 200 BC, starting the Second Macedonian War.
This ended with a decisive Roman victory at the Battle of
Cynoscephalae (197 BC). Like most Roman peace
treaties of the period, the resultant 'Peace of
Flaminius' was designed utterly to crush the power of
the defeated party; a massive indemnity was levied,
Philip's fleet was surrendered to Rome, and Macedon was
effectively returned to its ancient boundaries, losing
influence over the city-states of southern Greece, and
land in Thrace and Asia Minor. The result was the end of
Macedon as a major power in the Mediterranean.
As a result of
the confusion in Greece at the end of the Second
Macedonian War, the Seleucid Empire also became
entangled with the Romans. The Seleucid Antiochus
III had allied with Philip V of Macedon in 203 BC,
agreeing that they should jointly conquer the lands of
the boy-king of Egypt, Ptolemy V.
After defeating Ptolemy in the Fifth
Syrian War, Antiochus concentrated on occupying
the Ptolemaic possessions in Asia Minor. However, this
brought Antiochus into conflict with Rhodes and
Pergamum, two important Roman allies, and began a 'cold
war' between Rome and Antiochus (not helped by the
presence of Hannibal at the Seleucid court).[4]
Meanwhile, in mainland Greece, the Aetolian League, which had
sided with Rome against Macedon, now grew to resent the
Roman presence in Greece. This presented Antiochus III
with a pretext to invade Greece and 'liberate' it from
Roman influence, thus starting the Roman-Syrian
War (192–188 BC). In 191 BC, the Romans under
Manius Acilius Glabrio routed him at Thermopylae and
obliged him to withdraw to Asia. During the course of
this war Roman troops moved into Asia for the first
time, where they defeated Antiochus again at the Battle of Magnesia (190
BC). A crippling treaty was imposed on Antiochus, with
Seleucid possessions in Asia Minor removed and given to
Rhodes and Pergamum, the size of the Seleucid navy
reduced, and a massive war indemnity invoked.
Perseus of Macedon surrenders to
Paullus. Painting by
Thus, in less
than twenty years, Rome had destroyed the power of one
of the successor states, crippled another, and firmly
entrenched its influence over Greece. This was primarily
a result of the over-ambition of the Macedonian kings,
and their unintended provocation of Rome; though Rome
was quick to exploit the situation. In another twenty
years, the Macedonian kingdom was no more. Seeking to
re-assert Macedonian power and Greek independence,
Philip V's son Perseus incurred the
wrath of the Romans, resulting in the Third Macedonian War
(171–168 BC). Victorious, the Romans abolished the
Macedonian kingdom, replacing it with four puppet
republics; these lasted a further twenty years before
Macedon was formally annexed as a Roman province (146
BC) after yet another rebellion under Andriscus. Rome now demanded
that the Achaean League, the last stronghold of Greek
independence, be dissolved. The Achaeans refused and
declared war on Rome. Most of the Greek cities rallied
to the Achaeans' side, even slaves were freed to fight
for Greek independence. The Roman consul Lucius
Mummius advanced from Macedonia and defeated the
Greeks at Corinth, which was razed to the
ground. In 146 BC, the Greek peninsula, though not the
islands, became a Roman protectorate. Roman taxes were
imposed, except in Athens and Sparta, and all the cities
had to accept rule by Rome's local allies.
The Attalid
dynasty of Pergamum lasted little longer; a Roman ally
until the end, its final king Attalus III died in 133 BC
without an heir, and taking the alliance to its natural
conclusion, willed Pergamum to the Roman Republic.[96]
The final Greek resistance came in 88 BC, when King Mithridatesof Pontus
rebelled against Rome, captured Roman held Anatolia, and
massacred up to 100,000 Romans and Roman allies across
Asia Minor. Many Greek cities, including Athens,
overthrew their Roman puppet rulers and joined him in
the Mithridatic
wars. When he was driven out of Greece by the
Roman general Lucius
Cornelius Sulla, who laid siege to Athens and
razed the city. Mithridates was finally defeated by Gnaeus
Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) in 65 BC.
Further ruin was brought to Greece by the Roman civil
wars, which were partly fought in Greece. Finally, in 27
BC, Augustus
directly annexed Greece to the new Roman Empire as the province of Achaea. The
struggles with Rome had left Greece depopulated and
demoralised. Nevertheless, Roman rule at least brought
an end to warfare, and cities such as Athens, Corinth,
Thessaloniki and Patras soon recovered their
prosperity.
Contrarily,
having so firmly entrenched themselves into Greek
affairs, the Romans now completely ignored the rapidly
disintegrating Seleucid empire (perhaps because it posed
no threat); and left the Ptolemaic kingdom to decline
quietly, while acting as a protector of sorts, in as
much as to stop other powers taking Egypt over
(including the famous line-in-the-sand incident when the
Seleucid Antiochus IV Epiphanes
tried to invade Egypt).[4]
Eventually, instability in the near east resulting from
the power vacuum left by the collapse of the Seleucid
empire caused the Roman proconsulPompey
the Great to abolish the Seleucid rump state,
absorbing much of Syria into the Roman republic.[96]
Famously, the end of Ptolemaic Egypt came as the final
act in the republican civil war between the Roman
triumvirs Mark Anthony and Augustus
Caesar. After the defeat of Anthony and his lover,
the last Ptolemaic monarch, Cleopatra
VII at the Battle of Actium,
Augustus invaded Egypt and took it as his own personal
fiefdom.[96]
He thereby completed both the destruction of the
Hellenistic kingdoms and the Roman republic, and ended
(in hindsight) the Hellenistic era.
The Rosetta Stone, a trilingual
Ptolemaic decree establishing the
religious cult of Ptolemy V.
In some fields
Hellenistic culture thrived, particularly in its
preservation of the past. The states of the Hellenistic
period were deeply fixated with the past and its
seemingly lost glories.[98]
The preservation of many classical and archaic works of
art and literature (including the works of the three
great classical tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides) are due to the
efforts of the Hellenistic Greeks. The museum and
library of Alexandria was the center of this
conservationist activity. With the support of royal
stipends, Alexandrian scholars collected, translated,
copied, classified and critiqued every book they could
find. Most of the great literary figures of the
Hellenistic period studied at Alexandria and conducted
research there. They were scholar poets, writing not
only poetry but treatises on Homer and other archaic and
classical Greek literature.[99]
Athens retained its position as the
most prestigious seat of higher education, especially in
the domains of philosophy and rhetoric, with
considerable libraries and philosophical schools.[100]
Alexandria had the monumental Museum (i.e. research
center) and Library of Alexandria
which was estimated to have had 700,000 volumes.[100]
The city of Pergamon also had a large library and became
a major center of book production.[100]
The island of Rhodes had a library and also boasted a
famous finishing school for politics and diplomacy.
Libraries were also present in Antioch, Pella, and Kos.
Cicero was educated in Athens and Mark Antony in Rhodes.[100]
Antioch was founded as a metropolis and center of Greek learning which
retained its status into the era of Christianity.[100]Seleucia replaced Babylon as the metropolis of the
lower Tigris.
The spread of
Greek culture and language throughout the Near East and
Asia owed much to the development of newly founded
cities and deliberate colonization
policies by the successor states, which in turn was
necessary for maintaining their military forces.
Settlements such as Ai-Khanoum, situated on trade
routes, allowed Greek culture to mix and spread. The
language of Philip II's and Alexander's court and army
(which was made up of various Greek and non-Greek
speaking peoples) was a version of Attic Greek, and over time
this language developed into Koine, the lingua franca of the
successor states.
The
identification of local gods with similar Greek deities,
a practice termed 'Interpretatio graeca',
facilitated the building of Greek-style temples, and the
Greek culture in the cities also meant that buildings
such as gymnasia and theaters became
common. Many cities maintained nominal autonomy while
under the rule of the local king or satrap, and often had Greek-style
institutions. Greek dedications, statues, architecture
and inscriptions have all been found. However, local
cultures were not replaced, and mostly went on as
before, but now with a new Greco-Macedonian or otherwise
Hellenized elite. An example that shows the spread of
Greek theater is Plutarch's story of the death of
Crassus, in
which his head was taken to the Parthian court and used as
a prop in a performance of The Bacchae. Theaters have
also been found: for example, in Ai-Khanoum on the edge of Bactria, the theater has 35 rows –
larger than the theater in Babylon.
The spread of
Greek influence and language is also shown through Ancient Greek coinage.
Portraits became more realistic, and the obverse of the
coin was often used to display a propaganda image,
commemorating an event or displaying the image of a
favored god. The use of Greek-style portraits and Greek
language continued under the Roman, Parthian
and Kushan
empires, even as the use of Greek was in decline.
The concept of
Hellenization, meaning the adoption Greek culture in
non-Greek regions, has long been controversial.
Undoubtedly Greek influence did spread through the
Hellenistic realms, but to what extent, and whether this
was a deliberate policy or mere cultural diffusion, have
been hotly debated.
It seems
likely that Alexander himself pursued policies which led
Hellenization, such as the foundations of new cities and
Greek colonies. While it may have been a deliberate
attempt to spread Greek culture (or as Arrian says, "to
civilise the natives"), it is more likely that it was a
series of pragmatic measures designed to aid in the rule
of his enormous empire.[101]
Cities and colonies were centers of administrative
control and Macedonian power in a newly conquered
region. Alexander also seems to have attempted to create
a mixed Greco-Persian elite class as shown by the Susa weddings and his
adoption of some forms of Persian dress and court
culture. He also brought in Persian and other non-Greek
peoples into his military and even the elite cavalry
units of the companion cavalry.
Again, it is probably better to see these policies as a
pragmatic response to the demands of ruling a large
empire[101]
than to any idealized attempt to bringing Greek
culture to the 'barbarians'.
This approach was bitterly resented by the Macedonians
and discarded by most of the Diadochi after Alexander's
death. These policies can also be interpreted as the
result of Alexander's possible megalomania[102]
during his later years.
After
Alexander's death in 323BC, the influx of Greek
colonists into the new realms continued to spread Greek
culture into Asia. The founding of new cities and
military colonies continued to be a major part of the
Successors' struggle for control of any particular
region, and these continued to be centers of cultural
diffusion. The spread of Greek culture under the
Successors seems mostly to have occurred with the
spreading of Greeks themselves, rather than as an active
policy.
Throughout the
Hellenistic world, these Greco-Macedonian colonists
considered themselves by and large superior to the
native "barbarians" and excluded most non-Greeks from
the upper echelons of courtly and government life. Most
of the native population was not Hellenized, had little
access to Greek culture and often found themselves
discriminated against by their Hellenic overlords.[103]Gymnasiums
and their Greek education, for example, were for Greeks
only. Greek cities and colonies may have exported Greek
art and architecture as far as the Indus, but these
were mostly enclaves of Greek culture for the
transplanted Greek elite. The degree of influence that
Greek culture had throughout the Hellenistic kingdoms
was therefore highly localized and based mostly on a few
great cities like Alexandria and Antioch. Some natives
did learn Greek and adopt Greek ways, but this was
mostly limited to a few local elites who were allowed to
retain their posts by the Diadochi and also to a small
number of mid-level administrators who acted as
intermediaries between the Greek speaking upper class
and their subjects. In the Seleucid empire for example,
this group amounted to only 2.5 percent of the official class.[104]
Despite their
initial reluctance, the Successors seem to have later
deliberately naturalized themselves to their different
regions, presumably in order to help maintain control of
the population.[105]
In the Ptolemaic kingdom, we find some Egyptianized
Greeks by the 2nd century onwards. The Indo-Greek
kingdom, we find kings who were converts to Buddhism (e.g. Menander). The Greeks in the
regions therefore gradually become 'localized', adopting
local customs as appropriate. In this way, hybrid
'Hellenistic' cultures naturally emerged, at least among
the upper echelons of society.
The trends of
Hellenization were therefore accompanied by Greeks
adopting native ways over time, but this was widely
varied by place and by social class. The farther away
from the Mediterranean and the lower in social status,
the more likely that a colonist was to adopt local ways,
while the Greco-Macedonian elites and Royal families,
usually remained thoroughly Greek and viewed most
non-Greeks with disdain. It is only until Cleopatra
VII, that a Ptolemaic ruler bothered to learn the
Egyptian language of
their subjects.
Bust of Zeus-Ammon, a deity with
attributes from Greek and Egyptian gods.
In the
Hellenistic period, there was much continuity in Greek religion: the
Greek gods
continued to be worshiped, and the same rites were
practiced as before. However the socio-political changes
brought on by the conquest of the Persian empire and
Greek emigration abroad meant that change also came to
religious practices. This varied greatly on location,
Athens, Sparta and most cities in the Greek mainland did
not see much religious change or new gods (with the
exception of the Egyptian Isis
in Athens),[106]
while the multi-ethnic Alexandria had a very varied
group of gods and religious practices, including
Egyptian, Jewish and Greek. Greek emigres brought their
Greek religion everywhere they went, even as far as
India and Afghanistan. Non-Greeks also had more freedom
to travel and trade throughout the Mediterranean and in
this period we can see Egyptian gods such as Serapis, and the Syrian gods Atargatis and Hadad, as well as a Jewish synagogue, all coexisting on the
island of Delos alongside classical Greek
deities.[107]
A common practice was to identify Greek gods with native
gods that had similar characteristics and this created
new fusions like Zeus-Ammon, Aphrodite Hagne (a Hellenized Atargatis) and Isis-Demeter. Greek emigres faced
individual religious choices they had not faced on their
home cities, where the gods they worshiped were dictated
by tradition.
Hellenistic
monarchies were closely associated with the religious
life of the kingdoms they ruled. This had already been a
feature of Macedonian kingship, which had priestly
duties.[108]
Hellenestic kings adopted patron deities as protectors
of their house and sometimes claimed descent from them.
The Seleucids for example took on Apollo as patron, the Antigonids
had Herakles, and
the Ptolemies claimed Dionysus among others.[109]
The worship of
dynastic ruler cults was also a feature of this period,
most notably in Egypt, where the Ptolemies adopted
earlier Pharaonic practice, and established themselves
as god-kings.
These cults were usually associated with a specific
temple in honor of the ruler such as the Ptolemaieia
at Alexandria and had their own festivals and theatrical
performances. The setting up of ruler cults was more
based on the systematized honors offered to the kings
(sacrifice, proskynesis, statues, altars,
hymns) which put them on par with the gods (isotheism)
than on actual belief of their divine nature. According
to Peter Green, these cults did not produce genuine
belief of the divinity of rulers among the Greeks and
Macedonians.[110]
The worship of Alexander was also popular, as in the
long lived cult at Erythrae and of course, at
Alexandria, where his tomb was located.
The
Hellenistic age also saw a rise in the disillusionment
with traditional religion.[111]
The rise of philosophy and the sciences had removed the
gods from many of their traditional domains such as
their role in the movement of the heavenly bodies and
natural disasters. The Sophists
proclaimed the centrality of humanity and agnosticism; the belief in Euhemerism (the view that the
gods were simply ancient kings and heroes), became
popular. The popular philosopher Epicurus promoted a view of disinterested gods
living far away from the human realm in metakosmia. The apotheosis of rulers also
brought the idea of divinity down to earth. While there
does seem to have been a substantial decline in
religiosity, this was mostly reserved for the educated
classes.[112]
Magic was practiced widely,
and these too, were a continuation from earlier times.
Throughout the Hellenistic world, people would consult oracles, and use charms and figurines to deter
misfortune or to cast spells. Also developed in this era
was the complex system of astrology, which
sought to determine a person's character and future in
the movements of the sun,
moon, and planets.
Astrology was widely associated with the cult of Tyche (luck, fortune), which grew in
popularity during this period.
Literature
Relief with Menander and New Comedy
Masks (Roman, AD 40-60) - the masks show three New
Comedy stock characters: youth, false maiden, old
man. Princeton
University Art Museum
The
Hellenistic period saw the rise of New Comedy,
the only few surviving representative texts being those
of Menander (born 342/1 BCE). Only
one play, Dyskolos, survives in its
entirety. The plots of this new Hellenistic comedy of manners were
more domestic and formulaic, stereotypical low born
characters such as slaves became more important, the
language was colloquial and major motifs included escapism, marriage, romance and
luck (Tyche).[113]
Though no Hellenistic tragedy remains intact, they were
still widely produced during the period, yet it seems
that there was no major breakthrough in style, remaining
within the classical model. The Supplementum
Hellenisticum, a modern collection of extant
fragments, contains the fragments of 150 authors.[114]
Hellenistic
poets now sought patronage from kings, and wrote
works in their honor. The scholars at the libraries in
Alexandria and Pergamon focused on the collection,
cataloging, and literary criticism of
classical Athenian works and ancient Greek myths. The
poet-critic Callimachus, a staunch
elitist, wrote hymns equating Ptolemy II to Zeus and
Apollo. He promoted short poetic forms such as the epigram, epyllion and the iambic and attacked epic as
base and common ("big book, big evil" was his doctrine).[115]
He also wrote a massive catalog of the holdings of the
library of Alexandria, the famous Pinakes. Callimachus was extremely
influential in his time and also for the development of
Augustan poetry. Another
poet, Apollonius of Rhodes,
attempted to revive the epic for the Hellenistic world
with his Argonautica. He had been a
student of Callimachus and later became chief librarian
(prostates) of the library of Alexandria,
Apollonius and Callimachus spent much of their careers
feuding with each other. Pastoral
poetry also thrived during the Hellenistic era, Theocritus was a major poet who
popularized the genre.
Around 240 BCE
Livius Andronicus, a Greek slave from southern Italy,
translated Homer's Odyssey into Latin. Greek literature
would have a dominant effect of the development of the Latin literature of the
Romans. The poetry of Virgil, Horace and Ovid
were all based on Hellenistic styles.
During the
Hellenistic period, many different schools of thought
developed. Athens, with its multiple philosophical
schools, continued to remain the center of philosophical
thought. However Athens had now lost her political
freedom and Hellenistic philosophy is a reflection of
this new difficult period. In this political climate,
Hellenistic philosophers went in search of goals such as
ataraxia (un-disturbedness), autarky (self-sufficiency) and apatheia (freedom from
suffering), which would allow them to wrest well-being
or eudaimonia out of the most
difficult turns of fortune. This occupation with the
inner life, with personal inner liberty and with the
pursuit of eudaimonia is what all
Hellenistic philosophical schools have in common.[116]
The Epicureans
and the Cynics rejected
public offices and civic service, which amounted to a
rejection of the polis itself, the defining
institution of the Greek world. Epicurus promoted atomism and an asceticism based on freedom
from pain as its ultimate goal. Cynics such as Diogenes of Sinope
rejected all material possessions and social conventions
(nomos) as unnatural and useless. The Cyrenaics meanwhile, embraced hedonism, arguing that pleasure
was the only true good. Stoicism, founded by Zeno of Citium, taught that
virtue was sufficient for eudaimonia as it would allow
one to live in accordance with Nature or Logos. Zeno became extremely
popular, the Athenians set up a gold statue of him and
Antigonus II Gonatas invited him to the Macedonian
court. The philosophical schools of Aristotle (the Peripatetics
of the Lyceum) and Plato (Platonism at the Academy) also remained
influential. The academy would eventually turn to Academic Skepticism
under Arcesilaus until it was
rejected by Antiochus of Ascalon
(c. 90 BCE) in favor of Neoplatonism. Hellenistic
philosophy, had a significant influence on the Greek
ruling elite. Examples include Athenian statesman Demetrius
of Phaleron, who had studied in the lyceum; the Spartan
king Cleomenes III who was a
student of the Stoic Sphairos of Borysthenes and Antigonus II
who was also a well known Stoic. This can also be said
of the Roman upper classes, were Stoicism was dominant,
as seen in the Meditations of the Roman
emperor Marcus Aurelius and the
works of Cicero.
Eratosthenes'
method for determining the radius and circumference
of the Earth.
One of the
oldest surviving fragments of Euclid's Elements,
found at Oxyrhynchus and dated to
circa AD 100 (P. Oxy. 29).
The diagram accompanies Book II, Proposition
5.[117]
Hellenistic
culture produced seats of learning throughout the
Mediterranean. Hellenistic science differed from Greek
science in at least two ways: first, it benefited from
the cross-fertilization of Greek ideas with those that
had developed in the larger Hellenistic world; secondly,
to some extent, it was supported by royal patrons in the
kingdoms founded by Alexander's successors. Especially
important to Hellenistic science was the city of
Alexandria in Egypt, which became a major center of
scientific research in the 3rd century BC. Hellenistic
scholars frequently employed the principles developed in
earlier Greek thought: the application of mathematics
and deliberate empirical research, in their scientific
investigations.[118]
Astronomers
like Hipparchus (c. 190 – c. 120 BC) built upon
the measurements of the Babylonian astronomers before
him, to measure the precession of the Earth. Pliny
reports that Hipparchus produced the first systematic star catalog after he observed a new star
(it is uncertain whether this was a nova
or a comet) and wished to preserve
astronomical record of the stars, so that other new
stars could be discovered.[123]
It has recently been claimed that a celestial globe
based on Hipparchus's star catalog sits atop the broad
shoulders of a large 2nd-century Roman statue known as
the Farnese Atlas.[124]
Another astronomer, Aristarchos
of Samos developed a heliocentric
system.
The level of
Hellenistic achievement in astronomy and engineering is impressively
shown by the Antikythera mechanism
(150–100 BC). It is a 37-gear mechanical computer which
computed the motions of the Sun and Moon, including
lunar and solar eclipses predicted on the basis of
astronomical periods believed to have been learned from
the Babylonians.[125]
Devices of this sort are not found again until the 10th
century, when a simpler eight-geared luni-solar
calculator incorporated into an astrolabe was described by the
Persian scholar, Al-Biruni.[126][not in
citation given] Similarly
complex devices were also developed by other Muslim engineers and astronomers
during the Middle Ages.[125][not in
citation given]
Medicine, which was dominated by
the Hippocratic tradition, saw new advances under Praxagoras of Kos, who
theorized that blood traveled through the veins. Herophilos (335–280 BC) was the
first to base his conclusions on dissection of the human
body, animal vivisection and to provide accurate
descriptions of the nervous system, liver and
other key organs. Influenced by Philinus of Cos (fl. 250),
a student of Herophilos, a new medical sect emerged, the
Empiric school, which was
based on strict observation and rejected unseen causes
of the Dogmatic school.
