B. HELLENISTIC JUDAISM

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HELLENISM\1/

The centuries going from the rule of Alexander the Great (336-323 B.C.) to that of Octavian Augustus (27 B.C.-A.D. 14) are commonly called the Hellenistic period. The culture of this period, since Droysen gave vogue to the term, is incorrectly called “Hellenism”2 (properly, classical Greek

1 The brilliant book of Paul Wendland, Die hellenistisc mische Kultur in ihrm Beziehungen zu Judentum und Christentum (Handbuch zum Neum Testament, Vol.  I, Part 11).  Tubingen, 1907; 2nd and 3rd ed., 1912, is still standard and should have been long since translated into English.  The following works me the best histories of Hellenism: J. C. Droysen, Geschichte des Helkninnus, 2 vols., Gotha, 1836, 1843; 2nd ed., 3 vols.  Gotha, 1877.  B. Niese, Geschichte des grech­ischen und makedonischen Staten seit der Schlacht bei Chaeronea (Handbucher der alten Geschichte), 3 vols.  Gotha, 1893-1903.  E. R. Bevan, The House of Seleucus.  London, 1902; A History of Egypt under the Ptolemaic Dynasty.  London, 1927.  A. Bouche-Leclercq, Histoire des Lagides, 2 vols.  Paris, 1903 and 1907; Histoire des Seleucides, Parts, 1913.  W. S. Ferguson, Hellenistic Athens.  London, 1911; Greek Imperialism.  London and New York, 1913.  F. Baumgarten, F. Poland, R. Wagner, Die hellenistich-romische Kultur.  Leipzig and Berlin 1913.  W. Schubart, Aegypten van Alexander dem grossen bis auf Mohammed.  Berlin, 1922.  U. von Wilamowitz­Moellendorf, Staat und Gesellschaft der Griechen, 2nd ed.  Leipzig and Berlin, 1923.  J. B. Bury (and others), The Hellenistic Age.  Cambridge, 1923.  W. Otto, Kultur­geschichte des Altertums.  Munich, 1925.  K. J. Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, Vol. 4, in two parts.  Berlin and Leipzig, 1925 and 1927.  E. Meyer, Blute und Niedergang des Hellenismus in Asien. Berlin, 1925.  P. Jouget, Limperalisme macedonien et I'helldnisation de l’Orient.  Paris, 1926 (English translation: Macedonian Imperialism.  London, 1928).  J. Kaerst, Geschichte des Hellenismus, 2nd ed.  Vol. 1, Leipzig, 1917; Vol ' 2, 1926.  Cambridge Ancient History, Vols.  VI and following.  Cambridge, 1927 ff. .W.          W.Tam, Hellenistic Ci@liwtion, 2nd ed.  London, 1930.  M. 1. Rostovtzeff, The Social and economic History of the Hellenistic  World. 3 vols. Oxford and New York, 1941. M. Cary and T.J. Haarrhoff, Life andThought in the Greek and Roman World. New York, 1942. C. A. Robinson, Alexander the Great. New York, 1947. W. W. Tarn. Alexamder the Great, 2 vols. Cambridge University Press, 1948. H. I. Bell, Egypt from the Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest. Oxford and New York, 1948. On Ptolemaic and Roman-Egypt see also the list in Ida A. Pratt, Ancient Egypt (1925-1941), pp. 132-137. The New York Public Library, 1942.

2The word "Hellenism" occurs in ancient literature (hellenim6s), meaning the correct use of the Greek language and, in II Macc. 4:13, the adoption of Greek manners (being a synonym of allophylism6s, the adoption of foreign customs).  Similarly, the verb hellenizein and the noun hellenistes, which originally referred to the use of the Greek language, came to mean the adoption of Greek culture; on "Hellenist" in Acts 6:1; 9:29, etc., see Jackson and Lake, Beginnings of Christianity, vol. 5, pp. 59-74.  For the connotations of "Hellenism,' in ancient and modem times, see R. Laquem, Hellenismus  Giessen, 1925.culture), thus avoiding the correct-but dreadful-word "Hellenisticism." in view of the fact that art, science, literature, and philosophy in the early centuries of the Roman Empire were essentially Hellenistic (even Rome's greatest creation, jurisprudence, did not escape Greek influence), we may be allowed in this chapter to call the culture from 300 B.C. to A.D. 200 "Hellenism."

1. Historical Sketch

Philip II, king of Macedon (356-336 B.C.), defeated the Greek states at Cbaeronea (338) and settled the perennial "Balkan Problem' by forcing them, with the exception of Sparta, to form a Hellenic League.  A year later he received from it the mandate to attack Persia.  Philip sent Parmenio to Asia Minor with an army in 336, but was assassinated in the same year.  His son Alexander the Great was then twenty years of age: faced by a general revolt, he destroyed Thebes and restored order (335). In 334 he crossed over to Asia with an army of 32,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry, supported by 160 ships. Through the victories-at the river Granicus (334) and at Issus (333), through the conquest of Tyre and Gaza (332), through the expedition into Egypt (332-331), and through the victory at Gaugarnela Dear Arbela (331), Alexander became the master of the Persian Empire.  Alexander's great plan was to unite the peoples of Greece and Asia into one nation having a common culture.  He symbolized this fusion through marriages of Macedonians with Persians.  In Bactria he married Roxana; upon his return from India he married Statira, the daughter of the last Persian king, Darius 111, and Parysatis, the youngest daughter of Artaxerxes III Ochus.  He induced eighty of his highest officers to marry Persian ladies; 10,000 of his men married native women and during this feast of "fraternization' (in the spring of 324) Alexander paid all the debts of his men, at a cost of almost 10,000 talents (about fifteen million dollars).

When Alexander died in 323, his empire fell apart.  After the battle of Ipsus (301), Ptolemy I added Coele-Syria to Egypt, Seleucus I received Syria in addition to Mesopotamia, Asia Minor was divided between Lysimacbus and Pleistarcbus, and Cassander retained control of Macedon.

The conquests of Alexander and the rule of his successors are less significant politically than culturally in the history of Egypt and Western Asia.  The transition from the Persian to the Macedonian rule did not affect the life of populations long used to foreign rule; some of the Persian satraps were even left in office by Alexander until he found it expedient to substitute Macedonian ones.  But the Macedonians (notably their upper classes, who had been Hellenized) and the Greeks felt themselves charged with the diffusion of Greek civilization3, which even their military success per se confirmed as superior.  Alexander, who bad been a pupil of Aristotle (384-322), attached to his general staff Greek scholars and scientists, mostly trained by Aristotle: geographers, called Bematists or surveyors (Baeton, Diogenes, Amyntas), Whose observations were utilized by Dicaearchus; botanists, notably Theophrastus, whose geography and physiology of plants laid the foundations of scientific botany; historians, both professional (Callisthenes) and amateur (Nearchus described his sea voyage from India; Androsthenes reported his exploration of the Persian Gulf; Ptolemy and Aristobulus reported military campaigns); etbriographers, zoologists, mineralogists, bydrographers, and others.  Un­fortunately this mass of important scientific material, with the exception of the botanical works of Theophrastus, has been lost, althougb much of it was preserved indirectly and partially in the works of later Hellenistic and Roman scientists.

It is primarily in the scientific field that the Greeks surpassed all other ancient nations.  Egypt, Babylonia, and, at a much later date, China had in very early times reacbed a relatively high level of civilization, but, owing perhaps to the brilliance of the initial achievement, they soon became fixed and crystallized, never fulfilling their early promises: the Egyptian art of 2800 B.C. is superior to that of 280 B.c. Their achievements are primarily in the field of plastic arts, practical devices, and measures contributing to human comfort.  But in the intellectual field there is little to be said: no great literature (aside from Israel and India) was pro­duced in ancient Egypt and Asia; their science remained practical; philosophy (i.e., the feeling that there is a problem of the universe) is unknown outside of India; mathematics as a science of abstract intangibles was inaugurated by the Greeks.

It was thus inevitable that the civilization of Greece should make a great impression on all peoples reached by the armies of Alexander.  The Greeks had of course long been aware of their superior culture,4 and cailed those who did not speak Greek "barbarians" (literally "babblers, stammerers"): they regarded it as their mission to spread their civiliza­tion and regarded language as a primary factor in culture-both entirely new notions.  Nevertheless, they found much to admire in Egypt and in the Near East, particularly the great works of art and the mysterious

3 In modem times this education of the "natives" is quaintly called "the white man's burden," although it usually proves to be quite lucrative.  The Bantu in equs­torial and Southern Africa say, "At first we had the land and the white man had-the Bible.  Now we have the Bible and the white man has the land."

4 As early as 380 B.c., Isocrates could say that as a result of the spread of Athenian culture, "the name 'Hellene' now no longer means racial origin, but Indicates spiritual character, mentality; and those called 'Hellenes' are not so much blood relations as those who partake of our education" (Panegyric 50). wisdom of the East (notably in India), which has always fascinated the West (especially when it was idealized and misunderstood). Strangely, however, no Greek scholar ever learned to read hieroglyphs and cunei­forms.

On the other hand, it was inevitable that the peoples of Egypt and Western Asia-notably the upper classes-sbould be impressed by Greek culture, especially when civilian Greeks, following the annies, settled in their midst.  Accordingly, many of the Orientals hastened to talk broken Greek, wear Greek attire (Greek bats, worn by the noblest young Jews in Jerusalem, scandalized the orthodox; see 11 Macc. 4:12), take part in Greek sports, erect gymnasia, baths, and theaters, being fascinated by Greek customs and fashions and eager for Greek luxuries.  These imitators of the Greeks became known as "Hellenists," from the verb hellemizien, which Plato used in the sense of "to speak good Greek," but which came to mean "to imitate the ways of the Greeks" (cf. above, note 2).  Thus Hellenism spread from Cyrene to the Indus and the Caspian, most con­spicuously in the kingdom of the Seleucids; and in the West it conquered Rome.  The chief agent for the Hellenization of these far-reaching countries was the Greek city.  The flourishing Greek centers of commerce and culture founded by Alexander and his successors became the standard-bearers of the new civilizations According to Plutarch (De Alexandri Magni foltuna 1, 5), Alexander founded more than seventy cities-a figure which may not be far from the mark.  The most important and famous among them is of course Alexandria in Egypt; Samaria was destroyed by Perdiccas and rebuilt as a Greek city.  The greatest of all builders of cities are, however, Seleucus I Nicator (305-280) and Antiochus I Soter (280-261), whose new towns are scattered through Syria (Antioch), Mesopotamia (Edessa; Dura-Europos; Seleucia, the greatest city of the time, which soon eclipsed ancient Babylon), Cilicia, Caria, Lydia, Phrygia, Media, and Iran.  These centers of Greek life proved to be at the same time the strength and the weakness of Hel­lenism in Asia.  The greatest among them-capitals of kingdoms such as Alexandria, Pergamum, Antioch, Seleucia-attracted the best minds, not only for government service but also for the development of the arts and sciences, and thus became centers of learning to which pupils flocked and from which they eventually spread Greek culture elsewhere.  But, as a result of these conditions, Hellenism prevailed only in the cities and chiefly among the upper classes of the native populations.  The country­side, where rural folk retained their old languages and customs, was scarcely affected by Hellenism.

5 On the cities founded by Alexander and his successors see K. J. Beloch, Geschichte, 2nd ed., Vol. 4, Pt. 1, pp. 251-262.  Some of these new Hellenistic cities are mentioned in the New Testament. An observer in 200 B.C. would never have doubted the permanence of Hellenism in Western Asia; but a century later the signs of its decay were obvious: it was on the defensive against the Oriental reaction.  The rejec­tion of Hellenism in Judea through the victories of Judas Maccabeus was the dramatic forerunner of a general trend which eventually wiped out all traces of Greek culture in Western Asia and Egypt-aside from some archaeological ruins.  Like the Philistines before and the Crusaders later, the Macedonians were eventually absorbed in Western Asia, following a striking initial success.  Livy (38, 17) already observed this assimilation with the natives when he wrote: "The Macedonians who have colonies at Alexandria in Egypt, at Selencia and Babylon, and at other places scattered over the world, have degenerated into Syrians, Parthians, and Egyptians.”

While the Romanization of the West was thorough and bequeathed to modern times the languages derived from vulgar Latin (the Romance languages still spoken in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Rumania, and parts of Switzerland) and the solid unity of the Roman Church before the Reformation, the Hellenization of the Near East was only superficial: the Greek language, spoken chiefly in the cities, did not survive the triumph of the old languages (Aramaic or Syriac, Persian, the languages of Asia Minor, Coptic) and later of Arabic; and the Greek Church could not prevent the rise of national churches using Coptic, Ethiopic, Syriac, Armenian, and Georgian in their liturgies-not to speak of the growth of Zoroastrianism and the irresistible spread of Islam.  The decline of the Seleucid dynasty, which began with Antiocbus IV Epiphanes (175-163), the rise of the Parthian Empire (founded by Mithridates I [171-138]), and the Roman conquests (following the victory over Antiocbus III the Great at Magnesia in 190 B.c.) mark the beginning of Hellenism's decadence: when the Romans burned Seleucia to the ground in A.D. 164, they extinguished the torch of Greek culture cast of the Euphrates.  After the rise of Christianity, only the study of Greek philosophy, especially the works of Plato and (notably in the Syriac Church and in Islam) Aristotle, as also some elements of Hellenistic art, survived the end of Hellenism in the Near East.

