Just because I’ll capitulate once, doesn’t mean ;)…
Not that simple. Only Ptolemaic Egypt fell as a chunk.
By the time Macedon fell to Rome it included almost nothing of Greece proper, most of those territories having been lost in Wars of the Diadochi, to form seperate states and state-lets grouped into such formations as the Achaean League and the Aetolian League, or floating independent like Athens or Rhodes. In fact as early as the time of Antigonus Gonatas’ death ( the real founder of the Macedonian Antigonids ), only Thessaly was in Macedonian hands.
The only Seleucid territory that came to Rome from the Seleucids was Syria. Everything else either had thrown off Seleucid loyalties more or less on their own ( Bactria, Judaea, Armenia ), been sucked up by the Parthians, or had gone permanently independent after Antiochus III’s loss to Rome ( Pergamum and the other states of Asia Minor, most of which had started to break off almost as soon as the Seleucid state had constituted, really - it’s just after Antiochus III that the Seleucids were forced up trying to hold them ). Only Syria ( partially ) and Pergamum and a few neighboring territories ( like Lycia and Caria, held by another Roman ally, Rhodes ) were really strongly Hellenized. States like Bithnyia, Pontus and Cappadocia were still largely “Asiatic” in character and population ( really same with Egypt outside of Alexandria ).
Yes, to something of an extent ( I wouldn’t go quite so far as “almost entirely” ). But Rome would have been involved in the region regardless. The gravity of civilization at that time was the eastern Mediterranean, Carthage notwithstanding. The Diadochid states were what Rome dealt with, but no Alexander and they would have still been dealing with whomever was there.
Yeah, but he never got there. Alexander did have an impact in that theatre insomuch as the cash to buy off Pyrrhus of Epirus and send him kiting off to Magna Grecia probably mostly came from the immense pludered treasuries of Persia, which the Diadochi lived off of for a generation. But in the end all that did is give us the phrase “pyrrhic victory” :).
Anyway I grant all of the above indicates an impact, however indirect on Rome. However none of that proves it “changed how Ceasar was raised” ( see my earlier comments on absorption of Greek culture being not dependent on Alexander ) or that you can draw a lineal cultural/political progression from Alexander that terminates in 1453. Or in other words, I contend that Alexander was not a necessary precursor for the Roman state in approximately the way that we know it.
See, I don’t regard it that way. Not even remotely. Roman administration was considerably different, far more effective and centralized, and even rather more culturally homogenous ( not saying a lot, granted ) than what the Diadochid states produced. Rome did not step in and assume the Diadochid role - they almost completely tore it down and replaced it with their own system.
Accident of geography. At its heyday the Roman state was indisputably more “Latin” than “Greek”.
Again, disagree, though only in part. As I noted in my discusion on the Persians, movement of Greek scholars was through the Asian world was not unknown and not excessively restricted. I’ll go half-way and agree that cultural dissemination eastwards was greatly facilitated in some respects. But I wouldn’t want to overstate it.
Yes :). But Aristotle’s fame was in no more than a very minor way tied to Alexander. No Alexander, you still have Aristotle ( okay, maybe not the Gordian Knot story, but most everything else - the storioes about Philip and Alexander supplying him with thousands of slaves to collect specimens being widely regarded as apocryphal ).
- Tamerlane
). Certainly the Athenians saw the connection, when they went on an Iconoclastic tear at news of Alexander’s death, and they march straight to the Lyceum and burned it down and put Aristotle to flight.