Bolos of
Mendes made developments in alchemy and Theophrastus was known for
his work in plant classification. Krateuas wrote a
compendium on botanic pharmacy. The library of
Alexandria included a zoo for research and Hellenistic
zoologists include Archelaos, Leonidas of Byzantion,
Apollodoros of Alexandria and Bion of Soloi.
The
interpretation of Hellenistic science varies widely. At
one extreme is the view of the English classical
scholar, Cornford, who believed that "all the most
important and original work was done in the three
centuries from 600 to 300 BC"[128]
At the other is the view of the Italian physicist and
mathematician, Lucio Russo, who claims that
scientific method was actually born in the 3rd century
BC, to be forgotten during the Roman period and only
revived in the Renaissance.[129]
A syntagma of 256 phalangites
in a 16x16 pike square formation
Hellenistic
warfare was a continuation of the military developments
of Iphicrates and Philip II of Macedon,
particularly his use of the Macedonian
Phalanx, a dense formation of pikemen, in conjunction with
heavy companion cavalry.
Armies of the Hellenistic period differed from those of
the classical period in being largely made up of
professional soldiers and also in their greater
specialization and technical proficiency in siege
warfare. Hellenistic armies were significantly
larger than those of classical Greece relying
increasingly on Greek mercenaries
(misthophoroi; men-for-pay) and also on non-Greek
soldiery such as Thracians, Galatians, Egyptians and
Iranians. Some ethnic groups were known for their
martial skill in a particular mode of combat and were
highly sought after, including Tarantine cavalry,
Cretan archers, Rhodian slingers and Thracian peltasts.
This period also saw the adoption of new weapons and
troop types such as Thureophoroi and the Thorakitai who used the oval Thureos shield and fought with
javelins and the machaira
sword. The use of heavily armored cataphracts
and also horse
archers was adopted by the Seleucids,
Greco-Bactrians, Armenians and Pontus. The use
of war
elephants also became common. Seleucus received
Indian war elephants from the Mauryan
empire, and used them to good effect at the battle of Ipsus. He kept a
core of 500 of them at Apameia. The Ptolemies
used the smaller African elephant.
Ancient mechanical artillery: Catapults
(standing), the chain drive of Polybolos (bottom center), Gastraphetes (on wall)
Hellenistic
military equipment was generally characterized by an
increase in size. Hellenistic-era
warships grew from the trireme to include more banks of
oars and larger numbers of rowers and soldiers as in the
Quadrireme and Quinquereme. The Ptolemaic Tessarakonteres was the
largest ship constructed in Antiquity. New siege engines
were developed during this period. An unknown engineer
developed the torsion-spring catapult (ca. 360) and
Dionysios of Alexandria designed a repeating ballista, the Polybolos. Preserved examples of
ball projectiles range from 4.4 kg to 78 kg
(or over 170 lbs).[130]Demetrius
Poliorcetes was notorious for the large siege
engines employed in his campaigns, especially
during the 12-month siege of Rhodes when he had
Epimachos of Athens build a massive 160 ton siege tower
named Helepolis, filled with
artillery.
Sculpture of Cupid and Psyche, an
example of the sensualism of Hellenistic art. 2nd
century CE Roman copy of a 2nd-century BCE Greek
original.
The term Hellenistic
is a modern invention; the Hellenistic World not only
included a huge area covering the whole of the Aegean,
rather than the Classical Greece focused
on the Poleis of Athens and Sparta, but also a huge time range.
In artistic terms this means that there is huge variety
which is often put under the heading of "Hellenistic
Art" for convenience.
Hellenistic
art saw a turn from the idealistic, perfected, calm and
composed figures of classical Greek art to a style
dominated by realism and the depiction
of emotion (pathos) and character (ethos). The motif of deceptively
realistic naturalism
in art (aletheia) is reflected in stories such as
that of the painter Zeuxis, who was said to have
painted grapes that seemed so real that birds came and
pecked at them.[131]
The female nude
also became more popular as epitomized by the Aphrodite
of Cnidos of Praxiteles and art in general
became more erotic (e.g. Leda and the Swan and Scopa's Pothos). The dominant
ideals of Hellenistic art were those of sensuality and
passion.[132]
People of all
ages and social statuses were depicted in the art of the
Hellenistic age. Artists such as Peiraikos chose mundane and
lower class subjects for his paintings. According to
Pliny, "He painted barbers' shops, cobblers' stalls,
asses, eatables and similar subjects, earning for
himself the name of rhyparographos [painter of dirt/low
things]. In these subjects he could give consummate
pleasure, selling them for more than other artists
received for their large pictures" (Natural History,
Book XXXV.112). Even barbarians, such as the Galatians, were
depicted in heroic form, prefiguring the artistic theme
of the noble savage. The image of
Alexander the Great was also an important artistic
theme, and all of the diadochi had themselves depicted
imitating Alexander's youthful look. A number of the
best-known works of Greek sculpture belong to the
Hellenistic period, including Laocoön
and his Sons, Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory of
Samothrace.
Developments
in painting included experiments in chiaroscuro by Zeuxis and the development of landscape painting and
still life painting.[133]
Greek temples built during the Hellenistic period were
generally larger than classical ones, such as the temple of Artemis at
Ephesus, the temple of Artemis at Sardis, and the temple of Apollo at
Didyma (rebuilt by Seleucus in 300 BCE). The royal
palace (basileion) also came into its own during
the Hellenistic period, the first extant example being
the massive fourth-century villa of Cassander at Vergina.
This period
also saw the first written works of art history in the histories
of Duris of Samos and
Xenokrates of Athens, a sculptor and a historian of
sculpture and painting.
There has been
a trend in writing the history of this period to depict
Hellenistic art as a decadent style, following of the Golden
Age of Classical Athens. Pliny the Elder, after
having described the sculpture
of the classical period says: Cessavit deinde ars
("then art disappeared").[134]
The 18th century terms Baroque and Rococo have sometimes been applied,
to the art of this complex and individual period. The
renewal of the historiographical approach as well as
some recent discoveries, such as the tombs of Vergina, allow a better
appreciation of this period's artistic richness.
The focus on
the Hellenistic period over the course of the 19th
century by scholars and historians has led to an issue
common to the study of historical periods; historians
see the period of focus as a mirror of the period in
which they are living. Many 19th century scholars
contended that the Hellenistic period represented a
cultural decline from the brilliance of classical Greece. Though
this comparison is now seen as unfair and meaningless,
it has been noted that even commentators of the time saw
the end of a cultural era which could not be matched
again.[135]
This may be inextricably linked with the nature of
government. It has been noted by Herodotus that after the
establishment of the Athenian democracy:
...the
Athenians found themselves suddenly a great power.
Not just in one field, but in everything they set
their minds to...As subjects of a tyrant, what had
they accomplished?...Held down like slaves they had
shirked and slacked; once they had won their
freedom, not a citizen but he could feel like he was
labouring for himself"[136]
Thus, with the
decline of the Greek polis, and the establishment of
monarchical states, the environment and social freedom
in which to excel may have been reduced.[137]
A parallel can be drawn with the productivity of the
city states of Italy during the
Renaissance, and their subsequent decline under
autocratic rulers.
However, William Woodthorpe
Tarn, between World War I and World War II and the heyday
of the League of Nations,
focused on the issues of racial and cultural
confrontation and the nature of colonial rule. Michael Rostovtzeff,
who fled the Russian
Revolution, concentrated predominantly on the rise
of the capitalist bourgeoisie in areas of Greek rule. Arnaldo Momigliano, an Italian Jew
who wrote before and after the Second World War, studied
the problem of mutual understanding between races in the
conquered areas. Moses Hadas portrayed an
optimistic picture of synthesis of culture from the
perspective of the 1950s, while Frank
William Walbank in the 1960s and 1970s had a
materialistic approach to the Hellenistic period,
focusing mainly on class relations. Recently, however, papyrologist
C. Préaux has concentrated predominantly on the economic
system, interactions between kings and cities and
provides a generally pessimistic view on the period. Peter Green, on
the other hand, writes from the point of view of late
20th century liberalism, his focus being on
individualism, the breakdown of convention, experiments
and a postmodern disillusionment with all institutions
and political processes.[14]
F.W.
Walbank et al. THE CAMBRIDGE ANCIENT HISTORY, SECOND
EDITION, VOLUME VII, PART I: The Hellenistic World,
p. 1.
Green,
Peter (2007). The Hellenistic Age (A Short
History). New York: Modern Library
Chronicles.
Green, Peter
(1990); Alexander to Actium, the historical
evolution of the Hellenistic age. University of
California Press. Pages 7-8.
Green (1990),
page 9.
Green (1990),
page 14.
Green (1990),
page 21.
Green (1990),
page 30-31.
Green (1990),
page 126.
Green (1990),
page 129.
Green (1990),
page 134.
Green, Peter;
Alexander to Actium, the historical evolution of the
Hellenistic age, page 11.
McGing, BC.
The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator, King
of Pontus, P. 17.
Green (1990),
p. 139.
Berthold,
Richard M. Rhodes in the Hellenistic Age, p. 12.
Green (1990),
p. 199
Bugh, Glenn
R. (editor). The Cambridge Companion to the
Hellenistic World, 2007. p. 35
Stanley M.
Burstein, Walter Donlan, Jennifer Tolbert Roberts,
and Sarah B. Pomeroy. A Brief History of Ancient
Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture. Oxford
University Presspage 255
The Cambridge
Ancient History, Volume 6: The Fourth Century BC by
D. M. Lewis (Editor), John Boardman (Editor), Simon
Hornblower (Editor), M. Ostwald (Editor), ISBN
0-521-23348-8, 1994, page 423, "Through
contact with their Greek neighbors some Illyrian
tribe became bilingual (Strabo Vii.7.8.Diglottoi) in
particular the Bylliones and the Taulantian tribes
close to Epidamnus"
Dalmatia: research in the
Roman province 1970-2001 : papers in honour of
J.J by David Davison, Vincent L. Gaffney, J. J.
Wilkes, Emilio Marin, 2006, page 21, "...completely
Hellenised town..."
The
Illyrians: history and culture,History and Culture
Series,The Illyrians: History and Culture,
Aleksandar Stipčević, ISBN
0-8155-5052-9, 1977, page 174
The Illyrians
(The Peoples of Europe) by John Wilkes, 1996, page
233&236, "The Illyrians liked decorated
belt-buckles or clasps (see figure 29). Some of gold
and silver with openwork designs of stylised birds
have a similar distribution to the Mramorac
bracelets and may also have been produced under
Greek influence."
Carte de la
Macédoine et du monde égéen vers 200 av. J.-C.
Webber,
Christopher; Odyrsian arms equipment and tactics.
The Odrysian
Kingdom of Thrace: Orpheus Unmasked (Oxford
Monographs on Classical Archaeology) by Z. H.
Archibald,1998,ISBN
0-19-815047-4,page 3
The Odrysian
Kingdom of Thrace: Orpheus Unmasked (Oxford
Monographs on Classical Archaeology) by Z. H.
Archibald,1998,ISBN
0-19-815047-4,page 5
The
Peloponnesian War: A Military Study (Warfare and
History) by J. F. Lazenby,2003,page 224,"... number
of strongholds, and he made himself useful fighting
'the Thracians without a king' on behalf of the more
Hellenized Thracian kings and their Greek neighbours
(Nepos, Alc. ...
Walbank et
al. (2008), p. 394.
Delamarre, Xavier.
Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise. Editions
Errance, Paris, 2008, p. 299
Boardman,
John (1993), The Diffusion of Classical Art in
Antiquity, Princeton University Press, p.308.
Celtic
Inscriptions on Gaulish and British Coins" by
Beale Poste p.135 [1]
Momigliano,
Arnaldo. Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization,
pp. 54-55.
Green (1990),
187
Green (1990),
190
Green (1990),
p. 193.
Green (1990),
291.
Jones,
Kenneth Raymond (2006). Provincial reactions
to Roman imperialism: the aftermath of the
Jewish revolt, A.D. 66-70, Parts 66-70.
University of California, Berkeley. p. 174. ISBN978-0-542-82473-9.
... and the Greeks, or at least the
Greco-Macedonian Seleucid Empire, replace the
Persians as the Easterners.
Society
for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies (London,
England) (1993). The Journal of Hellenic
studies, Volumes 113-114. Society for the
Promotion of Hellenic Studies. p. 211. The
Seleucid kingdom has traditionally been regarded
as basically a Greco-Macedonian state and its
rulers thought of as successors to Alexander.
Baskin,
Judith R.; Seeskin, Kenneth (2010). The
Cambridge Guide to Jewish History, Religion, and
Culture. Cambridge University Press.
p. 37. ISBN978-0-521-68974-8.
The wars between the two most prominent Greek
dynasties, the Ptolemies of Egypt and the
Seleucids of Syria, unalterably change the
history of the land of Israel.... As a result
the land of Israel became part of the empire of
the Syrian Greek Seleucids.
Glubb,
Sir John Bagot (1967). Syria, Lebanon, Jordan.
Thames & Hudson. p. 34. OCLC585939.
In addition to the court and the army, Syrian
cities were full of Greek businessmen, many of
them pure Greeks from Greece. The senior posts
in the civil service were also held by Greeks.
Although the Ptolemies and the Seleucids were
perpetual rivals, both dynasties were Greek and
ruled by means of Greek officials and Greek
soldiers. Both governments made great efforts to
attract immigrants from Greece, thereby adding
yet another racial element to the population.
Bugh, Glenn
R. (editor). The Cambridge Companion to the
Hellenistic World, 2007. p. 43.
Steven
C. Hause, William S. Maltby (2004). Western
civilization: a history of European society.
Thomson Wadsworth. p. 76. ISBN978-0-534-62164-3.
The Greco-Macedonian Elite. The Seleucids
respected the cultural and religious
sensibilities of their subjects but preferred to
rely on Greek or Macedonian soldiers and
administrators for the day-to-day business of
governing. The Greek population of the cities,
reinforced until the second century BC by
emigration from Greece, formed a dominant,
although not especially cohesive, elite.
Victor,
Royce M. (2010). Colonial education and class
formation in early Judaism: a postcolonial
reading. Continuum International Publishing
Group. p. 55. ISBN978-0-567-24719-3.
Like other Hellenistic kings, the Seleucids
ruled with the help of their “friends” and a
Greco-Macedonian elite class separate from the
native populations whom they governed.
Britannica,
Seleucid kingdom, 2008, O.Ed.
Bugh, Glenn
R. (editor). The Cambridge Companion to the
Hellenistic World, 2007, p. 44.
"Pergamum". Columbia
Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, 1.
Shipley
(2000) pp. 318-319.
Justin, Epitome
of Pompeius Trogus, 25.2 and 26.2; the related
subject of copulative compounds, where both are of
equal weight, is exhaustively treated in Anna
Granville Hatcher, Modern English Word-Formation
and Neo-Latin: A Study of the Origins of English
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University), 1951.
This
distinction is remarked upon in William M. Ramsay
(revised by Mark W. Wilson), Historical
Commentary on Galatians 1997:302; Ramsay notes
the 4th century AD Paphlagonian Themistius' usage Γαλατίᾳ τῇ Ἑλληνίδι.
McGing,
B. C. (1986). The Foreign Policy of
Mithridates VI Eupator, King of Pontus.
Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill.
pp. 91–92.
Grousset
pp.90-91
Bivar, A.D.H.
(1983), "The Political History of Iran under the
Arsacids", in Yarshater, Ehsan, Cambridge History of
Iran 3.1, Cambridge UP, pp. 21–99.
Bedal,
Leigh-Ann; The Petra Pool-complex: A Hellenistic
Paradeisos in the Nabataean Capital, pg 178.
Davies, Cuthbert Collin
(1959). An Historical Atlas of the Indian
Peninsula. Oxford University Press.
Narain, A.K. (1976). The
Coin Types of the Indo-Greek Kings. Ares. ISBN0-89005-109-7.
Hans Erich
Stier, Georg Westermann Verlag, Ernst Kirsten, and
Ekkehard Aner. Grosser Atlas zur Weltgeschichte:
Vorzeit. Altertum. Mittelalter. Neuzeit.
Westermann, 1978, ISBN
3-14-100919-8.
"The
Antikythera Mechanism Research Project", The
Antikythera Mechanism Research Project. Retrieved
2007-07-01 Quote: "The Antikythera Mechanism is now
understood to be dedicated to astronomical phenomena
and operates as a complex mechanical 'computer'
which tracks the cycles of the Solar System."
Paphitis,
Nicholas (November 30, 2006). "Experts:
Fragments an Ancient Computer". The
Washington Post. Imagine tossing a
top-notch laptop into the sea, leaving
scientists from a foreign culture to scratch
their heads over its corroded remains centuries
later. A Roman shipmaster inadvertently did
something just like it 2,000 years ago off
southern Greece, experts said late Thursday.
Otto Neugebauer (1975). A
History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy.
New York: Springer. pp. 284–5.; Lloyd (1973), pp. 69-71.
Schaefer, Bradley E.
(2005). "The Epoch of the Constellations on the
Farnese Atlas and Their Origin in Hipparchus's
Lost Catalogue". Journal for the History of
Astronomy 36: 167–96. Bibcode:2005JHA....36..167S.; But see also Duke, Dennis W. (2006).
"Analysis of the Farnese Globe". Journal for
the History of Astronomy 37: 87–100. Bibcode:2006JHA....37...87D.
F. M. Cornford. The
Unwritten Philosophy and Other Essays.
p. 83. quoted in Lloyd (1973), p.
154.
Russo, Lucio (2004). The
Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in
300 BC and Why It Had To Be Reborn. Berlin:
Springer. ISBN3-540-20396-6. But see the critical reviews
by Mott Greene, Nature, vol 430, no. 7000 (5
Aug 2004):614 [2]
and Michael Rowan-Robinson, Physics World,
vol. 17, no. 4 (April 2004)[3].
Bugh, p. 285.
Green, Peter;
Alexander to Actium, the historical evolution of the
Hellenistic age, page 92.
Green (1990),
p. 342.
Green, Peter;
Alexander to Actium, the historical evolution of the
Hellenistic age, page 117-118.
Austin, Michel M. (1981). The
Hellenistic world from Alexander to the Roman
conquest: a selection of ancient sources in
translation. Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-22829-8.
Cary, Max (1932). A
History of the Greek World from 323 to 146 B.C.
London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.
Diadochi
(Διάδοχοι) is an ancient Greek word that currently
modern scholars use to refer primarily to persons acting
a role that existed only for a limited time period and
within a limited geographic range. As there are no
modern equivalents, it has been necessary to reconstruct
the role from the ancient sources. There is no uniform
agreement concerning exactly which historical persons
fit the description, or the territorial range over which
the role was in effect, or the calendar dates of the
period. A certain basic meaning is included in all
definitions, however.
The New Latin
terminology was introduced by the historians of
universal Greek history of the 19th century. Their
comprehensive histories of ancient Greece typically
covering from prehistory to the Roman Empire ran into many
volumes. For example, George Grote in the first
edition of History of Greece, 1846-1856, hardly
mentions the Diadochi, except to say that they were
kings who came after Alexander and Hellenized Asia. In
the edition of 1869 he defines them as "great officers
of Alexander, who after his death carved kingdoms for
themselves out of his conquests."[1]
Grote cites no
references for the use of Diadochi but his criticism of
Johann Gustav Droysen
gives him away. Droysen, "the modern inventor of
Hellenistic history,"[2]
not only defined "Hellenistic period" (hellenistische
... Zeit),[3]
but in a further study of the "successors of Alexander"
(nachfolger Alexanders) dated 1836, after Grote
had begun work on his history, but ten years before
publication of the first volume, divided it into two
periods, "the age of the Diadochi," or "Diadochi Period"
(die Zeit der Diodochen or Diadochenzeit),
which ran from the death of Alexander to the end of the
"Diadochi Wars" (Diadochenkämpfe, his term),
about 278 BC, and the "Epigoni Period" (Epigonenzeit),
which ran to about 220 BC.[4]
He also called the Diadochi Period "the Diadochi War
Period" (Zeit der Diadochenkämpfe). The Epigoni
he defined as "Sons of the Diadochi" (Diadochensöhne).
These were the second generation of Diadochi rulers.[5]
In an 1843 work, "History of the Epigoni" (Geschichte
der Epigonen) he details the kingdoms of the
Epigoni, 280-239 BC. The only precise date is the first,
the date of Alexander’s death, June, 323 BC. It has
never been in question.
Grote uses
Droysen's terminology but gives him no credit for it.
Instead he attacks Droysen's concept of Alexander
planting Hellenism in eastern colonies:[6]
"Plutarch states that Alexander founded more than
seventy new cities in Asia. So large a number of them is
neither verifiable nor probable, unless we either reckon
up simple military posts or borrow from the list of
foundations really established by his successors." He
avoids Droysen's term in favor of the traditional
"successor". In a long note he attacks Droysen's thesis
as "altogether slender and unsatisfactory." Grote may
have been right, but he ignores entirely Droysen's main
thesis, that the concepts of "successors" and "sons of
successors" were innovated and perpetuated by historians
writing contemporaneously or nearly so with the period.
Not enough evidence survives to prove it conclusively,
but enough survives to win acceptance for Droysen as the
founding father of Hellenistic history.