2. General Charact

It remains now to characterize the Hellenistic culture, the vicissitudes of which have been briefly sketched.  The far-reaching changes in the civilization of Greece resulting from the policies of Philip and the con­quests of Alexander may be roughly compared to those brought about in Germany by Bismarck, when in 1870, after the victory over France, he founded the German Empire.  The culture that was the product of the
 
 
 
 

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abiding creations of the genius of Kant, Goethe, Beethoven, and others, came to an end with the final convulsion marked by the works of Nietzsche and Wagner.  After 1870 the mental energy of Germany was directed mainly to research in the realm of the physical and natural sciences, as also in philology-if not to industrial production and prepara­tion for war.

The Greek classical culture, Teaching its apex at Athens in the age of Pericles, has no rivals.  The originality, depth of thought, and perfection of the works of Phidias, Plato, Sophocles, and others are unsurpassed to the present day.  It would seem that such genius could best flourish within the confines of a city-state (like Weimar, Florence, Venice), being greatly diluted in an empire.  Yet it is only such dilution that makes the highest cultures accessible to the masses: thus they become factors in mankidd's progress, which is accordingly nil in the realm of the spirit. just as the gospel of Jesus had to be transplanted by Paul into the great centers of the Roman world before it became one of the pillars of modern civilization, so the spread of Greek culture through the con­quests of Alexander made of Hellenism the other pillar of our civilization.  Both the gospel and Hellenism passed through Rome before reaching us, losing thereby the sublime purity and beauty of their beginnings but, by being popularized (or, as they would now say in Europe, "American­ized") almost beyond recognition and made to serve practical purposes in daily life, they gained universal acceptance and produced our modem civilization.

The immediate effect of the end of the polis, the independent Greek city-state, and the rise of great kingdoms and empires through the con­quests of Alexander was paradoxically to give to human life both a cos­mopolitan and an individualistic aspect.

Even though, as has been noted, Hellenism did not take root in the Near East as deeply as Romanism in the West, the conquests of Alexander did contribute to the education of the "barbarians," to the spread of the Greek language (in the form called koin,6 Ididlektos], or common [speech]), and thus, to some extent, to the obliteration of the distinction between Greek and "barbarians ' " inasmuch as they attained the same cultural level (cf.  Aristotle's remark in 348, reported by josephus, Against Apion I:22, §§176-182).  Besides this creation of a common culture and language over a wide area, Alexander's empire tended to break down more and more the separate nationalities of Western Asia, which had begun to be amalgamated by the Persian Empire.  Although the process was by no means completed, and eventually the Jews and the Persians, in strong nationalistic reactions, affirmed their cultural and political separateness, the trend to break down the barriers of nationality, social rank, religion, and culture is unmistakable.  The creation of a world
 
 
 
 

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empire per se pointed in the direction of a new conception which in theory bad been partially developed before Alexander, the oikoumene (the inhabited earth), the unity of the human race (genus humanum, Cicero, De finibus 111, 67), humanity or "One World" (Wendell Wfllkie), in which there is "neither Greek nor Jew ... barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free" (Col. 3:11), in which, as Cicero said (De finibus III, 63) referring to Cbrysippus, a man on account of the mere fact that be is a man will not appear to be an alien in the presence of another man.  In this period the Stoics had some vague notion of "the parliament of man, the federation of the world" (Tennyson), for they conceived a uniform law applied to all men and according to which, as if according to a common light, all are ruled (Plutarch, De Alexandii Magni fortune 1, 8).  So, at least in principle, the nationalism of the polis and of the small kingdom tended to be absorbed in the universalism of the world empires How the barrier between Greeks and "barbarians" tended to be obliterated may be seen in the following contrast: Aristotle (fragment 658, edit.  Rose) advised Alexander to practice "hegemony" (leadership) with the Greeks but "despotism- with the barbarians, caring, for the first as for friends and relatives, but utilizing the latter like plants or animals.  A century later, however, Eratosthenes (in Strabo 1, pp. 66-67; cf.  Cicero, De republics I, 58), rejecting this division into masters and servants, taught that one should judge and distinguish men according to virtue and wickedness alone-a classification unrelated to the distinction of races.
 
 

This notion of mankind as a whole and the establishment of a world empire naturally implied, for Alexander, a common culture for aU men­a culture basically Hellenic but enriched vath Oriental contributions.  As in the case of paint, the vaster the surface over which a culture is spread, the thinner the veneer will be.  Leveling is always downward, to the standards of the masses.  A general, average, Hellenistic culture was thus developed; national differences tended to disappear; Greek dialects were losing their identities in the koine-the common international speech chiefly based on Attic, in which the Septuagint and the New Testament were written; local juristic practices and principles tended to be merged into laws for all nations; education, morals, commerce and industry, and even religion were losing some of their parochial charac­teristics and coalesced into average forms; and the noblest creation of the age, Stoic philosophy, taught that the world was one and the individual (whatever his race and rank)-was supreme-tbus giving
 
 

6 "If what philosophers say of the kinship of God and men be true, what remains for men to do but as Socrates did: never, when asked one's country to answer, 'I m an Athenian or a Corinthian,' but 'I am a citizen of the world'“(Epictetus,Discourses I: 9,1).
 
 
 
 

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philosophical expression to the new cosmopolitan and individualistic spirit.  As U. von Wilamowitz-Moeflendorff aptly said, "The Stoa sets out solely from the single person and culminates in the wise man for whom individualization is essential.  This is diametrically the opposite of the old Hellenic principle which sets out from the community: the ideal conception of Plato is a community, that of Zeno is an individual."

The rise of individualism runs parallel to that of internationalism.  Diogenes calls himself kosmopolites (world citizen): the whole world becomes the fatherland of the sage,7 who would have approved John Wesley's dictum: "The world is my parish." On the contrary, in the Greek polis of earlier days patriotism was purely local and the interests of the city-state were supreme.  The citizen devoted the best of his thought and energy to the conduct of public affairs, his life unfolded within his commonwealth's limits, outside of which he was an alien merely tolerated and without a voice in the administration of the state.  As a public servant responsible for the welfare of his city, which depended to a great extent on the decisions reached by the assembly, the citizen left his private affairs largely in the hands of the women and the slaves of his family (like the fortunate husband in Prov. 31:10-31).  With the decadence of the polis even before the time of Alexander- due in part to its inability to administer a vast territory, to the rise of political parties more concerned with selfish interests than with the public welfare, and to the bitter strife between Greek cities-and with its final absorption within the kingdom of Philip, the empire of Alexander, and at last within the Roman Empire, participation in the government was precluded to all but a few citizens.  The result was a greater concern with private affairs, a greater interest in the home-which gave to womanhood a new importance and dignity-a desire for a successful professional or business career far from the native town, in one of the metropolitan centers of culture or at court, if not in the Hellenistic cities of Asia, which was then the America of the Greeks.  The social instinct now found expression in labor unions or craftsmen's guilds, religious and charitable associations, clubs.  Individualism and realism are characteristic of Hellenistic art; it excelled in portraits which are true to life.
 

A good index of this trend from public to private affairs is the Athenian comedy.  Aristophanes (d. ca. 380 B.C.) satirized on the stage public figures and political movements which displeased his conservative atti­tude.  A century later Menander (@-291 B.C.) was instead the precursor of Moliere in presenting wittily or commiseratingly human foibles and domestic troubles, and in depicting standard types of persons such as the misanthrope, the libertine, the rniser, the coquette.  Menander's con­temporary, the botanist Theophrastus (d. ca. 287), in his characters
 
 

7 Cf. Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, Vol. 4, Pt.  I, p. 404.
 
 
 
 

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sketched such types as the flatterer, the grumbler, etc.; cf.  C. N. Green­ough and J. M. French, A Bibliography of the Theophrastan Character in English.  Harvard University Press, 1947.
 
 

The great political upheavals of the times brought to the fore great personalities of leaders, men of iron will, definite purpose, prompt decision, utter ruthlessness, dazzling daring.  Such men were the first two Ptolemies, Seleucus I, Antioebus 111, Cassander, Antigonus Cyclops, Demetrius Poliorcetes, Herod the Great, and others.  By their side, or alone, are the women who, through intrigue, crime, flirtation, and keen­ness of mind, gain immense political influence or power: Berenice, Cleopatra the Great, some Seleucid queens, Herodias, and others.  While the masses worship the emperor and call him soter (savior), men of letters are devoting themselves to a new genre, biography (the books on Alexander; Nicholas of Damascus, whose biography of Herod was abundantly excerpted by josephus; Plutarch).  In its manifold variety and emotional complexity, in the contrasts between pomp and simplicity, sentimentalism and selfishness, puritanism and licentiousness, romanticism and realism, education and propaganda, science and superstition, Hellen­istic life is strangely modern, we almost could say "American- even though the world was then empty of machines and full of slaves.8 This new cosmopolitan and individualistic mentality permeated liter­ature, science, philosophy, and religion; thus it radically modified them and laid the foundation of Roman culture, from which our own has eventually descended.9
 
 
 
 

3.. Hellenistic Literature
 
 

The decline of the classical literature of the age of Pericles had begun before Alexander.  A new spirit which was to prevail in Hellenism, is
 
 

8 Cf.  U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, in Die Griechische und Lateinische Litffatur and Sprache (Kultur der Gegenwart, Part 1, Division VIII), pp. 92 f. Berlin and Leipzig 1905.  P. Wendland, Hellenistisch-romische Kultur, pp. 19-24.  W. W. Tam, Hellenistic Civilization, pp. 3 f.
 
 

9 Cosmopolitan and individualistic tendencies prevail likewise in public administra­tion, social and economic matters, painting and sculpture-subjects which lie outside the scope of the present summary; see for them the works cited at the beginning of this chapter.
 
 

10 In addition to the general works cited at the beginning of this chapter, see the brilliant summary of U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in Die Griechische und Lateinische Literatur und Sprache (Kultur der Gegenwart 1, viii), pp. 81-197 (for Latin literature see F. Leo, ibid., pp. 316-373).  For details, see: F. Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischm Litteratur in der Alexandrineneit, 2 vols.  Leipzig, 1891, 1892.  W. von Christ, Geschichte der Griechischen Literatur, Vol. 2, 6th ed. by W. Schmid and 0. Stahlin (I. van MiiHer's Handbuch der klassischen Altertlirnswis­senschaft VII, if, 1).  Miinchen, 1920.  See also M. Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, Vol. 3, P. 1593, n. 30.  Oxford, 1941.
 
 
 
 

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apparent in Euripides (d. ca.407), in contrast with Aeschylus (d. 456) and Sophocles (d. 406 at the age of ninety); and in Aristotle (d. 322), in contrast with Plato (d. 347).  Euripides begins to bring drama down to earth, to the level of everyday problems and emotions.  In his accurate character drawing, psychological analysis of passion, sense for dramatic conflict in human life, concern with stage effects and audience reaction, Euripides is a precursor not only of the Hellenistic theater, but of the modem one as well-Dotably in making of love the chief topic in some of his plays.  Aristotle, on the other hand, inaugurated a new era by for­saking the brilliant metaphysical and abstract speculations of Plato for research in the humanities and the natural sciences.  Aristotles own classroom lecture notes (hypomnemata) were jotted down with little attention to literary form and were later worked over by him and by his pupils into books for publication, which, being intended chiefly as manuals for information, lacked rhetorical art.  And yet, as in the case of some modern functional constructions (like suspension bridges), such writings stressing content rather than form have an artistic appeal of their own.  In fact such learned works are probably the best products of Hellenistic literature, in which the finest writings are seldom within the realm of belles-lettres.

The rationalism of Aristotle, which had been foreshadowed by the Sophists, and the realism of Euripides eventually had a corrosive effect on Athenian classical poetry, as on Platonic mysticism.  The latter, in various admixtures with Orphism and Oriental religions, sank to the level of the credulous masses until it was rescued for philosophy by Posidonius.  Poetry had been nourished since Homer by religion and mythology: now traditional religion is in flux, and myths have become fairy tales for children (unless they be interpreted allegorically as vehicles of the deep­est truths).  This agnostic attitude, together with the humanization of mythical beings in Euripides, robbed ancient myths of their romantic halo and thus dried up the types of poetry nourished by mythical lore: epics, tragedies, and hymns were no longer inspired by faith, their breath of life, and thus became artificial, mere empty shells, skillfully adorned whitened sepulchers.  The Alexandrian poetry that had a spark of life found its inspiration outside of mythology in the actual world of men and nature.

The Cretan Rhianus (ca. 260 i3.c.), author of a Heraclaeid and of local sagas in verse (notably on the second Messenian war), Antagoras of Rhodes (about 300-260), and particular Apollonius of Rhodes (ca. 270 B.c.), author of the Argmwutica, wrote epics in Homeric style, but modernized in the manner of novels by means of love interest, adven­tures, and details drawn from life.  But Callimachus had probably such long epics in mind when be said that "a big book is a big evil." Vergil of
 
 
 
 

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Mantua (70-19 B.C.), the great author of the Aeneid, is the only successor of Homer worthy of lasting remembrance.
 
 

In the third century the seven authors known as the Pleiad (a name revived by Pierre de Ronsard [d. 15851 in La Pleiade), strove to revive classical tragedy but failed dismally, although they found imitators among Alexandrian Jews.  A monologue-drama, written by Lycophron, the Alexandra (dealing with Cassandra), and a few fragments are all that survives from the Pleiad.

