Hello, you're listening to the Hellenistic Age podcast. To recap for those who didn't listen to Episode Zero, this is a podcast looking to cover the period of 323 to 30 BC.

After reading the title of this episode, you might be asking, why the age of Alexander? Well, in order to understand the Hellenistic Age, you need to look at the career

of Alexander the Great, whose rather short life of only 33 years sets up the framework for the

next 300. In order to understand Alexander, I thought it would be best to give the background

on the major players and condense some important historical events to give context to his rise

onto the world stage.

I'm going to be looking at the key groups of the Greeks, the Achaemenid Persian Empire, and lastly,

the Kingdom of Macedonia. I am also not going to go into excessive detail into each,

given that the histories of Persia and the Greeks alone can make podcast series unto themselves.

But I wanted to give a very rough outline of the major players that will continue to shape the world both during and after Alexander's reign.

So sit back, enjoy our first episode, The Ancient Greeks.

Few, if any, cultures, perhaps besides ancient Rome, have been as influential to the development of the idea of Western civilization as the ancient Greeks.

Their contributions of philosophy, science, mythology, literature, and art have formed the backbone of cultural and intellectual traditions for millennia.

In many ways, the Greeks have been used as a stand-in as the defenders of the West

and bringers of democracy to an uncivilized world. What's important to understand, however,

is that a unified ancient Greece is largely a modern notion. The Greeks had never been under the

banner of one political entity, nor were they limited to the modern borders of the peninsula.

They, in fact, had spread colonies from the coast of Asia Minor, modern Turkey, to Italy, France, and even some parts of Spain.

So, if there is no unified Greece, then how did the Greeks view themselves?

To distinguish themselves for their Greekness, the term they used was Helene, which was used to refer to those

who used Dorian or Ionic Greek as a language.

Those who did not were classified as barbaros or barbarians.

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