In this book a great twentieth-century historian of antiquity provides a comprehensive picture of the Hellenistic period, which covered the three centuries between the death of Alexander the Great and the establishment of the Roman Empire by Augustus. This was the period when the civilisation which had originated in Greece permeated the whole of the ancient world.
Beginning with a historical outline of the era, Professor Tarn (also author of Alexander the Great and the monumental Greeks in Bactria and India) continues with the brilliant descriptive and interpretive chapters on all aspects of Hellenistic life: political forms; social and economic conditions in the Greek cities; Hellenism in Asia and Egypt and its contacts with and influences on the Jews; and the status of trade, exploration, literature, learning, science, art, philosophy, and religion.
The revised edition (made with the cooperation of G.T. Griffith) brings up to date a classical study of one of the most complex, interesting, and formative periods in history.
With an index, bibliography, and maps.