Britannica History of Greece

6. From Alexander to the Roman Conquest (336–146 bc) —In the history of Greece proper during this period the interest is mainly constitutional. It may be called the age of federation. Federation, indeed, was no novelty in Greece. Federal unions had existed in Thessaly, in Boeotia and elsewhere, and the Boeotian league can be traced back at least to the 6th century. Two newly-founded federations, the Chalcidian and the Arcadian, play no inconsider­able part in the politics of the 4th century. But it is not till the 3rd century that federation attains to its full development in Greece, and becomes the normal type of polity. The two great leagues of this period are the Aetolian and the Achaean. Both had existed in the 4th century, but the latter, which had been dissolved shortly before the beginning of the 3rd century, becomes important only after its restoration in 280 b.c., about which date the former, too, first begins to attract notice. The interest of federalism lies in the fact that it marks an advance beyond the conception of the city‑state. It is an attempt to solve the problem which the Athenian empire failed to solve, the reconciliation of the claims of local autonomy with those of national union. The federal leagues of the 3rd century possess a further interest for the modern world, in that there can be traced in their constitutions a nearer approach to a representative system than is found elsewhere in Greek experience. A genuine representative system, it is true, was never developed in any Greek polity. What we find in the leagues is a sort of compromise between the principle of a primary assembly and the principle of a representative chamber. In both leagues the nominal sovereign was a primary assembly, in which every individual citizen had the right to vote. In both of them, however, the real power lay with a council . . . composed of members representative of each of the component states. The real interest of this period, however, is to be looked for elsewhere than in Greece itself. Alexander’s career is one of the turning‑points in history. He is one of the few to whom it has been given to modify the whole future of the human race. He originated two forces which have profoundly affected the development of civiliza­tion. He created Hellenism, and he created for the western world the monarchical ideal. Greece had produced personal rulers of ability, or even of genius; but to the greatest of these, to Peisistratus, to Dionysius, even to Jason of Pherae, there clung the fatal taint of illegitimacy. As yet no ruler had suc­ceeded in making the person of the monarch respectable. Alexander made it sacred. From him is derived, for the West, that “ divinity that doth hedge a king.” And in creating Hellenism he created, for the first time, a common type of civilization, with a common language, literature and art, as well as a common form of political organization. In Asia Minor he was content to reinforce the existing Hellenic elements (cf. the case of Side, Arrian, Anabasis, i. 26. 4). In the rest of the East his instrument of hellenization was the polis. He is said to have founded no less than seventy cities, destined to become centres of Greek influence; and the great majority of these were in lands in which city‑life was almost unknown. In this respect his example was emulated by his successors. The eastern provinces were soon lost, though Greek influences lingered on even in Bactria and across the Indus. It was only the regions lying to the west of the Euphrates that were effectively hellenized, and the permanence of this result was largely due to the policy of Rome. But after all deductions have been made, the great fact remains that for many centuries after Alexander’s death Greek was the language of literature and religion, of commerce and of administration throughout the Nearer East. Alexander had created a universal empire as well as a universal culture. His empire perished at his death, but its central idea survived—that of the municipal freedom of the Greek polis within the framework of an imperial system. Hellen­istic civilization may appear degenerate when compared with Hellenic; when compared with the civilizations which it super­seded in non‑Hellenic lands, it marks an unquestionable advance. (For the history of Greek civilization in the East, see HELLENISM.) Greece left her mark upon the civilization of the West as well as upon that of the East, but the process by which her influence was diffused was essentially different. In the East Hellenism came in the train of the conqueror, and Rome was content to build upon the foundations laid by Alexander. In the West Greek influences were diffused by the Roman conquest of Greece. It was through the ascendancy which Greek literature, philosophy and art acquired over the Roman mind that Greek culture penetrated to the nations of western Europe. The civilization of the East remained Greek. The civilization of the West became and remained Latin, but it was a Latin civilization that was saturated with Greek influences. The ultimate division, both of the empire and the church, into two halves, finds its explanation in this original difference of culture.