Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Settlement
- 2 Power
- 3 Victory
- 4 Benefaction
- Focus I The Great Altar of Pergamon
- Focus II Hellenistic Mosaics
- Appendix A The Artist
- Appendix B Kallixeinos of Rhodes on the Wonders of Alexandria
- Glossary
- Timeline
- Biographical Sketches
- Select Bibliography and Further Reading
- References
- Sources of Illustrations
- Index
1 - Settlement
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Settlement
- 2 Power
- 3 Victory
- 4 Benefaction
- Focus I The Great Altar of Pergamon
- Focus II Hellenistic Mosaics
- Appendix A The Artist
- Appendix B Kallixeinos of Rhodes on the Wonders of Alexandria
- Glossary
- Timeline
- Biographical Sketches
- Select Bibliography and Further Reading
- References
- Sources of Illustrations
- Index
Summary
Sprawling across two million square miles of the earth’s surface, Alexander’s empire (Map 1) was a geographic, ecological, ethnic, and cultural patchwork. Its multiple heartlands (Figure 11) included the rocky but intermittently lush Mediterranean coasts of Greece, Macedonia, and Anatolia; the abundant Nile Valley and Delta; the then “fertile crescent” of present-day Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq (watered by the Jordan, Orontes, Tigris, and Euphrates rivers); and, to the east, the high plains of Afghanistan and the vast and verdant Indus Valley.
Densely populated, these regions were ringed and punctuated by high peaks and arid deserts: the mountains of Greece; the dry Anatolian plateau and the Taurus Range that severs it from Syria; the Caucasus, linking the Black and Caspian seas; the Egyptian and Arabian deserts to the far south; the arid and mountainous Iranian plateau; and the mighty peaks of the Hindu Kush.
The Persian kings had controlled most of this vast area for two centuries, ruling a volatile collage of Greeks, Anatolians, Syrians, Phoenicians, Jews, Arabs, Egyptians, Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Baktrians, and Indians – to name but a few. Crisscrossed by a dense web of trade routes, their empire was highly urbanized and divided into two dozen provinces, or satrapies, each ruled by a provincial governor, or satrap (thus, for example, Hellenistic writers called the Iranian plateau the Upper Satrapies). Alexander inherited this system, and his successors happily perpetuated it.
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- Art in the Hellenistic WorldAn Introduction, pp. 26 - 43Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014