University of Heidelberg

The View from the Old World: Contemporary Perspectives on Hellenistic Culture

Andrew Erskine
(University of Edinburgh)

This paper examines the response of the old Greek world, the cities of mainland Greece and the Aegean, to the transformation of the eastern Mediterranean. I am interested in looking at contemporary views of the emergence of Hellenistic culture.  How were the peoples and cultures of this new world perceived?  Particularly important is the evidence of the 2nd c. BC Greek historian Polybius from the Peloponnesian city of Megalopolis. His account of the very mixed population of Alexandria (34.14) suggests that he did not think of the new cities of the Hellenistic East and their culture in the same way as he thought (for instance) of Athens or Sparta nor was he impressed. Whether these views of Polybius are typical is something that must be considered. An alternative perspective might be found in the evidence for panhellenic festivals: who counts as Greek here? who appears in the theorodokoi lists of Delphi and who gets invitations to acknowledge the new festivals of cities like Magnesia or Kos?  Certainly, when it was in their interests the old Greek world had no qualms about embracing the new as various examples of kinship diplomacy show (for example the Kytinian delegation to Lycian Xanthos).