M.M. Austin
localizes what he considers to be a problem with Grote's
view. To Grote's assertion in the Preface to his work
that the period "is of no interest in itself," but
serves only to elucidate "the preceding centuries,"
Austin comments "Few nowadays would subscribe to this
view."[2]
If Grote was hoping to minimize Droysen by not giving
him credit, he was mistaken, as Droysen's gradually
became the majority model. By 1898 Adolf Holm incorporated a
footnote describing and evaluating Droysen's arguments.[7]
He describes the Diadochi and Epigoni as "powerful
individuals."[8]
The title of the volume on the topic, however, is The
Graeco-Macedonian Age..., not Droysen's
"Hellenistic".
Droysen's
"Hellenistic" and "Diadochi Periods" are canonical
today. A series of six (as of 2014) international
symposia held at different universities 1997-2010 on the
topics of the imperial Macedonians and their Diadochi
have to a large degree solidified and internationalized
Droysen’s concepts. Each one grew out of the previous.
Each published an assortment of papers read at the
symposium.[9]
The 2010 symposium, entitled "The Time of the Diadochi
(323-281 BC)," held at the University of A Coruña,
Spain, represents the current concepts and
investigations. The term Diadochi as an adjective is
being extended beyond its original use, such as "Diadochi Chronicle,"
which is nowhere identified as such, or Diadochi
kingdoms, "the kingdoms that emerged," even past the Age
of the Epigoni.[10]
Ancient role
In ancient
Greek, diadochos[11]
is a noun (substantive or adjective) formed from the
verb, diadechesthai, "succeed to,"[12]
a compound of dia- and dechesthai,
"receive."[13]
The word-set descends straightforwardly from Indo-European
*dek-, "receive", the substantive forms being from the
o-grade, *dok-.[14]
Some important English reflexes are dogma, "a received
teaching," decent, "fit to be received," paradox,
"against that which is received." The prefix dia-
changes the meaning slightly to add a social expectation
to the received. The diadochos expects to
receive it, hence a successor in command or any other
office, or a succeeding work gang on work being
performed by relays of work gangs, or metaphorically
light being the successor of sleep.
Basileus
It was exactly
this expectation that contributed to strife in the
Alexandrine and Hellenistic Ages, beginning with
Alexander. Philip had made a state marriage to a woman
who changed her name to Olympias to honor the coincidence
of Philip's victory in the Olympic Games and
Alexander's birth, an act that suggests love may have
been a motive as well. Macedon was then an obscure
state. Its chief office was the basileia, or
monarchy, the chief officer being the basileus, now the signatory
title of Philip. Their son and
heir, Alexander, was raised with care, being educated by
select prominent philosophers. Philip is said to have
wept for joy when Alexander performed a feat of which no
one else was capable, taming the wild horse, Bucephalus, at his first
attempt in front of a skeptical audience including the
king. Amidst the cheering onlookers Philip swore that
Macedonia was not large enough for Alexander.[15]
The two developed a close and affectionate relationship.
When Philip was on campaign Alexander would remark with
pride at the report of each victory that his father
would leave him nothing of note to do.
And yet the
faithless king fell in love with a young woman, Cleopatra.
He married her apparently for love when he was too old
for marriage, having divorced Olympias. By that time
Philip had built Macedonia into the leading military
state of the Balkans. He had acquired his expertise
fighting for Thebes and Greek freedom
under his patron, Epaminondas. When Alexander
was a teen-ager, Philip was planning a military solution
to the contention with the Persian Empire. In the
opening campaign against Byzantium he made Alexander
"regent" (kurios) in his absence. Alexander used
every opportunity to further his father’s victories,
expecting that he would be a part of them. There was a
source of disaffection, however. Plutarch reports that
Alexander and his mother bitterly reproached him for his
numerous affairs among the women of his court.[16]
Alexander was
at the wedding banquet when Attalus, Cleopatra's
uncle, made a remark that seemed inappropriate to him.
He asked the Macedonians to pray for an "heir to the
kingship" (diadochon tes basileias). Rising to
his feet Alexander shouted, using the royal "we," "Do we
seem like bastards (nothoi) to you, evil-minded
man?" and threw a cup at him. The inebriated Philip,
rising to his feet, drawing his sword, presumably to
defend his wife's uncle, promptly fell. Making a comment
that the man who was preparing to cross from Europe to
Asia could not cross from one couch to another,
Alexander departed, to escort his mother to her native Epirus and to wait himself in Illyria. Not long after, prompted
by Demaratus the Corinthian to mend the dissension in
his house, Philip sent Demaratus to bring Alexander
home. The expectation by virtue of which Alexander was diadochos
was that as the son of Philip, he would inherit Philip's
throne.
After a time
the king was assassinated. In 336 BC, at the age of 20,
Alexander "received the kingship" (parelabe ten
basileian).[17]
In the same year Darius succeeded to the throne
of Persia as Šâhe Šâhân, "King of Kings,"
which the Greeks understood as "Great King." The role of the
Macedonian basileus was changing fast.
Alexander’s army was already multinational. Alexander
was acquiring dominion over state after state. His
presence on the battlefield seemed to ensure immediate
victory.
When Alexander
the Great died on June 10, 323 BC, he left behind a huge
empire which comprised many essentially independent
territories. Alexander's empire stretched from his
homeland of Macedon
itself, along with the Greek city-states that his father
had subdued, to Bactria and parts of India in the east. It included parts
of the present day Balkans, Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt, Babylonia, and most of the
former Persia, except for some
lands the Achaemenids formerly held in Central Asia.
The successors
An army on
campaign changes its leadership at any level frequently
for replacement of casualties and distribution of talent
to the current operations. The institution of the
Hetairoi gave the Macedonian army a flexible capability
in this regard. There were no fixed ranks of Hetairoi,
except as the term meant a special unit of cavalry. The
Hetairoi were simply a fixed pool of de facto general
officers, without any or with changing de jure rank,
whom Alexander could assign where needed. They were
typically from the nobility, many related to Alexander.
A parallel flexible structure in the Persian army
facilitated combined units.
Staff meetings
to adjust command structure were nearly a daily event in
Alexander's army. They created an ongoing expectation
among the Hetairoi of receiving an important and
powerful command, if only for a short term. At the
moment of Alexander's death, all possibilities were
suddenly suspended. The Hetairoi vanished with
Alexander, to be replaced instantaneously by the
Diadochi, men who knew where they had stood, but not
where they would stand now. As there had been no
definite ranks or positions of Hetairoi, there were no
ranks of Diadochi. They expected appointments, but
without Alexander they would have to make their own.
For purposes
of this presentation, the Diadochi are grouped by their
rank and social standing at the time of Alexander's
death. These were their initial positions as Diadochi.
They are not necessarily significant or determinative of
what happened next.
Craterus was
an infantry and naval commander under Alexander during
his conquest of Persia. After the revolt of his army at
Opis on the Tigris River
in 324, Alexander ordered Craterus to command the
veterans as they returned home to Macedonia. Antipater, commander of
Alexander's forces in Greece and regent of the
Macedonian throne in Alexander's absence, would lead a
force of fresh troops back to Persia to join Alexander
while Craterus would become regent in his place. When
Craeterus arrived at Cilicia in 323 BC, news reached
him of Alexander's death. Though his distance from
Babylon prevented him from participating in the distribution of power,
Craterus hastened to Macedonia to assume the protection
of Alexander's family. The news of Alexander's death
caused the Greeks to rebel in the Lamian War. Craeterus and
Antipater defeated the rebellion in 322 BC. Despite his
absence, the generals gathered at Babylon confirmed
Craterus as Guardian of the Royal Family. However, with
the royal family in Babylon, the Regent Perdiccas assumed this
responsibility until the royal household could return to
Macedonia.
Antipater was
an adviser to King Philip II,
Alexander's father, a role he continued under Alexander.
When Alexander left Macedon to conquer Persia in 334 BC,
Antipater was named Regent of Macedon and General of
Greece in Alexander's absence. In 323 BC, Craterus was ordered by Alexander
to march his veterans back to Macedon and assume
Antipater's position while Antipater was to march to
Persia with fresh troops. Alexander's death that year,
however, prevented the order from being carried out.
When Alexander's generals gathered in Babylon to divide the empire
between themselves, Antipater was confirmed as General
of Greece while the roles of Regent of the Empire and
Guardian of the Royal Family were given to Perdiccas and Craterus,
respectively. Together, the three men formed the top
ruling group of the empire.
Without a
chosen successor, there was almost immediately a dispute
among Alexander's generals as to whom his successor
should be. Meleager and the infantry supported the candidacy
of Alexander's half-brother, Arrhidaeus, while Perdiccas, the leading cavalry
commander, supported waiting until the birth of
Alexander's unborn child by Roxana. A compromise was arranged –
Arrhidaeus (as Philip III) should become King, and
should rule jointly with Roxana's child, assuming that
it was a boy (as it was, becoming Alexander IV).
Perdiccas himself would become Regent of the entire
Empire, and Meleager his lieutenant. Soon, however,
Perdiccas had Meleager and the other infantry leaders
murdered, and assumed full control.
Meanwhile, the
news of Alexander's death had inspired a revolt in
Greece, known as the Lamian War. Athens and other cities joined
together, ultimately besieging Antipater in the fortress
of Lamia. Antipater was relieved
by a force sent by Leonnatus, who was killed in
action, but the war did not come to an end until
Craterus's arrival with a fleet to defeat the Athenians
at the Battle of Crannon on
September 5, 322 BC. For a time, this brought an end to
Greek resistance to Macedonian domination. Meanwhile,
Peithon suppressed a revolt of Greek settlers in the
eastern parts of the Empire, and Perdiccas and Eumenes
subdued Cappadocia.
First
War of the Diadochi (322–320 BC)
Soon, however,
conflict broke out. Perdiccas' marriage to
Alexander's sister Cleopatra
led Antipater, Craterus, Antigonus, and Ptolemy to join
together in rebellion. The actual outbreak of war was
initiated by Ptolemy's theft of Alexander's body and
its transfer to Egypt. Although Eumenes defeated the
rebels in Asia Minor, in a battle at which Craterus was
killed, it was all for nought, as Perdiccas himself was
murdered by his own generals Peithon, Seleucus, and Antigenes during an
invasion of Egypt.
Ptolemy came
to terms with Perdiccas's murderers, making Peithon and
Arrhidaeus regents in his
place, but soon these came to a new agreement with
Antipater at the Treaty
of Triparadisus. Antipater was made regent of the
Empire, and the two kings were moved to Macedon.
Antigonus remained in charge of Phrygia, Lycia, and
Pamphylia, to which was added Lycaonia. Ptolemy retained Egypt,
Lysimachus retained Thrace, while the three murderers of
Perdiccas—Seleucus, Peithon, and Antigenes—were given
the provinces of Babylonia, Media, and Susiana
respectively. Arrhidaeus, the former Regent, received
Hellespontine Phrygia. Antigonus was charged with the
task of rooting out Perdiccas's former supporter,
Eumenes. In effect, Antipater retained for himself
control of Europe, while Antigonus, as leader of the
largest army east of the Hellespont,
held a similar position in Asia.
Soon after the
second partition, in 319 BC, Antipater died. Antipater
had been one of the few remaining individuals with
enough prestige to hold the empire together. After his
death, war soon broke out again and the fragmentation of
the empire began in earnest. Passing over his own son, Cassander, Antipater had
declared Polyperchon his successor as
Regent. A civil war soon broke out in Macedon and Greece
between Polyperchon and Cassander, with the latter
supported by Antigonus and Ptolemy. Polyperchon allied
himself to Eumenes in Asia, but was driven from
Macedonia by Cassander, and fled to Epirus with the infant king Alexander IV and
his mother Roxana. In Epirus he joined forces
with Olympias, Alexander's mother, and
together they invaded Macedon again. They were met by an
army commanded by King Philip Arrhidaeus and his wife Eurydice,
which immediately defected, leaving the king and
Eurydice to Olympias's not so tender mercies, and they
were killed (317 BC). Soon after, though, the tide
turned, and Cassander was victorious, capturing and
killing Olympias, and attaining control of Macedon, the
boy king, and his mother.
This division
was to last for a century, before the Antigonid Kingdom
finally fell to Rome,
and the Seleucids were harried
from Persia by the Parthians and forced by the Romans to relinquish control
in Asia Minor.
A rump Seleucid kingdom limped on in Syria until finally put to rest by Pompey in 64 BC. The Ptolemies lasted longer
in Alexandria, though as a client
under Rome. Egypt was finally annexed to Rome in 30 BC.
Historical
uses as a title
Aulic
Ironically in
the formal "court" titulature of the Hellenistic empires
ruled by dynasties we know as Diadochs, the title was
not customary for the Monarch, but has actually been
proven to be the lowest in a system of official
rank titles, known as Aulic titulature,
conferred – ex officio or nominatim – to actual
courtiers and as an honorary rank (for protocol)
to various military and civilian officials. Notably in Ptolemaic
Egypt, it was reported as the lowest aulic rank,
under Philos, during the reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes.
Carney, Elizabeth; Ogden,
Daniel (2010). "Preface". Philip II and
Alexander the Great: Father and Son, Lives and
Afterlives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
"Diadochi and
Successor Kingdoms". The Oxford Encyclopedia
of Greece and Rome. Volume 1. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 2010.
Liddell, Henry
George; Scott, Robert. "διάδοχος".
A Greek-English Lexicon. Perseus Digital
Library.
Liddell, Henry
George; Scott, Robert. "διαδέχομαι".
A Greek-English Lexicon. Perseus Digital
Library.
Liddell, Henry
George; Scott, Robert. "δέχομαι".
A Greek-English Lexicon. Perseus Digital
Library.
Frisk, Hjalmar
(1960). "δέχομαι". Griechisches Etymologisches
Wörterbuch (in German) I. Heidelberg: Carl
Winter.
Austin,
M. M. (1994). The Hellenistic world from
Alexander to the Roman conquest: a selection of
ancient sources in translation. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Droysen,
Johann Gustav (1836). Geschichte der
Nachfolger Alexanders (in German). Hamburg:
Friedrich Perthes.
Grote,
George (1869). A History of Greece: from the
Earliest Period to the Close of the Generation
Contemporary with Alexander the Great XI
(New ed.). London: John Murray.
Holm,
Adolf (1898) [1894]. Clarke, Frederick
(Translator), ed. The History of Greece from
Its Commencement to the Close of the
Independence of the Greek Nation. IV: The
Graeco-Macedonian age, the period of the kings and
the leagues, from the death of Alexander down to
the incorporation of the last Macedonian monarchy
in the Roman Empire. London; New York: Macmillan.
Shipley, Graham (2000). The
Greek World After Alexander. Routledge
History of the Ancient World. New York: Routledge.
Walbank, F.W. (1984).
"The Hellenistic World". The Cambridge Ancient
History. Volume VII. part I. Cambridge.
Diadochi
('successors'): name of the first generation of military
and political leaders after the death of the Macedonian
king and conqueror Alexander
the
Great in 323. To settle the question whether his
empire should disintegrate or survive as a unity, and,
if so, under whose rule, they fought four full-scale
wars. The result, reached by 300, was a division into
three large parts, which more or less coincided with
Alexander's possessions in Europe, Asia, and Egypt.
During the
next quarter of a century, it was decided whether these
states could endure. As it turned out, there were no
great territorial changes, although there were dynastic
changes. After 280, the period of state-forming came to
an end.
Diadochi
("successors"): name of the first
generation of military and political leaders after
the death of the Macedonian
king and conqueror Alexander
the Great in 323. To settle the question
whether his empire should disintegrate or survive
as a unity, and, if so, under whose rule, they
fought several full-scale wars. The result,
reached by 300, was a division into three large
parts. In the next decades, it was decided on the
battlefield whether these states could endure. An
overview of articles on this website can be found
here.
The chronology
of the events offered here is based on:
Tom Boiy, Between
High and Low. A Chronology of the Early Hellenistic
Period (2007)
Alexander
Meeus, "Diodorus and the Chronology of the Third
Diadoch War" in: Phoenix 66 (2012) 74-96
Second PunicWar.
Hannibal
leads 50,000 foot soldiers, 9000 cavalry,
and 37 war elephants over the Pyrennees and
the Alps.
c.
190 BCE
First
appearance of multiple Euthydemid
kings at the same time. Beginning of the
Indo-Greek
kingdoms.
c.
189 BCE
The
treaty of Apameea Kibotos. Peace and
alliance is established between the Seleucid
Kingdom and Rome
joined by her allies, such as Pergamon
and Rhodes.
The Seleucids have to evacuate all the land
and the cities
from Asia
Minor and to pay a huge war
indemnity.
Throughout the
Hellenistic period (323–31 B.C.),
Athens remained the leading center for the study of
philosophy, fostering several famous philosophical
schools (1993.342).
The first to be established in the first half of the
fourth century B.C. were Plato’s Academy, and
Aristotle’s Peripatos, a place for walking, built on the
site of a grove sacred to Apollo Lykeios. In the second
half of the fourth century B.C., Zeno of Citium (335–263
B.C.) established his Stoic school of philosophy, named
for his teaching platform, the stoa, or
arcade, in the Athenian Agora. Around the same time,
Epikouros (341–270 B.C.) developed his philosophical
school, the Kepos, named after the garden in Athens
where he taught (11.90).
The schools, as some of their names imply, were less
buildings than collections of people sharing a similar
philosophy of life (10.231.1).
They were devoted to gaining and imparting knowledge.
The Cynics were another philosophical group that had no
meeting place. Rather, they roamed the streets and
public places of Athens.
The two
schools of thought that dominated Hellenistic philosophy
were Stoicism, as introduced by Zeno of Citium, and the
writings of Epikouros. Stoicism, which was also greatly
enriched and modified by Zeno’s successors, notably
Chrysippos (ca. 280–207 B.C.),
divided philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics.
Epikouros, on the other hand, placed great emphasis on
the individual and the attainment of happiness. The
Athenian schools of philosophy were truly cosmopolitan
institutions. Teachers and students from all over Greece
and Rome came to study. In addition to philosophy,
students engaged in rhetoric (the art of public
speaking), mathematics, physics, botany, zoology,
religion, music, politics, economics, and psychology.
Elsewhere in
the Hellenistic world, rulers of the Macedonian court at
Pella and the
dynasty at
Antioch supported the pursuit of knowledge as benefactors
of intellectuals. In many ways, this kind of patronage
developed first at Alexandria, Egypt, where Ptolemaic
kings created a renowned intellectual center during the
early Hellenistic period. Prominent philosophers, writers,
and other scholars studied at the Alexandrian Library and
Mouseion, an institute of learning that is the root of the
modern word museum. Here, scholars copied and codified
earlier works, such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey
(09.182.50). They wrote
commentaries, compilations, and even encyclopedias. They
also enjoyed access to one another and, most likely, were
fed and housed at the king’s expense. In the latter part
of the third century B.C.,
the Attalid kings of Pergamon emulated the Ptolemaic
dynasts by building their own library, which attracted
artists and intellectuals away from Athens and Alexandria
to their royal court.
The
Hellenistic period was a golden age of Greek poetry,
whose practitioners easily measured up to the great
lyric poets of the Greek
Literature
also flourished. One writer, Kallimachos of Cyrene, is
credited with more than 800 books! Although relatively
little Hellenistic literature survives, much can be
gleaned from Roman literature, which was significantly
influenced by the Greek writers. Generally speaking, drama
was less popular in the Hellenistic period than in
Classical times, although Menander (344–292 B.C.), a comic writer from
Athens, was a prolific exception. His plays embodied new
ways of presenting and discussing the life of the
individual and the family.
In the
Hellenistic period, tremendous strides were made in
scientific understanding. Early on, Euclid (ca. 325–250
B.C.) wrote a book of
elementary mathematics that was to become the standard
textbook for more than 2,000 years. The mathematician
Apollonios of Perge (ca. 262–190 B.C.)
established the canonical terminology and methodology
for conic sections. And Archimedes of Syracuse (ca.
287–211 B.C.), whom many
consider the greatest mathematician of antiquity, made
important contributions to engineering, including
wondrous machines that were used against the Romans at
the siege of Syracuse in 212 B.C.
Another Hellenistic inventor, Ktesibios of Alexandria
(ca. 296–228 B.C.), was
the first to devise hydraulic machines, most famous of
which are his water clocks.
In the second
half of the second century B.C.,
the astronomer Hipparchus (ca. 190–120 B.C.) transformed Greek
mathematical
from a
descriptive to a predictive science. His work provided the
foundation for Ptolemy of Alexandria’s thirteen-volume
systematic treatise on astronomy, which was published in
the middle of the second century A.D.
Associated works of art in the Metropolitan Museum:
Papyrus fragment of works of
Homer
Marble head of Ptolemaic
Queen
Bronze statuette,
Philosopher on lamp stamd
Marble statue, draped seated
man
Marble head of a bearded man
Marble head of Epikouros
Hemingway, Colette, and Seán Hemingway. “Intellectual
Pursuits of the Hellenistic Age.” In Heilbrunn
Timeline of Art History. New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ipha/hd_ipha.htm (April
2007)
French
historians traditionally place the Enlightenment
between 1715, the year that Louis XIV
died, and 1789, the beginning of the French Revolution.
Some recent historians begin the period in the 1620s,
with the start of the scientific revolution.
The Philosophes, the French term for the
philosophers of the period, widely circulated their
ideas through meetings at scientific academies, Masonic lodges, literary
salons and coffee houses, and through printed books
and pamphlets. The ideas of the Enlightenment
undermined the authority of the monarchy and the
church, and paved the way for the revolutions of the
18th and 19th centuries.[3]
A variety of 19th-century movements, including liberalism and neo-classicism,
trace their intellectual heritage back to the
Enlightenment.[5]
The most
influential publication of the Enlightenment was the Encyclopédie,
compiled by Denis Diderot and (until 1759) by Jean le Rond
d'Alembert and a team of 150 scientists and
philosophers. It was published between 1751 and 1772
in thirty-five volumes, and spread the ideas of the
Enlightenment across Europe and beyond.[3]
Other landmark publications were the Dictionnaire
philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary,
1764) and Letters on the
English (1733) written by Voltaire; Rousseau's Discourse on
Inequality (1754) and The Social Contract
(1762); Adam Smith's The Wealth of
Nations (1776); and Montesquieu's Spirit
of the Laws (1748). The ideas of the
Enlightenment played a major role in inspiring the French Revolution, which began in
1789. After the Revolution, the Enlightenment was
followed by an opposing intellectual movement known as
Romanticism.
