Subscribe to Blog via Email
October 2024 M T W T F S S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
What is the importance of the Hellenistic culture?
Thx4A2A, Anon. As my fellows have asked, we’ll need more detail on what you’re asking.
I’m going to stab at a related question, which is the legacy of Hellenistic culture. In fact, that might be a good approach to vague questions like this, my fellow respondents: we grab a bit each of the possible answers that we can relate to.
We owe the Hellenistic—under which I’ll conflate Greek culture under the Romans:
- Linguistics, which started in Alexandria (Callimachus and co.) as a way of teaching the now obsolescent language of the Classics.
- Philology and textual criticism, which started in Alexandria (Callimachus and co.) as a way of stabilising the texts of the Classics.
- Library science, ditto, Alexandria.
- The novel, through a circuitous path (including Dictys Cretensis and the Roman de Troie).
- The comedy as we know it, from Menander via the renaissance revival of the Latin comic poets.
- Several influential schools of philosophy, including Stoicism and Neo-Platonism.
- The intellectual wherewithal of Christianity.
- Statues in Buddhism, through Greco-Buddhist art.
Leave a Reply