skill of the classical period, Hellenistic sculptors moved
away from the idealism of fifth-century classicism to a
more emotional and realistic art, seen in numerous stat-
ues of old women, drunks, and little children at play.
Alexander the Great’s incursion into the western
part of India resulted in some Greek cultural influ-
ences there, especially during the Hellenistic era. In
the first century B.C.E., Indian sculptors began to
create statues of the Buddha. The impact of Greek
sculpture was especially evident in the Buddhist
statues made in Gandhara, which is today part of
Pakistan.A Golden Age of Science
The Hellenistic era witnessed a more conscious sep-
aration of science from philosophy. In classical
Greece, what we would call the physical and life sci-
ences had been divisions of philosophical inquiry.
Nevertheless, by the time of Aristotle, the Greeks
had already established an important principle of
scientific investigation—empirical research, or sys-
tematic observation, as thebasis for generalization.
In the Hellenistic Age, the sciences tended to be
studied in their own right.
One of the traditional areas of
Greek science was astronomy, and two
Alexandrian scholars continued this
exploration. Aristarchus (ar-iss-TAR-
kus) of Samos (ca. 310–230 B.C.E.)
developed a heliocentric view of the
universe, contending that the sun and
the fixed stars remained stationary
while the earth rotated around the sun
in a circular orbit. This view was not
widely accepted, and most scholars
clung to the earliergeocentric viewof
the Greeks, which held that the earth
was at the center of the universe.
Another astronomer, Eratosthenes
(er-uh-TAHSS-thuh-neez)(ca.275–194
B.C.E.), determined that the earth was
round and calculated its circumference
at 24,675 miles, within 200 miles of
the actual figure.
A third Alexandrian scholar was
Euclid (YOO-klid), who lived around
300 B.C.E. He established a school in
Alexandria but is primarily known for
hisElements, a systematic organization
of the fundamental elements of geom-
etry as they had already been worked
out. It became the standard textbook
of plane geometry and was used up to
modern times.
The most famous of the scientists
of the Hellenistic period, Archimedes
(ahr-kuh-MEE-deez) (287–212 B.C.E.),
came from the western Mediterranean
region. Archimedes was especially im-
portant for his work on the geometry
of spheres and cylinders and for estab-
lishing the value of the mathematical
constant pi. Archimedes was also aHellenistic Sculpture and a Greek-Style Buddha.Greek architects
and sculptors were highly valued throughout the Hellenistic world. Shown
on the left is a terracotta statuette of a draped young woman, made as a
tomb offering near Thebes, probably around 300B.C.E. Alexander’s
advance into western India resulted in some Greek cultural influences
there. During the first centuryB.C.E., Indian sculptors in Gandhara began
to make statues of the Buddha in a style that combined Indian and
Hellenistic artistic traditions, evident in the stone sculpture of the Buddha
on the right. Note the wavy hair topped by a bun tied with a ribbon,
which is also a feature of earlier statues of Greek deities. This Buddha is
also wearing a Greek-style toga.(Left: Kanellopoulos Museum, Athens//Gianni Dagli Orti/The
Art Archive at Art Resource, NY; Right: National Museum of Pakistan, Karachi//Borromeo/Art Resource, NY)88 Chapter 4 The Hellenistic WorldCopyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
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