THE HELLENES IN THE ORIENT

=Dissolution of the Empire of Alexander.=—­Alexander had united under one master all the ancient world from the Adriatic to the Indus, from Egypt to the Caucasus.  This vast empire endured only while he lived.  Soon after his death his generals disputed as to who should succeed him; they made war on one another for twenty years, at first under the pretext of supporting some one of the house of Alexander—­his brother, his son, his mother, his sisters or one of his wives, later openly in their own names.

Each had on his side a part of the Macedonian army or some of the Greek mercenary soldiers.  The Greeks were thus contending among themselves who should possess Asia.  The inhabitants were indifferent in these wars as they had been in the strife between the Greeks and the Persians.  When the war ceased, there remained but three generals; from the empire of Alexander each of them had carved for himself a great kingdom:  Ptolemy had Egypt, Seleucus Syria, Lysimachus Macedonia.  Other smaller kingdoms were already separated or detached themselves later:  in Europe Epirus; in Asia Minor, Pontus, Bithynia, Galatia, Cappadocia, Pergamos; in Persia, Bactriana and Parthia.  Thus the empire of Alexander was dismembered.

=The Hellenistic Kingdoms.=—­In these new kingdoms the king was a Greek; accustomed to speak Greek, to adore the Greek gods, and to live in Greek fashion, he preserved his language, his religion, and his customs.  His subjects were Asiatics, that is to say, barbarians; but he sought to maintain a Greek court about him; he recruited his army with Greek mercenaries, his administrative officers were Greeks, he invited to his court Greek poets, scholars, and artists.

Already in the time of the Persian kings there were many Greeks in the empire as colonists, merchants, and especially soldiers.  The Greek kings attracted still more of these.  They came in such numbers that at last the natives adopted the costume, the religion, the manners, and even the language of the Greeks.  The Orient ceased to be Asiatic, and became Hellenic.  The Romans found here in the first century B.C. only peoples like the Greeks and who spoke Greek.[97]

=Alexandria.=—­The Greek kings of Egypt, descendants of Ptolemy,[98] accepted the title of Pharaoh held by the ancient kings, wore the diadem, and, like the earlier sovereigns, had themselves worshipped as children of the Sun.  But they surrounded themselves with Greeks and founded their capital on the edge of the sea in a Greek city, Alexandria, a new city established by the order of Alexander.