Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age

Hellenistic Culture and Society

by Peter Green

The Hellenistic Age, the three extraordinary centuries from the death of Alexander in 323 B. C. to Octavian's final defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium, has offered a rich and variegated field of exploration for historians, philosophers, economists, and literary critics. Yet few scholars have attempted the daunting task of seeing the period whole, of refracting its achievements and reception through the lens of a single critical mind. Alexander to Actium was conceived and written to fill that gap.

In this monumental work, Peter Green―noted scholar, writer, and critic―breaks with the traditional practice of dividing the Hellenistic world into discrete, repetitious studies of Seleucids, Ptolemies, Antigonids, and Attalids. He instead treats these successor kingdoms as a single, evolving, interrelated continuum. The result clarifies the political picture as never before. With the help of over 200 illustrations, Green surveys every significant aspect of Hellenistic cultural development, from mathematics to medicine, from philosophy to religion, from literature to the visual arts.

Green offers a particularly trenchant analysis of what has been seen as the conscious dissemination in the East of Hellenistic culture, and finds it largely a myth fueled by Victorian scholars seeking justification for a no longer morally respectable imperialism. His work leaves us with a final impression of the Hellenistic Age as a world with haunting and disturbing resemblances to our own. This lively, personal survey of a period as colorful as it is complex will fascinate the general reader no less than students and scholars.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Greece, Ancient, Historical, Classics

970 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

There is more than one author by this name in the database.

Peter Morris Green was a British classical scholar and novelist noted for his works on the Greco-Persian Wars, Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age of ancient history, generally regarded as spanning the era from the death of Alexander in 323 BC up to either the date of the Battle of Actium or the death of Augustus in 14 AD.

Reviews

[Ron Atchison · Rating 2 out of 5]

The constant use of French and Latin phrases when there are perfectly valid English phrases, such as 'inter alia' instead of 'among other things', and references to various, fairly obscure poets (Cavafy), is offputting and seems rather pretentious. Throw in the clear authorial biases and, despite the wealth of information, I cannot give this more than 2.5 stars.

[Michael Bennett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seemingly bursting at the seams with detail, this massive book really boils down to the author's editorializing on various aspects of hellenistic history. But missing from this opinionated garble is the actual history. Events are relayed, if at all, out of chronological order. Not only is it hard to follow, but it lacks any sense of context. For example, later on Green talks about the kings of Pontus and Bithynia. But where did these kingdoms come from? Last we heard about Asia Minor, it was all part of the Attalid dynasty.

Further, Green's reflections on art and literature are to be avoided. They are nothing other than his own distaste for Hellenistic art. Other reviewers have called attention to Green's apparent disdain for the Hellenistic kingdoms. Fine, but not in what is supposed to be an introduction to this period. The sad thing is, after reading over 700 pages of Green's pretentious writing style (absurdly over-reliant on obscure foreign words) the reader is left with little understanding of the Hellenistic era, which was supposed to be the whole point.

Surely there must be better books on this subject. This one cannot be recommended.

[Why-why · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well researched, author is incredibly knowledgeable. If not for that it'd be 2 stars.

Only about 1/3 of this very long book is history, the majority (I could have skipped for the most part) focuses on intellectual developments, philosophers, writers, art, religious beliefs... In actuality, the history part gets short-shrifted. Events, locations and characters pop in with little to no introduction. And after 100 pages about art and poets it'll necessarily have to repeat itself when it gets back to history to remind the reader what the heck was going on 100 pages ago.

Annoyingly long-winded, often with awkward sentence structure that's difficult to make heads or tails of. Definitely a British author. You'll also need to brush up on your Greek, Latin, French, and German. (German?? Really? Why?) Get ready for sentences like, it was "Heldengesellschaft rather than Hauptheld". The worst part is that so many times it's just unnecessary and uninformative academic snobbery. Did I really need to look up 'auctoritas' to translate 'authority' in perfectly fine English? Why do I need to look up 'oberta dicta' when 'observation' would have worked better? Sometimes 3 or 4 times in a single paragraph you'll be getting Google out.

