ABSTRACT
The Hellenistic Age, by almost general consent, covers the period from 323 to 30 b.c.; i.e. from the death of Alexander the Great to the incorporation of Egypt in the Roman empire. The concept of this period as having a character all its own is not older than the early nineteenth century, when the German historian J. G. Droysen realized the cultural unity behind the history of a number of states. He used the word Hellenismus as the name for an age which he regarded as the transitional period between Classical Greece and the Christian world; he forgot the part played by Rome, but nevertheless he had discovered an historical truth of the greatest importance.
