What is the importance of the Hellenistic culture?

By: | Post date: 2016-05-14 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, History, Mediaeval Greek

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.

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