Lindstrom, Essay #2, Question #4, Page #1 Nathan W.

Lindstrom Professor Gatlin History 4A 2012-02-24

IN

HIS BOOK,

OLD WORLD Encounters: Cross-cultural Contacts and Exchanges in

Pre-modern Times, author Jerry Bentley illustrates the concept of syncretism, the amalgamation of different cultures, including their religions and social conventions, through three different methods. First, Bentley explains, Second, syncretism

cultures can converge through voluntary association.

can be spurred on by economic, social, or political pressure. And third, it can happen due to forced assimilation (OWE, p. 9). Nowhere in the Hellenistic period of 400 to 30 B.C.E. is syncretism better illustrated than in the rise and fall of Alexander the Great. Weakened by the recent Peloponnesian War and constant internal strife, the Greek city-states in the Peloponnese region were easy prey for the rise of the Macedonians to the north, led by the father of Alexander the Great, king Philip II. By 338 B.C.E., Philip II had forced the southern Greek city-states to form a league under his rule. While they retained much of their internal freedom, they had to obey Macedonian foreign policy. Thus began the blending of Greek and Macedonian cultures due to the second type of syncretism as defined by Bentley.

Lindstrom, Essay #2, Question #4, Page #2 In 336 B.C.E. king Philip II was assassinated, and his son assumed the throne, beginning the largest empire expansion the world had ever seen. Alexander the Great soon conquered vast regions of the known world, including Persia, Egypt, and India. In establishing the colony of Alexandria in northern Egypt, Alexander imported a number of Greek and Macedonian people, a kind of economically-driven syncretism. For the conquered Persian people the change was much less dramatic. That a Macedonian became the Persian king, observes the authors of The Making of the West, hardly changed the lives of the local populations of the Persian Empire. They

continued to send the same taxes to a still remote master, whom they rarely if ever saw (MW, p. 103). However, Alexanders own government did

undergo a process of syncretism, as he frequently used non-Macedonian people whenever he needed their particular expertise in his government (MW, p. 105). Having died without leaving a designated heir, Alexanders generals divided his kingdom amongst themselves and became known as successor kings. Lacking the usual justifications for their power such as blood

lineage or mythical tales to establish their god-given authority the successor kings turned to syncretism to gain the loyalty of their new subjects through incorporating local traditions, local religion, and previous royal customs into their own. Speaking of one of these successor kings, Antiochus I, an unknown writer said that his rule depends mostly on his own aret, and on the goodwill of his friends and on his forces (MW, p. 108). It was this

Lindstrom, Essay #2, Question #4, Page #3 precarious balance of power that drove much of the social and political intermingling of cultures during the late Hellenistic period, particularly as large numbers of non-Macedonians and non-Greeks moved west to the new cities and colonies founded by Alexander and his generals. While syncretism was not a new concept to first see action during the Hellenistic period, it is very well illustrated by the historical period of 323 to 30 B.C.E. throughout the Hellenistic kingdoms.