In the
mid-18th century, Paris became the center of an
explosion of philosophic and scientific activity
challenging traditional doctrines and dogmas. The
philosophic movement was led by Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
who argued for a society based upon reason rather than
faith and Catholic doctrine, for a new civil order based
on natural law, and for science based on experiments and
observation. The political philosopher Montesquieu introduced the
idea of a separation of powers
in a government, a concept which was enthusiastically
adopted by the authors of the United States
Constitution. While the Philosophes of the
French Enlightenment were not revolutionaries, and many
were members of the nobility, their ideas played an
important part in undermining the legitimacy of the Old
Regime and shaping the French Revolution.[8]
There were two
distinct lines of Enlightenment thought: the radical
enlightenment, inspired by the philosophy of Spinoza,
advocating democracy, individual liberty, freedom of
expression, and eradication of religious authority; and
a second, more moderate variety, supported by René Descartes, John Locke, Christian Wolff,
Isaac Newton and others,
which sought accommodation between reform and the
traditional systems of power and faith.[9][10][11][12]
Both lines of thought were opposed by the conservative
Counter-Enlightenment.[9]
Francis
Hutcheson, a moral philosopher, described the utilitarian and consequentialist
principle that virtue is that which provides, in his
words, "the greatest happiness for the greatest
numbers". Much of what is incorporated in the scientific method (the
nature of knowledge, evidence, experience, and
causation) and some modern attitudes towards the
relationship between science and religion were developed
by his protégés David Hume and Adam Smith.[13]
Hume became a major figure in the skeptical
philosophical and empiricist
traditions of philosophy.
Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804) tried to reconcile rationalism and religious
belief, individual freedom and political authority, as
well as map out a view of the public sphere through
private and public reason.[14]
Kant's work continued to shape German thought, and
indeed all of European philosophy, well into the 20th
century.[15]Mary Wollstonecraft
was one of England's earliest feminist
philosophers.[16]
She argued for a society based on reason, and that
women, as well as men, should be treated as rational
beings. She is best known for her work A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1791).[17]
Science came
to play a leading role in Enlightenment discourse and
thought. Many Enlightenment writers and thinkers had
backgrounds in the sciences and associated scientific
advancement with the overthrow of religion and
traditional authority in favour of the development of
free speech and thought. Scientific progress during the
Enlightenment included the discovery of carbon dioxide
(fixed air) by the chemist Joseph Black, the argument
for deep time by the geologist James Hutton, and the
invention of the steam engine by James Watt.[18]
The experiments of Lavoisier were used to create the
first modern chemical plants in Paris, and the
experiments of the Montgolfier
Brothers enabled them to launch the first manned
flight in a hot-air balloon on 21 November 1783, from
the Château de la Muette,
near the Bois de Boulogne.[19]
Broadly
speaking, Enlightenment science greatly valued empiricism and rational
thought, and was embedded with the Enlightenment ideal
of advancement and progress. The study of science, under
the heading of natural philosophy, was
divided into physics and a conglomerate grouping of
chemistry and natural history, which
included anatomy, biology, geology, mineralogy, and zoology.[20]
As with most Enlightenment views, the benefits of
science were not seen universally; Rousseau criticized
the sciences for distancing man from nature and not
operating to make people happier.[21]
Science during the Enlightenment was dominated by
scientific societies and academies, which had largely
replaced universities as centres of scientific research
and development. Societies and academies were also the
backbone of the maturation of the scientific profession.
Another important development was the popularization of science
among an increasingly literate population. Philosophes
introduced the public to many scientific theories, most
notably through the Encyclopédie and the
popularization of Newtonianism by Voltaire and Émilie du Châtelet.
Some historians have marked the 18th century as a drab
period in the history of science;[22]
however, the century saw significant advancements in the
practice of medicine, mathematics, and physics; the development of
biological taxonomy; a new
understanding of magnetism and electricity; and the
maturation of chemistry as a discipline, which
established the foundations of modern chemistry.
Scientific
academies and societies grew out of the Scientific
Revolution as the creators of scientific knowledge in
contrast to the scholasticism of the university.[23]
During the Enlightenment, some societies created or
retained links to universities. However, contemporary
sources distinguished universities from scientific
societies by claiming that the university's utility was
in the transmission of knowledge, while societies
functioned to create knowledge.[24]
As the role of universities in institutionalized science
began to diminish, learned societies became the
cornerstone of organized science. Official scientific
societies were chartered by the state in order to
provide technical expertise.[25]
Most societies were granted permission to oversee their
own publications, control the election of new members,
and the administration of the society.[26]
After 1700, a tremendous number of official academies
and societies were founded in Europe, and by 1789 there
were over seventy official scientific societies. In
reference to this growth, Bernard
de Fontenelle coined the term "the Age of
Academies" to describe the 18th century.[27]
The influence
of science also began appearing more commonly in poetry
and literature during the Enlightenment. Some poetry
became infused with scientific
metaphor and imagery, while other poems were
written directly about scientific topics. Sir
Richard Blackmore committed the Newtonian system
to verse in Creation, a Philosophical Poem in Seven
Books (1712). After Newton's death in 1727, poems
were composed in his honour for decades.[28]James
Thomson (1700–1748) penned his "Poem to the Memory
of Newton," which mourned the loss of Newton, but also
praised his science and legacy.[29]
Sociology,
economics and law
Cesare Beccaria,
father of classical criminal theory (1738–1794)
Hume and other
Scottish Enlightenment thinkers developed a 'science of man',[30]
which was expressed historically in works by authors
including James
Burnett, Adam Ferguson, John Millar, and
William
Robertson, all of whom merged a scientific study
of how humans behaved in ancient and primitive cultures
with a strong awareness of the determining forces of modernity. Modern sociology
largely originated from this movement,[31]
and Hume's philosophical concepts that directly
influenced James Madison (and thus the
U.S. Constitution) and as popularised by Dugald Stewart, would be
the basis of classical liberalism.[32]
Cesare Beccaria, a jurist
and one of the great Enlightenment writers, became
famous for his masterpiece Of Crimes and Punishments
(1764), which was later translated into 22 languages.[35]
Another prominent intellectual was Francesco Mario Pagano,
who wrote important studies such as Saggi Politici
(Political Essays, 1783), one of the major works of the
Enlightenment in Naples, and Considerazioni sul
processo criminale (Considerations on the criminal
trial, 1787), which established him as an international
authority on criminal law.[36]
The
Enlightenment has long been hailed as the foundation of
modern Western political and intellectual culture.[38]
The Enlightenment brought political modernization to the
West, in terms of introducing democratic values and
institutions and the creation of modern, liberal
democracies. This thesis has been widely accepted by
Anglophone scholars and has been reinforced by the
large-scale studies by Robert Darnton, Roy Porter and most recently by
Jonathan Israel.[39][40]
Theories
of government
Denmark's minister Johann
Struensee, a social reformer ahead of his
time, was publicly executed in 1772
John Locke,
one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers,[41]
based his governance philosophy in social
contract theory, a subject that permeated
Enlightenment political thought. The English philosopher
Thomas Hobbes ushered in
this new debate with his work Leviathan in 1651.
Hobbes also developed some of the fundamentals of
European liberal thought: the
right of the individual; the natural equality of all
men; the artificial character of the political order
(which led to the later distinction between civil society and the
state); the view that all legitimate political power
must be "representative" and based on the consent of the
people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves
people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly
forbid.[42]
Both Locke and
Rousseau developed social contract theories in Two
Treatises of Government and Discourse on
Inequality, respectively. While quite
different works, Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau agreed that
a social contract, in which the government's authority
lies in the consent of the governed,[43]
is necessary for man to live in civil society. Locke
defines the state of nature as a condition in which
humans are rational and follow natural law; in which all
men are born equal and with the right to life, liberty
and property. However, when one citizen breaks the Law
of Nature, both the transgressor and the victim enter
into a state of war, from which it is virtually
impossible to break free. Therefore, Locke said that
individuals enter into civil society to protect their
natural rights via an "unbiased judge" or common
authority, such as courts, to appeal to. Contrastingly,
Rousseau's conception relies on the supposition that
"civil man" is corrupted, while "natural man" has no
want he cannot fulfill himself. Natural man is only
taken out of the state of nature when the inequality
associated with private property is established.[44]
Rousseau said that people join into civil society via
the social contract to achieve unity while preserving
individual freedom. This is embodied in the sovereignty
of the general will, the moral and
collective legislative body constituted by citizens.
Locke is known
for his statement that individuals have a right to
"Life, Liberty and Property", and his belief that the
natural right to property is derived from labor. Tutored
by Locke, Anthony
Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury wrote in
1706: "There is a mighty Light which spreads its self
over the world especially in those two free Nations of
England and Holland; on whom the Affairs of Europe now
turn".[45]
Locke's theory of natural rights has influenced many
political documents, including the United
States Declaration of Independence and the French
National Constituent Assembly's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen.
The philosophes
argued that the establishment of a contractual basis of
rights would lead to the market mechanism and capitalism, the scientific method,
religious tolerance, and the organization
of states into self-governing republics through
democratic means. In this view, the tendency of the philosophes in
particular to apply rationality to every problem
is considered the essential change.[46]
Though much of
Enlightenment political thought was dominated by social
contract theorists, both David Hume and Adam Ferguson
criticized this camp. Hume's essay Of the Original
Contract argues that governments derived from
consent are rarely seen, and civil government is
grounded in a ruler's habitual authority and force. It
is precisely because of the ruler's authority
over-and-against the subject, that the subject tacitly
consents; Hume says that the subjects would "never
imagine that their consent made him sovereign", rather
the authority did so.[47]
Similarly, Ferguson did not believe citizens built the
state, rather polities grew out of social development.
In his 1767 An
Essay on the History of Civil Society,
Ferguson uses the four stages of progress, a theory that
was very popular in Scotland at the time, to explain how
humans advance from a hunting and gathering society to a
commercial and civil society without "signing" a social
contract.
Both Rousseau
and Locke's social contract theories rest on the
presupposition of natural rights,
which are not a result of law or custom, but are things
that all men have in pre-political societies, and are
therefore universal and inalienable. The most famous
natural right formulation comes from John Locke in his Second
Treatise, when he introduces the state of nature.
For Locke the law of nature is grounded on mutual
security, or the idea that one cannot infringe on
another's natural rights, as every man is equal and has
the same inalienable rights. These natural rights
include perfect equality and freedom, and the right to
preserve life and property. Locke also argued against
slavery on the basis that enslaving yourself goes
against the law of nature; you cannot surrender your own
rights, your freedom is absolute and no one can take it
from you. Additionally, Locke argues that one person
cannot enslave another because it is morally
reprehensible, although he introduces a caveat by saying
that enslavement of a lawful captive in time of war
would not go against one's natural rights.
In several
nations, rulers welcomed leaders of the Enlightenment at
court and asked them to help design laws and programs to
reform the system, typically to build stronger national
states. These rulers are called "enlightened
despots" by historians.[48]
They included Frederick the Great of
Prussia, Catherine the Great of
Russia, Leopold II
of Tuscany, and Joseph II of
Austria. Joseph was over-enthusiastic, announcing so
many reforms that had so little support that revolts
broke out and his regime became a comedy of errors and
nearly all his programs were reversed.[49]
Senior ministers Pombal in Portugal
and Struensee in
Denmark also governed according to Enlightenment
ideals. In Poland, the model constitution of 1791
expressed Enlightenment ideals, but was in effect for
only one year as the nation was partitioned among its
neighbors. More enduring were the cultural achievements,
which created a nationalist spirit in Poland.[50]
Frederick the Great,
the king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, saw
himself as a leader of the Enlightenment and patronized
philosophers and scientists at his court in Berlin.
Voltaire, who had been imprisoned and maltreated by the
French government, was eager to accept Frederick's
invitation to live at his palace. Frederick explained,
"My principal occupation is to combat ignorance and
prejudice ... to enlighten minds, cultivate
morality, and to make people as happy as it suits human
nature, and as the means at my disposal permit."[51]
The
French Revolution
The
Enlightenment has been frequently linked to the French
Revolution of 1789. One view of the political changes
that occurred during the Enlightenment is that the "consent of the
governed" philosophy as delineated by Locke in Two Treatises of
Government (1689) represented a paradigm
shift from the old governance paradigm under feudalism
known as the "divine right of kings."
In this view, the revolutions of the late 1700s and
early 1800s were caused by the fact that this governance
paradigm shift often could not be resolved peacefully,
and therefore violent revolution was the result. Clearly
a governance philosophy where the king was never wrong
was in direct conflict with one whereby citizens by
natural law had to consent to the acts and rulings of
their government.
Alexis de
Tocqueville described the French Revolution as the
inevitable result of the radical opposition created in
the 18th century between the monarchy and the men of
letters of the Enlightenment. These men of letters
constituted a sort of "substitute aristocracy that was
both all-powerful and without real power." This illusory
power came from the rise of "public opinion," born when
absolutist centralization removed the nobility and the
bourgeoisie from the political sphere. The "literary
politics" that resulted promoted a discourse of equality
and was hence in fundamental opposition to the
monarchical regime.[52]
De Tocqueville "clearly designates ... the
cultural effects of transformation in the forms of the
exercise of power".[53]
Nevertheless, it took another century before cultural
approach became central to the historiography, as
typified by Robert Darnton, The Business of
Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the
Encyclopédie, 1775–1800 (1979).
Religion
Enlightenment
era religious commentary was a response to the preceding
century of religious conflict in Europe, especially the
Thirty Years' War.[54]
Theologians of the Enlightenment wanted to reform their
faith to its generally non-confrontational roots and to
limit the capacity for religious controversy to spill
over into politics and warfare while still maintaining a
true faith in God.
For moderate Christians, this meant a return to simple
Scripture. John Locke abandoned the corpus of
theological commentary in favor of an "unprejudiced
examination" of the Word of God alone. He determined the
essence of Christianity to be a belief
in Christ the redeemer and recommended
avoiding more detailed debate.[55]Thomas Jefferson in the Jefferson
Bible went further; he dropped any passages
dealing with miracles, visitations of angels, and the
resurrection of Jesus after his death. He tried to
extract the practical Christian moral code of the New Testament.[56]
Enlightenment
scholars sought to curtail the political power of organized religion and
thereby prevent another age of intolerant religious war.[57]Spinoza
determined to remove politics from contemporary and
historical theology (e.g., disregarding Judaic law).[58]Moses Mendelssohn
advised affording no political weight to any organized
religion, but instead recommended that each person
follow what they found most convincing.[59]
A good religion based in instinctive morals and a belief in God should
not theoretically need force to maintain order in its
believers, and both Mendelssohn and Spinoza judged
religion on its moral fruits, not the logic of its
theology.[60]
A number of
novel ideas about religion developed with the
Enlightenment, including Deism and talk of atheism. Deism, according to Thomas Paine, is the simple
belief in God the Creator, with no
reference to the Bible or any other miraculous source.
Instead, the Deist relies solely on personal reason to
guide his creed,[61]
which was eminently agreeable to many thinkers of the
time.[62]
Atheism was much discussed, but there were few
proponents. Wilson and Reill note that, "In fact, very
few enlightened intellectuals, even when they were vocal
critics of Christianity, were true atheists. Rather,
they were critics of orthodox belief, wedded rather to
skepticism, deism, vitalism, or perhaps pantheism."[63]
Some followed Pierre Bayle and argued that atheists
could indeed be moral men.[64]
Many others like Voltaire held that without belief in a
God who punishes evil, the moral order of society was
undermined. That is, since atheists gave themselves to
no Supreme Authority and no law, and had no fear of
eternal consequences, they were far more likely to
disrupt society.[65]
Bayle (1647–1706) observed that in his day, "prudent
persons will always maintain an appearance of
[religion].". He believed that even atheists could hold
concepts of honor and go beyond their own self-interest
to create and interact in society.[66]
Locke said that if there were no God and no divine law,
the result would be moral anarchy: every individual
"could have no law but his own will, no end but himself.
He would be a god to himself, and the satisfaction of
his own will the sole measure and end of all his
actions".[67]
The "Radical
Enlightenment"[9][10]
promoted the concept of separating church and state,[11]
an idea that often credited to English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704).[68]
According to his principle of the social contract, Locke
said that the government lacked authority in the realm
of individual conscience, as this was something rational
people could not cede to the government for it or others
to control. For Locke, this created a natural right in
the liberty of conscience, which he said must therefore
remain protected from any government authority.
These views on
religious tolerance and the importance of individual
conscience, along with the social contract, became
particularly influential in the American colonies and
the drafting of the United States Constitution.[69]Thomas Jefferson called
for a "wall of separation between church and state" at
the federal level. He previously had supported
successful efforts to disestablish the Church of England in
Virginia,[70]
and authored the Virginia
Statute for Religious Freedom.[71]
Jefferson's political ideals were greatly influenced by
the writings of John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton[72]
whom he considered the three greatest men that ever
lived.[73]
The
Enlightenment took hold in most European countries,
often with a specific local emphasis. For example, in
France it became associated with anti-government and
anti-Church radicalism while in Germany it reached deep
into the middle classes and where it expressed a
spiritualistic and nationalistic tone without
threatening governments or established churches.[74]
Government responses varied widely. In France, the
government was hostile, and the philosophes
fought against its censorship, sometimes being
imprisoned or hounded into exile. The British government
for the most part ignored the Enlightenment's leaders in
England and Scotland, although it did give Isaac Newton
a knighthood and a very lucrative government office.
One leader of the Scottish
Enlightenment was Adam Smith, the father of
modern economic science.
In the Scottish Enlightenment,
Scotland's major cities created an intellectual
infrastructure of mutually supporting institutions such
as universities, reading societies, libraries,
periodicals, museums and masonic lodges.[75]
The Scottish network was "predominantly liberal
Calvinist, Newtonian, and 'design' oriented in character
which played a major role in the further development of
the transatlantic Enlightenment".[76]
In France, Voltaire said "we look to
Scotland for all our ideas of civilization."[77]
The focus of the Scottish Enlightenment ranged from
intellectual and economic matters to the specifically
scientific as in the work of William Cullen, physician
and chemist; James Anderson,
an agronomist;
Joseph Black, physicist and
chemist; and James Hutton, the first
modern geologist.[13][78]
In Italy,
parts of society also dramatically changed during the
Enlightenment, with rulers such as Leopold
II of Tuscany abolishing the death penalty in
Tuscany. The significant reduction in the Church's power
led to a period of great thought and invention, with
scientists such as Alessandro Volta and Luigi Galvani making new
discoveries and greatly contributing to science.[35]
In Russia, the
government began to actively encourage the proliferation
of arts and sciences in the mid-18th century. This era
produced the first Russian university, library, theatre,
public museum, and independent press. Like other enlightened despots,
Catherine the Great played a key role in fostering the
arts, sciences, and education. She used her own
interpretation of Enlightenment ideals, assisted by
notable international experts such as Voltaire (by
correspondence) and, in residence, world class
scientists such as Leonhard Euler and Peter Simon Pallas. The
national Enlightenment differed from its Western
European counterpart in that it promoted further modernization
of all aspects of Russian life and was concerned with
attacking the institution of serfdom in Russia. The
Russian enlightenment centered on the individual instead
of societal enlightenment and encouraged the living of
an enlightened life.[79][80]
Several
Americans, especially Benjamin Franklin and Thomas
Jefferson, played a major role in bringing Enlightenment
ideas to the New World and in influencing British and
French thinkers.[81]
Franklin was influential for his political activism and
for his advances in physics.[82][83]
The cultural exchange during the Age of Enlightenment
ran in both directions across the Atlantic. Thinkers
such as Paine, Locke, and Rousseau all take Native
American cultural practices as examples of natural
freedom.[84]
The Americans closely followed English and Scottish
political ideas, as well as some French thinkers such as
Montesquieu.[85]
As deists, they were influenced by ideas of John Toland
(1670–1722) and Matthew Tindal (1656–1733).[86]
During the Enlightenment there was a great emphasis upon
liberty, democracy, republicanism,
and religious
tolerance. Attempts to reconcile science
and religion resulted in a widespread rejection of
prophecy, miracle, and revealed
religion in preference for Deism – especially by Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason
and by Thomas Jefferson in his
short Jefferson Bible –
from which all supernatural aspects were removed.
Historiography
The
Enlightenment has always been contested territory. Its
supporters "hail it as the source of everything that is
progressive about the modern world. For them, it stands
for freedom of thought, rational inquiry, critical
thinking, religious tolerance, political liberty,
scientific achievement, the pursuit of happiness, and
hope for the future."[87]
However, its detractors accuse it of 'shallow'
rationalism, naïve optimism, unrealistic universalism,
and moral darkness. From the start there was a Counter-Enlightenment
in which conservative and clerical defenders of
traditional religion attacked materialism and skepticism
as evil forces that encouraged immorality. By 1794, they
pointed to the Terror during the French Revolution as
confirmation of their predictions. As the Enlightenment
was ending, Romantic philosophers argued that excessive
dependence on reason was a mistake perpetuated by the
Enlightenment, because it disregarded the bonds of
history, myth, faith and tradition that were necessary
to hold society together.[88]
Definition
The term
"Enlightenment" emerged in English in the later part of
the 19th century,[89]
with particular reference to French philosophy, as the
equivalent of the French term 'Lumières' (used first by
Dubos in 1733 and already well established by 1751).
From Immanuel Kant's 1784 essay
"Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?" ("Answering
the Question: What is Enlightenment?") the German
term became 'Aufklärung' (aufklären = to
illuminate; sich aufklären = to clear up).