Then there's the weird, out of place modern references. Agothocles, we are told, was "like Freud, suffering from cancer of the jaw." Umm.....? Or how about, "The Lyceum, like all good research establishments and Walt Whitman, contradicted itself and contained multitudes." And waaaay too much space was given to critiquing the ancient economy according to completely inappropriate modern standards of progress, productivity and efficiency.

[Ozymandias · Rating 5 out of 5]

This hefty and intimidating volume seeks to provide a summary of the entire Hellenistic Era (323-31 BC). Obviously 300 years is a long time to cover, and there is much to talk about. It is also, tragically, poorly documented for most of its existence and scholars debate even basic dates. Green wisely avoids making that aspect a focus. While this book was pretty much unique when it was written, it has since been joined by newer overviews (see below). As Green takes a very negative attitude towards the period, those books are worth checking out for a more positive spin on the era.

The book is wisely divided into narrative segments, starting with a part on Alexander’s Successors, moving onto the period of Hellenistic supremacy, and then moving onto the Roman conquest of Macedon and then the collapse of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms. Each part contains several chapters that approach the period more thematically. We get two narrative chapters bookending the period at start and finish, and then chapters on a variety of topics including religion, philosophy, government, economics, and society. There are no separate sections on each kingdom since he views them as essentially the same except for small differences he covers in the narrative. These sections cover their topics well, although he can be a bit opinionated as a literary/philosophy critic, and I wish he’d stuck more to explaining the writings instead of judging them. A lot of his literary criticisms seem quite huffy and sharp. I like Polybius. And Xenophon. “Deficient in creative imagination” indeed! Mostly the positioning of these chapters feels right as well, although leaving all the philosophy sections for the end is a shame.

Green is very conversational as a writer and that makes his books approachable for the amateur. He’s clearly written this (despite its size) with a wide audience in mind. That said, some of his habits can be alienating. He likes making analogies to later periods/people. So he compares Menander with Wodehouse and Austin, calls Demochares “an intransigent Gaullist somehow now accommodated among the more pliable men of Vichy”, and uses a lot of random terms like sans-culotte, danegeld, and bien-pensant. I gotta say, some of these references get pretty obscure. Pantisocracy on the banks of the Susquehanna? Havelock Ellis? Fainéant? I’m pretty well read but I can’t identify these. And of course the further you get from the 1980s the less any of his modern allusions will make sense!

He also makes use of a lot of Marxist terminology. I wouldn’t define his approach to the era as dogmatic, but he does accept the basic Marxist tenet that history is defined by class struggle based on economic models. The Roman business community, for example, pushed Rome to conquest against the opposition of the more principled senators. Ok. And this leads to a rather uncritical and vague use of terms like bourgeoise and a constant search for social revolution. His conclusion that this was a period of machtpolitik with no idealism and fiercely committed to suppressing social revolution says more, I think, for what he expects from the past than what he finds. It’s only in the late 18th through early 20th century that we see widespread social revolution, so why should we expect to find it in Ancient Greece? And what counts as revolution? Does all revolution have to start from below or focus on egalitarianism? Why do radical reforms trying to strengthen the state by reducing the power of the wealthy not count as a revolution? That sounds far more egalitarian than, say, Germany’s revolution. Or even the American Revolution. In any event, just because the ideals of the time are not his nor those of the Classical polis doesn’t mean there were none.

One of Green’s bugbears, and an area where he has definitely been vindicated, is the demolition of the idea of Hellenization. No Hellenistic or Greek kingdom ever tried to incorporate the native populations into Greek society. To do so would have been counter to everything they stood for. Greeks were the superior culture. They were better than the filthy barbarians. How then could you sully the Greek race by corrupting it with foreign blood and influences? Any talk of a deliberate campaign to bring Greek culture to the barbarians is an anachronism inserted by European imperialists who saw their mission as that of “civilizing” the world and assumed that their great predecessors must have thought as they did. They didn’t. You need quite a large ego as well as a proselytizing religious creed to go around making everyone behave as you do, and while the Greeks definitely had the former they completely lacked the latter.

