People speak as if the Greek Olympian world collapsed after Alexander the Great, while praising the Latin Roman Olympian world as uniquely continuous, yet the Hellenistic kingdoms endured across three continents for centuries afterward.
The Ptolemaic Kingdom ruled Egypt for 275 years. The Seleucid Empire ruled Asia and Mesopotamia for 250 years. The Kingdom of Pontus endured for over 200 years. The Bosporan Kingdom lasted over 600 years. The Antigonid Kingdom ruled Macedonia for 150 years. The Kingdom of Pergamon endured for 150 years. The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom carried Greek rule deep into Central Asia for 130 years, while the Indo-Greek kingdoms ruled across Central Asia and India for 200 years.
Several of these Greek Olympian imperial structures beyond Greece lasted as long as, or longer than, major Roman Olympian imperial structures beyond Italy. These were not scattered poleis collapsing every generation, but Hellenic imperial structures ruled by Greek dynasties, filled with Greek cities, theatres, gymnasia, libraries, philosophy, science, coinage, education, and administration stretching from Southern Italy and Egypt to Mesopotamia, Bactria, and India.
The Latin Roman Olympian world later absorbed much of this eastern Greek sphere politically, inheriting lands already deeply Hellenic long before Roman rule. Southern Italy, Sicily, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and much of the eastern Mediterranean had already been shaped through centuries of Greek civilisation before Roman expansion.
The Roman Olympian phase was fundamentally Latin and pagan, but once Christianity transformed the Roman Empire, the surviving eastern empire functioned overwhelmingly through Greek civilisation, language, education, and administration rather than a purely Latin imperial identity.
Ancient statues were originally painted. Historians have created hideous reconstructions, purporting to show how they looked.
Were they really this ugly? I argue the answer is no, and that the reconstructions are a form of "trolling".
Article & thread. https://t.co/1ENKypNCPG
مقطع مرعب، مقطع يحبس الأنفاس
لحظة محاولة جيش الاحتلال قتل وقنص صيادين فلسطينيين داخل قاربهم وسط بحر غزة اثناء قيامهم بصيد الأسماك لإعانة عائلاتهم
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