However, scholars have never agreed on a definition of
the Enlightenment, or on its chronological or
geographical extent. Terms like "les Lumières" (French), "illuminismo" (Italian), "ilustración" (Spanish) and "Aufklärung"
(German) referred to partly
overlapping movements. Not until the late nineteenth
century did English scholars agree they were talking
about "the Enlightenment."[88][90]
If there is something you
know, communicate it. If there is something you
don't know, search for it.
— An engraving from the 1772
edition of the Encyclopédie; Truth, in the top center, is
surrounded by light and unveiled by the figures to
the right, Philosophy and Reason.
Enlightenment
historiography began in the
period itself, from what Enlightenment figures said
about their work. A dominant element was the
intellectual angle they took. D'Alembert'sPreliminary Discourse of l'Encyclopédie provides
a history of the Enlightenment which comprises a
chronological list of developments in the realm of
knowledge – of which the Encyclopédie forms the
pinnacle.[91]
In 1783, Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn
referred to Enlightenment as a process by which man was
educated in the use of reason.[92]
Immanuel Kant called Enlightenment "man's release from
his self-incurred tutelage", tutelage being "man's
inability to make use of his understanding without
direction from another".[93]
"For Kant, Enlightenment was mankind's final coming of
age, the emancipation of the human consciousness from an
immature state of ignorance."[94]
The German scholar Ernst Cassirer called the
Enlightenment "a part and a special phase of that whole
intellectual development through which modern
philosophic thought gained its characteristic
self-confidence and self-consciousness".[95]
According to historian Roy Porter, the liberation of
the human mind from a dogmatic state of ignorance is the
epitome of what the Age of Enlightenment was trying to
capture.
Bertrand Russell saw the
Enlightenment as a phase in a progressive development,
which began in antiquity, and that reason and challenges
to the established order were constant ideals throughout
that time.[96]
Russell said that the Enlightenment was ultimately born
out of the Protestant reaction against the Catholic counter-reformation,
and that philosophical views such as affinity for
democracy against monarchy originated among 16th-century
Protestants to justify their desire to break away from
the Catholic Church. Though many of these philosophical
ideals were picked up by Catholics, Russell argues, by
the 18th century the Enlightenment was the principal
manifestation of the schism that began with Martin Luther.[96]
Jonathan
Israel rejects the attempts of postmodern and Marxian
historians to understand the revolutionary ideas of the
period purely as by-products of social and economic
transformations.[97]
He instead focuses on the history of ideas in the period
from 1650 to the end of the 18th century, and claims
that it was the ideas themselves that caused the change
that eventually led to the revolutions of the latter
half of the 18th century and the early 19th century.[98]
Israel argues that until the 1650s Western civilization
"was based on a largely shared core of faith, tradition
and authority".[99]
Time span
There is
little consensus on the precise beginning of the Age of
Enlightenment; the beginning of the 18th century (1701)
or the middle of the 17th century (1650) are often used
as epochs. French
historians usually place the period, called the Siècle
des Lumières (Century of Enlightenments), between
1715 and 1789, from the beginning of the reign of Louis XV
until the French Revolution. If
taken back to the mid-17th century, the Enlightenment
would trace its origins to Descartes' Discourse
on Method, published in 1637. In France,
many cited the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia
Mathematica in 1687.[100]
It is argued by several historians and philosophers that
the beginning of the Enlightenment is when Descartes
shifted the epistemological basis from external
authority to internal certainty by his cogito ergo sum published
in 1637.[101][102][103]
As to its end, most scholars use the last years of the
century, often choosing the French Revolution of 1789 or
the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars (1804–15)
as a convenient point in time with which to date the end
of the Enlightenment.[104]
Modern study
In the 1970s,
study of the Enlightenment expanded to include the ways
Enlightenment ideas spread to European colonies and how
they interacted with indigenous cultures, and how the
Enlightenment took place in formerly unstudied areas
such as Italy, Greece, the Balkans, Poland, Hungary, and
Russia.[105]
Intellectuals
such as Robert Darnton and Jürgen Habermas have
focused on the social conditions of the Enlightenment.
Habermas described the creation of the "bourgeois public
sphere" in 18th-century Europe, containing the new
venues and modes of communication allowing for rational
exchange. Habermas said that the public sphere was
bourgeois, egalitarian, rational, and independent from
the state, making it the ideal venue for intellectuals
to critically examine contemporary politics and society,
away from the interference of established authority.
While the public sphere is generally an integral
component of the social study of the Enlightenment,
other historians have questioned whether the public
sphere had these characteristics.[106]
A medal minted during the reign of Joseph II,
Holy Roman Emperor, commemorating his grant of
religious liberty to Jews and Protestants
in Hungary. Another important reform of Joseph II
was the abolition of serfdom.
Society and
culture
In contrast to
the intellectual historiographical approach of the
Enlightenment, which examines the various currents or
discourses of intellectual thought within the European
context during the 17th and 18th centuries, the cultural
(or social) approach examines the changes that occurred
in European society and culture. This approach studies
the process of changing sociabilities and cultural
practices during the Enlightenment.
One of the
primary elements of the culture of the Enlightenment was
the rise of the public sphere, a "realm of
communication marked by new arenas of debate, more open
and accessible forms of urban public space and
sociability, and an explosion of print culture," in the
late 17th century and 18th century.[107]
Elements of the public sphere included: it was
egalitarian, it discussed the domain of "common
concern," and argument was founded on reason.[108]
Habermas uses the term "common concern" to describe
those areas of political/social knowledge and discussion
that were previously the exclusive territory of the
state and religious authorities, now open to critical
examination by the public sphere. The values of this
bourgeois public sphere included holding reason to be
supreme, considering everything to be open to criticism
(the public sphere is critical),
and the opposition of secrecy of all sorts.[109]
German explorer Alexander von
Humboldt showed his disgust for slavery and
often criticized the colonial policies. He always
acted out of a deeply humanistic conviction, borne
by the ideas of the Enlightenment.[110]
The creation
of the public sphere has been associated with two
long-term historical trends: the rise of the modern
nation state and the rise of capitalism. The modern nation
state, in its consolidation of public power, created by
counterpoint a private realm of society independent of
the state, which allowed for the public sphere.
Capitalism also increased society's autonomy and self-awareness, and an
increasing need for the exchange of information. As the
nascent public sphere expanded, it embraced a large
variety of institutions;
the most commonly cited were coffee houses and cafés,
salons and the literary public sphere, figuratively
localized in the Republic of Letters.[111]
In France, the creation of the public sphere was helped
by the aristocracy's move from the King's palace at
Versailles to Paris in about 1720, since their rich
spending stimulated the trade in luxuries and artistic
creations, especially fine paintings.[112]
The context
for the rise of the public sphere was the economic and
social change commonly associated with the Industrial Revolution:
"economic expansion, increasing urbanization, rising
population and improving communications in comparison to
the stagnation of the previous century"."[113]
Rising efficiency in production techniques and
communication lowered the prices of consumer goods and
increased the amount and variety of goods available to
consumers (including the literature essential to the
public sphere). Meanwhile, the colonial experience (most
European states had colonial empires in the 18th
century) began to expose European society to extremely
heterogeneous cultures, leading to the breaking down of
"barriers between cultural systems, religious divides,
gender differences and geographical areas".[114]
The word
"public" implies the highest level of inclusivity – the
public sphere by definition should be open to all.
However, this sphere was only public to relative
degrees. Enlightenment thinkers frequently contrasted
their conception of the "public" with that of the
people: Condorcet
contrasted "opinion" with populace, Marmontel "the
opinion of men of letters" with "the opinion of the
multitude," and d'Alembert
the "truly enlightened public" with "the blind and noisy
multitude".[115]
Additionally, most institutions of the public sphere
excluded both women and the lower classes.[116]
Cross-class influences occurred through noble and lower
class participation in areas such as the coffeehouses
and the Masonic lodges.
Social
and cultural implications in the arts
Because of the
focus on reason over superstition, the Enlightenment
cultivated the arts.[117]
Emphasis on learning, art and music became more
widespread, especially with the growing middle class.
Areas of study such as literature, philosophy, science,
and the fine arts increasingly explored subject matter
that the general public in addition to the previously
more segregated professionals and patrons could relate
to.[118]
As musicians
depended more and more on public support, public
concerts became increasingly popular and helped
supplement performers' and composers' incomes. The
concerts also helped them to reach a wider audience. Handel, for
example, epitomized this with his highly public musical
activities in London. He gained considerable fame
there with performances of his operas and oratorios. The
music of Haydn and Mozart, with
their Viennese Classical styles, are usually regarded as
being the most in line with the Enlightenment ideals.[119]
The desire to
explore, record and systematize knowledge had a
meaningful impact on music publications. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's
Dictionnaire de musique (published 1767 in Geneva
and 1768 in Paris) was a leading text in the late 18th
century.[119]
This widely available dictionary gave short definitions
of words like genius and taste, and was clearly
influenced by the Enlightenment movement. Another text
influenced by Enlightenment values was Charles Burney's A
General History of Music: From the Earliest Ages to
the Present Period (1776), which was a historical
survey and an attempt to rationalize elements in music
systematically over time.[120]
Recently, musicologists have shown renewed interest in
the ideas and consequences of the Enlightenment. For
example, Rose Rosengard
Subotnik's Deconstructive Variations
(subtitled Music and Reason in Western Society)
compares Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (1791) using
the Enlightenment and Romantic perspectives, and
concludes that the work is "an ideal musical
representation of the Enlightenment".[120]
As the economy
and the middle class expanded, there was an increasing
number of amateur musicians. One manifestation of this
involved women, who became more involved with music on a
social level. Women were already engaged in professional
roles as singers, and increased their presence in the
amateur performers' scene, especially with keyboard
music.[121]
Music publishers begin to print music that amateurs
could understand and play. The majority of the works
that were published were for keyboard, voice and
keyboard, and chamber ensemble.[121]
After these initial genres were popularized, from the
mid-century on, amateur groups sang choral music, which
then became a new trend for publishers to capitalize on.
The increasing study of the fine arts, as well as access
to amateur-friendly published works, led to more people
becoming interested in reading and discussing music.
Music magazines, reviews, and critical works which
suited amateurs as well as connoisseurs began to
surface.[121]
Dissemination
of ideas
The philosophes
spent a great deal of energy disseminating their ideas
among educated men and women in cosmopolitan cities.
They used many venues, some of them quite new.
The term
"Republic of Letters" was coined by Pierre Bayle in 1664, in his
journal Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres.
Towards the end of the 18th century, the editor of Histoire
de la République des Lettres en France, a literary
survey, described the Republic of Letters as being:
In the midst
of all the governments that decide the fate of men; in
the bosom of so many states, the majority of them
despotic ... there exists a certain realm which
holds sway only over the mind ... that we honour
with the name Republic, because it preserves a measure
of independence, and because it is almost its essence
to be free. It is the realm of talent and of thought.[122]
The Republic
of Letters was the sum of a number of Enlightenment
ideals: an egalitarian realm governed by knowledge that
could act across political boundaries and rival state
power.[122]
It was a forum that supported "free public examination
of questions regarding religion or legislation".[123]
Immanuel Kant considered written communication essential
to his conception of the public sphere; once everyone
was a part of the "reading public", then society could
be said to be enlightened.[124]
The people who participated in the Republic of Letters,
such as Diderot and Voltaire, are frequently known
today as important Enlightenment figures. Indeed, the
men who wrote Diderot's Encyclopédie arguably
formed a microcosm of the larger "republic".[125]
Many women
played an essential part in the French Enlightenment,
due to the role they played as salonnières in
Parisian salons, as the contrast to the male philosophes.
The salon was the principal social institution of the
republic,[126]
and "became the civil working spaces of the project of
Enlightenment." Women, as salonnières, were "the
legitimate governors of [the] potentially unruly
discourse" that took place within.[127]
While women were marginalized in the public culture of
the Ancien Régime, the French Revolution destroyed the
old cultural and economic restraints of patronage and
corporatism (guilds), opening French society to female
participation, particularly in the literary sphere.[128]
In France, the
established men of letters (gens de lettres) had
fused with the elites (les grands) of French
society by the mid-18th century. This led to the
creation of an oppositional literary sphere, Grub Street, the domain of a
"multitude of versifiers and would-be authors".[129]
These men came to London to become authors, only to
discover that the literary market simply could not
support large numbers of writers, who, in any case, were
very poorly remunerated by the publishing-bookselling guilds.[130]
The writers of
Grub Street, the Grub Street Hacks, were left feeling
bitter about the relative success of the men of letters,[131]
and found an outlet for their literature which was
typified by the libelle. Written mostly in the
form of pamphlets, the libelles "slandered the
court, the Church, the aristocracy, the academies, the
salons, everything elevated and respectable, including
the monarchy itself".[132]Le Gazetier cuirassé by Charles Théveneau de
Morande was a prototype of the genre. It was Grub Street
literature that was most read by the public during the
Enlightenment.[133]
More importantly, according to Darnton, the Grub Street
hacks inherited the "revolutionary spirit" once
displayed by the philosophes, and paved the way
for the French Revolution by desacralizing figures of
political, moral and religious authority in France.[134]
The book
industry
ESTC
data 1477–1799 by decade given with a regional
differentiation.
The increased
consumption of reading materials of all sorts was one of
the key features of the "social" Enlightenment.
Developments in the Industrial Revolution allowed
consumer goods to be produced in greater quantities at
lower prices, encouraging the spread of books,
pamphlets, newspapers and journals – "media of the
transmission of ideas and attitudes". Commercial
development likewise increased the demand for
information, along with rising populations and increased
urbanisation.[135]
However, demand for reading material extended outside of
the realm of the commercial, and outside the realm of
the upper and middle classes, as evidenced by the Bibliothèque
Bleue. Literacy rates are difficult to gauge, but
in France at least, the rates doubled over the course of
the 18th century.[136]
Reflecting the decreasing influence of religion, the
number of books about science and art published in Paris
doubled from 1720 to 1780, while the number of books
about religion dropped to just one-tenth of the total.[8]
Reading
underwent serious changes in the 18th century. In
particular, Rolf Engelsing has argued for the existence
of a Reading
Revolution. Until 1750, reading was done
"intensively: people tended to own a small number of
books and read them repeatedly, often to small audience.
After 1750, people began to read "extensively", finding
as many books as they could, increasingly reading them
alone.[137]
This is supported by increasing literacy rates,
particularly among women.[138]
The vast
majority of the reading public could not afford to own a
private library, and while most of the state-run
"universal libraries" set up in the 17th and 18th
centuries were open to the public, they were not the
only sources of reading material. On one end of the
spectrum was the Bibliothèque Bleue, a
collection of cheaply produced books published in
Troyes, France. Intended for a largely rural and
semi-literate audience these books included almanacs,
retellings of medieval romances and condensed versions
of popular novels, among other things. While some
historians have argued against the Enlightenment's
penetration into the lower classes, the Bibliothèque
Bleue represents at least a desire to participate in
Enlightenment sociability.[139]
Moving up the classes, a variety of institutions offered
readers access to material without needing to buy
anything. Libraries that lent out their material for a
small price started to appear, and occasionally
bookstores would offer a small lending library to their
patrons. Coffee houses commonly offered books, journals
and sometimes even popular novels to their customers. The Tatler and The Spectator, two
influential periodicals sold from 1709 to 1714, were
closely associated with coffee house culture in London,
being both read and produced in various establishments
in the city.[140]
This is an example of the triple or even quadruple
function of the coffee house: reading material was often
obtained, read, discussed and even produced on the
premises.[141]
It is
extremely difficult to determine what people actually
read during the Enlightenment. For example, examining
the catalogs of private libraries gives an image skewed
in favor of the classes wealthy enough to afford
libraries, and also ignores censured works unlikely to
be publicly acknowledged. For this reason, a study of
publishing would be much more fruitful for discerning
reading habits.[142]
Across
continental Europe, but in France especially,
booksellers and publishers had to negotiate censorship
laws of varying strictness. The Encyclopédie,
for example, narrowly escaped seizure and had to be
saved by Malesherbes,
the man in charge of the French censure. Indeed, many
publishing companies were conveniently located outside
France so as to avoid overzealous French censors. They
would smuggle their merchandise across the border, where
it would then be transported to clandestine booksellers
or small-time peddlers.[143]
The records of clandestine booksellers may give a better
representation of what literate Frenchmen might have
truly read, since their clandestine nature provided a
less restrictive product choice.[144]
In one case, political books were the most popular
category, primarily libels and pamphlets. Readers were
more interested in sensationalist stories about
criminals and political corruption than they were in
political theory itself. The second most popular
category, "general works" (those books "that did not
have a dominant motif and that contained something to
offend almost everyone in authority") demonstrated a
high demand for generally low-brow subversive
literature. However, these works never became part of
literary canon, and are largely forgotten today as a
result.[144]
A healthy, and
legal, publishing industry existed throughout Europe,
although established publishers and book sellers
occasionally ran afoul of the law. The Encyclopédie, for
example, condemned not only by the King but also by
Clement XII, nevertheless found its way into print with
the help of the aforementioned Malesherbes and creative
use of French censorship law.[145]
But many works were sold without running into any legal
trouble at all. Borrowing records from libraries in
England, Germany and North America indicate that more
than 70 percent of books borrowed were novels. Less
than 1 percent of the books were of a religious
nature, indicating the general trend of declining
religiosity.[122]
Georges
Buffon is best remembered for his Histoire naturelle,
a 44 volume encyclopedia describing everything known
about the natural world.
A genre that
greatly rose in importance was that of scientific
literature. Natural history in particular became
increasingly popular among the upper classes. Works of
natural history include René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur's
Histoire naturelle des insectes and Jacques
Gautier d'Agoty's La Myologie complète, ou
description de tous les muscles du corps humain
(1746). Outside ancien régime France, natural history
was an important part of medicine and industry,
encompassing the fields of botany, zoology, meteorology,
hydrology and mineralogy. Students in Enlightenment
universities and academies were taught these subjects to
prepare them for careers as diverse as medicine and
theology. As shown by M D Eddy, natural history in this
context was a very middle class pursuit and operated as
a fertile trading zone for the interdisciplinary
exchange of diverse scientific ideas.[146]
The target
audience of natural history was French polite society,
evidenced more by the specific discourse of the genre
than by the generally high prices of its works.
Naturalists catered to polite society's desire for
erudition – many texts had an explicit instructive
purpose. However, natural history was often a political
affair. As E. C. Spary writes, the classifications used
by naturalists "slipped between the natural world and
the social ... to establish not only the expertise
of the naturalists over the natural, but also the
dominance of the natural over the social".[147]
The idea of taste (le goût) was a social
indicator: to truly be able to categorize nature, one
had to have the proper taste, an ability of discretion
shared by all members of polite society. In this way
natural history spread many of the scientific
developments of the time, but also provided a new source
of legitimacy for the dominant class.[148]
From this basis, naturalists could then develop their
own social ideals based on their scientific works.[149]
The first
scientific and literary journals were established during
the Enlightenment. The first journal, the Parisian Journal
des Sçavans, appeared in 1665. However, it
was not until 1682 that periodicals began to be more
widely produced. French and Latin were the dominant
languages of publication, but there was also a steady
demand for material in German and Dutch. There was
generally low demand for English publications on the
Continent, which was echoed by England's similar lack of
desire for French works. Languages commanding less of an
international market – such as Danish, Spanish and
Portuguese – found journal success more difficult, and
more often than not, a more international language was
used instead. French slowly took over Latin's status as
the lingua franca of
learned circles. This in turn gave precedence to the
publishing industry in Holland, where the vast majority
of these French language periodicals were produced.[150]
Jonathan
Israel called the journals the most influential cultural
innovation of European intellectual culture.[151]
They shifted the attention of the "cultivated public"
away from established authorities to novelty and
innovation, and promoted the "enlightened" ideals of
toleration and intellectual objectivity. Being a source
of knowledge derived from science and reason, they were
an implicit critique of existing notions of universal
truth monopolized by monarchies, parliaments, and
religious authorities. They also advanced Christian
enlightenment that upheld "the legitimacy of
God-ordained authority"—the Bible—in which there had to
be agreement between the biblical and natural theories.[152]
Encyclopedias
and dictionaries
First page of the Encyclopedie
published between 1751 and 1766
Although the
existence of dictionaries
and encyclopedias spanned into
ancient times, the texts changed from simply defining
words in a long running list to far more detailed
discussions of those words in 18th-century encyclopedic
dictionaries.[153]
The works were part of an Enlightenment movement to
systematize knowledge and provide education to a wider
audience than the elite. As the 18th century progressed,
the content of encyclopedias also changed according to
readers' tastes. Volumes tended to focus more strongly
on secular
affairs, particularly science and technology, rather
than matters of theology.
Along with
secular matters, readers also favoured an alphabetical
ordering scheme over cumbersome works arranged along
thematic lines.[154]
The historian Charles Porset, commenting on
alphabetization, has said that "as the zero degree of
taxonomy, alphabetical order authorizes all reading
strategies; in this respect it could be considered an
emblem of the Enlightenment." For Porset, the avoidance
of thematic and hierarchical
systems thus allows free interpretation of the works and
becomes an example of egalitarianism.[155]
Encyclopedias and dictionaries also became more popular
during the Age of Reason as the number of educated
consumers who could afford such texts began to multiply.[153]
In the later half of the 18th century, the number of
dictionaries and encyclopedias published by decade
increased from 63 between 1760 and 1769 to approximately
148 in the decade proceeding the French Revolution
(1780–1789).[156]
Along with growth in numbers, dictionaries and
encyclopedias also grew in length, often having multiple
print runs that sometimes included in supplemented
editions.[154]
The first
technical dictionary was drafted by John Harris and
entitled Lexicon
Technicum: Or, An Universal English Dictionary of
Arts and Sciences. Harris' book avoided
theological and biographical entries; instead it
concentrated on science and technology. Published in
1704, the Lexicon technicum was the first book
to be written in English that took a methodical approach
to describing mathematics and commercial arithmetic along with the
physical sciences and navigation. Other technical
dictionaries followed Harris' model, including Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia
(1728), which included five editions, and was a
substantially larger work than Harris'. The folio
edition of the work even included foldout engravings.
