The Hellenistic Age

The Hellenistic age began with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, whose conquests had carried Greek language and culture from Egypt to the borders of India. His generals carved the empire into great kingdoms — the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Seleucids in Asia, the Antigonids in Macedon — and Greek became the common tongue of the eastern Mediterranean.

A wider world

The old independent polis gave way to vast monarchies and sprawling new cities. Foremost was Alexandria in Egypt, whose famous Library and Museum made it the intellectual capital of the world — the home of Euclid's geometry and of great advances in astronomy and medicine.

Philosophy and the schools

Philosophy flourished and turned increasingly to the conduct of life, as the Stoic, Epicurean, and Sceptic schools took their place beside Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum. Greek thought met the wisdom of Egypt and the East, a meeting that would later shape Middle Platonism and the religious philosophy of figures like Philo.

The coming of Rome

One by one the Hellenistic kingdoms fell to the rising power of Rome, until the last of them, Ptolemaic Egypt, was annexed after the battle of Actium in 31 BCE — the conventional end of the age, though Greek culture lived on under Roman rule.