Other poetic genres showed more vitality-in spite of the fact that their verses proceeded from the pens of erudite scholars and were in­tended for the intelligentsia.  The elegy, which later flourished in Roman literature, was revived in the Hellenistic period by Philetas of Cos (d. ca. 280), Hermesianax (ca. 290), Euphorion (ca. 230), and others.  Asclepiades of Samos (ca. 290), composed songs and erotic epigrams: his topics ranged from 'wine, women, and song" to the sadness of man's lot.  In his day, his imitators were Hedylus of Athens and Poseidippus of Alexandria.  Leonidas of Tarentum (ca. 280) composed more elaborate epigrams, which influenced Phoenician and Syrian poets of the period 130-60 D.C.: Meleager and Philodemus of Cadara in Transjordania (whose erotic epigrams have been compared to the Song of Songs), and Antipatros of Sidon.11
 
 

The two masters of Hellenistic poetry are Theocritus of Syracuse (ca. 280-260) and Callirnachus of Cyrene (ca. 280-245), the first more in­spired as a poet, the second more celebrated (Quintilian calls him elegiae princess) and a far greater scholar.  Theocritus, the greatest of bucolic poets, composed graceful-if sophisticated-idyls (imitated, but not surpassed, by Vergil in his Eclogues), in which the descriptions of nature's charms and of rustic festivals make us forget that the shepherds of Theocritus are really cultivated gentlemen wearing a rustic disguise.  Callimaebus composed hvmns, epigrams, and notably elegies and idyls (like his Hekale); his chief work (Aitia) is a collection of ancient local
 
 

11 The Greek Anthropology( Anthologia Palatina), preserved in a single mauscriptof the Palatine Library in Heidelberg (11th cent.), is the fullest collection of Greek epigrams and other brief poems. It is based on the collection of Constantine Kephalas, made at the end of the 9th century. Its 15 books contain about 4,500 brief poems. The standard text is that of H. Stadmuller in the Teubner edition Library (the Greek Anthropolgy). Another source of our knowledge of the Hellenistic literature is the mass of classical papyri discovered in the sands of Egypt; see for general orientation, C. H. Roberts, “The Greel Papyri” in the Legacy of Egypt (ed. by S.R.K. Glanville), pp. 249-282. Oxford, 1942; K. Preisendanz, Papyrusfunde und Papyrusforschung. Leipzig, 1933. Lists of literary texts have been prepared by C.H. Oldfather (The Greek Literary Texts from Graeco-Roman Egypt. Madison, Wis., 1923), and H.J. M. Milne (Catalogue of the Literary Papyri in the British Museum. London, 1927). Latest edition of texts: D.L. Page, Greek Literary Papyri, Vol. 1, Loeb Clasical Library, 1942.
 
 
 
 

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legends relating the origin of customs and the founding of Greek cities.  Ovid (d. ca. A.D. 17), his greatest successor, recognized that his poetic technique surpassed his inspiration (ingenia non valet, arte valet).
 

Hellenistic poetry displays not only great erudition, as in Callimachus, but also scientific knowledge.  The best known astronomical poem is the Phain6mena of Aratus of Soli in Cil. cia (d. eq. 245).  Paul probably quoted the verse "M him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28) from its initial invocation to Zeus.  The poem describes the con­stellations and has an appendix on the signs of the weather (cf.  Matt. 16:2f.), leaving open the question whether the stars make the weather or merely point it out in advance.  Aratus, however, committed some errors due to misunderstanding.  Nicander of Colophon was similarly criticized by Cicero with respect to the lack of agricultural knowledge in his Georgics (imitated by Vergil, according to Quintilian).  Two other of his technical poems (Theriaca and Alexipharmaca) deal with anti­dotes against poisoning through animals and through foods, respectively; they are based on the treatises of Apollodorus and, in spite of their in­fluence on far better Latin poets, they are quite pedantic.
 

Folk literature flourished by the side of this sophisticated, erudite, and rhetorical poetry: little of it, except the new comedy (Meander, 341­291 B.C.), was spontaneous and natural.  On a lower level than the Attic new comedy, the comic burlesques of tragedy (phlyakes), presented by grotesquely costumed actors, sent southern Italian and Sicilian audiences into peals of laughter.  Through the medium of the Campanian Atellanae -ribald farces transplanted to Rome after 210 B.c.-they have survived, in a fashion, to the present day in the Italian Puncb-and-judy shows; the Neapolitan Pulcinella is a remote and refined descendant of a rude Syracusan clown.  The spoken mime (as distinguished from the sung mime of the Ionians in the East) likewise originated in the West and is a burlesque of the Attic comedy, depicting in caricature scenes from daily life-notably low life.  The plot was usually merely sketched and the actors improvised freely.  Theocritus12 and Herodas (ca. 240) com­posed such genre sketches in verse.
 

 [extra space]

Apart from scientific, scholarly, and philosophical works, the prose literature of the Hellenistic period comprises primarily history and fiction, which are not always sharply separated, for historical works (since Herodotus) included legends and fanciful tales, while novels were some­times built around historical characters.  Jewish literature of this period, both Palestinian and Alexandrian, displays the same disregard of a sharp demarcation between fact and fancy.  Honestly historical are the books
 
 

12 The three mimes of Theocritus are: The Sorceresses (Idyl II), The Loves of

Cynisca (Idyl XIV), and The Syracusan Women at the Festival of Adonis (Idyl XV).
 
 
 
 

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 [[105]]
 
 

of Ptolemy I on Alexander and the naval report of Nearchus on the voyage down the Indus and to the Persian dulf; Aristobulus of Cas­sandreia is more fanciful: all three are preserved in part by Arrian of Nicomedia (second century of our era), our main extant source on Alexander.  Less reliable histories of Alexander are those of Clitarchus (about 300 B.c.), whose imaginative account became the most popular and was still enjoyed by Cicero; it is probablv the main source of Diodorus Siculus (book 17), of Callisthenes (ca. 330 B.c.), and of Hegesis (ca. 250), together with the rather trivial and fictitious stories of Onesicritus (a pilot of Nearchus), Chares (a chamberlain), and Ephippus.  Historians of the time generally assumed that their task was not merely the exact description of past events, but rather the education and enjoyment of the reader.  The purpose of the Epitomist, to whom we owe II Maccabees, as of other bistori . ans, was to write so 'that they that read may have delight, and that they that are desirous to commit to memory might have ease, and that all into whose hands it comes might have profit" (11 Mace. 2:25).  Consequently, they stressed drama more than truth, eloquence and moralizing more than facts, propaganda more than objectivity, and rhetorical elegance more than unadorned his­toricity.  The same epitomator, in his defense of rhetorical style, com­pared himself not to the builder of a house but to its interior decorator (2:29).  Such writing for effect (illustrated in its extreme form by this epitomator) dictated the selection of the materials: stories with a moral, tragic events, examples of steadfastness in misfortune, miraculous de­liverances, deeply moving pathetic scenes, as when the butler of Darius wept seeing Alexander use his master's table as a footstool (Diodorus 17:66, 4), characterizations, moral verdicts on important persons, de­tailed descriptions of battles or of scenery were much liked.  Although rhetorical devices are not wholly avoided by Polyhius (ca. 200-120 B.c.), the forty books of his Histories (of which books 1-5 and long fragments of others are extant), dealing with Roman expansion from 266 to the destruction of Carthage in 146, 13 are not merely the sole important remnant of Hellenistic historiography but its masterpiece: among Greek historians Polybius is second only to Tbucydides.

Apart from the life of Alexander and the history of Roman conquests, Hellenistic historians disclosed a keen interest in the history of Oriental nations:14 the Jews (I Maccabees in Greek, Jason of Cyrene and II
 
 

13The Histories of Polvbius were continued by Posidonius of Apamea (or Of Rhodes, 135-51 B.C.) who was far better as a Stoic philosopher than as a hisiorian.
 
 

14 The fragmentary surviving texts of these historians are edited with a Latin translation in C. and T. Muller, Fragmenta historicorum graecorum, Vols. 1-4. Paris Didot, 1885.  The following work is similar in  scope: F. jacoby, Die Fragmente der Griechischm Historiker. 7 vols., Berlin, 1923-1930 (not vet corn lete).  On the indi­vidual authors see also C. Wachsmuth, Einleitung in (6 stuyium dff Altm Geschichte.  Leipzig, 1895.  The fragments of minor Hellenistic-Jewish historians are published, in addition to Mijller's Fragmenta, in W. N. Stearns, Fragments from Graeco-Je"sh Writers.  Chicago, 1908.  References to Jewish history in Creek and Roman authors are collected in Th.  Reinacb, Textes crautmrs Grecs et Remains relatifs au Judaime.  Paris, 1895.
 
 
 
 

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Maccabees, Flavius josephus), the Egyptians (Hecataeus of Abdera, ca. 290 B.c.; Manetho, ca. 270 B.C.; Plutarch's On Isis and Osiris, ca. A.D. 100), the Babylonians and Assyrians (Berossus, ca. 280; the famous cbrono­logical canon of reigns by Claudius Ptolemy, second century of our era; Abydenus, early in our era), the Pboenicians (Menander, second century B.C.; Dios; Pbilostratus; in the first century of our era Philo Byblius, translated the Pboonician myfliology of Sanchuniathon); the Indians (Megasthenes).

Out of such national histories were the universal histories compfled.  The most important for us is the Historical Library (BibliotukO historike') of Diodorus Siculus (ca. 25 B.c.). Only books 1-5 (mythic beginnings) and 11-20 (480-302 B.C.), of the forty books of Diodorus, bave survived more or less intact, but abundant fragments of the rest (notably those from the last ten books, preserved by Pbotius) are known.  His method is annalistic.  Tbe first part describes the mytbical history of non-Hellenic nations (1-3) and of the Greeks (4-6); the second deals with the bistory from the fall of Troy to the death of Alexander the Great (7-17); and the third part comes down to Caesar's Gallic war in 60 B.C. (18-40).  The work is merely a vast collection of extracts strung on a thin thread of original narrative, but it is invaluable for us, baving preserved fragments of earlier historians wbich otherwise would be lost; thus it bridges the gap between Xenophon and Polybius.

Much larger is the work in 144 volumes entitled Histories, written by Nicbolas of Damascus, the confidential secretary of Herod the Great (37-4 B.C.), in ten years (ca. 15-6 B.c.). Fragments of the first seven books (coming down to Cyrus) are preserved.  Nicbolas is the main source of josepbus for the biography of Herod in books 15-17 of the Antiquities, and his sole source in War 1, 18-33.  Nicbolas had written a detailed biography of Herod (Josephus, Antiquities 16:7, 1), but we do not know whether it was the final part of his Histori--s or a separate work.15
 

The third universal bistory was written in Latin, tbough based on Greek sources, by the Gaul Pompeius Trogus in the latter part of the reign of Augustus.(31 B.C.-A.D. 14) and was entitled Philippic Histories.  We bave only an ecbo of it in the miserable epitome prepared by junianus justinus in the second or third century-a wretched opus which enjoyed great popularity among the Cburch Fathers.  The Prologi (or table of contents) give us a better idea of the scope of the original work.
 
 
 

15 Cf - H. St. John Thackeray, fosephus: The Man and the Historian, pp. 40 f., 65-67.  New York, 1926.
 
 
 
 

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The title is taken from the Philippica of Theopompus (a Macedonian history).  Books 1-6 deal with the Near East to the Persian Wars; books 7-12 with Macedonian history (7-9 to the death of Philip, 10-12 to the death of Alexander); books 12-40 come down to Augustus; two appen­dixes close the work: books 41-42 deal with the Pardiians, and books 42-44 with the founding of Rome, and with the Gauls and Iberians.  One of the main sources of Trogus seems to have been the book On King& by his earlier contemporary Timagenes.

The best known world chronicles (Chronographiai) are those of Eratosthenes of Cyrene (ca. 230-200 B.C.), ApoUodorus of Athens (ca. 150-100 B.C.), and Sosibius Lakon (second century B.C.?), Castor of ]Rhodes (ca. 50 B.C.), Dionysius of Halicarnassus (d. ca. 7 B.C.), Thallus (middle of the first century of our era?),16 and others down to the Christian chronographers Sextus Julius Africanus (ca. 225) and Eusebius of Caesarea (d. ca. 340), whose world chronicles were utilized by their ByzaDtine successors.17

Biographies and autobiographies are characteristic of the Hellenistic age.  The earliest autobiography (or "confessions") known is the "apology' of Hattushil III, king of the Hittites (ca. 1281-1260 B.C.), if we disregard the self-laudatory grave inscriptions of the Egyptian monarchs of the Middle Kingdom in the first half of the second millennium B.C. Nehe­miah's memoirs, contained in his book, are something unique in the fifth century B.C. In the Hellenistic period Pyrrhus, I'tolemy VII Euergetes 11, and Aratos of Sykion (271-213), wrote their autobiographies.  In the Roman period such memoirs were written in Greek (Nicholas of Damas­cus, Flavius josephus) and in Latin (Scaurus and Sulla; cf. the Corn­mentarii of Julius Caesar).  Collections of biographies begin with Clear­chus of Soli (ca. 300), Antigonus of Carystus (d. ca. 220 B.C.), who wrote on the Athenian philosophers of the third century B.C., and with Satyrus of Alexandria (ca. 220), a biographer of statesmen, poets, and philos­ophers.  Out of the mass of uncritical and semifictional biographies written in Alexandria, Plutarch of Chaeronea (d. ca. A.D. 120) drew the material for his famous Parallel Lives, and Diogenes La6rtius (third century of our era) for his Lives of Philosophers.  Both works are indispensable historical sources in spite of their fusion of fact and fancy.
 