The Cyclopaedia emphasized Newtonian theories, Lockean philosophy, and
contained thorough examinations of technologies, such as
engraving, brewing, and dyeing.
"Figurative
system of human knowledge", the structure that
the Encyclopédie organised knowledge into. It had
three main branches: memory, reason, and imagination
In Germany,
practical reference works intended for the uneducated
majority became popular in the 18th century. The Marperger
Curieuses Natur-, Kunst-, Berg-, Gewerkund
Handlungs-Lexicon (1712) explained terms that
usefully described the trades and scientific and
commercial education. Jablonksi Allgemeines Lexicon
(1721) was better known than the Handlungs-Lexicon,
and underscored technical subjects rather than
scientific theory. For example, over five columns of
text were dedicated to wine, while geometry and logic were allocated only twenty-two
and seventeen lines, respectively. The first edition of
the Encyclopædia
Britannica (1771) was modelled along the
same lines as the German lexicons.[157]
However, the
prime example of reference works that systematized
scientific knowledge in the age of Enlightenment were universal encyclopedias rather than
technical dictionaries. It was the goal of universal
encyclopedias to record all human knowledge in a
comprehensive reference work.[158]
The most well-known of these works is Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond
d'Alembert's Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire
raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers.
The work, which began publication in 1751, was composed
of thirty-five volumes and over 71 000 separate entries.
A great number of the entries were dedicated to
describing the sciences and crafts in detail, and
provided intellectuals across Europe with a high-quality
survey of human knowledge. In d'Alembert's Preliminary
Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, the
work's goal to record the extent of human knowledge in
the arts and sciences is outlined:
“
As an Encyclopédie, it is to set forth
as well as possible the order and connection of
the parts of human knowledge. As a Reasoned
Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Trades, it
is to contain the general principles that form the
basis of each science and each art, liberal or
mechanical, and the most essential facts that make
up the body and substance of each.[159]
”
The massive
work was arranged according to a "tree of knowledge."
The tree reflected the marked division between the arts
and sciences, which was largely a result of the rise of
empiricism. Both areas of knowledge were united by
philosophy, or the trunk of the tree of knowledge. The
Enlightenment's desacrilization of religion was
pronounced in the tree's design, particularly where
theology accounted for a peripheral branch, with black
magic as a close neighbour.[160]
As the Encyclopédie gained popularity, it was
published in quarto
and octavo
editions after 1777. The quarto and octavo editions were
much less expensive than previous editions, making the Encyclopédie
more accessible to the non-elite. Robert Darnton
estimates that there were approximately 25 000 copies of
the Encyclopédie in circulation throughout
France and Europe before the French Revolution.[161]
The extensive, yet affordable encyclopedia came to
represent the transmission of Enlightenment and
scientific education to an expanding audience.[162]
Popularization
of science
One of the
most important developments that the Enlightenment era
brought to the discipline of science was its
popularization. An increasingly literate population
seeking knowledge and education in both the arts and the
sciences drove the expansion of print culture and the
dissemination of scientific learning. The new literate
population was due to a high rise in the availability of
food. This enabled many people to rise out of poverty,
and instead of paying more for food, they had money for
education.[163]
Popularization was generally part of an overarching
Enlightenment ideal that endeavoured "to make
information available to the greatest number of people."[164]
As public interest in natural philosophy grew during the
18th century, public lecture courses and the publication
of popular texts opened up new roads to money and fame
for amateurs and scientists who remained on the
periphery of universities and academies.[165]
More formal works included explanations of scientific
theories for individuals lacking the educational
background to comprehend the original scientific text. Sir Isaac Newton's celebrated
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia
Mathematica was published in Latin and
remained inaccessible to readers without education in
the classics until Enlightenment writers began to
translate and analyze the text in the vernacular.
The first
significant work that expressed scientific theory and
knowledge expressly for the laity, in the vernacular,
and with the entertainment of readers in mind, was Bernard
de Fontenelle's Conversations
on the Plurality of Worlds (1686). The book
was produced specifically for women with an interest in
scientific writing and inspired a variety of similar
works.[166]
These popular works were written in a discursive style,
which was laid out much more clearly for the reader than
the complicated articles, treatises, and books published
by the academies and scientists. Charles Leadbetter'sAstronomy
(1727) was advertised as "a Work entirely New" that
would include "short and easie [sic]
Rules and Astronomical Tables."[167]
The first French introduction to Newtonianism and the Principia
was Eléments de la philosophie de Newton,
published by Voltaire in 1738.[168]Émilie du Châtelet's
translation of the Principia, published after
her death in 1756, also helped to spread Newton's
theories beyond scientific academies and the university.[169]Francesco Algarotti,
writing for a growing female audience, published Il
Newtonianism per le dame, which was a tremendously
popular work and was translated from Italian into
English by Elizabeth Carter. A
similar introduction to Newtonianism for women was
produced by Henry Pembarton. His A View of Sir
Isaac Newton's Philosophy was published by
subscription. Extant records of subscribers show that
women from a wide range of social standings purchased
the book, indicating the growing number of
scientifically inclined female readers among the
middling class.[170]
During the Enlightenment, women also began producing
popular scientific works themselves. Sarah Trimmer wrote a
successful natural history textbook for children titled
The Easy Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature
(1782), which was published for many years after in
eleven editions.[171]
Most work on
the Enlightenment emphasizes the ideals discussed by
intellectuals, rather than the actual state of education
at the time. Leading educational theorists like
England's John Locke and Switzerland's Jean Jacques
Rousseau both emphasized the importance of shaping young
minds early. By the late Enlightenment, there was a
rising demand for a more universal approach to
education, particularly after the American and French
Revolutions.
The
predominant educational psychology from the 1750s
onward, especially in northern European countries was
associationism, the notion that the mind associates or
dissociates ideas through repeated routines. In addition
to being conducive to Enlightenment ideologies of
liberty, self-determination and personal responsibility,
it offered a practical theory of the mind that allowed
teachers to transform longstanding forms of print and
manuscript culture into effective graphic tools of
learning for the lower and middle orders of society.[172]
Children were taught to memorize facts through oral and
graphic methods that originated during the Renaissance.[173]
Many of the
leading universities associated with Enlightenment
progressive principles were located in northern Europe,
with the most renowned being the universities of Leiden,
Göttingen, Halle, Montpellier, Uppsala and Edinburgh.
These universities, especially Edinburgh, produced
professors whose ideas had a significant impact on
Britain's North American colonies and, later, the
American Republic. Within the natural sciences,
Edinburgh's medical also led the way in chemistry,
anatomy and pharmacology.[174]
In other parts of Europe, the universities and schools
of France and most of Europe were bastions of
traditionalism and were not hospitable to the
Enlightenment. In France, the major exception was the
medical university at Montpellier.[175]
Learned
academies
Louis XIV
visiting the Académie des
sciences in 1671. "It is widely
accepted that 'modern science' arose in the Europe
of the 17th century, introducing a new understanding
of the natural world." —Peter Barrett[176]
The history of
Academies in France during the Enlightenment begins with
the Academy of Science,
founded in 1635 in Paris. It was closely tied to the
French state, acting as an extension of a government
seriously lacking in scientists. It helped promote and
organize new disciplines, and it trained new scientists.
It also contributed to the enhancement of scientists'
social status, considering them to be the "most useful
of all citizens". Academies demonstrate the rising interest in
science along with its increasing secularization,
as evidenced by the small number of clerics who were
members (13 percent).[177]
The presence of the French academies in the public
sphere cannot be attributed to their membership;
although the majority of their members were bourgeois,
the exclusive institution was only open to elite
Parisian scholars. They perceived themselves as
"interpreters of the sciences for the people". For
example, it was with this in mind that academicians took
it upon themselves to disprove the popular
pseudo-science of mesmerism.[178]
The strongest
contribution of the French Academies to the public
sphere comes from the concours académiques (roughly
translated as 'academic contests') they sponsored
throughout France. These academic contests were perhaps
the most public of any institution during the
Enlightenment.[179]
The practice of contests dated back to the Middle Ages,
and was revived in the mid-17th century. The subject
matter had previously been generally religious and/or
monarchical, featuring essays, poetry, and painting. By
roughly 1725, however, this subject matter had radically
expanded and diversified, including "royal propaganda,
philosophical battles, and critical ruminations on the
social and political institutions of the Old Regime."
Topics of public controversy were also discussed such as
the theories of Newton and Descartes, the slave trade,
women's education, and justice in France.[180]
Antoine Lavoisier
conducting an experiment related to combustion
generated by amplified sun light.
More
importantly, the contests were open to all, and the
enforced anonymity of each submission guaranteed that
neither gender nor social rank would determine the
judging. Indeed, although the "vast majority" of
participants belonged to the wealthier strata of society
("the liberal arts, the clergy, the judiciary, and the
medical profession"), there were some cases of the
popular classes submitting essays, and even winning.[181]
Similarly, a significant number of women participated –
and won – the competitions. Of a total of 2300 prize
competitions offered in France, women won 49 – perhaps a
small number by modern standards, but very significant
in an age in which most women did not have any academic
training. Indeed, the majority of the winning entries
were for poetry competitions, a genre commonly stressed
in women's education.[182]
In England,
the Royal
Society of London also played a significant role
in the public sphere and the spread of Enlightenment
ideas. It was founded by a group of independent
scientists and given a royal charter in 1662.[183]
The Society played a large role in spreading Robert Boyle's experimental
philosophy around Europe, and acted as a
clearinghouse for intellectual correspondence and
exchange.[184]
Boyle was "a founder of the experimental world in which
scientists now live and operate," and his method based
knowledge on experimentation, which had to be witnessed
to provide proper empirical legitimacy. This is where
the Royal Society came into play: witnessing had to be a
"collective act", and the Royal Society's assembly rooms
were ideal locations for relatively public
demonstrations.[185]
However, not just any witness was considered to be
credible; "Oxford professors were accounted more
reliable witnesses than Oxfordshire peasants." Two
factors were taken into account: a witness's knowledge
in the area; and a witness's "moral constitution". In
other words, only civil society were considered for
Boyle's public.[186]
Coffeehouses
were especially important to the spread of knowledge
during the Enlightenment because they created a unique
environment in which people from many different walks of
life gathered and shared ideas. They were frequently
criticized by nobles who feared the possibility of an
environment in which class and its accompanying titles
and privileges were disregarded. Such an environment was
especially intimidating to monarchs who derived much of
their power from the disparity between classes of
people. If classes were to join together under the
influence of Enlightenment thinking, they might
recognize the all-encompassing oppression and abuses of
their monarchs and, because of their size, might be able
to carry out successful revolts. Monarchs also resented
the idea of their subjects convening as one to discuss
political matters, especially those concerning foreign
affairs - rulers thought political affairs to be their
business only, a result of their supposed divine right
to rule.[187]
Coffeehouses
represent a turning point in history during which people
discovered that they could have enjoyable social lives
within their communities. Coffeeshops became homes away
from home for many who sought, for the first time, to
engage in discourse with their neighbors and discuss
intriguing and thought-provoking matters, especially
those regarding philosophy to politics. Coffeehouses
were essential to the Enlightenment, for they were
centers of free-thinking and self-discovery. Although
many coffeehouse patrons were scholars, a great deal
were not. Coffeehouses attracted a diverse set of
people, including not only the educated wealthy but also
members of the bourgeoisie and the lower class. While it
may seem positive that patrons, being doctors, lawyers,
merchants, etc. represented almost all classes, the
coffeeshop environment sparked fear in those who sought
to preserve class distinction. One of the most popular
critiques of the coffeehouse claimed that it "allowed
promiscuous association among people from different
rungs of the social ladder, from the artisan to the
aristocrat" and was therefore compared to Noah's Ark,
receiving all types of animals, clean or unclean.[188]
This unique culture served as a catalyst for journalism
when Joseph Addison and Richard Steele recognized
its potential as an audience. Together, Steele and
Addison published The Spectator (1711),
a daily publication which aimed, through fictional
narrator Mr. Spectator, both to entertain and to provoke
discussion regarding serious philosophical matters.
The first
English coffeehouse opened in Oxford in 1650. Brian
Cowan said that Oxford coffeehouses developed into "penny
universities", offering a locus of learning that
was less formal than structured institutions. These
penny universities occupied a significant position in
Oxford academic life, as they were frequented by those
consequently referred to as the "virtuosi", who
conducted their research on some of the resulting
premises. According to Cowan, "the coffeehouse was a
place for like-minded scholars to congregate, to read,
as well as learn from and to debate with each other, but
was emphatically not a university institution, and the
discourse there was of a far different order than any
university tutorial."[189]
The Café Procope was established
in Paris in 1686; by the 1720s there were around 400
cafés in the city. The Café Procope in particular became
a center of Enlightenment, welcoming such celebrities as
Voltaire and Rousseau. The Café Procope was where
Diderot and D'Alembert decided to create the Encyclopédie.[190]
The cafés were one of the various "nerve centers" for bruits
publics, public noise or rumour. These bruits
were allegedly a much better source of information than
were the actual newspapers available at the time.[191]
The debating
societies are an example of the public sphere during the
Enlightenment.[192]
Their origins include:
Clubs of
fifty or more men who, at the beginning of the 18th
century, met in pubs to discuss religious issues and
affairs of state.
Mooting
clubs, set up by law students to practice rhetoric.
Spouting
clubs, established to help actors train for theatrical
roles.
John Henley's
Oratory, which mixed outrageous sermons with even more
absurd questions, like "Whether Scotland be anywhere
in the world?"[193]
An example of a French salon
In the late
1770s, popular debating societies began to move into
more "genteel" rooms, a change which helped establish a
new standard of sociability.[194]
The backdrop to these developments was "an explosion of
interest in the theory and practice of public
elocution". The debating societies were commercial
enterprises that responded to this demand, sometimes
very successfully. Some societies welcomed from 800 to
1200 spectators a night.[195]
The debating
societies discussed an extremely wide range of topics.
Before the Enlightenment, most intellectual debates
revolved around "confessional" – that is, Catholic,
Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist), or Anglican issues, and
the main aim of these debates was to establish which
bloc of faith ought to have the "monopoly of truth and a
God-given title to authority".[196]
After this date everything thus previously rooted in
tradition was questioned and often replaced by new
concepts in the light of philosophical reason. After the
second half of the 17th century and during the 18th
century, a "general process of rationalization and
secularization set in," and confessional disputes were
reduced to a secondary status in favor of the
"escalating contest between faith and incredulity".[196]
In addition to
debates on religion, societies discussed issues such as
politics and the role of women. It is important to note,
however, that the critical subject matter of these
debates did not necessarily translate into opposition to
the government. In other words, the results of the
debate quite frequently upheld the status quo.[197]
From a historical standpoint, one of the most important
features of the debating society was their openness to
the public; women attended and even participated in
almost every debating society, which were likewise open
to all classes providing they could pay the entrance
fee. Once inside, spectators were able to participate in
a largely egalitarian form of sociability that helped
spread Enlightenment ideas.[198]
Masonic lodges
Masonic initiation ceremony
Historians
have long debated the extent to which the secret network
of Freemasonry was a main factor
in the Enlightenment. The leaders of the Enlightenment
included Freemasons such as Diderot, Montesquieu,
Voltaire, Pope, Horace Walpole, Sir Robert Walpole,
Mozart, Goethe, Frederick the Great, Benjamin Franklin,[199]
and George Washington.[200]
Norman Davies said that Freemasonry was a powerful force
on behalf of Liberalism in Europe, from
about 1700 to the twentieth century. It expanded rapidly
during the Age of Enlightenment, reaching practically
every country in Europe. It was especially attractive to
powerful aristocrats and politicians as well as
intellectuals, artists and political activists.[201]
During the Age
of Enlightenment, Freemasons comprised an international
network of like-minded men, often meeting in secret in
ritualistic programs at their lodges. they promoted the
ideals of the Enlightenment, and helped diffuse these
values across Britain and France and other places.
Freemasonry as a systematic creed with its own myths,
values and set of rituals originated in Scotland around
1600 and spread first to England and then across the
Continent in the eighteenth century. They fostered new
codes of conduct – including a communal understanding of
liberty and equality inherited from guild sociability –
"liberty, fraternity, and equality"[202]
Scottish soldiers and Jacobite Scots brought to the
Continent ideals of fraternity which reflected not the
local system of Scottish customs but the institutions
and ideals originating in the English Revolution against
royal absolutism.[203]
Freemasonry was particularly prevalent in France – by
1789, there were perhaps as many as 100,000 French
Masons, making Freemasonry the most popular of all
Enlightenment associations.[204]
The Freemasons displayed a passion for secrecy and
created new degrees and ceremonies. Similar societies,
partially imitating Freemasonry, emerged in France,
Germany, Sweden and Russia. One example was the "Illuminati" founded in Bavaria
in 1776, which was copied after the Freemasons but was
never part of the movement. The Illuminati was an
overtly political group, which most Masonic lodges
decidedly were not.[205]
Masonic lodges
created a private model for public affairs. They
"reconstituted the polity and established a
constitutional form of self-government, complete with
constitutions and laws, elections and representatives."
In other words, the micro-society set up within the
lodges constituted a normative model for society as a
whole. This was especially true on the Continent: when
the first lodges began to appear in the 1730s, their
embodiment of British values was often seen as
threatening by state authorities. For example, the
Parisian lodge that met in the mid 1720s was composed of
English Jacobite exiles.[206]
Furthermore, freemasons all across Europe explicitly
linked themselves to the Enlightenment as a whole. In
French lodges, for example, the line "As the means to be
enlightened I search for the enlightened" was a part of
their initiation rites. British lodges assigned
themselves the duty to "initiate the unenlightened".
This did not necessarily link lodges to the irreligious,
but neither did this exclude them from the occasional
heresy. In fact, many lodges praised the Grand
Architect, the masonic terminology for the deistic
divine being who created a scientifically ordered
universe.[207]
German
historian Reinhart Koselleck claimed that "On the
Continent there were two social structures that left a
decisive imprint on the Age of Enlightenment: the
Republic of Letters and the Masonic lodges."[208]
Scottish professor Thomas Munck argues that "although
the Masons did promote international and cross-social
contacts which were essentially non-religious and
broadly in agreement with enlightened values, they can
hardly be described as a major radical or reformist
network in their own right."[209]
Many of the Masons values seemed to greatly appeal to
Enlightenment values and thinkers. Diderot discusses the
link between Freemason ideals and the enlightenment in
D'Alembert's Dream, exploring masonry as a way of
spreading enlightenment beliefs.[210]
Historian Margaret Jacob stresses the importance of the
Masons in indirectly inspiring enlightened political
thought.[211]
On the negative side, Daniel Roche contests claims that
Masonry promoted egalitarianism. He argues that the
lodges only attracted men of similar social backgrounds.[212]
The presence of noble women in the French "lodges of
adoption" that formed in the 1780s was largely due to
the close ties shared between these lodges and
aristocratic society.[213]
The major
opponent of Freemasonry was the Roman Catholic Church,
so that in countries with a large Catholic element, such
as France, Italy, Spain, and Mexico, much of the
ferocity of the political battles involve the
confrontation between what Davies calls the reactionary
Church and enlightened Freemasonry.[214][215]
Even in France, Masons did not act as a group.[216]
American historians, while noting that Benjamin Franklin
and George Washington were
indeed active Masons, have downplayed the importance of
Freemasonry in causing the American Revolution because
the Masonic order was non-political and included both
Patriots and their enemy the Loyalists.[217]
A.
Swingewood, "Origins of Sociology: The Case of the
Scottish Enlightenment", The British Journal of
Sociology, vol. 21, no. 2 (June 1970), pp.
164–80 in JSTOR.
D. Daiches,
P. Jones and J. Jones, A Hotbed of Genius: The
Scottish Enlightenment, 1730–1790 (1986).
M. Fry, Adam
Smith's Legacy: His Place in the Development of
Modern Economics (Routledge, 1992).
The Illusion
of Free Markets, Bernard E. Harcourt, p. 260, notes
11-14.
Daniel
Brewer, The Enlightenment Past: reconstructing
eighteenth-century French thought (2008), p. 1
De Dijn, Annelien (2012).
"The Politics of Enlightenment: From Peter Gay to
Jonathan Israel". Historical Journal 55
(3): 785–805. doi:10.1017/s0018246x12000301.
Pierre
Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism
(1994) pp 20–38
Lessnoff,
Michael H. Social Contract Theory. New York: New
York U, 1990. Print.
Discourse on
the Origin of Inequality
Rand, B.
(1900), The Life, Unpublished Letters and
Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of
Shaftesbury, p. 353 quoted in Porter,
Roy (2000), Enlightenment, Britain and the
Creation of the Modern World, Allen Lane,
The Penguin Press, p. 3
Lorraine Y.
Landry, Marx and the postmodernism debates: an
agenda for critical theory (2000) p. 7
Of the
Original Contract
Stephen J.
Lee, Aspects of European history, 1494–1789
(1990) pp. 258–66
Nicholas
Henderson, "Joseph II", History Today (March
1991) 41:21–27
John Stanley,
"Towards A New Nation: The Enlightenment and
National Revival in Poland", Canadian Review of
Studies in Nationalism, 1983, Vol. 10 Issue 2,
pp 83–110
Giles
MacDonogh, Frederick the Great: A Life in Deed
and Letters (2001) p 341
Chartier, 8.
See also Alexis de Tocqueville, L'Ancien Régime
et la Révolution, 1850, Book Three, Chapter
One.
Chartier, 13.
Margaret C.
Jacob, ed. The Enlightenment: Brief History with
Documents, Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001,
Introduction, pp. 1–72.
