All this sudden increase of wealth, all the thousand new enjoyments with which life was now adorned and enriched, did not work wholly for good. With luxury there went, as always, laxity in morals. Contact with the vice and effeminacy of the East tended to lessen the manly vigor of the Greeks, both in Asia and in Europe. Hellas became corrupt, and she in turn corrupted Rome.
GREEK INFLUENCE ON THE ORIENT
Yet the most interesting, as well as the most important, feature of the age is the diffusion of Hellenic culture—the "Hellenizing" of the Orient. It was, indeed, a changed world in which men were now living. Greek cities, founded by Alexander and his successors, stretched from the Nile to the Indus, dotted the shores of the Black Sea and Caspian, and arose amid the wilds of central Asia. The Greek language, once the tongue of a petty people, grew to be a universal language of culture, spoken even by "barbarian" lips. And the art, the science, the literature, the principles of politics and philosophy, developed in isolation by the Greek mind, henceforth became the heritage of many nations.
THE NEW COSMOPOLITANISM
Thus, in the period after Alexander the long struggle between East and West reached a peaceful conclusion. The distinction between Greek and Barbarian gradually faded away, and the ancient world became ever more unified in sympathies and aspirations. It was this mingled civilization of Orient and Occident with which the Romans were now to come in contact, as they pushed their conquering arms beyond Italy into the eastern Mediterranean.
[Illustration: ORIENTAL, GREEK, AND ROMAN COINS
1. Lydian coin of about 700 B.C.; the material is electrum, a
compound of gold and silver.
2. Gold daric; a Persian coin worth about $5.
3. Hebrew silver shekel.
4. Athenian silver tetradrachm showing Athena, her olive
branch and sacred owl.
5. Roman bronze as (2 cents) of about 217 B.C.; the
symbols are the head of Janus and the prow of a ship.
6. Bronze sestertius (5 cents) struck in Nero's reign; the
emperor, who carries a spear, is followed by a second horseman
bearing a banner.
7. Silver denarius (20 cents) of about 99 B.C.; it shows a
bust of Roma and three citizens voting.
8. Gold solidus ($5) of Honorius about 400 A.D.; the emperor
wears a diadem and carries a scepter.]
STUDIES
1. On an outline map indicate the routes of Alexander, marking the principal battle fields and the most important cities founded by him. Note, also, the voyage of Nearchus.
2. On an outline map indicate the principal Hellenistic kingdoms about 200 B.C.
3. Give the proper dates for (a) accession of Alexander; (b) battle of Issus; (c) battle of Arbela; and (d) death of Alexander.