Long overlooked by historians of the ancient Mediterranean in favor of democratic Athens and Republican Rome, the Hellenistic world (323—31 BCE) remains a neglected chapter in the story of ancient Eurasia and North Africa. Formed from Alexander the Great’s conquests in Central Asia, the Iranian plateau, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Egypt, the empires of the Hellenistic world combined Greek fiscal regimes, urban settlements, and linguistic preferences with indigenous cultural traditions of great antiquity and variety. In recent years, scholars have begun to apply research paradigms from other areas of history, and from the broader social sciences more generally, to the political, economic, and social questions that are pivotal to the study of the Hellenistic past. The establishment of a supra-regional cosmopolitan culture, for instance, has been explored through the lens of globalization theory. Cultural historians have brought the perspective of post-colonialism to bear on the interactions between Greek settlers and local populations. And the traditions of political science have been used to analyze interstate relations among the various Hellenistic empires and to explain the rise of their Roman and Parthian conquerors. These perspectives have enriched the literature on the Hellenistic world and given the field a distinct identity within ancient studies. There is still much ground to cover, however, before the period is as well understood as classical Greece and Rome, and the continuous stream of new evidence from archaeological excavations frequently enjoins the rethinking of old assumptions.

On this panel, four speakers will treat different facets of the Hellenistic world in papers that challenge earlier scholarship and promote the further integration of the field with the broader historical discipline. The topics that come in for reevaluation include the relationship between gender and political power among Hellenistic royalty; civic religion in the foremost Greek city of Hellenistic Afghanistan; interstate rivalry in Armenia and Mesopotamia during the first century BCE; and the historiography of the Hellenistic period’s conclusion and legacy. The presentations will make extensive use of archaeological materials and documentary sources, many of which are new or still poorly understood; other insights will come from more familiar passages in Greco-Roman literature that are reinterpreted from novel vantage points. Collectively, the speakers will push back on the relegation of Hellenistic history to subordinate status within the field of classical studies, challenging the notion that Greek and Roman norms must be the starting point for investigation of the topic. In grappling with the issues of gender, religion, foreign politics, and historiography that are central to its papers, moreover, the panel will endeavor to put the Hellenistic period in dialogue with proximate fields of history, and to bring greater exposure to this understudied corner of the ancient past.