Chapter 4: Expansion of Greece
Chapter Summary
One of the tragedies of Hellenic civilization is that the Greeks soon learned that the polis could not sustain a tolerable form of life. Even Socrates was aware of this: how could the Athenians create a polis based on virtue when no one could define what they meant by virtue in the first place? The psychological effect of this discovery on the Greeks was profound and gave way to despair and cynicism, and all this was compounded by the fact that between the 5th and 3rd centuries, the Hellenic polis gave way to the Hellenistic cosmopolis.
Of course, all this despair and cynicism was fashioned in an environment which also produced two of the most important philosophers in the western intellectual tradition: Plato, and his student, Aristotle. In his many dialogues, Plato tried to create a world above and beyond the world we perceive with our senses. This transcendent world is one we can know, but only if we have grasped the Idea of the Good. Aristotle, on the other hand, was a scientist who trusted his senses and believed in the objective reality of all things. Together, Plato and Aristotle fashioned two opposing views of human knowledge: rationalism and empiricism.
But not all was so philosophically peaceful. To the historical stage came Philip II of Macedon and his son, Alexander the Great. Under Alexander, the Greek work expanded as far west as the Indus River, before he died from fever at the age of thirty-three. Planting cities along the way, Alexander and his armies succeeded in Hellenizing the ancient Near East and Egypt, thus mixing Greek ideas and culture with those ideas of a much lengthier history. Again, the tendency seems to be toward internationalism, something we have noted in previous chapters. But there were psychological storms on the horizon.
The Greeks had lost something in the progress from polis to cosmopolis and what hey lost was fundamentally human, fundamentally Hellenic. A period of despair, cynicism and anxiety ensued and in this atmosphere of dejection came new philosophies to serve as therapies for those who felt lost in a world they thought the knew. The Stoics taught that there was a divine plan to the cosmos and that in order to find peace, man must submit to that order. Duty and self-discipline, then, were the highest Stoic virtues. The Epicureans taught there was no rational order and that the highest good was pleasure. These therapies were good for the citizens, the most literate of Hellenistic culture. But the broad masses, something else was needed and this something else came in the form of a number of mystery cults, the most important being Persian Mithraism, which had similarities with early Christianity.
We cannot underestimate the influence of the Hellenistic Greeks. Not only did they make startling discoveries in science, mathematics, geography, physics and medicine, they also showed us that despair and anxiety appear when traditional values break down. The Hellenistic Age is a transitional one between the Greeks and the Romans. Perhaps the most important legacy was Alexander the Great himself. What would Rome have become without his example?
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