270 HISTOKY OF GREECE. at least in impertance, throughout most of the cities in Western Asia. In particular, the Macedonian military organization, dis- cipline, and administration, was maintained systematically among these Asiatic kings. In the account of the battle of Magnesia, fought by the Seleukid king Atiochus the Great against the Ro- mans in 190 B. c, the Macedonian phalanx, constituting the main force of his Asiatic army, appears in all its completeness, just as it stood under Philip and Perseus in Macedonia itself.^ When it is said however that Asia became hellenized under Alexander's successors, the phrase requires explanation. Hel- lenism, properly so called — the aggregate of habits, sentiments, energies, and intelligence, manifested by the Greeks during their epoch of autonomy- — never passed over into Asia ; neither the highest qualities of the Greek mind, nor even the entire char- acter of ordinary Greeks. This genuine Hellenism could not sub- sist under the overruling compression of Alexander, nor even un- der the less irresistible pressure of his successors. Its living force, productive genius, self-organizing power, and active spirit of political communion, were stifled, and gradually died out. AU that passed into Asia was a faint and partial resemblance of it, carrying the superficial marks of the original. The administra- tion of the Greco-Asiatic kings was not hellenic (as it has been sometimes called), but completely despotic, as that of the Persians had been before. Whoever follows their history, until the period of Roman dominion, will see that it turned upon the tastes, tem- per, and ability of the prince, and on the circumstances of the re- gal family. Viewing their government as a system, its promi- ' Appian, Syriac. 32.
- This is the sense in which I have always used the word Hellenism,
throughout the present Work. "With Droysen. the word Hellenismus — Das HcUenistische Staaten system — is applied to the state of things which followed upon Alexander's death ; to the aggregate of kingdoms into which Alexander's conquests become distributed, having for their point of similarity the common use of Greek epeech, a certain proportion of Greeks both as inhabitants and as officers, Hnd a partial streak of Hellenic culture. I cannot but think that such an employment of the word is misleading. At any rate, its sense must be constantly kept in mind, in order that it may not be confounded with hellenism in the stricter meaning.