There is accordingly no hard and fast demarcation between these historical and biographical writings and fiction-particularly historical fiction, such as the Cryopaedia, (education of Cyrus) by Xenophon.  And
 
 

16 Horace A. I g, Tr, ("Thallus: The Samaritan?" [HTR 34 (1941) 111-1191), has shown that there is no valid evidence proving that Thallus was a Samaritan.
 
 

17 See the standard work of H. Gelzer, Sextus Julim Afrkanus and die bywnt. Chrmographie.  Vol.  I (on the chronography of Africanw), Leipzig, 1880; Vol. 2 (on his followers), Leipzig, 1885.
 
 
 
 

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who can tell whether one of the numerous Lives of Alexander is romanticized history or historical fiction?  As a matter of fact Alexander became the hero of one of the most widespread sagas ever written: the folk tale, like the hero, conquered the world!  The innumerable forms of the Alexander sagas in Latin, Greek, French, English, German, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Flemish, and Czech literatures down to Boccaccio's Decameron, ultimately go back to the story written by andria in the second century Greek and its Byzantine re­inspired the varied and inter­end of the third century A.D.; Historia de Proeliis, tenth century), Armenian,(seventh century), Pah­lavi (Persian, ca. sixth century), Syriac (translated from the Pahlavi, seventh century), Arabic (translated from the Syriac, ca. 750-850), Sabidic-Coptic (eighth century; see 0. von Lemm, Der Alexanderroman der Kopten.  St. Petersburg, 1903), Ethiopic (fully Christianized, so that Alexander becomes a saint; sixteenth century), Georgian (early seven-teenth century), etc.l9
 
 

   Hellenistic fiction, in accordance with a trend begun in Aramanic literature during the proceeding Persian period, became a sea into which  poured motifs and plots out of the various Oriental and Western cultures, from the Atlantic to India. Eventually, when this ephemeral fusion came to an end and the Individual nations developed their own literatures in a variety of tongues, the great Hellenistic reservoir remained the source of the separate streams pouring out of it and flowing again through the old nationalistic beds. 20 This mutual fertilization betweeen East and West during the Hellenistic period may be illustrated  with the story and the
 
 

18 The standard edition of the Greek text is: W. Kroll, HistAlexandri M (pudo-CaUisthenes).  Vol. 1: Recensio vetusta.  Berlin., 1926.  A German criticaly reconstructed text is given by A. Ausfeld, Der griechische Alexanderroman, edited by W. Kroll.  Leipzig, 1907.
 
 

19 For Eropean medieval Alexander romances see P. Meyer, Alemndre le grand dans la litterature francaise au moyen age. 2 vols., Paris, 1886. F.P. Magoun, Jr., The Gests of King Ai Byzantion 16 [1942-4 that of Th.  Nbldeke: der kaiserl.  Akademie E. A., W. Budge has edited and translated  the Syriac (Cambridge, 1889) and the Ethiopic (2 vols., 1896) versions. I am indebted to my colleague and friend F.P. Magoun for most of these references. W. W. Tarn, Alexander the Great, 2 vols. Cambridge University Press, 1948, appeared too late to be used here.
 
 

20 See: K. Ker6nyi, Die eriechisch-orientalische Romanliteratur in religiongeschitlicher Beleuchtung (1927Y.  C. H. Becker, -Dw Erbe der Antike im Orient end okzit (1931).  Miss R. S6der, Die apokryphm Apostelgeschichten und die romanhafte Literatur der Antike (1932).  G. E. von Grunebaum, "Greek Fom Elements in the Arabian Nights" (JAOS 62 [19421 277-292; cf. 64 [19441 62 f ., n. 7).
 
 
 
 

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wisdom of Ahikar.21 The earliest version known is an Aramaic text cir­culating in the Persian Empire late in the fifth century B.C. It has been suggested that it was ultimately a Babylonian tale written about 550 i3.c., translated either directly into Aramaic or into Persian, from which the Aramaic was translated.  Whatever be its ultimate origin, we have more or less free renderings into Syriac (from which the Armenian and the Arabic were translated), and into Byzantine Greek, from which the Slavonic text (the basis of the Rumanian version) was rendered.  How the plot of the Abikar tale came to be utilized in the Life of Aesop written by Maxirnus Planudes (d. ca. 1310) remains a curious puzzle, but it indicates how fluid and mobile the material of popular fiction could become.  Earlier echoes of Ahikar's proverbial wisdom and of his vicissitudes have been noticed in Jewish writings (Psalms, Proverbs, Tobit, Sirach, jubilees, Testaments of the XII Patriarchs), in the New Testament, and in the Koran (cf.  R. H. Charles, Pseudepigrapha, pp. 716-719).

in a sense the novel (as distinguished from the short story, which is much earlier) is a creation of the Hellenistic period.22 Two separate strains combined to create the full-length novel: love_ and adventure.  Love poetry was ancient in Greek literature and flourished in new forms after Alexander; love became the prevailing topic in the New Comedy (although sentimental outpourings are not frequent in it); now romantic love tales relate the joys and sorrows, longings and disappointments of fictitious lovers of present times or of long ago (such as Hero and Leander, Jason and Medea, Pyramus and Thisbe, and others; see in particular Ovid's Heroides).  The tale of adventures in distant fabulous countries also appears early in Greek literature, beginning with Homer's Odyssey; the Gilgamesh Epic furnishes an ancient Babylonian example of such descriptions of marvels and wonders witnessed in imaginary lands.  The Sicilian Euhemerus (ca. 275)23 in his Sacred History- philosophical roman a these-relates that on the (imaginary) island of Panchaea in the Indian Ocean he found an inscription describing the activities of Greek gods (Uranus, Cronus, Zeus) when they were still rulers or conquerors, before they were worshiped as gods by their grateful subjects. This attempt to rationalize mythology, tracing religion to ancestor worship or the cult of the dead, was not new, but gained wide popularity through Eubernerus; it suggested to the author of Wis-
 
 

21 For biographical references see the chapter on Tobit.
 
 

22 The Standard work is Edwin Rohde, Der griechische Roman und seine Vorlaufer, 3rd ed/ Liepzig, 1914. See also B. Lovagnini, Le origini del romanzo greco (1921). The basic work on literary style and literary genres is Eduard Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa vm VI. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis in die Zeit der Renaissance. 2 vols.

Leipzig and Berlin, 1898 (reprinted with supplements, 1900).
 
 

23 Cr.  T. S. Brown, "Euheineros and the Historians" (HTR 39 [1946] 259-274).
 
 
 
 

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dom of Solomon (14:15-17) one of the ways in which idolatry began. journeys to fantastic places are also the subject of the novel on the Hyperboreans by Hecataeus of Abdera (ca. 290) and of those of AmG­metus dealing with the Himalayas, the upper Nile, and Arabia.  The most incredibly absurd tales, comparable to those of Baron Munchausen24 are those of Antiphanes of Berge, who knows of a country so cold that a man's words froze in the autumn and were not heard until they thawed in the spring (see also Luciai;s True Story).  Gulliver’s Travels, the journeys to the heavenly spheres in Enoch, or to the moon in Jules Verne's De la terre a la lune (1865), some tales from the Arabian Nights (like that of Sindbad the Sailor), explorations of the abode of the dead like Dante's Di6ne Comedy (see A. Dieterich, Nekya: Beitrdge zur Erkldrung der neuentdeckten Petrus-Apokalypse.  Leipzig, 1893; 2nd ed., 1913) have all parallels and antecedents in Hellenistic fiction.  According to E. Rohde (Der Griechischer Roman, 3rd ed., P. 295), Antonius Diogenes (probably first century of our era), in his novel Wonders beyond Thule, was one of the first to combine in his book erotic and fantastic elements and Photius seems to have regarded him as the first among the writers of Greek novels.
 
 
 
 
 
 

4. Hellenistic Science
 
 

Such imaginary voyages to the lands "of make-believe" were inspired by the actual explorations by land and sea which, as we have seen, began with the far-reaching conquests of Alexander the Great.  Besides the exact measurements of road distances traversed by Alexander, which the Bematists preserved for later geographers, other voyages of exploration supplied important inforrnation.25 Nearchus at the orders of Alexander sailed down the Indus and to the mouth of the Euphrates, thus making known to the Greeks the Indian Ocean.  Androsthenes of Thasos explored the eastern coast of Arabia before Alexander's death.  The coasts of the Red Sea were explored to a great extent by Pbilo, a naval officer of the first two Ptolemies.  Under Ptolemy II (285-246), Dalios sailed up the Nfle south of Meroe (Ethiopia).  Two generals of Seleucus 1 (321-280), Patrocles and Demodamas of Miletus, explored the Caspian Sea (incom­pletely) and Scythia beyond the Yaxartes, respectively.  Agathocles, ruler
 
 

24 The fantastic tales about Baron Karl F. H. von Miincbhausen ( 1720-1797) were written by R. E. Raspe, anonymous author of Baron Munchamen's Naffative of his Marvelous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, 1785.
 
 

25 On the geographical  knowledge of the Hellenistic period, see in particular, H. Berger, Geschicte der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der Griechen. Four parts, Leipzig, 1887-1893; 2nd edition, 1903. The best account og Hellenistic and Roman science is George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science. Vol. 1: From Homer to Omar Khayyam, pp. 124-343. Carnegie Instituion of Washington, 1927.
 
 
 
 

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of Syracuse (316-289), campaigned in the region of Carthage.  Pytheas of Messalia (Marseilles) in the time of Alexander navigated along the coasts of Western Spain, Gaul, and reached the northern end of Scotland and the mouth of the Elbe.  He saw the bright summer nights in the North and heard of Thule, wbere the sun never set in midsummer; he explained correctly the ebb and flow of the tides, connecting them with the pbases of the moon.  Megasthenes was sent by Seleucus I as ambas­sador to the court of Chandragapta (Sandrokottos in Greek) and re­mained in Palibothra or Pataliputra (now Patna) from 302 to 298; his observations on India (Indica) are unfortunately lost except for some fragments.

Such firsthand observations of lands and seas bitherto unknown to the Greeks not only contributed to create that cosmopolitan feeling and the global notion of the oikounw'ni (whole inhabited earth), hut also fur­nisbed scientific geographers with needed information.  Dicaearchus, a pupil of Aristotle (d. 322 iB.c.), proceeded to measure the size of the earth, the spheric sbape of wmch had been discovered before him, and reached results wbich occasionally were almost correct; on his map be divided the oikoumene into a northern and a southern half, separated by the Mediterranean Sea and the Himalayas, and proved that mountains and valleys were insignificant irregularities on the surface of an earth which was much larger than had been previously surmised.

These and other geographic researches, such as the book on harbors and coastlines by Timostbenes of Rhodes under Ptolemy II, and the books of Cleon of Syracuse, Nymphodorus, Lycus of Rhegium, and Timaeus, enabled Eratosthenes of Cyrene, the head of the Alexandrian library under Ptolemy III (246-221), to calculate anew the size and circumference of the earth (24,662 miles; in reality, 24,857; see A. Diller in Isis 40 [1949] 6-9), and to surmise that one should reach India by sailing westward from Spain-the error of Columbus.  Dis­covery of a New World was predicted by Seneca Id. A.D. 65], Medea 376-380.  Eratosthenes guessed that there was another oikoumene - in the southern half of the globe, and prepared the first map of the known world, which for Mediterranean countries was less inaccurate than we migbt expect.  His map was superior to the later one prepared for Agrippa (63-12), the son-in-law and adviser of Augustus, and bis scientific method was far better than that of Strabo (ca. 63 B.C.-A.D. 24), whose famous extant Geography, although based on earlier works like that of Artemi­dorus of Ephesus, deservedly became a "best seller" and a classic.
 
 

The conquests of Alexander furthered astronomical studies in two respects: by the new calculations of the size of the terrestrial globe, already noted, and by providing information about the Babylonian
 
 
 
 

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observations of the heavenly bodies.26 The theory of Eudoxus of Cnidus (early fourth century), improved by Callippus (fourth century), did Dot explain the movements of the planets; and the relative sizes of earth, sun, and rnoon were being constantly revised.  Eudoxus bad reckoned that the diameter of the sun was nine times that of the moon, and that the sun was therefore nine times as far from the earth as the moon, but Pheidias of Syracuse at the beginning of the third century figured the ratio twelve to one, the great Aristarchus of Samos (in the time of Ptolemy 11, 285-246) adopted the ratio of eighteen or twenty to one, and Archimedes of Syracuse, son of Pheidias (d. 212 B.C.), that of thirty to one.  Aristarchus_ recognizing thus that the sun must be much greater than the earth (between six to eight times larger in diameter and about ically concluded that the earth sun-the epoch-making dis­is famous.  Aristarchus even the earth that the cuffs universe was merely like the center of a circle.  But the times were not ripe for these brflliadt conjec­tures: Archimedes refused to accept them, and Cleanthes, who suc­ceeded Zeno as the head of the Stoics, accused Aristarchus of ungodli­ness.  Even astronomers like Conon of Samos, active in Alexandria under Ptolemy III (246-221 B.C.), and his pupil Dositheus of Pelusium, rejected the Dew theories.  On the other band, however, it was no longer possible to accept the system of Eudoxus (according to which sun, moon, and planets moved round the earth in concentric spheres), so Apollonius of Perga (third century) developed the theory of the epicycles accord­ing to which the planets moved in an orbit the center of which rotated around the earth: thus, after some improvements by Hipparchus of Nicea (ca. 130 B.C.) originated the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, so named after Claudius Ptolemaeus (second century of our era), which prevailed until Copernicus and J. Kepler (d. 1630) proved it to be false.  Only Seleucus of Babylon (middle of the second century B.c.) adopted the theory that earth and planets moved around the sun, but the im­mecliately following scientific decline consigned the theory to oblivion until modem times.
 
