more “Greek and barbarian”—everyone would enjoy the benefits of
Greek civilization.
o He established the polis as a center of cultural diffusion
through such institutions as the gymnasium, where the paideia
of Greece could be learned from the classics.o He encouraged intermarriage among Greeks and barbarians to
break down ethnic and cultural differences.o He extended the use of the Greek language so that it became
the “common language” (koine) for succeeding centuries.o He encouraged the practice of religious syncretism, by
which different polytheistic systems could be regarded as
functionally equivalent.o The ideal that Alexander sought was “cosmopolitanism,” a
sense of world citizenship that would derive from always
having available the forms of Greek civilization.• The effect of empire was to distort the very values that Alexander
sought to propagate: Hellenism was something other than ancient
Athenian culture.
o The city-state of Athens had citizen participation, which was
lost in empire and in huge metropolises.
o Further, the Attic Greek of Athens was influenced by Semitic
languages as it was extended so that the koine of the empire
was not exactly the same language as that used by Sophocles
and Plato.o Athenian culture was intensely local, but making it universal
reduced its effect. The most highly mobile members of society
felt most acutely that the flip side of cosmopolitanism is social
alienation or anomie.