Chapter 12:

The New World of the

Hellenistic Period
(323-30 BC)
 Struggle for the Succession
 Alexander’s half-brother and his unborn child
 The Regency of Perdiccas
 Settling veterans & exiles
 Appointing Satraps (Governors)
 The Revolt in Greece
 The Death of Perdiccas
 The Primacy of Antigonus the One-Eyed
 Convinces other satraps to disband the Regency
 End of the Macedonian Argead dynasty
 The “Freedom” of the Greeks
 Other satraps declare war on Antigonus
 Various satraps declare themselves “kings”
 Birth Pangs of the New Order (301-
276)
 Empire officially divided
 Imperial stability amid continuing warfare
 Decline and Fall
 Seleucid Asia
 Ptolemaic Egypt
 Antigonid Macedonia
 The Polis in the Hellenistic World
 Greek “Leagues” of Poleis
 A new class of aristocracy
 Hellenistic Philosophy
 Stoics
 Natural law; a rational universe
 Epicureans
 Natural pleasure
 the senses
 ataraxia
 Cynics/Skeptics
 Nature vs culture
 Diogenes
 The Macedonian Kingdoms
 Absolute monarchies
 State monopolies
 Hellenistic Society
 New opportunities in a colonial world
 Growth of a (Greek) middle class
 Hellenistic Women
 Alexandria and Hellenistic Culture
Late Classical Art
Hellenistic
Visual
Art
Sleeping
satyr:
c. 200?,
7’
Dying Gaul and
Wife,
c. 220,
6’11”
Dying Gaul, c. 220, 3’
 Nike of
Samothrace:
180
8’ 1”
Eros and Psyche,
c. 150-100,
4’1”
Seated bronze
boxer,
c. 100-50
 Laocoön,
c. 150 BC or
c. AD 50,
7’ 10”
Hellenistic
veristic art
 Raphael's
Madonna and
Child
Bernini's David
Bernini, Ecstasy
of St. Theresa
Caricature
Grotesque
Orestes and
Electra
 ‘The
Knidia’, c.
350, 6’8”
Venus di Milo
Capitoline
Venus
Crouching
Aphrodite
Eros, Satyr and
Aphrodite
 Mausoleum
of
Halicarnassus
the Great Altar to Zeus
at Pergamon, c.175-150
 450’ x 8’
 Gigantomachy: 200 figures
 Scholarship and Science
 Technology and Applied science
 Antikythera Mechanism
 Social relations in the Hellenistic
World
 The Place of Non-Greeks
 How extensive was hellenization
 Who took the lead in Hellenizing?
 Hellenistic Religion
 Flexible, non-dogmatic
 Syncretism