The Hellenistic World 323-31 B.C.

Koine Greek: Common Greek language

Antigonus (Antigonid Ruler) Ruled 306-301 B.C.

Alexander

1. 500,000 by 250 B.C.; 1,000,000 by 31 B.C.
2. Museum; "home of the Muses"

• Culture, an object of study, not part of daily life
• Literary canons; Paideia, "training up" of the youth; The Two Cultures, C.P. Snow, the culture of art and humanities divorced from the culture of science, hence the inability to study them;
• Emphasis on Science

3.Scientifc Breakthroughs

• Euclid (ca. 300 B.C.) formulated the rules of geometry
• Archimedes (287-212 B.C.) advanced experimental science
• Aristarchus (ca. 275 B.C.) articulated the heliocentric theory
• Eratosthenes (ca. 225 B.C.) calculated the circumference of the earth
• Ptolemy (127-48 B.C.) systematized astronomical information; created theory to explain planetary motion

Hellenistic Philosophy:

Stoicism and Epicureanism

• "Therapeutic philsophies"
• Focus shifted to ethics: "How can I cope and how can I live?"

Stoicism

Zeno (335-263 B.C.)

• taught at the stoa poikile (porch) in Athens
• believes that knowledge is possible
• equates knowledge with virtue
• believed that there was a divine reason that permeated all creation
• Virtue consists in becoming acquainted with the divine reason

Epicureanism

Epicurus (341-270 B.C.)

• The aim of philosophy is happiness, or pleasure (not hedonism)
• Epicurus defined happiness as an absence of pain from the body and of trouble form the soul