Earn Alexander To Actium: The Historical Evolution Of The Hellenistic Age (Volume 1) Narrated By Peter Green Shared As Electronic Format

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 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 quotationsfamiliar commonplaces apartin 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, Probably the best general history book I have ever read, Fantastic Still the best book on The Hellenistic World, still early on, but undoubtedly the best book on Hellenistic history, Beautiful stylist 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 nonEnglish languages", but that really meant "common to oldfashioned 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,/
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 overpages of Green's pretentious writing style absurdly overreliant 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, 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 geopolitically focused studies of the period.
Highly recommend if you looking for a more academic but still readable look at the Hellenistic period.
A very exiting book! My first encounter with Peter Green came with his book The GrecoPersian 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 Flacelières Daily Life in Greece at the Time of Pericles, which was a lively maninthestreet 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 atpages 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,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 citystates great.
Green points out that “From the midfourth century indeed, in many cases earlier jewelry, clothing, luxury food, funerary monuments, entertainment, furniture, housing, all tell the same story: selfindulgence as a classic substitute for power.
” p.

Alexanders 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 Alexanders cavalry, was the most politically astute among them, “He was the only one of all Alexanders 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.The greatest general among them, and the only one who truly had a chance of reforming Alexanders empire, was Antigonus “the OneEyed”, who was killed at the Battle of Ipsus inBC 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.


Greens 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 Alexanders death.
. . : loss of selfconfidence and idealism, displacement of public values, the erosion of religious beliefs, selfabsorption 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.

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 middleclass city dwellers had long looked askance at their indifference to civic morality.
” p.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 saviorgods, 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.

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.
.