Feldman, Noah
(2005). Divided by God. Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, pg. 29 ("It took John Locke to translate the
demand for liberty of conscience into a systematic
argument for distinguishing the realm of government
from the realm of religion.")
Feldman, Noah
(2005). Divided by God. Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, pg. 29
J.
Repcheck, The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton
and the Discovery of the Earth's Antiquity
(Basic Books, 2003), pp. 117–143.
Elise
Kimerling Wirtschafter, "Thoughts on the
Enlightenment and Enlightenment in Russia", Modern
Russian History & Historiography, 2009,
Vol. 2 Issue 2, pp 1–26
Israel,
Jonathan I. Democratic Enlightenment:
Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750–1790.
Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 609–632.
Henry F. May,
The Enlightenment in America (1978)
Michael
Atiyah, "Benjamin Franklin and the Edinburgh
Enlightenment," Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society (Dec 2006) 150#4
pp 591–606.
Jack
Fruchtman, Jr., Atlantic Cousins: Benjamin
Franklin and His Visionary Friends (2007)
Charles C.
Mann, 1491 (2005)
Paul M.
Spurlin, Montesquieu in America, 1760–1801
(1941)
Jean le Rond
d'Alembert, Discours préliminaire de
l'Encyclopédie
Outram, 1.
The past tense is used deliberately as whether man
would educate himself or be educated by certain
exemplary figures was a common issue at the time.
D'Alembert's introduction to l'Encyclopédie, for
example, along with Immanuel Kant's essay response
(the "independent thinkers"), both support the later
model.
Ernst
Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment,
(1951), p. vi
Russell, Bertrand. A
History of Western Philosophy. p 492–494
Israel,
Jonathan I. A Revolution of the Mind: Radical
Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of
Modern Democracy. Princeton, 2010,
pp. 49–50.
Israel,
Jonathan I. Enlightenment Contested. Oxford
University Press, 2006, pp. v – viii.
Israel,
Jonathan I. Radical Enlightenment; Philosophy
and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750. Oxford
University Press, 2002, p. 3.
J. B. Shank,
The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French
Enlightenment (2008), "Introduction"
Martin Heidegger [1938]
(2002) The Age of the World Picture
quotation:
For up to
Descartes ... a particular sub-iectum ...
lies at the foundation of its own fixed
qualities and changing circumstances. The
superiority of a sub-iectum ...
arises out of the claim of man to a ...
self-supported, unshakeable foundation of truth,
in the sense of certainty. Why and how does this
claim acquire its decisive authority? The claim
originates in that emancipation of man in which
he frees himself from obligation to Christian
revelational truth and Church doctrine to a
legislating for himself that takes its stand
upon itself.
Outram, 6.
See also, A. Owen Alridge (ed.), The
Ibero-American Enlightenment (1971)., Franco
Venturi, The End of the Old Regime in Europe
1768–1776: The First Crisis.
For example,
Robert Darnton, Roger Chartier, Brian Cowan, Donna
T. Andrew.
James Van
Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in
Enlightenment Europe (2001), 4.
Jürgen
Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the
Public Sphere, (1989), 36, 37.
Outram,
Dorinda. The Enlightenment (2nd ed.).
Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 12.
Outram 2005,
p. 13.
Chartier, 27.
Mona Ozouf,
"'Public Opinion' at the End of the Old Regime
David Beard
and Kenneth Gloag, Musicology, The Key Concepts
(New York: Routledge, 2005), 58.
J. Peter
Burkholder, Donald J. Grout and Claude V. Palisca, A
History of Western Music, Seventh Edition,
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006),
475.
Beard and Gloag, Musicology,
59.
Beard and Gloag, Musicology,
60.
Burkholder, Grout and
Palisca, A History of Western Music, 475.
Outram, 21.
Chartier, 26.
Chartier, 26,
26. Kant, "What is Enlightenment?"
Outram, 23.
Goodman, 3.
Dena Goodman,
The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of
the French Enlightenment (1994), 53.
Carla Hesse,
The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became
Modern (2001), 42.
Crébillon
fils, quoted from Darnton, The Literary
Underground, 17.
Darnton, The
Literary Underground, 19, 20.
Darnton, "The
Literary Underground", 21, 23.
Darnton, The
Literary Underground, 29
Outram, 22.
Darnton, The
Literary Underground, 35–40.
Outram, 17,
20.
Darnton, "The
Literary Underground", 16.
from Outram,
19. See Rolf Engelsing, "Die Perioden der
Lesergeschichte in der Neuzeit. Das statische
Ausmass und die soziokulturelle Bedeutung der
Lektüre", Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens, 10
(1969), cols. 944–1002 and Der Bürger als Leser:
Lesergeschichte in Deutschland, 1500–1800
(Stuttgart, 1974).
Emma Spary,
"The 'Nature' of Enlightenment" in The Sciences
in Enlightened Europe, William Clark, Jan
Golinski, and Steven Schaffer, eds. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1999), 281, 282.
Spary,
289–293.
See Thomas
Laqueur, Making sex: body and gender from the
Greeks to Freud (1990).
Daniel Roche,
France in the Enlightenment, (1998), 420.
Roche, 515,
516.
Caradonna JL.
Annales, "Prendre part au siècle des
Lumières: Le concours académique et la culture
intellectuelle au XVIIIe siècle"
Jeremy L.
Caradonna, "Prendre part au siècle des Lumières: Le
concours académique et la culture intellectuelle au
XVIIIe siècle", Annales. Histoire, Sciences
sociales, vol.64 (mai-juin 2009), n.3,
633–662.
Steven
Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and
Science in Seventeenth-Century England,
Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Steven Shapin
and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump:
Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 5,
56, 57. This same desire for multiple witnesses led
to attempts at replication in other locations and a
complex iconography and literary technology
developed to provide visual and written proof of
experimentation. See pages 59–65.
Colin Jones,
Paris: Biography of a City (New York: Viking,
2004), 188, 189.
Darnton, Robert (2000).
"An Early Information Society: News and the Media
in Eighteenth-Century Paris". 105#1. American
Historical Review: 1–35. JSTOR2652433.
Donna T.
Andrew, "Popular Culture and Public Debate: London
1780", This Historical Journal, Vol. 39, No.
2. (June 1996), pp. 405–423.
Andrew, 406.
Andrew gives the name as "William Henley", which
must be a lapse of writing.
Bullock, Steven C.
(1996). "Initiating the Enlightenment?: Recent
Scholarship on European Freemasonry". Eighteenth-Century
Life 20 (1): 81.
Norman
Davies, Europe: A History (1996) pp 634–635
Margaret C.
Jacob's seminal work on Enlightenment freemasonry,
Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment:
Free masonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century
Europe (Oxford University Press, 1991) p. 49.
Margaret C.
Jacob, "Polite worlds of Enlightenment," in Martin
Fitzpatrick and Peter Jones, eds. The
Enlightenment World (Routledge, 2004) pp.
272–87.
Roche, 436.
Fitzpatrick
and Jones, eds. The Enlightenment World p.
281
Jacob, pp 20,
73, 89.
Jacob,
145–147.
Reinhart
Koselleck, Critique and Crisis, p. 62, (The
MIT Press, 1988)
Margaret C.
Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and
politics in eighteenth-century Europe (Oxford
University Press, 1991.)
Roche, 437.
Jacob, 139.
See also Janet M. Burke, "Freemasonry, Friendship
and Noblewomen: The Role of the Secret Society in
Bringing Enlightenment Thought to Pre-Revolutionary
Women Elites", History of European Ideas 10
no. 3 (1989): 283–94.
Davies, Europe:
A History (1996) pp 634–635
Richard
Weisberger et al., eds., Freemasonry on both
sides of the Atlantic: essays concerning the craft
in the British Isles, Europe, the United States,
and Mexico (2002)
Robert R.
Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution:
The struggle (1970) p. 53
Neil L. York,
"Freemasons and the American Revolution", The
Historian Volume: 55. Issue: 2. 1993, pp 315+.
Further
reading
Reference
and surveys
Becker,
Carl L. The Heavenly City of the
Eighteenth-Century Philosophers. (1932), a
famous short classic
Bronner, Stephen. The
Great Divide: The Enlightenment and its Critics
(1995)
Burns,
William. Science in the Enlightenment: An
Encyclopædia (2003) 353pp
Chisick,
Harvey. Historical Dictionary of the
Enlightenment. 2005. 512 pp
Delon,
Michel. Encyclopædia of the Enlightenment
(2001) 1480pp
Dupre,
Louis. The Enlightenment & the
Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture
2004
Israel,
Jonathan. Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy,
Revolution, and Human Rights, 1750–1790
(2011), 1152pp; intellectual history focused on
radicalism
Jacob,
Margaret Enlightenment: A Brief History with
Documents 2000
Reill,
Peter Hanns, and Wilson, Ellen Judy. Encyclopædia
of the Enlightenment. (2nd ed. 2004). 670 pp.
Schmidt, James.
"Inventing the Enlightenment: Anti-Jacobins,
British Hegelians, and the 'Oxford English
Dictionary'".
Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (3):
421–43. JSTOR3654234.
Diderot,
Denis. "Letter on the Blind" in Tunstall, Kate E. Blindness
and Enlightenment. An Essay. With a new
translation of Diderot's Letter on the Blind
(Continuum, 2011)
Diderot,
Denis. The Encyclopédie of Diderot and
D'Alembert: Selected Articles (1969) excerpt
and text search
Gay,
Peter, ed. The Enlightenment: A Comprehensive
Anthology (1973) [1]
Gomez,
Olga, et al. eds. The Enlightenment: A
Sourcebook and Reader (2001) excerpt
and text search
Philhellenism
("the love of Greek culture") and philhellene ("the
admirer of Greeks and everything Greek"), from the Greek
φίλοςphilos
"friend, lover" and ἑλληνισμόςhellenism "Greek", was an intellectual fashion
prominent mostly at the turn of the 19th century. It
contributed to the sentiments that led Europeans such as
Lord Byron or Charles Nicolas
Fabvier to advocate for Greek independence
from the Ottoman Empire.
The later
19th-century European Philhellenism was largely to be
found among the Classicists.
In antiquity,
the term 'philhellene' (Greek: φιλέλλην, from φίλος - philos,
"dear one, friend" + Έλλην - Hellen,
"Greek"[1])
was used to describe both non-Greeks who were fond of
Greek culture and Greeks who patriotically upheld their
culture. The Liddell-Scott
Greek-English Lexicon defines 'philhellen' as
"fond of the Hellenes, mostly of foreign princes, as Amasis; of Parthian kings[...]; also of
Hellenic tyrants, as Jason of Pherae and
generally of Hellenic (Greek) patriots.[2]
The early
rulers of the Parthian Empire, merging
Iranian and Greek culture described themselves as
philhellenes
Roman
philhellenes
The literate
upper classes of Rome were increasingly Hellenized in their culture
during the 3rd century BC.[3]
Among Romans
the career of Titus Quinctius
Flamininus (died 174 BC), who appeared at the Isthmian Games in Corinth in 196 BC and proclaimed
the freedom of the Greek states, was fluent in Greek,
stood out, according to Livy,
as a great admirer of Greek culture; the Greeks hailed
him as their liberator.[4]
There were however, some Romans during the late
Republic, who were distinctly anti-Greek, resenting the
increasing influence of Greek culture on Roman life, an
example being the Roman Censor, Cato the Elder and also
Cato the Younger who lived during the "Greek invasion"
of Rome but towards the later years of his life he
eventually became a philhellene after his stay in
Rhodes.
The lyric poet
Quintus
Horatius Flaccus was another philhellene. He is
notable for his words, "Graecia capta ferum victorem
cepit et artis intulit agresti Latio" (Conquered
Greece took captive her savage conqueror and brought her
arts into rustic Latium), meaning that after the
conquest of Greece the defeated Greeks created a
cultural hegemony over the Romans.
In the period
of political reaction and repression after the fall of Napoleon, when the
liberal-minded, educated and prosperous middle and upper
classes of European societies found the romantic revolutionary ideals
of 1789–92 repressed by the restoration of old regimes
at home, the idea of the re-creation of a Greek state on
the very territories that were sanctified by their view
of Antiquity — which was reflected even in the furnishings of their own parlors
and the contents of their bookcases — offered an ideal,
set at a romantic distance. Under these conditions, the
Greek uprising
constituted a source of inspiration and expectations
that could never actually be fulfilled, disappointing
what Paul Cartledge called "the
Victorian self-identification with the Glory that was
Greece".[5]
Another
popular subject of interest in Greek culture at the turn
of the 19th century was the shadowy Scythian
philosopher Anacharsis, who lived in the
6th century BCE. The new prominence of Anacharsis was
sparked by Jean-Jacques
Barthélemy's fanciful Travels of Anacharsis
the Younger in Greece (1788), a learned imaginary
travel
journal, one of the first historical
novels, which a modern scholar has called "the
encyclopedia of the new cult of the antique" in the late
18th century. It had a high impact on the growth of
philhellenism in France: the book went through many
editions, was reprinted in the United States and was
translated into German and other languages. It later
inspired European sympathy for the Greek War of
Independence and spawned sequels and imitations
throughout the 19th century.
In German
culture the first phase of philhellenism can be traced
in the careers and writings of Johann Joachim
Winckelmann, one of the inventors of art history,
Friedrich August Wolf,
who inaugurated modern Homeric scholarship
with his Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795)
and the enlightened bureaucrat Wilhelm von Humboldt.
In the German
states, the private obsession with ancient Greece
took public forms, institutionalizing an elite
philhellene ethos through the Gymnasium, to
revitalize German
education at home, and providing on two occasions
high-minded philhellene German princes ignorant of
modern-day Greek realities, to be Greek sovereigns.[6]
During the
later 19th century the new studies of archaeology and
anthropology began to offer a quite separate view of
ancient Greece, which had previously been experienced at
second-hand only through Greek literature,
Greek sculpture
and architecture.[7]
20th century heirs of the 19th-century view of an
unchanging, immortal quality of "Greekness" are typified
in J.C. Lawson's Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient
Greek Religion (1910) or R. and E. Blum's The
Dangerous Hour: The lore of crisis and mystery in
rural Greece (1970); according to the Classicist Paul Cartledge, they
"represent this ideological construction of Greekness as
an essence, a Classicizing essence to be sure,
impervious to such historic changes as that from paganism
to Orthodox
Christianity, or from subsistence peasant
agriculture to more or less internationally market-driven
capitalist farming." [8]
The theme of Nikos Dimou's The
Misfortune to be Greek[9]
is the perception that the Philhellenic West's projected
desire for the modern Greeks to live up to their
ancestors' glorious past has always been a burden upon
the Greeks themselves. In particular, Western
Philhellenism focused exclusively on the heritage of
Classical Greek history, in effect negating or rejecting
the heritage of Byzantine
history which for the Greeks themselves is at least as
important.
Philhellenism
also created a renewed interest in the artistic movement
of Neoclassicism, which
idealized 5th-century Classical Greek art and
architecture.,[10]
very much at second hand, through the writings of the
first generation of art historians, like Johann Joachim
Winckelmann and Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing.
The
groundswell of the Philhellenic movement was result of
two generations of intrepid artists and amateur
treasure-seekers, from Stuart and Revett, who published
their measured drawings as The Antiquities of Athens
and culminating with the removal of sculptures from Aegina and the Parthenon (the Elgin
marbles), works that ravished the British
Philhellenes, many of whom, however, deplored their
removal.
Many
philhellenes supported the Greek revolution. Some,
notably Lord Byron, even took up arms
to join the Greek revolutionaries. Many more financed
the revolution.
Throughout the
19th century, philhellenes continued to support Greece
politically and militarily. For example, Ricciotti Garibaldi
led a volunteer expedition in the Greco-Turkish War of
1897.[11]
Notable philhellene - Nick Xenophon (Australian Senator)
A modern
assessment is E. Badian, 1970. Titus Quinctius
Flamininus: Philhellenism and Realpolitik0
Cartledge
The history
of pedagogically conservative philhellenism in
German high academic culture has been examined in Suzanne L. Marchand, Down
from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in
Germany, 1750-1970 (Princeton
University Press, 1996); she begins with
Winckelmann, Wolf and von Humboldt.
S.L.
Marchand, 1992. Archaeology and Cultural
Politics in Germany, 1800-1965: The Decline of
Philhellenism (University of Chicago).
Cartledge
1995
Η δυστυχία
του να είσαι Έλληνας, 1975.
It often
selected for its favoured models third and second
century sculptures that were actually Hellenistic
in origin, and appreciated through the lens of Roman
copies: see Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste
and the Antique: The Lure of Antique Sculpture
1500-1900 1981.
Gilles
Pécout, "Philhellenism in Italy: political
friendship and the Italian volunteers in the
Mediterranean in the nineteenth century", Journal
of Modern Italian Studies 9:4:405-427 (2004) doi:10.1080/1354571042000296380
Thomas Cahill, Sailing
the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (Nan
A. Talese, 2003)
Stella
Ghervas, « Le philhellénisme d’inspiration
conservatrice en Europe et en Russie », in Peuples,
Etats et nations dans le Sud-Est de l’Europe,
(Bucarest, Ed. Anima, 2004.)
Stella
Ghervas, « Le philhellénisme russe : union
d’amour ou d’intérêt? », in Regards sur le
philhellénisme, (Genève, Mission permanente de
la Grèce auprès de l’ONU, 2008).
--------------------
5b. What’s the Difference Between the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment?
From Quora
http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2015/01/09/what_s_the_difference_between_the_renaissance_and_the_enlightenment.html
The
Renaissance was a cultural and intellectual movement
that peaked during the 15th and 16th
centuries, though most historians would agree that it
really began in the 14th, with antecedents
reaching back into the 12th, and really
didn't end until the 17th. Its chief
feature was a heightened interest, to near obsession,
with classical (that is, Greco-Roman) learning and
culture, much of which had gone into eclipse, at least
in Western Europe, during the early Middle Ages.
The
Renaissance, which flowered first in Italy and spread
to much of Western Europe east of the Pyrenees, saw a
continuation of interest in the classical philosophy,
mathematics, and natural sciences that late medieval
scholars had begun to revive in the 12th
century. The Renaissance added to this an interest in
the aesthetics of the classical world, including
architecture and letters. The revival of interest in
all things classical, beginning in the 12th-century
focus on philosophy and natural philosophy, owed much
to the transmission of Greek and Roman culture through
Byzantium (the Eastern Roman Empire) and through
Islamic culture, and to the preservation of especially
Greek philosophy (to include natural philosophy) in
the Middle East and especially Central Asia. The
reconquest of Sicily from Arab control in the early 11th
century, and contact (both peaceful and bellicose)
with the Umayyad caliphate in Spain, which had been
captured by Islam in the 8th century and
was eventually reconquered in 1492, were crucial to
this.
Dante
Alighieri, detail from Luca Signorelli’s fresco,
Chapel of San Brizio, Orvieto Cathedral in Italy
The
Renaissance is associated with great figures like the
father of the Latin revival Petrarch, the humanist
philosopher Pico della Mirandola, the great artist and
inventor Leonardo da Vinci, the poet Dante Alighieri,
the artist Michelangelo, the political philosopher
Niccolò Machiavelli and many other names
doubtless familiar to most educated Europeans.
Humanism and
the keen interest in reason common to many of those
smitten with Aristotelean philosophy during these
centuries brought about profound challenges to the
authority of the Roman Catholic Church during this
time. The church itself was beset by many internal
problems: Long-standing tensions between
ecclesiastical and secular authority—supporters of the
Holy Roman emperor versus partisans of the pope—broke
out into open warfare during the early Renaissance.
The Western Schism took place, in which there were
actually three rival claimants to the papacy. And
practices like the sale of indulgences (which would,
for the right amount of money, supposedly reduce the
time a sinner spent in purgatory before ascending to
heaven), as well as concubinage, simony (sale of
religious offices), and many other abuses of power
would eventually create violent demand for reform.
This would culminate in the Protestant Reformation.
The
Enlightenment came much later, but it wouldn't really
have been possible without the Renaissance and the
Reformation. Most historians will slip a mainly 17th-century
“Age of Reason” into outline chronologies of
intellectual history, and this makes a great deal of
sense; the great thinkers of the 17th
century didn't have quite the fervor for empiricism
and hadn't quite embraced the political liberalism
that would characterize the European Enlightenment.
But they had pretty much abandoned the project of
Scholasticism—that is, trying to prove God and
revealed truth through pure reason, a very late
medieval and Renaissance kind of obsession—and they
instead “changed the subject,” as the historian Mark
Lilla so aptly put it. This was the political
philosopher Thomas Hobbes' great contribution in Leviathan:
He really begun the divorce of political thought
from theology by simply no longer speaking of God in
matters of statecraft.
The
Enlightenment began, most historians would probably
concur, in mid-17th century, and peaked in
the 18th century, when its real center of
gravity France, not (as in the Renaissance) Italy. It
was only really conscious of itself as an epochal
movement from the early to mid-18th century
on, though, and the word Enlightenment
didn't really come into vogue until much later in that
century. It was very much a reaction to the Catholic
counter-revolution and really flowered after the end
of the Thirty Years' War, when the great powers of
Europe fought along (roughly) confessional
lines—France of course was an exception, and fought
mainly on the side of the Protestant powers despite
being Catholic.
The
Enlightenment was the age of the triumph of science
(Newton, Leibniz, Bacon) and of philosophy (Descartes,
Locke, Spinoza, Kant, Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu).
Unlike the Renaissance philosophers, they no longer
sought validation in the texts of the Greco-Roman
philosophers, but were predicated more solidly on
rationalism and empiricism. There were atheists among
them, and devout Christians, but if there was a common
belief about the divine among Enlightenment
philosophers, it was probably deism.
The
political philosophy of the Enlightenment is the
unambiguous antecedent of modern Western liberalism:
secular, pluralistic, rule-of-law-based, with an
emphasis on individual rights and freedoms. Note that
none of this was really present in the Renaissance,
when it was still widely assumed that kings were
essentially ordained by God, that monarchy was the
natural order of things and that monarchs were not
subject to the laws of ordinary men, and that the
ruled were not citizens but subjects.
