Hellenistic period
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
History of Western civilization
Antiquity (before AD 500)
The opposition of a European "West" to an Asiatic "East" has its roots in Classical Antiquity, with then Persian Wars where the Greek city states were opposing the expansion of the Achaemenid Empire. The Biblical opposition of Israel and Assyria from a European perspective was recast into these terms by early Christian authors such as Jerome, who compared it to the "barbarian" invasions of his own time (see also Assyria and Germany in Anglo-Israelism)
The "East" in the Hellenistic period was the Seleucid Empire, with Greek influence stretching as far as Bactria and India, besides Scythia in the Pontic steppe to the north. In this period, there was significant cultural contact between the Mediterranean and the East, giving rise to syncretisms like Greco-Buddhism. It was only with Christianization of the Roman Empire in the 4th century that the Mediterranean world lost interest in the Eastern cultures.
The division of Europe into a Western (Latin) and an Eastern (Greek) part was prefigured in the division of the Roman Empire by Diocletian in 285. The history of Christianity took divergent routes in these spheres from early times, but the final Great Schism separating Roman and Eastern Christianity occurred only in the 11th century.
In 476 A.D. the western Roman Empire, which had ruled modern-day Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and England for centuries collapsed due to a combination of economic decline and drastically reduced military strength, allowing invasion by barbarian tribes originating in southern Scandinavia and modern-day northern Germany. According to many authors, the main causes for the fall of any empire are internal, such as racial, religious or political divisions within the country. Also, warfare and economic crisis may contribute to the empire's collapse. In England, several Germanic tribes invaded, including the Angles and Saxons. In Gaul (modern-day France, Belgium and parts of Switzerland) and Germania Inferior (The Netherlands), the Franks settled, in Iberia the Visigoths invaded and Italy was conquered by the Ostrogoths. Christianity ceased to be the dominant religion in these lands and much of Roman culture disappeared. Only Ireland, which had never been ruled by Rome, remained Christian throughout this time.