That said, some of Green’s conclusions here seem a little overstated. Perhaps because he’s combatting a pernicious invention he feels the need to be more dogmatic than he might otherwise be, but there are plenty of examples of natives Hellenizing themselves for the social benefits it brought. While he sees the absence of foreign names in Hellenistic courts as a sign the Greeks/Macedonians remained in charge, this ignores the rather frustrating fact that ambitious natives often adopted Greek names in order to get past Greek snobbery. I’ve read Tarn. I know that this smug imperialist sense of destiny he dismantles is not a strawman. But the opposite view isn’t wholly correct either.

I think this is one of the best introductions to the Hellenistic period out there, but there are competitors now. Peter Thonemann provides a very brief (perhaps too brief) look at the period in his The Hellenistic Age. Really, that’s just to whet your appetite. More useful is Graham Shipley’s The Greek World After Alexander: 323-30 BC. Part of Routledge’s History of the Ancient World (between Simon Hornblower’s The Greek World 479-323 BC and Tim Cornell’s The Beginnings of Rome), it provides a more nuanced and focused take on the period. I think that one (while more scholarly in tone) is probably an easier read just for the sake of length. It does divide the kingdoms up separately, but it provides solid reasons for doing so. Still, this is a great book if you have the time to read 800 very large pages of text. It does a thorough job of exploring the period (even if the views being fought against are not those of today) and does so in a conversational style that mostly works. In any event, it is a tremendous and learned work of scholarship that should serve as a valuable reference book for anyone looking into the era.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first encounter with Peter Green came with his book The Greco-Persian Wars, which I liked. It was well researched, engagingly written, and clearly presented the important events of the times. I also liked his translation of Robert Flacelière’s Daily Life in Greece at the Time of Pericles, which was a lively man-in-the-street view of ordinary men and women living in extraordinary times. When I saw Alexander to Actium I thought that Professor Green would be just the author to take me through the era between the death of Alexander and the start of the Roman Empire. I was not disappointed.

Given how much has been lost there are times when I am amazed that we know so much about the ancient world, and even at 970 pages this book is svelte compared to the what is known about the totality of ancient history as presented in the Cambridge Ancient History series, of fourteen volumes comprising nineteen books and coming in at 17,620 pages. Green has divided his book into five parts describing different periods of the Hellenistic age. There is good history here, but history is only part of the narrative, and often just a small part. I was impressed by the depth of his scholarship on related topics as well, as he discussed politics, philosophy, art, architecture, and science, illuminating the age in a way that bare history could not.

The overarching story of the Hellenistic age is of the gradual decline of Greek civilization as it fragmented into warring kingdoms, transient alliances, and a loss of the social cohesion that had once made the city-states great. Green points out that “From the mid-fourth century – indeed, in many cases earlier – jewelry, clothing, luxury food, funerary monuments, entertainment, furniture, housing, all tell the same story: self-indulgence as a classic substitute for power.” (p. 212)

Alexander’s empire dissolved as soon as he died, when his generals, the diadochi (“Successors”) split up the territories and immediately began fighting each other. Ptolomy, who had commanded Alexander’s cavalry, was the most politically astute among them. “[He] was the only one of all Alexander’s marshals who had seen, right from the beginning, that limited ambitions, a safe power base, a prudent division of the spoils, and canny diplomacy – including dynastic intermarriages – offered the only viable solution.” (p. 249) The greatest general among them, and the only one who truly had a chance of reforming Alexander’s empire, was Antigonus (“the One-Eyed”), who was killed at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC after his son Demetrius, seeking personal glory, left the battlefield to pursue part of the enemy forces and did not return in time to save his father.

Green’s approach is deductive, using the known facts about the era to develop a social and cultural theory that explains Hellenistic civilization.

