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The Hellenized Rome Essay

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The Hellenized Rome The Roman Empire began as a small colony, in the city of Rome, and eventually, became one of the largest empires that the world has ever known before its ultimate demise. Because of the vast size of their territory, and the number of cultures they consumed throughout their existence, the Romans were heavily influenced by the Greeks and other Hellenistic civilizations. Two different groups of professors argue this point. Professors Matthews, Platt, and Noble argue this influence is reflected by Roman music, philosophy, literature, architecture, art, culture/government, and technology and science; and Professor Weber argues this is reflected in the areas of government/law, the influence and effects of conquests, …show more content…

continue their discourse of Hellenistic influence in philosophy. Matthews et al. state that philosophy in the early and late Roman world was indebted to the conquered Hellenistic civilizations. In the early Roman Empire, Greek Skepticism appealed to many Romans after the Greek philosopher, Carneades, had been brought to Rome in 155 BCE.iii They state that Skepticism faded after Carneades’ death, but was revived in the late empire, and eventually, became a permanent influence of western thought. The later popularity of Greek Stoicism influenced a number of people including Emperor Marcus Aurelias (Commodus). Finally, they argue that Romans synthesized the various Greek schools of philosophy (Stoicism, Platonism, etc.) to create a new school of thought known as Neoplatonism.iv Matthews et al. argue that Romans gained significantly from Hellenistic civilizations with respect to literature. Their argument includes mentioning the famed library of Alexandria, which contained more than 700,000 volumes of books.v They argue that much of early Roman literature was noteworthy for its strong Greek flavour; many early writers wrote in Greek because they found Latin inferior for high art. Further, they state that Romans used the Greek writing style for history, lyric and epic poetry, comedy, and tragedy before creating their own styles. Roman writers took plots from old Hellenistic tales and breathed new life into them (such as Plautus who borrowed from the

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