Hellenistic period

Exactissima totius ARCHIPELACHI nec non GRAECIAE TABULA in qua omnes subjacentes Regiones et Insulae distincte ostenduntur
The Hellenistic period covers the period of Mediterranean history between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire as signified by the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the subsequent conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt the following year. The Ancient Greek word Hellas (Ἑλλάς, Ellás) is the original word for Greece, from which the word "Hellenistic" was derived.


After Alexander the Great's invasion of the Persian Empire in 330 BC and its disintegration shortly after, the 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). The Hellenistic period was characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization which established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa. This resulted in the export of Greek culture and language to these new realms, spanning as far as modern-day India. 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. This mixture gave rise to a common Attic-based Greek dialect, known as Koine Greek, which became the lingua franca through the Hellenistic world.




This page was last edited on 18 June 2018, at 02:02 (UTC).
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_science under CC BY-SA license.

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