In the school classics curriculum in my day the Hellenistic period was the bit that got left out between study of classical Greek and classical Latin. At university we read the standard histories which helped plug the gap, although the period still did not feature in the curriculum apart from a course on the history of the Greek language. Yet from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC to the final absorption of the remnants of the Ptolemaic Empire into the Roman Empire following the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, a Greek‐based culture flourished across the Near East, not least in the city of Alexandria itself.
In our own professional context, of course, the period also saw the foundation – and destruction – of one of history's most famous libraries; and all those ancient Greek texts I studied had been sifted and edited by scholars of the Hellenistic period. Octavian himself set the pattern: in Alexandria after the Battle of Actium he paid homage to the body of Alexander, but on being invited to view the bodies of the Ptolemies is said by Suetonius to have replied that he came to see a king, not corpses.
Any period or place in history has its intrinsic interest, but the Hellenistic period warrants study as much, or more, for itself as for its influence on Roman and subsequent history and culture. Philosophy, literature, social and economic development, geography, medicine, science (not given a chapter of its own here, but covered more peripherally under medicine and philosophy) all flourished during the period or influenced wider development in the Roman Empire and beyond. No excuse is needed for studying the period or for producing a handbook to it.
This latest volume is typical of the Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series: it offers a thorough and wide‐ranging academic perspective on all aspects of the period. Following an overview by the editor, seven sections contain: five essays on history; four on the protagonists (Ptolemies, Seleukids, Attalids and the rest); four essays on change and continuity (kings, cities, myth and geography); four on Greeks and others (Ptolemaic Egypt, Jews and Greeks, Galatians and Italy and Sicily in the Hellenistic age); five essays on society and economy; two on religion; and four on arts and sciences.
Each essay has a note on further reading and the volume is completed by a comprehensive bibliography (arranged by authors) and an index. Illustration is sparse but relevant: the chapter on art has eight reproductions, the essay on space and geography a single diagrammatic map and a diagram, for example. Reproductions from photographs do not come out very well: using lithography on a rather absorbent paper leads to hazy images. But the illustrations are so few that this is not a particular problem.
The realities of ancient economics are highlighted in Vincent Gabrielsen's piracy and the slave trade. The application and relevance of modern techniques is well illustrated in the essay “Reading the landscape: survey archaeology and the Hellenistic Oikoumene”. Essays on Jews and Greeks and on the Galatians implicitly take the context forward to the Biblical world. The use, or misuse, of myth and history for dynastic or political purposes is interestingly discussed by Tanja S. Scheer in “The past in a Hellenistic present: myth and local tradition”. These are just a handful of the contents of this volume that took this reviewer's attention; there is plenty more in similar vein for everybody.
The contributors are academics from across Europe and North America. Their essays discuss and analyse received fact and latest research, and do so in academic terms and within the context of current academic thought. The facts are, of course, recounted and discussed and overall a detailed picture is given of a geographically wide‐ranging and socially, economically and intellectually vibrant era.
The book, like the series, is aimed at the professional and academic market, so it will find a useful place in any university library serving courses on ancient history, philosophy, economics or society.
