Hellenistic period

Alexander the Great History Channel (Engineering an Empire)

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• published: 23 Mar 2015
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Alexander the Great, History Channel Documentary (Engineering an Empire). Greece in the age of Alexander the Great and the establishment of the Macedonian Empire which introduced the Hellenistic Period of ancient Greek civilization. It would take one man's desire for conquest and domination to unify Greece and then vanquish the world. Without Alexander the Great, it is possible Greece's Golden Era would have been just a footnote in history, but Alexander's triumph had its price. The Athenian experiment with democracy had ended and tens of thousands would die during Alexander's relentless attacks on Persia and Egypt. Still, his armies carried Greek life, culture and values far abroad and this empire became known as the Hellenistic World. Greece's amazing engineering achievements and ideas are still with us today. From Pergamon, a city that still stands today as testament to the genius of Greek city planning and engineering, to theaters with acoustics that still amaze sound engineers today, to the world's first lighthouse and one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, this episode will examine the architecture and infrastructure engineered by the Greek Empire. Engineering an Empire is an excellent series and definitely worth watching. ............................................ Plutarch, "Moralia: On the Fortune of Alexander", I, 328d, 329a: “O wondrous power of Philosophic Instruction, that brought the Indians to worship Greek gods, and the Scythians to bury their dead, not to devour them! We admire Carneades' power, which made Cleitomachus, formerly called Hasdrubal, and a Carthaginian by birth, adopt Greek ways ... But when Alexander was civilizing Asia, Homer was commonly read, and the children of the Persians, of the Susianians, and of the Gedrosians learned to chant the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides. Yet through Alexander Bactria and the Caucasus learned to revere the gods of the Greeks... Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes, and sowed all Asia with Greek magistracies ... Egypt would not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its Seleucia, nor Sogdiana its Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, nor the Caucasus a Greek city, for by the founding of cities in these places savagery was extinguished and the worse element, gaining familiarity with the better, changed under its influence.” ............................................. "We know the ancient Macedonians were fundamentally Greeks. That is to say they were Greek speakers and ethnically they were Greeks." (Yale University Courses, Lecture youtube.com/watch?v=cuOxGMoHMMY , Introduction to Ancient Greek History, Philip, Demosthenes and the Fall of the Polis, 2007) on 0:01:48 "We must remember too that Philip and Alexander were Greeks, descended from Heracles, wished to be recognised as Greeks, as benefactors of the Greeks, even as Heracles had been."(Nicholas Hammond, British scholar and expert on Macedon, “Alexander the Great”, p.257) "They (ancient Macedonians) felt as Greeks, and they had no temptation to destroy what they claimed was their mother country. They had clearly no wish to swallow up Greece in Macedonia, but rather to make Macedonia, as a Greek state, the ruling power of Greece. Such was undoubtedly the aim of Philip and Alexander too." (Theodore Ayrault Dodge, military historian, “Alexander”, p.187) “In the end, the Greeks would fall under the rule of a single man, who would unify Greece: Philip II, king of Macedon (360-336 BC). His son, Alexander the Great, would lead the Greeks on a conquest of the ancient Near East vastly expanding the Greek world.” (Michael Burger, “The Shaping of Western Civilization: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment”, University of Toronto Press, 2008, p.76) “After Philip's assassination at Aegae in 336, Alexander inherited, together with the Macedonian kingdom, his father's Panhellenic project to lead the Greeks in the conquest of Persia.” (Waldemar Heckel, Lawrence A. Tritle, “Alexander the Great: A New History”, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, p.99 ) “Afterwards he [Alexander] revived his father's League of Corinth, and with it his plan for a pan-Hellenic invasion of Asia to punish the Persians for the suffering of the Greeks, especially the Athenians, in the Greco-Persian Wars and to liberate the Greek cities of Asia Minor.” (Victor Davis Hanson, “Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome”, Princeton University Press, 2012, p.119)