Hellenic civilisation

The greatest of Alexander’s foundations became the greatest city of the Hellenistic world, Alexandria-by-Egypt. It was laid out in the typical Hellenistic grid pattern along a narrow strip between Lake Mareotis and the sea. Canopic Way ran the length of the city, finely paved and nearly 100 feet (30 metres) wide, with seven or more main roads parallel to it. Across it was the shorter Transverse Street, with at least 10 parallel major roads. The city was divided into five regions, known as Alpha, Beta (the Palace area), Gamma, Delta (the Jewish quarter), and Epsilon. The great buildings included the palace, Alexander’s tomb, the temple of the Muses, the academy and library, the zoological gardens, the temple of Serapis, the superb gymnasium, stadium, and racecourse, the theatre, and an artificial mound, the shrine of Pan, ascended by a spiral road. There were two harbours. The famous lighthouse lay on an offshore island. A canal to the Nile helped secure the water supply; there also were rainwater cisterns. The city wall was some 10 miles (16 km) long. It was a cosmopolitan city. The so-called Potter’s Oracle described the city as “a universal nurse, a city in which every human race has settled,” and Strabo called it “a universal reservoir.”

The great Seleucid capital Antioch on the Orontes stood safely some 11 miles (18 km) from the sea on a major trade route. Originally small, the grid plan with blocks roughly 390 feet (120 metres) by 115 feet (35 metres) was laid out from the first for the expansion over the plain, which eventually took place. A colonnaded street, in Roman times more than 88 feet (27 metres) in width (about one-third carriageway and one-third for each sidewalk), ran the city’s length. Aqueducts brought water from the mountains to flow in water conduits along the east-west streets and through terra-cotta pipes along the cross streets. Like Alexandria, the city was cosmopolitan, and Tacitus speaks of intermarriage between the ethnic groups. When Julia Domna held court, students came from Phoenicia, Palestine, Egypt, Cyprus, Arabia, Cilicia, and Cappadocia. It was a city noted for its luxurious living, as the magnificent mosaics of the Roman period from Antioch itself and the fashionable suburb of Daphne demonstrate. Antioch suffered severely from earthquakes and flooding; thus there was much rebuilding. The population was perhaps 500,000 at its largest.

It seems that Antioch was smaller than Seleuceia on the Tigris, the largest of all the Seleucid foundations, with 600,000 inhabitants according to Strabo. Little, however, is known about it, except that it was on a grid plan and had a stone wall on foundations of baked mud brick. In 143 BCE it became an autonomous Greek city under Parthian control.

Pergamum, a small town before it became the capital of the Attalid dynasty, remains one of the most spectacular of ancient sites. The southern face of the acropolis was brilliantly terraced and carried two agoras, stoas, a gymnasium, palaestras, an odeum, temples, and other buildings. Near the top stood the great altar of Zeus with its mighty frieze (now in Berlin) of the battle of gods and giants, and the throne of Satan. The main street leads through a gate to the upper city. There one finds an imposing sanctuary of Athena, the famous library, and a temple of Trajan, on which excellent restoration work has been done. Below is a vertiginous theatre seating 10,000, with a removable stage building on a terrace leading to the Ionic temple, presumably of Dionysus. Much of the remainder of the upper city was occupied by the palace buildings and storehouses. Less can be discerned of the lower city, except for the sanctuary and hospital of Asclepius, founded about 400 BCE but developed in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

Brittanica