#hellenistic greece

[vintage-treasures]

Cast Glass Pomegranate Vase. (ca. 2nd Century B.C. – 1st Century A.D.) In ancient Greek life, small fruit-shaped containers like this were commonly used to hold precious cosmetic or perfume oils. To achieve this rich burgundy color in the Hellenistic period, ancient glassworkers typically added a small amount of manganese or colloidal gold to the molten glass.

The pomegranate carried deep mythological meaning in antiquity. Because of its abundance of seeds, it served as a widespread symbol of fertility, fruitfulness, and life, making it a frequent attribute of goddesses like Aphrodite and Hera. Due to the myth of Persephone, who ate its seeds in the Underworld, the fruit also represented life within death, explaining why such pieces were often placed in ancient tombs as votive offerings. Loc. Private Collection. Dim. 6.9 x 6.6 cm (2.7 x 2.5 in.)

[jeannereames]

Hello Professor! Did the Macedonians hate Alexander in retrospect? And if so, why? Is it because of the Persianization?

Alexander's reputation went up and down, although he remained so enormously important/popular that all the Successor kings sought ties to him. They wouldn't have done that if he'd been widely hated.

That said, it certainly wasn't beloved in some areas of Greece, and not only Athens (although his infamy may have peaked there). And his father, Philip, was probably more popular, at least in some areas of Macedonia/among some groups.

But it's more nuanced than yes, they loved him or no, they hated him.

[deathlessathanasia]

Demeter in Hellenistic poetry: religion and poetics

[jacaerysyearner]

Hellenistic Greece artwork appreciation. the most dramatic, emotional and tragic of Greek art history, showcasing the turmoil of the time.

[deathlessathanasia]

The New Politics of Olympos: Kingship in Kallimachos' Hymns - Anna’s Archive

Michael Brumbaugh The New Politics of Olympos explores the dynamics of praise, power, and persuasion in Kallimachos Oxford University P

[lightdancer1]

Incidentally while most of the Ancient Greeks and Romans were monogamous, the Macedonians were the big exception:

One of the key factors of Macedonian history and culture is that unlike the rest of the Greek world Macedonians happily, or at least the Royal Family happily, indulged in polygamy. This was a very key factor in shaping the destinies of women, and it both accounted for the kind of intrigues that are a dime a dozen in the various Iranian and Islamic states, and for that matter in China having parallels in Macedon that they ultimately do not in the rest of the Graeco-Roman world. This only makes the rise of Olympias, simultaneously mother and aspiring Diadochi and brief autocrat of Macedon, all the more impressive. She parlayed her son Alexander's success into her own claim, and proved that he got no small portion of what shaped him into the world-bestriding juggernaut who forged a new world at Gaugamela much as Khalid Ibn Al-Walid would at the Yarmuk from her.

She also was one of the losers and yet the reality is that a Queen played and was also one of the winners, and for longer than some of the more unfortunate players in the Diadochi Wars.

Olympias

Olympias (c. 375-316 BCE) was the second wife of Philip II of Macedon (r. 359-336 BCE) and the mother of Alexander the Great (r. 336-323 BCE

[lightdancer1]

Today in Women's History Month, the Classical World beginning with Greece and the Roman Empire:

Today in Women's History Month, women in the classical world, which will begin from west to east. In this case it begins not with Mycenaean Greece, where women had relatively more rights, but with Classical Greece where the only Polis to give women rights at all did so because it was a proto-fascist state built on compulsory slave labor and every able body counted. The women of the Polis in turn gave way to the women of the blended Polis and gargantuan empire ruled by God-Emperors world of the Hellenistic age, and in all cases women in Greece had fewer rights than women in Rome, and women in Rome had damned few rights until the time of the Empire.

This matters not least because it is from this world of Poleis and Hellenistic God-Emperors, and the occluded harem-like lives of women that gave way in a few very notable cases to women under the great monarchies who could exercise considerable power indeed. Beginning, in point of fact, with the woman who played such a disproportionate role in the life of Alexander the Great.

And as always the sources give a deep and ultimately undue bias to the realities of the lives of noble and royal women, the common masses of women forgettable and forgotten to elite men who wrote for other elite men, when very few women could read and write at all.

Women in Ancient Greece

Women in the ancient Greek world had few rights in comparison to male citizens. Unable to vote, own land, or inherit, a woman's place was in

[lionofchaeronea]

Hellenistic drachma of the Epirote League, depicting the heads of Dodonian Zeus (crowned with an oak wreath) and Dione (or Hera). Artist unknown; ca. 233-168 BCE. Now in the Staatliche Münzsammlung, Munich. Photo credit: ArchaiOptix/Wikimedia Commons.