DrZoidberg
Contributor
I'm taking myself through the podcast series, Litterature and History, which is about ancient literature. After doing a synopsis of each piece he explains the context.
https://literatureandhistory.com/index.php/episode-040-hellenism-and-the-birth-of-the-self
In the linked episode he has an entire episode where he doesn't sum up a story, but just has an episode of context, explaining the difference of literature, religion and sense of self from before and after Alexander the Great.
He mentioned something which stood out to me.
Before Alexander the Great religion was collective. God punished cities and villages collectively. Empires were on the whole well run and of mutual benefit. Enter Alexander the Great. A military genius, but incompetent ruler and useless at book keeping. Where ever he showed up the economy was ruined, and vast numbers of people were sold into slavery for the flimsiest of excuses. Only so he could keep his army bankrolled. Seizing wealth and selling people into slavery was how he kept the Macedonian economy going. The way he held onto power was through terror. The ever looming threat of being sold into slavery kept people under Alexander, or one of his generals, obedient. If they had slave economies before Alexander, it was nothing compared to the economy after Alexander.
After Alexander died and his generals chopped up his territories between them, turned on each other and then perpetuated the Alexandranian way of fighting wars for 300 years Creating an incredibly turbulent and violent period with little stability. Then the Romans came and stabilized matters. But by then the old ways were dying. Cosmopolitanism was the way of the future. Local cults were something of the past.
Plays before Alexander could be scathing criticisms of politicians or the lampooning of men of power. After Alexander plays was about trivial personal matters that wouldn't offend anyone. It simply wasn't safe to annoy your superiors.
Sending people (slaves) back and forward across the empire created cosmopolitan identities. Nobles no longer lived in the villages they ruled over. But lived in the capital, close to the power. They weren't apart of their native community. They were individuals. They had their own personal identity.
Before Alexander religion was predominantly local cults where the gods inhabited statues in the village temple. You had to go there to talk to the gods. After Alexander religion was increasingly personal gods you could speak to directly. Because the chances that you were currently living in your home village wasn't great.
Before Alexander people didn't believe in much of an afterlife. They believed that Earthly life was the main event. After Alexander life was so harsh and brutal that people needed to believe there was more to life than this Earthly shit life.
He talked about it as if this is well established fact. It's the first time I hear about this connection between Alexander the Great's brutality and the spread of personal religion and thus the birth of the thinking which later became Christianity.
Is it established fact? Or is it just another theory?
https://literatureandhistory.com/index.php/episode-040-hellenism-and-the-birth-of-the-self
In the linked episode he has an entire episode where he doesn't sum up a story, but just has an episode of context, explaining the difference of literature, religion and sense of self from before and after Alexander the Great.
He mentioned something which stood out to me.
Before Alexander the Great religion was collective. God punished cities and villages collectively. Empires were on the whole well run and of mutual benefit. Enter Alexander the Great. A military genius, but incompetent ruler and useless at book keeping. Where ever he showed up the economy was ruined, and vast numbers of people were sold into slavery for the flimsiest of excuses. Only so he could keep his army bankrolled. Seizing wealth and selling people into slavery was how he kept the Macedonian economy going. The way he held onto power was through terror. The ever looming threat of being sold into slavery kept people under Alexander, or one of his generals, obedient. If they had slave economies before Alexander, it was nothing compared to the economy after Alexander.
After Alexander died and his generals chopped up his territories between them, turned on each other and then perpetuated the Alexandranian way of fighting wars for 300 years Creating an incredibly turbulent and violent period with little stability. Then the Romans came and stabilized matters. But by then the old ways were dying. Cosmopolitanism was the way of the future. Local cults were something of the past.
Plays before Alexander could be scathing criticisms of politicians or the lampooning of men of power. After Alexander plays was about trivial personal matters that wouldn't offend anyone. It simply wasn't safe to annoy your superiors.
Sending people (slaves) back and forward across the empire created cosmopolitan identities. Nobles no longer lived in the villages they ruled over. But lived in the capital, close to the power. They weren't apart of their native community. They were individuals. They had their own personal identity.
Before Alexander religion was predominantly local cults where the gods inhabited statues in the village temple. You had to go there to talk to the gods. After Alexander religion was increasingly personal gods you could speak to directly. Because the chances that you were currently living in your home village wasn't great.
Before Alexander people didn't believe in much of an afterlife. They believed that Earthly life was the main event. After Alexander life was so harsh and brutal that people needed to believe there was more to life than this Earthly shit life.
He talked about it as if this is well established fact. It's the first time I hear about this connection between Alexander the Great's brutality and the spread of personal religion and thus the birth of the thinking which later became Christianity.
Is it established fact? Or is it just another theory?