 

Mathematical studies27 made possible this progress in astronomy.  Euclid (ca. 300 B.C.) wrote in Alexandria those famous Elements
 
 

26 On Hellenistic mtmnomy, see T. Heath, Arwarchw of Samos (1913) and the article of Hultsch, "Astronomie," in Pauly-Wissowa!s Rea"zyklopddie. On Babylo­nim ffiflumee see H. Gressmann, Die heuenistische Gestimreligim, pp. 4-7. (Beih. zum Alten Orient . Leipzig, 1925).
 
 

27 Geminw, a pupil of Posidonius, wrote a comprehensive history of ancient mathe­matics.
 
 
 
 

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(stoicheia) which remained the standard textbook of geometry ahnost to the twentieth century.  Archimedes of Syracuse, who is said to have shouted, "Eurekaf' (I have discovered [it]) in his bath when he deter­mined that a body immersed in a fluid loses in weight an amount equal to that of the fluid displaced, fixed more exactly the ratio of diameter to circumference of a circle, found that a hemisphere has two-thirds the volume of a cylinder of the same circumference and height, and founded the theory of the spiral.  The work of Archimedes and of Conon of Samos on conic sections was surpassed by the outstanding work (peli ko'n6n) of Apollonius of Perga (third century), which marked the ultimate achievement of antiquity on the subject.  Apollonius likewise arrived at a more accurate ratio of the diameter to the circumference than Archi­medes had obtained and he was possibly the discoverer of trigonometry, unless this honor belongs to Hipparchus (ca. 130 B.c.) The latter is usually regarded as the discoverer of the precession of the equinoxes (although some historians attribute it to the Babylonian Kidinnu [Greek, Kidenas] of Sippar, third century); he calculated the sun's mass as 1,880 times that of the earth, and its distance 1,245 earth diameters from it; Posidonius (ca. 80 B.c.) said 6,545.  In reality the sun's volume is 1,300,000 times that of the earth; and while the diameter of the earth is less than 8,000 miles, its average distance from the sun is 92,900,000 miles: in both cases Hipparcbus figured about one-tendi of the ratios discovered by modern astronomers.

Archimedes invented mechanical devices such as endless screws, and Ctesibius of Alexandria soon after him invented catapults and other machines operated through air pressure, as also a water clock.  On these foundations Philo of Byzantium composed his standard treatise on mechanics.
 
 
 
 
 
 

In the field of natural sciences, the outstanding work was done by Theophrastus (d. ca. 287), a pupil of Aristotle.  His History of Plants, res nting the information on exotic plants which the campaigns of Alexander had made known to the Greeks, and his Theoretical Botany, dealing with plant physiology, laid the foundation of the science.  His pupil Strato of Lampsacus, and the latter's pupil Lycon (ca. 270-226), who headed the Peripatetic school in succession after Theopbrastus, carried on zoological researches, but with these men biological sciences, which bad hardly advanced beyond the work of Aristotle, ceased to be cultivated except for practical or medical purposes.

Hippocrates (d. ca. 377) was called the "Father of Medicine" and the 'Hippocratic Oatb," still administered to physicians, is ascribed to him.  In the early third century Alexandria became the medical center: through dissections and, ff we believe A. Cornelius Celsus (early first century
 
 
 
 

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A.D.), the author of a great scientific encyclopedia of which only the eight books on medicine are extant (Proemium, 1, 4; cf.  Tertullian, De aniiw 10, cf. 25), even vivisections on criminals, anatomy and physiology made notable progress.  Herophflus of Chalcedon (ca. 300), a pupil of Prax­agoras of Cos, discovered the nerves and their functions, recognized that the arteries contained blood (not air) and that their pulsations originated in the heart: thus he almost determined the circulation of the blood, the discovery of which made William Harvey (1578-1657) famous.  Erasistratus of Iulis in Ceos, his younger contemporary, distinguished more accurately motor and sensory nerves, performed serious operations, studied the digestive process, but went back to the theory that arteries carried air except in certain diseases when blood entered them.  These two outstanding physicians continued the traditions of the Hippocratic school of Cos and the school of Cnidus, respectively.  A third school, the empiric, was founded by Philinus of Cos, a pupil of Herophilus: stressing medical experience rather than theory, it regarded anatomy and physiology as secondary in practical therapy.  This school became important about 200 i3.c. with Serapion of Alexandria; with Heraclides of Tarentum it contributed to the knowledge of drugs.  Asclepiades of Bithynia (first century B.c.) even dispensed with drugs: he prescribed diets, bathing, massage, and exercise.  Moreover, by the side of medicine, miraculous cures were reported at the sanctuaries of Serapis and Asclepios-ancient pagan parallels to Lourdes and St. Anne de Beaupr6.
 
 
 
 
 
 

5. Hellenistic Scholarship
 
 

The achievements of Hellenistic scholars are no less epoch-making than those of the scientists whose work has just been sketched.  The vast amount of writing in the fields of history and biography has been mentioned in speaking of Hellenistic literature.  Here a word should be added about works on the history of arts, sciences, and literature.  The school deserves the credit of initiating such studies, following the example of its founder.  Aristotle (d. 322) had collected material for a history of Attic drama; he laid the foundations of science as well as of learning in the following ages, and Dante rightly called him "il maestro di color che sanno" (Inferno IV, 133) or the teacher of the learned ('the professors professor," as a modern journalist would say).  Doris of Samos (ca. 300), a pupil of Aristotle's pupil Theophrastus, wrote the first history of painting and sculpture, and was followed by other historians of art: Xenocrates of Athens (ca. 280-260), Antigonus of Carysttis (ca. 230), Adeus of Mytilene adcl Callixenus of Rhodes (late third century).  Pupils of Aristotle wrote histories of science: Meno a history of medicine, Eudemus of ]Rhodes a history of mathematics and astronomy, Theo-
 
 
 
 

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phrastus a systematic history of natural sciences.  A colleague of Aristotle, Aristoxenus of Tarentum (ca. 330), not only Wrote a brilliant work on and rhythm which is still extant,28 but through his the history of philosophy, can­Carystus for the period after DioEenes Laertius (third cen­tury A.D.) are our chief source of information (together with the works aphies of the great dramatists. presumably Chamaeleon of Heraclea Pontica (ca. 280), a pupil of Theophrastus' the author of a history of Greek poetry from Homer ' Aristop hanes (d. ca. 380 B.C.). He was probably inspired by his lea countryman, Heraclides (d.after 330j, a pupil of Plato and a rival of Aristotle, who wrote extensively on scientific subjects as also on the history of music and literature.  In his Life of Greece Dicaearchus presented a history of culture; he also wrote a book on the poet Alcaeus (ca. 600).  The last work of the Peri patetic school in the- field of literary history was the comprehensive treatise, after the manner of Chamaeleon, prepared by Hieronymus of Rhodes (ca. 250).
 
 

The preparation of critically edited texts of the Greek classics and of commentaries on them bad begun before Alexander, but reached such a degree of accuracy and thoroughness in the Hellenistic period that, as in the case of mathematics and physical sciences, it became the standard in medieval and modern times.  The first critical edition of the Homeric poems was prepared by Antirnachus of Colophon about 400 B.c.; after Aristotle himself had apparently edited a Homeric text for his pupil Alexander, such critical studies were pursued in his school by Dich­aearcbus and Chamaeleon, and particularly by Praxiphanes of Mytilene, a . pupil of Theophrastus.  He proved that the exorclium of Hesiod's Work and Days was spurious, while his pupil, the poet Aratus of Soli (author of the Phaenomena) edited the Odyssey. s of Cos (ca. 300), Another school was founded by the poet Phileta the compiler of a dictionary which was widely used.  His pupil Zenodotus of Ephesus became the librarian of the Museum in Alexandria and pre­pared the standard critical edition of the Homeric epics, omitting many spurious verses.  Aristarchus of Samothrace (ca. 220-150), likewise Museum librarian at Alexandria, edited the text of the Iliad and odyssey prepared by Zenodotus (revised by another librarian, Aristoph­anes of Byzantiunl' [ca. 257-1801), dividing each poem into twenty­four books, and thus substantially gave us our current printed text of Homer.
 
 

28 Cf.  W. R. Amld, in old Testament ,d semitic studies in Meory ot William R. Harper, Vol. 1, pp. 167-204.  Chicago, 1908.
 
 
 
 

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Zenodotus also initiated the immense work of cataloguing the Library of the Museum.  He was assisted by two able scholars, Alexander of Pleuron and Lycophron of Rhegium, who classified the tragedies and comedies, respectively.  The work of cataloguing the library was finally completed by the great poet Callimacbus, who probably succeeded Zenodotus as librarian: his monumental catalogue (Ptnakes, Tablets) in 120 papyrus scrolls was a literary bistory giving biographies and bibli­ograpbies of the authors represented in the library.  A number of pupfls of CaUimachus became eminent scholars, but his successor as librarian was the great scientist Eratosthenes (see above), who wrote a great work on Attic comedy.
 

Thus during the two centuries from 300 to 100 B.c. Alexandrian scholars, through critical texts, philological and historical commentaries, and learned research, not only made the Greek classics available and comprehensible, but laid the foundation of critical and exegetical methods, soon adopted in Alexandria by Jews like PbiIo, and Christians like Origen, in their study of the Bible, and eventually blossoming in the research technique of modern times.
 

Dictionaries and grammars also grew out of the Alexandrian literary researches.  The Stoic philosopher Chrysippus (d. ca. 204 B.C.) raised an important philological problem: does analogy or anomaly contribute most to linguistic development?  Dictionaries were prepared at Alexandria: lists of words considered classical (prepared to determine the authen­ticity of classical passages), lists of words belonging to certain dialects, vocabularies for individual authors, and other types of dictionaries were used in Hellenistic centers of leaming.  The first systematic Greek gram­mar was prepared by Dionysius Thrax in Rhodes (ca. 100 Bc.) and still survives.  Although it is an elementary textbook and makes no contribu­tions to philology, it became an ancient "best seller." It is not only the ancestor of all grammars of the Greek language down to our times, but it is the parent of Latin, Syriac, and Armenian grammatical studies.  The Indians are of course the earliest and greatest grammarians in the world (Panini's Sanskrit grammar, the earliest extant, dates from ca. 350 B.C.), but their work has not influenced Western philologists until recent times.  Before then, for better or for worse, all European grammars were more or less indebted to Dionysius Thrax.
 
 
 
 
 
 

6. Hellenistic Philosophy29
 
 

Alexandria with its Museum and Library was flie center of scholarly and, to a lesser degree, scientific researcb; but Atliens remained the
 
 

29 The chief general somces me, Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers (de claromm philosophomm vitis, libri decem), dating from the third mntury of ow era, and the philosophical works of Cimro (d. 43 B.c.) and Plutarch (d. ca. A.D. 120).The standard work, even though antiquated in occasional details, is still Eduard Zeller, Die Philosophic der Criechen i ihrff geschichtlichm Entwickelung, 3 vols., Tiibingen, 1844-52; 5th ed., 5 vols., 1892-1909; in English: E. Zeller, Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, 1880; History of Greek Ph lowphy.  London, 1881.  For t r bibliographies, see F. Ubeweg, Grundriss du Gescht'chte der Philosophic, Vol. 1; 12th ed. by Prdchter, Berlin, 1926; and also individual articles in Pauly­Wi sowa, Realenzyklopddie.  Good general smmaries of Hellenistic philosophy will be found in Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophic pp.200-287 (by H. von Amim).Kultur der Gegenwart I, 5. Berlin and Leipzig, 1909: W. Windelband, Geschichte der antiken Pkilosophie, 3rd ed. by A. Bonhoffer (I. von Miffler's Hmdbuch der klassischen Altertms-Wissenschaft V, 1, 1). Munchen, 1912.
 
 
 
 
 
 

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home of the schools of phflosophy and kept the flame of pagan thought alive until Justinian (527-565) in 529 closed the school of Athens.

The Hellenistic scbools, of which the most influential was the Stoa, soon departed from the metaphysics of Plato (d. 347) and Aristotle (d. 322), and going back to Socrates (d. 399) stressed the problems of human life, notably the conduct and happiness of the individual.  The empire of Alexander and the monarchies into which it divided at his death in 323 created a cosmopolitan and individualistic attitude toward life wbich philosophy could not ignore.

Soon after 323 we find in Athens several schools.  Aristotle's Peripatetic school headed by Theophrastus was incorporated by the state and bought the garden near the Lyceum where Aristotle had taught; Epicurus of Samos (d. 270) came from Larnpsacus and opened his school in 306; Zeno of Citium on Cyprus (d. 262) had come to study with Crates of Thebes (a Cynic) in 312, and in 301 he began to teach in the "Painted Porch" (pill stod) adomed with frescoes of Polygnotus, near the market (his pupils were accordingly called 'Stoics"); the fourth school was Plato's Academy.  The Cynics, led by Crates (d. ca. 300), a disciple of Diogenes of Sinope (d. 323), professed poverty (like Diogenes, who lived in a tub), and owned no meeting place.  The first four were endowed by Marcus Aurelius (d.  A.D. 180).  Besides these five schools, active in Athens sbortiy before 300 i3.c., the Skeptic school was founded by Pyrrho of Elis (d. ca. 275 Bc.) in his homeland.  Rhodes and Rome eventually became, for a time, centers of Stoic teaching.  Cyrene and Megara gave their names to the two remaining schools.
 