More important still – if harder to quantify – were the inner changes wrought on the Greek psyche, both at home and abroad, by those tremendous social and political upheavals that followed Alexander’s death...: loss of self-confidence and idealism, displacement of public values, the erosion of religious beliefs, self-absorption ousting involvement, hedonism making impotent resentment, the violence of despair, the ugliness of reality formalized as realism, the empty urban soul staving on pastoral whimsy, sex, and Machtpolitik. (p. 641-642)

Green emphasizes the changing role of religion in society, starting with the rapid growth of the practice of magic. Educated people began to disassociate themselves from the vain, silly, oversexed gods of their forefathers, especially as philosophy and science started to provide alternative answers. “Ethical and scientific advances had robbed [the gods] of many of their original functions as anthropomorphized natural forces, and middle-class city dwellers had long looked askance at their indifference to civic morality.” (p. 750) Belief was still strong among the majority of the population, but as time went on they increasingly turned from the staid old civic forms of religion and embraced new arrivals from the East, with their savior-gods, emotional and often ecstatic worship, and deep personal connections.

It was a violent and bloody time, with vicious fighting between the various factions in the city states: the monarchists, oligarchs, and democrats. The temporary ascendancy of one group often led to slaughter of the others. The individualism that had propelled Greece to the height of culture and civilization was also its greatest defect, in that they had no vision of themselves as a cohesive nation. Temporary leagues of cities would form, but their purpose was conquest, subjugation, and plunder, not the creation of a unified Greece.

As a result they were no match for Rome when it decided to intervene. The Romans originally wanted to avoid involvement in the internecine quarrels of the Greeks, but as their legions arrived to assist one faction or another they found themselves drawn further and further into the affairs of the country. Inevitably some city or league would foolishly declare war, and were crushed, and the Romans began to see the potential for great profits plundering the art and treasures of the Greece. Eventually Rome would control all of Greece and Macedon, either directly or via client kings, and turned its attention toward Asia Minor.

Once again the Roman army proved superior to its opponents, and the area as far as the eastern edge of the Black Sea fell under Roman control within a few decades, until only Egypt and Syria were left, tottering but still independent. Although many history books speak of Rome bringing security, order, standardized laws, and enhanced trade to the region, the governors under the Republic were notable mainly for their venality.

Had the Romans brought to Asia a reasonable moderation to temper their administrative efficiency, they would have been welcomed everywhere with open arms. Unhappily, the basic attitude of almost every Republican proconsul or praetor was precisely that of his Macedonian predecessors: here was an unbelievably rich Oriental milch cow, to be squeezed for all it would yield, a handy source for paying off campaign debts or funding grandiose Campanian building projects. (p. 1216)

The book ends with the death of Cleopatra and the incorporation of Egypt as a Roman province. She was one of the great figures of the ancient world, and the first of the Ptolemys who learned to speak Egyptian, as well as half a dozen other languages. She was astute, flexible, and ruthless, as seen in the way she married and discarded Egyptian princes as her needs changed. She was a match for Julius Caesar, and clearly superior to Mark Antony, who comes across as something of a dolt.

The Hellenistic age is not treated with much depth in many histories of the ancient world. It is often glossed over between the Age of Alexander and the Age of Rome, but it was a period of great artistic, scientific, and political ferment. Alexander to Actium does an excellent job explaining the history and culture of these turbulent times.

[Rindis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've long been interested in the ancient world. The Roman Empire, especially, gets a lot of my historical interest. In my reading, it's very easy to find books on Rome (Empire and Republic), and on Alexander. The period right after Alexander is a bit more difficult. So I've been searching for a good book on the diadochoi and the successor states in general for quite some time.

Peter Green's Alexander to Actium is that book. Green is a professor of Classics who needed a textbook on the Hellenistic world for a set of lectures, and found that no appropriate work existed (which explains my troubles). It is a history of the entire Hellenistic world from the death of Alexander to (to spoil his alliteration) the death of Cleopatra. He wrote it with both the specialists and more general audience in mind, "The main text throughout remains free (I hope) of all arcane allusions, historiographical jargon, specialist shorthand, and quotations—familiar commonplaces apart—in foreign languages." He is much more successful with the earlier parts of the list than the later parts. There is a fair amount of academic French scattered throughout the book that is opaque to me.

The book itself is broken into five parts, roughly delineating different periods of Hellenistic history, and for the most part chapters of 'straight' history are alternated with examinations of particular subjects such as art, architecture, medicine, science (or the lack thereof), and philosophy. Philosophy in particular gets two chapters in part five, and proved hard for me to get through, as opposed to the rest of the book, which was (a few phrases apart) a very interesting read.