It was the
Enlightenment, and thinkers who embodied its ideas, like
Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin (I think it was Eugen Weber
once described the sage of Philadelphia as the epitome of
the Enlightenment thinker), who were the intellectual
force behind the American Revolution and the French
Revolution, and who really inspired the ideas behind the
great political documents of the age like the American
Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of
the Rights of Man and the Citizen.
The American
Enlightenment is a period of intellectual ferment in
the thirteen American colonies
in the period 1714–1818, which led to the American Revolution,
and the creation of the American Republic. Influenced
by the 18th-century European Enlightenment
and its own native American philosophy,
the American Enlightenment applied scientific
reasoning to politics, science, and religion, promoted
religious tolerance, and restored literature, the
arts, and music as important disciplines and
professions worthy of study in colleges. The
"new-model" American style colleges of King's College
New York (now Columbia University),
and the College of Philadelphia (now Penn) were
founded, Yale College and the College of
William & Mary were reformed, and a
non-denominational moral philosophy replaced theology
in many college curricula; even Puritan colleges such
as the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University)
and Harvard University
reformed their curricula to include natural philosophy
(science), modern astronomy, and mathematics.
Various dates
for the American Enlightenment have been proposed,
including the dates 1750-1820,[1]
1765 to 1815,[2]
and 1688-1815.[3]
One somewhat more precise start date proposed [4]
is the introduction of a collection of donated
Enlightenment books by Colonial AgentJeremiah Dummer into the
library of the small college of Yale at Saybrook Point,
Connecticut on or just after October 15, 1714.
They were received by a young post-graduate student Samuel
Johnson, of Guilford Connecticut, who studied the
Enlightenment works. Finding they contradicted all his
hard learned Puritan learning, he wrote, using the
metaphors of light that would soon be used to
characterize the age, that, “All this was like a flood
of day to his low state of mind”,[5]
and that “he found himself like one at once emerging out
of the glimmer of twilight into the full sunshine of
open day." Two years later in 1716 as a Yale Tutor,
Johnson introduced a new curriculum into Yale using the
donated Dummer books, offering what Johnson called "The
New Learning",[6]
which included the works and ideas of Francis Bacon,
John Locke, Isaac Newton, Boyle, Copernicus, and
literary works by Shakespeare, Milton, and
Addison.Joseph Ellis has traced the impact of the newly
introduced Enlightenment ideas on the Yale
Commencement Thesis of 1718.[7]
Religious
tolerance
Enlightened
Founding Fathers, especially Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington,
fought for and eventually attained religious
freedom for minority denominations. According to
the founding fathers, the United States should be a
country where peoples of all faiths could live in peace
and mutual benefit. James Madison summed up this ideal
in 1792 saying, "Conscience is the most sacred of all
property."[8]
A switch away
from established religion to religious tolerance, was
one of the distinguishing features of the era from 1775
to 1818. The passage of the new Connecticut Constitution
on October 5, 1818, overturned the 180-year-old
"Standing Order" and the The Connecticut Charter of 1662,
whose provisions dated back to the founding of the state
in 1638 and the Fundamental
Orders of Connecticut; it has been proposed as a
date for the triumph if not the end of the American
Enlightenment.[9]
The new constitution guaranteed freedom of religion, and
disestablished the Congregational church.
Intellectual
currents
Between 1714
and 1818 a great intellectual change took place that
changed the British Colonies of America from a distant
backwater into a leader in the fields of moral
philosophy, educational reform, religious revival,
industrial technology, science, and, most notably,
political philosophy. It saw a consensus on a "pursuit
of happiness" based political philosophy.
Architecture
After 1780,
the Federal-style of American
Architecture began to diverge from the Georgian
style and became a uniquely American genre; in 1813, the
American architect Ithiel Town designed and in
1814-1816 built the first Gothic Style church in North
America, Trinity Church on
the Green in New Haven, predating the English Gothic revival
by a decade. In the fields of literature, poetry, music
and drama some nascent artistic attempts were made,
particularly in pre-war Philadelphia, but American
(non-popular) culture in these fields was largely
imitative of British culture for most of the period, and
is generally considered not very distinguished.
The Whig canon and the
neo-Harringtonians, John Milton, James
Harrington and Sidney,
Trenchard, Gordon and Bolingbroke,
together with the Greek, Roman, and Renaissance
masters of the tradition as far as Montesquieu,
formed the authoritative literature of this
culture; and its values and concepts were those
with which we have grown familiar: a civic and
patriot ideal in which the personality was founded
in property, perfected in citizenship but
perpetually threatened by corruption; government
figuring paradoxically as the principal source of
corruption and operating through such means as
patronage, faction, standing armies (opposed to
the ideal of the militia); established churches
(opposed to the Puritan and deist modes of
American religion); and the promotion of a monied
interest—though the formulation of this last
concept was somewhat hindered by the keen desire
for readily available paper credit common in
colonies of settlement.
The Scottish Enlightenment
also influenced American thinkers. David Hume's Essays
and his History of
England were widely read in the colonies,[13]
and Hume's political thought had a particular influence
on James Madison and the Constitution.[14]
Another important Scottish writer was Francis
Hutcheson. Hutcheson's ideas of ethics, along with
notions of civility and politeness developed by the Earl
of Shaftesbury, and Addison and Richard Steele in their Spectator, were a major
influence on upper-class American colonists who sought
to emulate European manners and learning.
By far the
most important French sources to the American
Enlightenment, however, were Montesquieu'sSpirit
of the Laws and Emer de Vattel'sLaw of Nations.
Both informed early American ideas of government and
were major influences on the Constitution. Voltaire's histories were widely
read but seldom cited. Rousseau's influence
was marginal. Noah Webster used Rousseau's
educational ideas of child development to structure his
famous Speller. A German influence includes Samuel
Pufendorf, whose writings were also commonly cited
by American writers.
Liberalism
and republicanism
Since the
1960s, historians have debated the Enlightenment's role
in the American Revolution. Before 1960 the consensus
was that liberalism, especially that of
John Locke, was paramount;
republicanism was largely ignored.[15]
The new interpretations were pioneered by J.G.A.
Pocock who argued in The Machiavellian
Moment (1975) that, at least in the early
eighteenth-century, republican ideas were just as
important as liberal ones. Pocock's view is now widely
accepted.[16]Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood pioneered the
argument that the Founding
Fathers of the United States were more influenced
by republicanism than they were
by liberalism. Cornell University
Professor Isaac Kramnick, on the other hand, argues that
Americans have always been highly individualistic and
therefore Lockean.[17]
In the decades
before the American Revolution (1776), the intellectual
and political leaders of the colonies studied history
intently, looking for guides or models for good (and
bad) government. They especially followed the
development of republican ideas in England.[18]
Pocock explained the intellectual sources in the United
States:
The Whig
canon and the neo-Harringtonians, John Milton, James Harrington
and Sidney,
Trenchard, Gordon and Bolingbroke,
together with the Greek, Roman, and Renaissance
masters of the tradition as far as Montesquieu, formed the
authoritative literature of this culture; and its
values and concepts were those with which we have
grown familiar: a civic and patriot ideal in which the
personality was founded in property, perfected in
citizenship but perpetually threatened by corruption;
government figuring paradoxically as the principal
source of corruption and operating through such means
as patronage, faction, standing armies (opposed to the
ideal of the militia), established churches (opposed
to the Puritan and deist modes of American religion)
and the promotion of a monied interest — though the
formulation of this last concept was somewhat hindered
by the keen desire for readily available paper credit
common in colonies of settlement. A neoclassical
politics provided both the ethos of the elites and the
rhetoric of the upwardly mobile, and accounts for the
singular cultural and intellectual homogeneity of the
Founding Fathers and their generation.[19]
The commitment
of most Americans to these republican values made
inevitable the American Revolution,
for Britain was increasingly seen as corrupt and hostile
to republicanism, and a threat to the established
liberties the Americans enjoyed.[20]
Leopold von Ranke, a
leading German historian, in 1848 claims that American
republicanism played a crucial role in the development
of European liberalism:
By
abandoning English constitutionalism and creating a
new republic based on the rights of the individual,
the North Americans introduced a new force in the
world. Ideas spread most rapidly when they have found
adequate concrete expression. Thus republicanism
entered our Romanic/Germanic world.... Up to this
point, the conviction had prevailed in Europe that
monarchy best served the interests of the nation. Now
the idea spread that the nation should govern itself.
But only after a state had actually been formed on the
basis of the theory of representation did the full
significance of this idea become clear. All later
revolutionary movements have this same goal.... This
was the complete reversal of a principle. Until then,
a king who ruled by the grace of God had been the
center around which everything turned. Now the idea
emerged that power should come from below.... These
two principles are like two opposite poles, and it is
the conflict between them that determines the course
of the modern world. In Europe the conflict between
them had not yet taken on concrete form; with the
French Revolution it did.[21]
"Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"
Many
historians[22]
find that the origin of this famous phrase derives
from Locke's position that "no one ought to harm another
in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."[23]
Others suggest that Jefferson took the phrase from Sir
William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of
England.[24]
Others note that William Wollaston's 1722
book The Religion of Nature Delineated describes
the "truest definition" of "natural religion" as being "The
pursuit of happiness by the practice of reason and
truth."[25]
That all men
are by nature equally free and independent, and have
certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter
into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact,
deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the
enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of
acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and
obtaining happiness and safety.
Both the
Moderate Enlightenment and a Radical or Revolutionary
Enlightenment were reactions against the authoritarianism,
irrationality, and obscurantism of the
established churches. Philosophers such as Voltaire depicted organized Christianity as a tool of
tyrants and oppressors and as being used to defend
monarchism, it was seen as hostile to the development of
reason and the progress of science and incapable of
verification.
An alternative
religion was deism, the philosophical belief in a
deity based on reason, rather than religious revelation
or dogma. It was a popular perception among the philosophes,
who adopted deistic attitudes to varying degrees. Deism
greatly influenced the thought of intellectuals and Founding
Fathers, including John Adams, Benjamin Franklin,
perhaps George Washington and,
especially, Thomas Jefferson.[26]
The most articulate exponent was Thomas Paine, whose The Age of Reason
was written in France in the early 1790s, and soon
reached the United States. Paine was highly
controversial; when Jefferson was attacked for his deism
in the 1800
election, Democratic-Republican politicians took
pains to distance their candidate from Paine.[27]
Ferguson Robert
A., The American Enlightenment, 1750-1820,
Harvard University Press, 1994
Adrienne
Koch, referenced by Woodward, C. Vann, The
Comparative Approach to American History,
Oxford University Press, 1997
Henry F. May,
referenced by Byrne, James M., Religion and the
Enlightenment: From Descartes to Kant,
Westminster John Knox Press, 1996, p.50
Olsen,Neil
C., Pursuing Happiness: The Organizational
Culture of the Continental Congress, Nonagram
Publications, ISBN
978-1480065505ISBN 1480065501,
2013, p. 145
Johnson,
Samuel, and Schneider, Herbert, Samuel Johnson,
President of King's College; His Career and
Writings, editors Herbert and Carol Schneider,
New York: Columbia University Press, 1929, Volume 1,
p. 7
Johnson and
Schneider
Joseph J.
Ellis, The New England Mind in Transition:
Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, 1696-1772, Yale
University Press, 1973, Chapter II and p 45
Bryan-Paul
Frost and Jeffrey Sikkenga, History of American
political thought (2003) p. 152
Olsen, p.16
Linda K.
Kerber, "The Republican Ideology of the
Revolutionary Generation," pp. 474–495 in
JSTOR
J.G.A.
Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment p 507
See David
Lundberg and Henry F. May, "The Enlightened Reader
in America," American Quarterly, vol. 28,
no. 2 (1976): 267.
See Mark G.
Spencer, David Hume and Eighteenth-Century
America (2005).
See Douglass
Adair, "'That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science':
David Hume, James Madison, and the Tenth
Federalist," Huntington Library Quarterly,
vol. 20, no. 4 (1957): 343-360; and Mark G. Spencer,
"Hume and Madison on Faction," The William and
Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., vol. 59, no. 4
(2002): 869-896.
See for
example, Vernon L. Parrington, Main Currents in
American Thought (1927) online at [1]
Shalhope
(1982)
Isaac
Kramnick, Ideological Background," in Jack. P.
Greene and J. R. Pole, The Blackwell
Encyclopedia of the American Revolution (1994)
ch 9; Robert E. Shallhope, "Republicanism," ibid
ch 70.
Trevor
Colbourn, The Lamp of Experience: Whig History
and the Intellectual Origins of the American
Revolution (1965) online
version
Pocock, The
Machiavellian Moment p 507
Bailyn,
Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American
Revolution (1967)
Paul Sayre,
ed., Interpretations of modern legal
philosophies (1981) p 189
James W. Ely,
Main themes in the debate over property rights
(1997) p. 28
Sanford,
Charles B. The Religious Life of Thomas
Jefferson (1987) University of Virginia Press,
ISBN
0-8139-1131-1
Eric
Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America
(1977) p 257
Further
reading
Biographies
Aldridge, A. Owen,
(1959). Man of Reason: The Life of Thomas Paine.
Lippincott.
Cunningham,
Noble E. In Pursuit of Reason (1988)
well-reviewed short biography of Jefferson.
Weinberger,
Jerry Benjamin Franklin Unmasked: On the Unity
of His Moral, Religious, and Political Thought
(University Press of Kansas, 2008) ISBN
0-7006-1584-9
Academic
studies
Allen,
Brooke Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding
Fathers (2007) Ivan R Dee, Inc, ISBN
1-56663-751-1
Bailyn,
Bernard The Ideological Origins of the American
Revolution (1992) Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, ISBN
0-674-44302-0
Bedini,
Silvio A Jefferson and Science (2002) The
University of North Carolina Press, ISBN
1-882886-19-4
Cohen, I.
Bernard Science and the Founding Fathers:
Science in the Political Thought of Jefferson,
Franklin, Adams and Madison (1995) WW Norton
& Co, ISBN
0-393-03501-8
Dray, PhilipStealing
God's Thunder: Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Rod
and the Invention of America (2005) Random
House, ISBN
1-4000-6032-X
Ellis,
Joseph. "Habits of Mind and an American
Enlightenment," American Quarterly Vol. 28,
No. 2, Special Issue: An American Enlightenment
(Summer, 1976), pp. 150–164 in
JSTOR
Ferguson,
Robert A. The American Enlightenment, 1750–1820
(1997) Harvard University Press, ISBN
0-674-02322-6
Gay,
Peter The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern
Paganism (1995) W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN
0-393-31302-6; The Enlightenment: The
Science of Freedom (1996) W. W. Norton &
Company, ISBN
0-393-31366-2
Greeson,
Jennifer. "American Enlightenment: The New World and
Modern Western Thought." American Literary
History (2013) online
Israel,
Jonathan A Revolution of the Mind – Radical
Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of
Modern Democracy (2009) Princeton University
Press, ISBN
0-691-14200-9
Jayne,
Allen Jefferson's Declaration of Independence:
Origins, Philosophy and Theology (2000) The
University Press of Kentucky, ISBN
0-8131-9003-7; [traces TJ's sources and
emphasizes his incorporation of Deist theology into
the Declaration.]
Koch,
Adrienne. "Pragmatic Wisdom and the American
Enlightenment," William and Mary Quarterly
Vol. 18, No. 3 (Jul., 1961), pp. 313–329 in
JSTOR
May,
Henry F. The Enlightenment in America (1978)
Oxford University Press, U.S., ISBN
0-19-502367-6; the standard survey
May,
Henry F. The Divided Heart: Essays on
Protestantism and the Enlightenment in America
(Oxford UP 1991) online
McDonald,
Forrest Novus Ordo Seclorum: Intellectual
Origins of the Constitution (1986) University
Press of Kansas, ISBN
0-7006-0311-5
Meyer D.
H. "The Uniqueness of the American Enlightenment," American
Quarterly Vol. 28, No. 2, Special Issue: An
American Enlightenment (Summer, 1976),
pp. 165–186 in
JSTOR
Nelson,
Craig Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution,
and the Birth of Modern Nations (2007)
Penguin, ISBN
0-14-311238-4
Reid-Maroney,
Nina. Philadelphia's Enlightenment, 1740-1800:
Kingdom of Christ, Empire of Reason (2000)
Richard,
C.J. Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome and
the American Enlightenment (1995) Harvard
University Press, ISBN
0-674-31426-3
Sanford,
Charles B. The Religious Life of Thomas
Jefferson (1987) University of Virginia Press,
ISBN
0-8139-1131-1
Sheridan,
Eugene R. Jefferson and Religion, preface by
Martin Marty, (2001)
University of North Carolina Press, ISBN
1-882886-08-9
Staloff,
Darren Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics
of Enlightenment and the American Founding.
(2005) Hill & Wang, ISBN
0-8090-7784-1
Wood,
Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American
Revolution (1993) Vintage, ISBN
0-679-73688-3
Historiography
Caron,
Nathalie, and Naomi Wulf. "American Enlightenments:
Continuity and Renewal." Journal of American
History (2013) 99#4 pp: 1072-1091. online
Dixon,
John M. "Henry F. May and the Revival of the
American Enlightenment: Problems and Possibilities
for Intellectual and Social History." William
& Mary Quarterly (2014) 71#2 pp: 255-280.
in
JSTOR
Primary
sources
Torre,
Jose, ed. Enlightenment in America, 1720-1825
(4 vol. Pickering & Chatto Publishers, 2008)
1360 pages; table of contents online at Pickering
& Chatto website
Lemay, A.
Leo, ed. Franklin: Writings (Library of
America, 1987)
The Nike of Samothrace is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of Hellenistic art.
Hellenistic period. Dionysus sculpture from the Ancient Art Collection at Yale.
Alexander fighting the Persian king Darius III. From the Alexander Mosaic, Naples National Archaeological Museum.
The Kingdoms of Antigonos and his rivals circa 303 BC.301 BC.
Kingdom of Ptolemy I SoterKingdom of CassanderKingdom of LysimachusKingdom of Seleucus I Nicator
Greece and the Aegean World c.200 BCE.
The Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Pyrrhus and his elephants.
Main article: Ptolemaic kingdom
Main article: Seleucid Empire
The Hellenistic world c. 200 BCE.The Pergamon Altar, Smarthistory[60]
The Dying Gaul is a Roman marble copy of a Hellenistic work of the late 3rd century BC. Capitoline Museums, Rome.
Bust of Mithridates VI sporting a lion pelt headdress, a symbol of Herakles.
Tigranes the Great's Armenian Empire
Coin of Phraates IV with Hellenistic titles such as Euergetes, Epiphanes and Philhellene (admirer of the Greeks)
Al-Khazneh in Petra shows the Hellenistic influences on the Nabatean capital city
The Greco-Bactrian kingdom at its maximum extent (c. 180 BC).
Silver coin depicting Demetrius I of Bactria (reigned c. 200–180 BC), wearing an elephant scalp, symbol of his conquests in India.
Carthaginian hoplite (Sacred Band, end of the 4th century BC)
Eastern hemisphere at the end of the 2nd century BC.The Library of Alexandria in the Ptolemaic Kingdom, here shown in an artist's impression, was the largest and most significant library of the ancient world.[97]
One of the first representations of the Buddha, and an example of Greco-Buddhist art, 1st-2nd century AD, Gandhara: Standing Buddha (Tokyo National Museum).Further information: Hellenization
Bust of Zeus-Ammon, a deity with attributes from Greek and Egyptian gods.
Zeno of Citium founded Stoic philosophy.Main article: Hellenistic philosophy
Head of an old woman, a good example of realism.Main article: Hellenistic art
Sculpture of Cupid and Psyche, an example of the sensualism of Hellenistic art. 2nd century CE Roman copy of a 2nd-century BCE Greek original.
German philosopher Immanuel Kant
Cesare Beccaria, father of classical criminal theory (1738–1794)
Denmark's minister Johann Struensee, a social reformer ahead of his time, was publicly executed in 1772
Europe at the beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession, 1700
One leader of the Scottish Enlightenment was Adam Smith, the father of modern economic science.
John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence shows the drafting committee presenting its work to the Congress
If there is something you know, communicate it. If there is something you don't know, search for it.— An engraving from the 1772 edition of the Encyclopédie; Truth, in the top center, is surrounded by light and unveiled by the figures to the right, Philosophy and Reason.
A medal minted during the reign of Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, commemorating his grant of religious liberty to Jews and Protestants in Hungary. Another important reform of Joseph II was the abolition of serfdom.
German explorer Alexander von Humboldt showed his disgust for slavery and often criticized the colonial policies. He always acted out of a deeply humanistic conviction, borne by the ideas of the Enlightenment.[110]
French philosopher Pierre Bayle
Front page of The Gentleman's Magazine, January 1731
ESTC data 1477–1799 by decade given with a regional differentiation.
Denis Diderot is best known as the editor of the Encyclopédie.
Georges Buffon is best remembered for his Histoire naturelle, a 44 volume encyclopedia describing everything known about the natural world.
Journal des sçavans was the earliest academic journal published in Europe
First page of the Encyclopedie published between 1751 and 1766
"Figurative system of human knowledge", the structure that the Encyclopédie organised knowledge into. It had three main branches: memory, reason, and imagination
A portrait of Bernard de Fontenelle.
Louis XIV visiting the Académie des sciences in 1671. "It is widely accepted that 'modern science' arose in the Europe of the 17th century, introducing a new understanding of the natural world." —Peter Barrett[176]
Antoine Lavoisier conducting an experiment related to combustion generated by amplified sun light.
An example of a French salon
Masonic initiation ceremony
"The Massacre at Chios" by Eugène Delacroix reflects the attitudes of French Philhellenism.
List of philhellenes who contributed during the Greek War of Independence; National Historical Museum, Athens. The first two and half columns from the left are the names of those having died.
Statue in honour of Lord Byron in Athens
Thomas Paine