 

In the field of phflosophy the famous schools founded by Plato and Aristotle soon lost ground and importance.  The Old Academy under the leadership of Speusippus (347-339) and Xenocrates of Chalcedon (339­314) developed Plato's thought as he bad conceived it in his last years, but modified it in some points.  Their successors (Polemo of Athens 1314-2701, wbose best pupil was Crantor; and Crates of Athens [270-2641) stressed ethics and religion: thus the philosophical system of Plato dis­integrated and decayed.  The Middle Academy, headed by Arcesilaus of
 
 
 
 

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Pitane (d. 241), followed by Lakydes of Cyrene (d. 216), completed this dissolution first by a return to Socrates's critique of superficial opinions, then by a frank adoption of the skepsis of Pyrrho.  The New Academy, founded by Cameades of Cyrene (d. 129) and continued by Clitomachus, included also Philo of Larissa and Antiochus of Ashkelon, the teachers of Cicero.  Carneades, the greatest skeptic of adtiquity, attacked Stoicism and as a member of a philosophical embassy in Rome in 155 displayed his virtuosity there by lecturing brilliantly for and against justice. The New Academy joined to its theoretical skepticism a practical theory of probablilities, and eventually. like other schools, reached its end in eclecticism. Aristotle’s Peripatetic school (the Lyceum) followed an entirely different course, as has been noticed above in dealing with science and Theophrastus (d. 287), work of the master: Aristoxenus of Taren-tum wrote on musical theory; Eudemus of Rhodes wrote a history of mathematics and astronomy Dicaearchus wrote a history of Greek cul­ture, the Constitution of Sparta, and prepared a map.  The successor of Theophrastus, Strato of Lampsacus (d. 269), was the last important Hellenistic physicist; Ue Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus, he strove to over­come Plato's dualism (the world of ideas and the world of material objects) which Aristotle had not solved, for he still contrasted God and world, spirit and nature, form and matter: he asserted the immanence of reason (against Aristotle's transcendence) in the soul.  After him the Perpatetic school ceased to deal with philosophical problems, except for Critolaus of Phaselis (ca. 155).  Lycon of Troas, who headed it from 269 to 225, devoted himself to pedagogy.  His successor Ariston of Ceos wrote books on morals, while, as we have seen, other members of the school, in Alexandria and Athens, turned more and more to humanistic scholarship: we may mention again Clearchus of Soli, Doris, Chamaeleon, Hieronymus of Rhodes.  The final and, for the future, most important contribution of the Peripatetic school was the collection, edition, and explanation of the works of Aristotle.  Tyrannion (ca. 90 B.c.) prepared a critical edition of the works of the master, and Anclronicus of Rhodes (ca. 70 B.c.), the eleventh head of the Peripatetic school, arranged and interpreted them.  This work was continued by the latest members of the Peripatetic school, of whom Alexander of Aphrodisias (ca.  A.D. 200) was probably the greatest.  The complaint of Seneca (d . A.D. 65) was justified for both the Academy and the Peripatetic school in his time: quae philosophia fuit, facta phiologia est (Epistle 108, 23; “what was once philosophy has become philology”); cf.  Epictetus, Manual, No. 49.
 
 

The endeavor to overcome the dualism of Plato, which Aristotle had narrowed (but not suppressed) by bringing together in existing objects
 
 
 
 

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Plato's ideas and matter as inseparable form and matter, remained the chief metaphysical problem of Hellenistic philosophy.  In Aristotle the dualism appeared chiefly in the contrast between God-pure act, pure form, pure thought, unmoved mover-and the world.  Even in the Peri­patetic school, as we have seen, Strato rejected Aristotle's dualism in the cosmos, by finding there nature alone without God, and in the soul, by denying the transcendence of reason and asserting the sours unity.  Epicureans and Stoics likewise in different ways reached the mw beyond the ttw.
 

Epicurus of Samos (342-270) was much impressed as a young man by the atomism of Democritus of Abdera (early fourth centuryB.c.) and the ataraxia (impassiveness) of Pyrrho, whose skepticism, however, he rejected.  Epicurus recognized only two disciplines in philosophy: physics and ethics.  His notions of the physical world are chiefly derived from Democritus: nothing exists except atoms moving in empty space.  The atoms are of different sizes, have weight and form, and are indestructible.  They move downward in space at different speeds and, due to collisions between atoms, they are capable of deviating slightly from the vertical direction, making possible the formation of bodies having spontaneous motion-and even the freedom of the human will, which is the foundation of ethics.  Since everything is the result of a combination of atoms, the souls are dissipated at death; and popular religions are immoral and false superstitions.  The gods exist, but live serenely outside of our world, in interstellar spaces, unconcerned with terrestrial affairs and needing no worship, although being perfect they are worthy of it.  In his ethical teaching.Epicurus followed the Cyrenaic school, founded by Aristippus (d. ca. 360), according to which pleasure (hedone) is the aim of life and virtue is the capacity to enjoy pleasure.  But Epicurus did not stress, like Aristippus, the pleasures of the senses, such as the delights of love and the enjoyment of banquets, but rather the lack of pain attained through insight.  Insight leads us to virtue, which ensures serenity of mind in the midst of misfortune, or ataraxia (impassiveness).  The great poem of T. Lucretius Carus (d. 55 i3.c.) On Nature (De rerum nature), one of the masterpieces of world literature, is the fullest exposition of the teaching of Epicurus now extant.  It seems likely that Ecclesiastes, and Wisd. of Sol. 2:1-9, contain more or less distorted echoes of the hedonism of Epicurus.

After Aristippus, the first hedonist, new tendencies appear in the Cyrenaic school.  Hegesias (ca. 300 B.C.) realized that pleasure, which was the aim of man for Aristippus, was unattainable, for life brought more sorrows than joys; he became therefore so pessimistic that he was called he peisithdnatos (the persuader to die), for he taught that de­liverance from pain came only in death.  Tbeodorus, his contemporary, was less gloomy; he believed that through insight and righteousness one
 
 
 
 

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might attain a constant happy inood enabling one to enjoy life.  His attack on popular religion, which gained him the nickname of "the atheist" (dtheos), made an impression on his pupil Euhemems of Messene (Sicily) who, in his pbflosophical novel-Sacred History depicted Zeus and other gods as ancient divinized kings.
 

The school of the Cynics was founded by Antisthenes of Athens (d. ca. 370), a pupil of Gorgias and of Socrates, and gained popularity through Diogenes of Sinope (d. 823), called 'the insane Socrates," and his pupil Crates of Thebes (d. ca. 300) who, with his wife Hipparchia, gave away his property and lived on alms.  The Cvnics bad no interest in scientific research but stressed the right life.  Virtue, according to Antisthenes, was attained not through leaming and reflection but through practice (askesis).  Virtue, the nmmum bonum which alone brings happiness, is the capacity to reduce our wants to a minimum; thus, after becoming emancipated from externals, we attain inner freedom and joy.  Spiritual and physical p6nos (toil and trouble), poverty, humiliations, false accusations, are consequently more desirable than pleasure.  The political ideal of the Cynics was a world state: one flock and one shepherd.  In religion they stressed monotheism against the popular myths and cults.  One of the last and most brilliant members of the school was Menippus of Cadara (Transiordania) in the third century B.C., the author of biting satires partly in verse and partly in prose-a literary genre which reached its perfection in the satires of Horace (d. 8 B.c.) which were composed entirely in hexameters.  After Menippus the Cynics be­came itinerant evangelists to the lowest classes.

The Megarian school was founded by Euclides of Megara (d. 374 B.C.). He gave a concrete content to the Eleatic abstract Being-the sole reality according to Parmenides of Elea (ca. 470 B.c.), for 46stin einai (being is)-by identifying it with the Good, under the influence of his teacher Socrates.  This sole existing reality is called by various names (God, Reason, Insight, one of the virtues) but it is eternally invariable; likewise there is but a single virtue, namely, knowledge.  A later head of the Megarians, Stilpo of Megara (d. ca. 300) combined this teaching with the ethics of the Cynics, and thus had a deep influence on his pupil Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school.  Stilpon argued that if the sole existing Being is the Good, the Good must have all the attributes of what really exists; virtue must be the state in which the mind is separated from all pain and all change, and the summum bonum must be complete apathy and autarchy of the soul, its indifference to external goods, as the Cynics taught.  However, for the Cynics what is perceived through the senses was the only reality, while for the Megarians it did not exist at all.
 

A similar moral ideal was presented by the Skeptical school founded
 
 
 
 

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by Pyrrho of Elis (d. 275 or 270 B.C.). Our inforrdation on this school in pre-Christian times is limited to echoes of the teaching of Timon of Phlius (d. ca. 230), Pyrrho's pupil; the school was revived after him by Aenesidemus of Knossos (first century B.C.) and came to its end with Sextus Empiricus (ca.  A.D. 200), some of whose works are preserved. Like Epicureanism, Pyrrhonism had its roots in the atomism of Democ­ritus: Pyrrho was a pupil of the latter's follower Anaxarchus, with whom he reached India in Alexander's expedition.  Doubts about the possibility of human knowledge bad of course been raised by the Sophists in the fifth century.  Pyrrho argued that either sense-perception or reason may at times deceive us, and no truth may confidently be expected from such deceivers, particularly since we possess no reliable criterion for deter­mining what is true.  Sense and reason can inform us merely about Phenomena, never about the ultimate reality: our knowledge is always relative, never absolute.  Consequently, Timon could sum up his teach­ing in three questions: What is the nature of things?  How should we behave in relation to them?  What do we gain if we behave correctly?30 The three following words concisely give the phflosopher's attitude to these three problems, in the same order: akatalepsia (incomprehensi­bility), epoche (suspension of judgment), and ataraxia (impassiveness).  Since things are unknowable, they are indifferent (adidphora).  The Skeptics suspended judgment not merely in physical and metaphysical matters, but also in value verdicts, refusing to commit themselves as to whether something was beautiful or ugly, good or bad, just or unjust.  For such value judgments would produce attraction or repulsion, desire or avoidance, and thus disturb the serenity of the soul, the supreme happiness and peace of ataraxia, which is substantially the same as the Epicurean serenity, the Cynic inner freedom, the Megarian autarchy of the soul, and the Stoic apathy.  All these schools strive toward the self­mfficiency of the individual and Ms indifference to external occurrences.
 
 

The Stoic school was the most successful and the most characteristic school of the Hellenistic and Roman periods: it offered the most accept­able solutions to the metaphysical problem (how to overcome the dualism of Plato and Aristotle) and to the practical problem about the attainment of the peace of mind that most schools of philosophy made the goal of their ethical teaching.

Zeno of Citium in Cyprus (d. 262), the founder of the Stoa, had among his teachers the Cynic Crates, the Academist Polemon, and the Megarians Stilpon and Diodorus Cronus.  His greatest pupil, who followed him as the bead of the Stoa, was Cleanthes of Assus (d. 232), called 'the donkey" by his comrades on account of his clumsiness.  He
 
 

 30 Aristocles, quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica  XIV: 18, 2.
 
 
 
 

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allowed some gifted Stoics, like Ariston of Chius, Herillus of Chalcedon, and DioDysius of Heracleia (Pontus) to found other schools or to follow other masters.  Chrysippus of Soli in Cilicia (d. 206) was the successor of Cleanthes: an indefatigable scholar, his writings filled 705 scrolls (100 of our printed volumes) and fixed in all details the standard teaching of i, the Stoa for his successors (Zeno of Tarsus, Diogenes of Seleucia,.  Antipatrus of Tarsus, and Archedemus).31 "If Chrysippos were not, the Stoa would not exise' (Diogenes La6rtius 7, 180).  A second phase of Stoicism, characterized by a more eclectic acceptance of Platonic and Aristotelian teachings, began with Panaetius of Rhodes through whose friend Scipio Africanus the Younger (185-129) Stoicism was taught in Rome.  In 129 PaDaetius became the head of the Stoic school in Athens, and Cicero (106-43) in his De ofliciis Dot only preserved die basic teaching of Panaetius' book On Duties, but passed it on to Ambrose of!  Milan (d. A.D. 397) and thus to Christianity.  Posidonius of Apamea in Syria (d. 51 i3.c.), the greatest pupil of Panaetius and the teacher of Cicero, was the last original Hellenistic thinker.32 Finally, in the Roman Empire, the leading Stoics were Lucius Annacus Seneca of Cordoba A.D. 65), the tutor of Nero; C. Musonius Rufus of Volsinii (first century 1 of our era); Epictetus of Hierapolis in Phrygia (d. ca. A.D. 130), whose teaching has been preserved by his pupil Flavius Arrian (d. ca.  A.D. 150) in two books, the Diatribai (Discourses) and the famous Encheilidion (Manual), a brief extract thereof; and Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (161-180), whose Meditations (Greek title: Eis heaut6n [For Himself]), the justly classical swan song of Stoicism, well express the aspirations of a noble mind.

The Stoics defined the sophs'a (wisdom), which is the goal of philos­ophy, as 'the knowledge for science] of divine and human things and of their causeS";33 and they subdivided it into logic, physics, and ethics,

Logic is the science of language and thought, of words (grammar) and what they mean (concepts, judgments, conclusions): it is the study of 16gos, which means both word and reason (cf.  John 1:1), either a
 
 

31 The surviving fraaments of the early Stoics have been edited in the standard work of Hans von Arnim (J. ab Arnim), Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, 3 vols.  Leip­zig, Teubner, 1903-1905; Vol. 4 by M. Adler, 1924.  The main secondary sources on Stoicism me the fragmentary seventh book of Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, Cicero, and Seneca.  Aside from the; general works previously listed, the following are still basic on the Stoa: L. Stein, bie Psychologie der  Stoa, Vols. 1-2, Berlin, 1886-1888.  A. Bonhoffer, Epiktet und die Stm.  Stuttgart, 1890.  A. Schmekel, Die Philosophic der mittlerm Stw.  Berlin, 1892.  A. Dyroff, Die Ethik der alien Stoa.  Berlin, 1897.
 