I should mention that it is a very long read as well. Nearly three hundred years of an area stretching from Greece to India (at its greatest extent) is a lot of territory, and this is not a beginning summary, but a full, detailed overview of the entire subject. Despite the size of the book, and the amount of detail that is in the book, it does not hold your hand. It starts with Alexander dead, and plunges directly into Macedonian/Greek power politics with no real guide to who these people are. This holds true, though to much lesser extent in other places as well. Thankfully, this wasn't a major problem for me, but I sure could have used a dramatis personae going in.

In all, this really is the book I've been looking for for over a decade. History, culture, thought, of a period I wanted to know more about, all well told in a single package, and a great place to go back to for reference, and to tie any greater detail I find back into the whole. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the period.

[J. Clayton Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having known very little about the Hellenistic period beyond what I picked up from Will Durant (who I still love, in spite of his ill repute among professional historians), I must say Mr. Green has pretty much filled in all the gaps with his exhaustive history. Yes, you have to battle your way through a host of historical figures and the innumerable power plays of the post-Alexander disentegration. And yes, I needed to pull out my dictionary on occasion. (Although my Webster's New World Dictionary doesn't include 'protreptics'.) Also, Mr. Green is way too fond of certain words and phrases, such as 'inter alia' and (especially) 'banausic'. But these are very minor complaints from a non-scholar. Frankly, I wish I knew this much. Had this much culture. Mr. Green is as familiar with modern poetry as with the ancient classics, and often draws comparisons. This is history as I like it: opinionated. Not biased, however. There's a difference. Mr. Green tells you in detail about the Cynics and Epicureans, and then follows that with his opinion. But you are given plenty of information with which to make up your own mind. (I get the impression he doesn't think much of the Cynics, thinks a little better of Epicurus, and thinks even better of the Stoics, though with major reservations.) I don't know if Mr. Green has a 'circular' view of history, but this is the kind of book that (for me at least) reinforces that view. Plus ça change... This isn't the easiest of books to read, especially when wading through the names of so many unfamiliar characters. But stick with it. Your brain will feel better in the end. A most excellent volume.

[Lo · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all, this is a very long book. Be warned. As someone who loves the Hellenistic period I wasn't deterred. I've read this book twice, and it is wonderful both as a read and as a reference. It covers everything political and cultural which happened between Alexander's death and the battle of Actium (duh). If he is a little negative, as one reviewer mentioned rightly, I think it's because many mistakes were made by the rulers of the time. Their infighting and Rome's outsider status are what caused the fall of the Greek world and the rise of Rome, plain and simple.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is for real scholarship, son.

[Wes Christensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece of history. A treasure I return to again and again.

[Thomas Baughman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still the best book on The Hellenistic World.

[Cory Sine · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I added ‘The Hellenistic World’ to my study list this year, I wanted to explore an obscure area of history. Everyone has heard of Alexander the Great and his march of conquest from Macedonia to India in the 4th Century AD, but what came after is often glossed over. This three-century period began with the death of Alexander and the partitioning of his empire (Macedonia, Greece, modern-day Turkey, the Middle East, Central Asia, Egypt, modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and western India) between his generals. These generals became the “Successor Kings” who carved out empires of their own while battling endlessly with each other for sole ownership of Alexander’s legacy. Greek culture and society was spread throughout the known world. Peter Green’s 682-page book on this age is the most fascinating and thorough account of a historical period I have ever read.

Many Classicists have the tendency to glorify the lives of Alexander and his Successors in the long-tradition of academics salivating over all matters Ancient Greek. Right from the start it is apparent that Green holds no illusions whatsoever. His leanings are Neo-Marxist and he uncovers the raw exploitation and colonial dominance prevalent in the rule of these Kings in their “spear-won” (how the Macedonians said it) territories. The Greeks had little interest in their conquests beyond plundering them, designing governments to bleed them dry long-term, and then ruthlessly maintaining the status-quo (the latter being an idea he returns to time and time again - shades of the modern globalized capitalist world we see today).

