become conventional to refer to the period from the death of Alexander in 323 BC to the end of the last
independent Macedonian kingdom in 30 BC as the “Hellenistic Period.” It is interesting to note, however,
that the ancient Greeks themselves did not perceive a significant shift in their situation at the time of the
death of Alexander. For, while the character of what we call the Hellenistic Period is noticeably different
from that of the Classical Period that preceded it, many if not most of the differences were already
beginning to make themselves felt in the fourth century, independently of the influence of Alexander’s
conquests. It might, in fact, make more sense to consider the end of the Peloponnesian War, rather than the
death of Alexander, as marking the break between the Classical and the Hellenistic Periods. The changes
brought about by the imposition of Macedonian rule, significant as those were, primarily concerned
government and the relationship between the people and the (now divine) ruler. In the realm of art,
literature, and thought, however, the developments of the Hellenistic Period can be seen largely as a
continuation of what had begun before Alexander’s death, and even, in many cases, before his birth. We
will consider in this chapter the distinctive features of the Hellenistic Period and how those features
emerged from the situation of the Greeks in the fifth and fourth centuries.

Political Life and the Polis

Even in the realm of government and politics, where the changes were more sudden and dramatic, the
developments of the Hellenistic Period were not entirely new. The fundamental unit of Greek government
throughout the Archaic and Classical periods was the polis, which is, indeed, one of the characteristic
features of ancient Greek civilization. Already during the Peloponnesian War the integrity of the Greek
polis was coming to be challenged. The Athenian “allies,” for example, were not entirely free to
determine their own policies and in some instances the Athenian judicial system had jurisdiction over the
allies’ internal affairs. Philip’s imposition of Macedonian authority over the Greek poleis in the middle of
the fourth century is in many ways a comparable infringement of the autonomy of the cities under his
control. The Macedonian monarchies of the Hellenistic Period merely continued to exercise the kind of
control that Philip had imposed. The kingdom that most directly affected mainland Greece was the
Antigonid kingdom of Macedon, ruled by the descendants of Antigonus, one of Alexander’s generals (map
16 ). The Greek cities in Asia Minor, however, fell at varying times under the influence of the Ptolemaic
kingdom, whose court was at Alexandria in Egypt, and the Seleucid kingdom based in northern Syria.
(Ptolemy and Seleucus had also been among Alexander’s generals.) Each of these kingdoms had a
different character and what would today be called a different “management style,” depending partly upon
the character of the individual king, but more importantly upon the history and the nature of the territory he
governed.