 

32 The basic work on Panaetiw and Posidonius is still Schmekel's Die Philmophie der Mittleren Stoa, mentioned in the preceding footnote.

'3 Refermees to this definition by Plutarch, Cicero, and Seneca are quoted by C. L. W. GriTnm, Kurzgefasstes Exegetisches Handbuch zu den Apokryphen, Vol. 4,

p. 305.  Leipzig 7. This deflnition is quoted in IV Mace. 1:16 and Philo, De congressu eruditionis gratia 14 [M 1, 531].
 
 
 
 

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thought in the mind or an expression on the lips.  The Stoic teacbing on grammar, on dialectics (discrimination between truth and falsehood), and on epistemology (according to which knowledge is based on sensa­tions tested and directly apprehended, in contrast with imagination and general concepts) need not be considered in detail here, but the notion of 1ogos is basic for us, since it influenced Hellenistic Judaism and Christianity.  This 1ogos is a faculty which dumb animals lack: men share it with the gods.  It is the capacity to pass from a mass of individual sensations to general concepts and conclusions.  The human 1ogos is essentially identical with the cosmic reason molding matter into natural objects; consequently, even though not infallible like the divine 1ogos, human reason can reproduce the thoughts of cosmic reason and thus understand reality.
 

The 1ogos has brought us to the second branch of pboosophy, physics (and metaphysics).  Plato in the Timaeus portrays the eternal immaterial God creating the world and implanting in it a universal rational soul (which was made before matter) to rule over it intelligently, administer­ing the immutable laws of nature.  Aristotle (Metaphysics), instead, did not regard the immaterial God as the creator of the world: both God and the world existed from eternity and God was merely the cause of motion and of its laws.  The Stoics went a stop further in eliminating the dualism between God and the world.  God for them is material and existed from eternity in the primeval fire, out of which he created the world.  In this world of ours God functions as the mind or soul of the world, the cosmic logos, and reaches out to all parts of the universe through his innumerable seminal 1ogoi (1ogoi spernwtikol) or powers (dyna'meis).  Thus reality is one, an organism in which body and soul are inseparable, for God is immanent in the world.  The immaterial realities of Plato and Aristotle become spirit (pneuma), which is material and, in various degrees of refinement (from that of God himself to that in a stone), permeates all matter, which the Stoics, in contrast to the atomists, regarded as infinitely divisible.  In this pantheistic conception, the im­manent God is the ultimate cause of all motion (without being Aristotle's motionless movens non motus) and of all phenomena: this single chain of cause and effect, this necessary relationship of all phenomena ulti­mately originating in God is called heimarmene (fate), Such a notion had obvious repercussions on human conduct.

We thus come to the third field of philosophy, ethics.  The divine primeval fire is not only the determining cause of all that exists (fate), but at the same time the cosmic all-knowing reason and purposeful mind, the benevolent pr6noia (providence); cf.  Wisd. of Sol. 14:3; 17:2; IV Macc. 9:Z4; 13:18; etc.  The same God causes all events and uses them for the attainment of the noblest goals, but in him there is no
 
 
 
 

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conflict between fate and providence.  In the seminal 1ogoi, likewise, determinism and purpose are one, and Cbrysippus could say that what­ever happens through fate happens also according to providence.  Cleanthes, on the contrary, denied this, saying that what happened through providence aiso happened through fate, but not vice versa.  Thus Cleanthes was able to explain the presence of evil in the world as the effect of fate without the influence of providence.  Conversely, Cbrysippus, stressing the unity of the cosmos, could not admit that any evfl ever came into the world without the consent of providence.  He refused to admit that man's serenity could be disturbed by pbysical pain or other external evil, wbich as a matter of fact was no actual evil.  As for moral evil, be proved that it was in harrnony with divine providence by show­ing that moral good could not exist vatbout moral evil, and was implicit in human freedom of the will.  Man, the goal of all creation, could be an image of God only if he were free to live according to reason, thus collaborating with God, or to decline to do so.  If man refuses to fulfill this purpose he sinks to the level of animals: from the cosmic point of view this is no more a real evil than the fact that there are plants and animals besides men.  Man bas a higher freedom than beasts wben he deliberately chooses to follow the dictates of reason, rather than the com­pulsions of nature.  This goal is fully achieved only by the sage, who becomes as free as God, for whom necessity and freedom are one and the same notion.  The soul of man grows out of the soul of animal as the 1ogos or reason develops within the highest part of the soul, the Uge­manik6n (the governing faculty).  Only the souis that bave attained wisdom and virtue live on as ghosts-but not forever.  The cosmos, as Heraclitus had taught, emerges from fire as a new universal order (diakosmesis) and later returns to the primitive simplicity of the fiery divine substance (ekpyrosis, conflagration), eventually being born anew (palingenesia) and repeating the process through etemity.34 As every­thing else, the souls of the wise are merged with the divine substance in the process of ekpyrosis, but in the palingenesis the souls are reborn, witbout any memory of their previous existence, bowever.  Such are the theoretical foundations of the practical philosophy of the Stoics.  In accordance with their times, they regarded happiness as the goal of human life. For Zeno such happiness was logical agreement of our thoughts, and harmony of our feelings, volitions, and actions with our thoughts; Cleanthes changed this harmonious life into the famous “life in harmony with nature” - whatever that may mean. Chrysippus clarified the formula by stating that it meant both life in harmony with human nautre and cosmic nature; fir they are basically the same, “nature”
 
 

34 For echoes of this doctrine in Judaism and Christianity, see E. Schiirer, Geschichte des Judischen Volkes, Vol. 2, pp. 636-638.  The word palingenesia in its cosmic sense occurs in Matt. 19:28.
 
 
 
 

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(physis) being taken in a comprehensive sense, including soul and reason.  In other words, for Chrysippus harmony with nature meant harmony widi the 1ogos which determides both universal law and moral law: human reason, when fully developed, agrees with divine reason.  Thus the human ideal is the full realization of the possibilities of human nature: the attainment of this goal is called virtue.  Therefore, life in harmony widi nature means virtuous life and aione brings happiness: virtue is its own reward. But virtue must always be a goal, never the means to another end, otherwise it ceases to be virtue and the supreme good.  In practice, everything rnust be subordinated to die attainment of this goal.  Things and actions either contribute to life according to the will of God, or hinder it, or finally, doing neither, they are irrelevant. Consequently, what most men regard as good  (like wealth, honors, position, health) or as bad (as poverty, disgrace, ruin, pain) are intrinsically indifferent matters: their moral value depends entirely from the use we make of them. They affect only our animal nature, but as reasonable beings we are independent of externals: the wise can say with Dante, (Inferno 2:93), "fiamma desto incendio non m'assale' (the flame of this conflagration does not attack me).  Sucb things as are indif­ferent (adidphora) from the point of view of the supreme goal of life are, however, significant to our animai nature and are therefore to be preferred or to be rejected (proegmena or apoproegmena)-not actually good or bad-by the sage.  The same applies to human actions: they are good, bad, or indifferent inasmuch as their influence on right living is positive, negative, or nil.  Indifferent actions may be absolutely so or may affect our physical existence: the latter constitute a common zone of conduct between wise and fool, at Ieast in regard to the action per se, without reference to the motive.  There are thus the katorthoma (virtuous action), the hamartema (sinful action), and the katukon (proper, cor­rect, legal action).  An action in the third category is virtuous wben performed by the wise (all of Whose actions are necessarily virtuous) and sinful when performed by a fool (all he does is sinful).

This absolute contrast between good and evil, theoretically without gradations in virtue and vice, divided mankind, at least in principle, into two classes: the wise and the fools, no less sharply distinguished than the saved and the damned of St. Augustine (d. 430), Calvin (d. 1564), or, for that matter, a good old-fashioned revival meetings' There is no
 
 

35  Logically of comse there is only truth and falsehood, right and wrong, with no middle ground.  There is "the way of life and the way of death" (jer. 21:8), wisdom and folly (Ecel. 1:17; 2:12; 7:25), the narrow gate and way leading to destruction ( Matt. 7:13 f.); see in general, for Jewish literature, H. L. Strack and P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, Vol. 1, pp. 460-463.  Prodicus of Ceos (d. ca. 400 B.c.) gave the earliest and best expositco; of the doctrine of the two ways in his apologue of the choice of Heracles, smmarized by Xenophon (d. ca. 355 B.c.) in Memorabilia 11, 1:21-34.
 
 
 
 

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gray between black and white: even a fool may make slow progress in wisdom, but he becomes a sage instantly; in other words, a man is one or the other.  In practice even Zeno, bowever, admitted a sort of middle class, the prokopton (the one advancing morally and intellectually) and common sense showed that men were either idcurably bad (rare), average (the great mass), progressing, (many), or wise (very few).

The sage, or wise man (sophos), exemplifies the Stoic ethical ideal.  Epictetus (Discourses IV, 3:9-12) expresses it thus: "I am free, I am a friend of God ready to render him wiuing obedience.  Of all else, I may set store by nothing-neither by my own body, nor possessions, nor office, nor good report, nor, in a word, anything else." The sage must be selfless, passionless, pitiless, serene.  He bas achieved autdrkeia (inde­pendence, self-sufficiency) and apdtheia (impassibility, freedom from emotions).  Having the first, he cannot be affected by the course of events in the world around him; his happiness is entirely an inner state, without connection with happenings independent from bis will.  By -attaining the second be has rooted out from bimself the passionate emotions rebellious against the 1ogos; he has substituted desire for greediness, caution for fear, joy for pleasure; he has banisbed oom­passion, which is mourning for another's misfortune, since mouming is excluded entirely; he has reached the stage in wbich 'pious reason (logos) is the absolute ruler (autodespotos; also autokrator) over the passions" (IV Macc. 1: 1, the theme of the book; cf. 1: 7, 9, 13 f., 19, 30; 2:6 f., 10, 24; 6:31; 7:16; 13: 1; 16: 1; 18:2).  Freedom from greediness leads to temperance (sophrosyne,); freedom from fear becomes couragage (andreia); both of these virtues presuppose the insight and knowledge (phronesis, prudence) of right, wroing, and indifferent; and in turn are presupposed by justice (dikaiosyne), whicb is the knowledge of what belongs to God and every person, and acting acoordingly.16 While the first three virtues stress individualism, justice is practiced in human society.  Later Stoics, beginning presumably with Panaetius, added benevolence to justice (Cicero, De oflicifs I, 7:20); compassion and mercy were stressed by Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius.  Seneca (De dementia) discussed in detail the problem of how strict justice can be reconciled with clemency: the unfortunate should be helped, without grieving with them; punishment should not be omitted, but should be determined after due consideration of human frailty and of extenuating
 
 

36 These four Stoic cardinal virtues were first detemined by Plato in connection with the four parts of the soul.  The Stoics modified their meaning slightly; from them they were adopted by the Alexandrian Tews (Wisd. of Sol. 8:r IV Macc. 1:2-4, 6; cf. 5:23-24, where they are harmonized with the Law of Moses and piety takes the place of prudence; for Philo, see H. A. Wolfson, Philo, Vol. 2, p. 218, n. 134; cf.  C. Siegfrfed, Philo vm Alexandria, p. 272.  Jena, 1875).  The ethics of the Stoics in general had a mnsiderable influence on the teaching of Philo; see E. Br6hier, Les idees philosophiques et religeuses de Philon cFAlexendrie, 2nd ed., pp. 252-259. Paris, 1925; but cf. Wolfson, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 111-112.
 
 
 
 

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circumstances.  Elsewhere Seneca condemns RoTnan gladiatorial fights and warlike spirit.  The social trend begins with the second basic instinct (race preservation; the first is self-preservation), which produces devo­tion to the family.  From this we pass to ever-wider circles of fellow human beings until we reach all of mankind.  The Mgos proves that all men are brothers, being children of the same heavenly Father: 'they are by nature your kinsmen, your brothers, the offspring of God (Epictetus, Discourses 1, 13:3).  All beings endowed with reason (1ogos), i.e., all gods and men (but not animals) , are a single society, a single state in which reason is law; they have duties toward the other members of the world state, piety being their duty toward the gods.  All men were indeed rnembers of this organism "whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free" (I Cor. 12:13; cf. 12:12-26).
 
 

If the mental faculty is cornmon to us, then the 1ogos by which we are reasonable beings is common.  If this is so, also the 1ogos which commands us what to do and what not to do is common.  If this is so, then there is likewise a law in common.  If this is so, we are fellow-citizens, and if so we are members

of the sarne community.  If this is so the world is, so to say, a single state.

Marcus Aurehus IV, 4
 
 

In this world state, individual states are like houses (or households) within a city (ibid. 111, 11).  This great idea of the world state, according to Epictetus (Discourses 1, 9), goes back to Socrates, who, when asked to what country he belonged, replied, "I am a citizen of the world [kosmios, meaninv obviously kosmopolitesl." According to the Stoics, in the words of St. Paul, "there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free" (Col. 3: 11) for those who 'put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him" (Col. 3:9 f.). Such a cosmopolitan view did riot, however, prevent the Stoics from participating ably and actively in the administration of their own particular countries, and this is one of the reasons for the popularity of this school in Rome, where Emperor Marcus Aurelius (VI, 44) could say, 'As [Marcus Aurelius] Antoninus my state and fatherland is Rome, but as a man it is the world." Whether the world state was suggested to Zeno by Alexander's empire or not, this great conception furnished a Catostrophical. basis for the Roman Empire and for Paul’s notion of a universal Christian Church in which social, national, and racial differences are no longer significant.
 