Like any truly great historian, he is concerned with not just how the world changed, but how people’s minds changed during this sweeping paradigm shift. And like any bonafide Neo-Marxist, Green is well informed on the machinations of political power. The city-state world of Greece, where political participation was seen as not just necessary but as the only path to a pious and virtuous life, was gone and had been replaced with a cabal of despotic kings ruling with iron fists. It is this momentous act of political disempowerment that Green uses to anchor his entire work. The Greeks had lost their moorings and been cut loose from the fabric of their civilization and so they turned away from their communities inwards towards themselves.

This manifested in an assortment of ways, all catalogued expertly by Green. The interest in the biting social commentary and political relevance of Greek Tragedies gave way to an indulgence in the “New Comedy”. These were comedies of manners wth colourful characters and humour based on misunderstandings and such - the birth of the sitcom. Engaging politically-active themes and ideas were replaced with artistic comfort-food. Philosophy took a psychological bend towards self-improvement and the search for a ‘new meaning’ that would fit the chaotic new world. Philosophers offered “lifestyle programs” to their followers (for a price of course). As people were politically-neutered, they turned to the accumulation of personal wealth in its place. Huge capitalistic ventures flourished and Greek businessmen traversed the known world making their fortunes - the death of participatory politics and the birth of self-serving economics. Faith was lost in the Olympian Gods and people turned to foreign religious cults, astrology, and the fetishizing of chance itself (“Tyche” envisioned as a goddess) - the death of Greek myth and the desperate, frantic search to find a worthy substitute. Greeks longed for the security of their own past and nostalgia was the word of the day from architecture to drama and painting.

The rulers themselves saw their ambition twist into spiritual and ethical corruption descending into the depraved excess that colonial rule has brought to rulers across history. They claimed divine status and the “leader cult” was born and flourished complete with worshippers and all the trappings of a new religion. When Rome conquered all at the end of the Hellenistic Age, the whole Greek world was rife with rot, chaos, and weakness after decades of perverse, power-hungry, and incompetent rulers had drained the lifeblood from their people to fight in their dynastic struggles.

The sheer breadth of this book’s subject matter is formidable achievement. Political and military history is, of course, in there but so is medicine, science, philosophy, art, psychology, society, inequality, architecture, urban life, religion, economics, and so on. There is no corner of this world that Green does not delve into and his chapters are nicely self-contained so that the book can be easily digested piecemeal (nearly 700 pages is a lot to swallow, let me tell you).

All of these elements are brought together masterfully by Green to illuminate a people desperately trying to find meaning in a world they no longer recognized or understood. His book is an astounding achievement and I cannot recommend it more highly. He achieves the highest goal of a historian, in my opinion, in that he not only reconstructs the Hellenistic Age but also lets you see it through the eyes of the people who lived in it. It’s not everyday that the effects of a time-machine are achieved in literary form.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age
Peter Green
Read it in an enormous used Hardback weighing in at a massive 970 pages.

Alexander to Actium is a sort of sequel to an excellent earlier work covering the life of Alexander the Great. This behemoth picks up after Alexander's conquest and death when the conquest lands were separated amongst his most faithful, in turn creating Kingdoms and Dynasties that would last for some time. It aims to cover these splinter kingdoms, in detail; including their successes, failures, and their eternal struggle against each other to aggregate power.

The book is broken into five parts:
Part One: Alexander's Funeral Games, 323-276 B.C.
Part Two: The Zenith Century, 276-222 B.C.
Part Three: Phalanx and Legion, 221-168 B.C.
Part Four: The Breaking of Nations, 167-116 B.C.
Part Five: Rome Triumphant, 116-30 B.C.

I can't emphasize how in detail this actually goes. Green painstakingly covers more than just politics and battles (although there is plenty of that), but actually delves deep into culture, technology, peoples, and philosophical theories of the kingdoms and their peoples. It's impressive and intimidating, so much so that this slew my Historic Side pot readers, in which it was never resuscitated. It's ambitious, incredibly dense, daunting, and while you're in its throws there is no apparent light at the end of the tunnel. It is probably the most ambitious and complete non-fiction I have ever read. This is the Green's life's work and it shows.

Of course it also comes with a very complete chronology, genealogical tables, notes, bibliography, detailed maps, and art.

