Here is a series of lectures given by Sean Gabb in 2022, in which he discusses the influence of the Greeks on the other peoples of the Ancient World. For reasons of politeness and data protection, all student contributions have been removed.

This eighth lecture in the course discusses the Hellenistic Age that lies between the death of Alexander in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra in 30 BC. Topics covered include:

• The division of Alexander’s empire
• The main Hellenistic kingdoms
• The demography of Greek domination
• Hellenistic art and literature and science

The Greeks are perhaps the exceptional people of the Ancient World. They were not saints: they were at least as willing as anyone else to engage in aggressive wars, enslavement, and sometimes human sacrifice. At the same time, working without any strong outside inspiration, they provided at least the foundations for the science, mathematics, philosophy, art and secular literature of later peoples.