 
 
 
 
 

7.                                 Hellenistic Religion
 
 

in the Greek world after Alexander five types of religion attracted adherents: the city cults in honor of the Olympian gods, the personal
 
 
 
 

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striving for alvation in the mystery religions, the beliefs  in chance and fate, the teaching  of philosophical schools like the Stoa, and the Oriental religions (including Judaism and Christianity).

     The traditional worship of the Olympians37 was declining long before Christianity brought it to an end.38 Nothing had contributed more to delineate the individual character of the Olympians, to create a common Greek religion by the side of the local cults, to humanize (and con­sequently to moralize) the gods than the Homeric poems (tenth to eighth centuries B.c.)-the basis of Greek education and mentality (on which the best study is W. jaeger's Paideia).39 Homer, however, had no in­fluence on the celebration of the local rituals and festivals, and on personal religion.

Before Alexander several trends were at work to undermine the wor­ship of the Olympians.  The austere bourgeois morality and the common sense of farmers characteristic of Hesiod (eighth century) contrast sharply with the Homeric world of noble heroes and proud knights, in which the common man appears only once in Tbersites (who is thrashed linto sflence when he speaks his mind in the assembly) aside from faithful old family retainers.  In the sixth century a new spirit appears in Greek
 
 

37 The standard works on the Olympian gods are the following.  L. F. A. Maury, Histoire des religions de la Grece antique. 3 vols.  Paris, 1857-1859. 0. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte. 2 vols.  Handbuch der Klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, edited by I. von Muller, V, 2. Munchen, 1897-1906.  L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States. 5 vols. Oxford 1896-1909.  A. B. Cook, Zeus. 3 vols. Cambridge, 1914 ff. O. Kern, Die Religion der Griechen. 3 vols.  Berlin, 1926­-1938. M. P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion.  Vol.  I [to Alexander]. Handbuch der Aftertumswissenschaft V, ii, 1. Milnchen, 1941.  Summaries: L. R. Farnell, Outlines of Greek Religion (reprinted from the article "Greek Religion" in J. Hastings, Encyclop"dia of Religion and Ethics).  London, 1920.  M. P. Nilsson, History of Greek Religion (expanded translation of Chant. de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch der Religionsgewhichte, 4th ed. by A. Bertholet and E. Lehmann.  Vol. 2, pp. 280­417.  Tiibingen, 1925).  Oxford, 1925, G. Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion.  London, 1925.  A. Gereke and E. Norden, editors, Einleitung in die Altertu=wis­senschaft 11, 4: S. Wide and M. P. Nilsson, Griechische und Rdmische Religion. 4th ed. Leipzig and Berlin, 1931.  See also the general histories of religion and the encyciopaedias.
 
 

38 on the decline and end of paganism after the birth of Christianity see especially: V. Scbultw, Geschichte des Untergangs des griechich-romischen Heidentums. 2 vols.  Jena, 1887, 1892.  G. Boissier, La fin du paganime.  Paris, 1891.  J. Toutain, Les cultes paiens dans l’empire romain.  Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des Hautes Erodes, Sciences Religieuses, Vols. 20 and 25.  Paris, 1905, 1911.  A. Dieterich, Der Untergang der antiken Religion (in: kleine Schriften, pp. 449-539.  Leipzig, 1911).  G. Wissowa, Religion und Kuhm der Rdmer, 2nd ed.  Miincben, 1912.  A. Harnack, Die Mission und Aubreitung des Christentums, 2 vols., 3rd ed.  Leipzig, 1915 (English translation of the 2nd ed.  London, 1908).  J. Geffcken, Der Ausgang des griechich-romischen Heidentums.  Heidelberg, 1929.  Books on pagan criticism of Greek religion, and particularly of polytheism and image worship, will be found listed in Part 11, Chapter V (The Wisdom of Solomon), note 22.
 
 

39 W. Jaeger, Paideim Translated by G. Highet.  Vol. 1. Oxford, Blackwell, 1939.  Vol. 2. Oxford University Press, 1943: Vol. 3, Oxford University Press, 1944.
 
 

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religion, about the same time when new heights were reached in China (Lao-tse and Confucius), India (Buddha and the Upanishads), Iran (Zoroaster), and Israel (Jeremiah, Deuteronomy, and the Second Isaiah).  The cults of Demeter, a country goddess of farmers worshiped in the Eleusinian mysteries, and of Dionysus, whose orgiastic rites originated among Thracian barbarians, as also the later Orphic religion, likewise coming from Thrace, offered to the average man the hope of a blessed immortality, unknown to Homer.  Greek philosophy was born in the same century, and investigated the origin of the universe: one of the early philosophers, Xenophanes of Colophon (sixth century) ridiculed the human tendency to represent the gods as men and recognized but a single god, the thinking universe; another, Heraclitus of Ephesus, not long after him, attacked rituals and idolatry and saw in primeval fire the first principle and mind of the world.  Even more corrosive for religion was the agnosticism and skepticism of the Sophists in the fifth century.  Strange as it may seem, the superb poetry of Pindar (d. 443) and Aeschylus (d. 456), which was superficially in agreement with Homer, through its profound moral and monotheistic piety actually taught a new religion, akin to that of philosophers like Socrates and Plate.  Sophocles (d. 406) was more conservative than Aeschylus; but Euripides (d. 406)-bitterly attacked by the reactionary Aristophanes (d. ca. 380), particularly in The Frogs (as Socrates in The Clouds)­openly censured the conduct of the Homeric gods and even, following Protagoras of Abdera (fifth century), seemed at times to doubt their existence.

So the Hellenistic period witnessed the twilight of the Olympian gods, at least in the minds of the cultivated Greeks.  New factors, in addition to the mystical and rationalistic attacks just mentioned, con­tributed to the decay of traditional beliefs.  The old religion was intimately connected with the po'lis, or city-state, which was absorbed into kingdoms and empires after Philip of Macedon (382-336), the father of Alexander, conquered Greece through his victory at Chaeronea (338).  So shaken were the old convictions that when Hellenistic rulers were worshiped as gods hardly anyone protested in the name of religion.  Seleucus I Nicator (d. 280) was revered as "Zeus victorious," Antiochus I Soter [savior] (d. 261), his son, became 'Apollo savior," Antiochus IV Epiphanes [ (god) manifest] (d. 164) called himself "god" and was represented as the Olympian Zeus on his coins (cf.  Dan. 11:36).  Demetrius I Poliorcetes (d. 283) was celebrated as the only god (the son of Poseidon and Aphrodite), received the Parthenon in Athens as his residence, and saw his mistress Lamia receive divine boners as Aphrodite Lamia in Athens and Thebes.40 This apotheosis of rulers received a sort of philosophical vindication
 
 

40 K. J. Belocb, Griechische Geschichte, 2nd ed., Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 434.  Berlin, 1925.
 
 
 
 

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through Euhemerus, who, in his fictional Sacred His-tory, presented Zeus and other gods as human kings, divinized after their death; thus he contributed to the dethronement of the Olympians.  Moreover, the allegorical interpretation of Homer, introduced by Theagenes of Rhegium before Plato (cf.  J. Tate, in Classical Review 41 [19271 214f.; Classical Quarterly 23 [19291 142-154), stripped the ancient myths of even the semblance of fact: Aristotle dismissed popular beliefs as nothing but fables.  Finally, the influence of Egypt and the Near East proved decisive: as early as Herodotus Oriental deities were identified with Greek ones (Melkart of Tyre was called Heracles, Amon was called Zeus, etc.); they were adopted by the Greeks, but no Greek god received more than passing formal worship in Asia and Africa.41 Antiochus IV Epiphanes alone in 168 attempted to force his subjects to worship the Olympian Zeus exclusively, but failed dismally.

While the Homeric deities were losing their hold on the faith of the Greeks, their public worship was flourishing: festivals were celebrated as splendidly as ever, temples continued to receive votive gifts, divine oracles were still requested by the authorities, notably from Apollo at Delphi.  We even hear of deities appearing visibly to their devotees, as Artemis Leucopbryone at Magnesia in 221 B.c.-an event celebrated annually as a national festival sanctioned by the Delphic oracle.42 This is not the sole instance of a religion stressing pomp and circumstance in the public worship when it has ceased to be a living faith, a genuine inner force.
 
 

As has been noted, personal religious feeling and the quest for im­mortality found little satisfaction in the national cult of the Olympians; in Egypt, likewise, the masses sought immortality through Osiris when the official worship of Amon-Re failed to promise it to them.  In the Hellenistic period, the earlier Eleusinian mysteries in honor of Demeter, the enthusiastic and orgiastic cult of Dionysus (from which came the Attic drama), and the Orphic mysteries continued to flourish;43 at the same time a number of Oriental cults attracted Greek adherents-par­ticularly among the women.
 
 

41 On Hellenistic cults in Syria, see 0. Eissfeldt, Tempel und Kulte syrischer Stadte in hellenistisch-r6mischir Zeit (AO 40).  Leipzig, 1941.
 
 

42 Such divine apparitions explain how Paul and Bamabas could be regarded as H@es and Ze@ -by the people and the priesthood of Lystra in Lycaonia (Acts 14:11-13).
 
 

43 On the Greek mystery religions see in particular: C.A. Lobeck, Aglaophamus. Konigsberg, 1829. O’Kern, Orpheus. Berlin, 1920; Orphicorum Fragmenta. Berlin, 1922. V. Macchioro, Zagreus: studi sul’ orfismo. Bari, 1920. E. Rhode, Psyche. 10th ed. Tubingen, 1925. R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen. 3rd ed. Leipzig-Berlin, 1927. See also below, note 83.
 
 
 
 

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The mysteries of Demeter at Eleusis, as in those of Dionysus, Adonis,44 Attis, and Osiris, depict the death and resurrection of a deity (symboliz­ing the revival of nature in spring).  In this case, Persephone (Kore), the daughter of Demeter, is carried to the underworld by Hades (Pluto) and may come back to the world of sunshine not more than eight months every year.  Through initiation rites which, being secret, are not known in detail, the mystai (initiates) believed that they secured a happy im­mortalit)r.45 On the island of Samothrace the mysteries of the two Kdbeiroi (Cabiri) gods, said to be of Phrygian origin, were associated with those of Demeter and Dionysus; aside from other future benefits, the initiates enjoyed the right of asylum.  Later the mysteries of Hecate flourished on the island of Aegina.

Dionysus was originally a fertility god and in Greece became the god of wine (Bacchus): his female devotees (maenads) danced wildly in the night, bearing torches, and after being overcome by "divine' frenzy tore living animals apart and devoured their bloody flesh, reputedly the body of Zagreus, i.e., Dionysus (see Euripides, Bacchae).  In their enthusiasm, in the rapture of their ecstasy, the devotees were lifted above themselves to the divine plane, forgot their misery, and for a moment achieved the ineffable experience of mystical union with the deity, which was a foretaste of eternal bliss.

Orpheus was a Thracian singer whose lyre tamed savage men and beasts until the maenads tore him apart.  Orphism, named after him, not only taught the death and resurrection of Dionysus, but also fur­nished that exact information on life after death of which echoes come down to modem times.  The body is considered as the tomb of the soul (s6ma-sdnw, body-grave; cf.  Plato, Gorgias 493a), . man is the dream of a shadow' (Pindar, Pythian Odes 8, 95 cf.  Sophocles, Ajax 126; Wisd. of Sol. 2:5; etc.). After death, the Orphic initiates, who had been purified in this life through special rites, and through strict diet and conduct had remained pure, enjoyed an immortality about which opinions ranged from a state of eternal ebriety (Plato, Republic 11, 363c) to the pleasures of a delightful countryside (Aristopbanes, Frogs 154-157).  The wicked, conversely, went to a horrible hell first described in Orpbic interpolations near the end of book XI (576-600) of the Odyssey (Tityus, Tantalus, Sisyphus).46
 
 

44The earliest form of the Adonis myth is found in the mythological poem from Ras Shmra on Aleyan Baal, translated by Cyrus H. Gordon in The Loves and Wars of Baal and Anat,' Princeton University Press, 1944; see also Julian obemann, Ugaritic Mythology, Yale University Press, 1948.
 
 

45Homeric Hymn to Demeter 480 f.
 
 

46 The basic study of Greek notions about heaven and hell is: A. Dieterieb, Nekyia.  Leipzig, 1893.  Second ed., 1913.  See also E. Robde, Psyche, and the standard books on Greek religion cited in note 37, above.  The great Polygnotus (Sth cent.) depicted at Delpfii some of the infernal torments: he represented the visit of Odysseus to Hades adding some scenes not found in Odyssey XI. Plato, who was much impressed by Orphism, like Polygnotus described the Danaides who are punished in Hades (for killing their husbands) by being forced to carry water in sieves or leaky vessels.
 
 
 
 

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And next youll see great snakes and savage monsters

in tens of thousands.... Then weltering seas of filth

And ever-rippling dung: and plunged therein,

. Whose has wronged the stranger here on earth,

Or robbed his boylove of the promised pay,

Or swinged his mother, or profanely smitten

His father's check, or sworn an oath f