Highly recommended for anyone that completed Alexander to Actium or has any interest in a deep dive into the Hellenistic Age.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Green's sheer hatred of this period of history is very different from what is typical in books like this, I've read (very good) Timur apologia! Still it can get grating for him to hammer home how much he dislikes the art and ideas of the period while portraying almost every figure maximally poorly. Ironically, despite this book's massive length, I would've preferred more in-depth analysis of the events and people involved. The actual history usually just gets two or three chapters per part and it can easily end up scrambling your brain to keep track of which Antiochus is which.

This sounds like I hated the book, but I enjoyed it quite a lot actually. Green's writing is brisk, if complex, and many of his points are convincing. I particularly enjoyed him essentially saying the Cynics were the South Park Goths of Ancient Athens.

[John Bohman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully comprehensive. Does a great job connecting gaps between the better know events of the period, while focusing on topics like culture, art and intellectual developments that are usually left out of other, more episodic and geo-politically focused studies of the period. Highly recommend if you looking for a more academic but still readable look at the Hellenistic period.

[David Hollywood · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very detailed and long book about the Hellenistic period, and which never relents on providing the reader with description, conjecture and opinion about a period of history that required such revelations. A brilliant work

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was the author a bit pretentious in his style of writing? Yes. Did this book throughly fill a gap in my historical knowledge of the era? Absolutely. Broad and detailed.

[David Montgomery · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dense, informative look at the Hellenistic period — one I'd argue is often ignored in Western history classes. We learn about the Greeks and the Persians, about Athens and Sparta, and Alexander's conquests, but then skip forward to the rise of Rome. I knew bits and pieces about this period, but this very comprehensive book has really filled in the gaps.

It doesn't just tackle the straight history of battles and kings, although that's there. Just as much if not more of the book is devoted to the history of Hellenistic art and literature, while other segments throughout focus on science, architecture and philosophy.

The most striking thing about this book to me is that it's so long, dense and thoroughly researched when the author appears to dislike everything about the period. I'm sure that's not actually the case, but he is thoroughly critical of just about every aspect of the age: the behavior of its elites, its trends in art and literature, the general lack of progress, the hypocrisy, the religions and philosophies, etc. Even the rare undisputed triumphs of the age, such as medical breakthroughs in Alexandria or a few of Alexander's more talented generals, are dismissed as exceptions to the general rule of stagnation and decadence. And the thing is, I'm not sure he's wrong. But it was striking.

And this period is an important period of history. Despite Green's criticisms, the Hellenistic Age had a huge impact for centuries to come. Its Stoic and Epicurean philosophies, its advances in medicine, astronomy and other sciences, its architecture (the Seven Wonders of the World are almost all from this era), its military innovations, its impact on ancient Judaism, and generally speaking the cultural prestige of the Hellenistic era all profoundly influenced Rome and, at greater remove, our own culture.

If you're interested in filling in the gaps in a thorough way, this book will do it, though it's dense and perhaps — to my tastes anyway — overdetailed on art and literature. For a breezier look, the same author wrote a much shorter survey of the period, though I have not read it and cannot comment on its quality.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thematic history of the Greek world between Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire. Lots of philosophers, poets and artists. Surprisingly few kings, battles and dates. Green claimed to only use "common words and phrases from non-English languages", but that really meant "common to old-fashioned classicists. Oh, and he really really likes the poet Cavafy. I don't. Still, lots of info here, and it is quite depressing seeing just how like today the old times were. Budget surpluses! Rated PG for some coarse language and adult themes. 3/5

[Erik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding, but does everything have to happen for the most cynical reasons? Historians are such pessimists. I also found the contemporary references and Weltschmerz a bit out of place. But the history, ooo la la.

[Derek Davis]

still early on, but undoubtedly the best book on Hellenistic history. Beautiful stylist

[Evan Leach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best general history book I have ever read.

[Patrick Aisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic

[Mary Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great history book on the era between Alexander the Great's Empire and the rise of the Roman Empire. Reads like fiction, unlike most history books!

[Alicia Ruggieri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful resource for writers as well as entertaining in its own right.

[Prof Primate]

A very exiting book!