Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization

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In this classic study of cultural confrontation Professor Momigliano examines the Greeks' attitude toward the contemporary civilizations of the Romans, Celts, Jews, and Persians. Analyzing cultural and intellectual interaction from the fourth through the first centuries B.C., Momigliano argues that in the Hellenistic period the Greeks, Romans, and Jews enjoyed an exclusive special relationship that guaranteed their lasting dominance of Western civilization.

Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization Review

This short yet rich book consists of six lectures delivered by Arnaldo Momigliano at Cambridge (U.K) in 1973 and at Bryn Mawr (U.S.A.) in 1974. The "alien" in the title refers to the Romans, Celts, Jews, and Iranians as seen from the vantage point of the Hellenistic Greeks. Momigliano shows that it was only after Alexander (323 B.C.) and prior to Augustus (31 B.C.) (e.g., in the Hellenistic Age) when the Greeks really came to know Romans, Celts, and Jews. The Greeks had known the Persians since at least the 6th c. B.C. as a foreign conquerer of Greek lands, though the tables began to turn against the Persians at Marathon, Salamis, and Platea in the 5th c. B.C., and then decisively under Alexander the Great in the 4th c. B.C. However, it was really only after 323 B.C. that the Iranian heartland became familiar to Greeks.
Although we often marvel at the intellectual, military, and political achievements of the ancient Greeks, Momigliano shows that the archaic and classical Greeks were remarkably uninterested in the Celts, Romans, and Jews on the periphery of their Mediterranean world. The colony of Massalia (modern Marseilles) was an entrepot to Celtic Gaul to the north, the cities of Magna Graecia were on the Romans' doorstep, and Greek mercenaries and traders were familiar with Palestine. Yet these Greeks did not bother to learn the languages of these "alien" nations (including that of the Achaemenid Persians), and were happy to maintain their prejudice for Greek culture. It was only in the Hellenistic Age when the Greeks were compelled, often through violent confrontation, to come to terms with Romans, Celts, Jews, and Iranians.
The historical paradigms through which Momigliano chooses to explore this expanding hellenistic knowledge are first the Greek conquests south and east under Alexander and his successors, then the subsequent Roman expansion throughout the Mediterranean hinterlands. For the Greeks this is a time of political and intellectual decline as the Parthians and Jews shake off the Greco-Macedonian yoke, the Celts maraud into mainland Greece and Anatolia, and the Romans become the greatest power of all. The failure of the Greeks to learn Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, or Coptic thwarts Greek political ambitions and leads to an incomplete and often counterfeit understanding of these cultures. Eventually, Greeks such as Polybius and Posidonius studied the Romans, Celts, and Levantines in detail, but even these scholars were principally compelled by inexorably expanding Roman power.
The Romans, on the other hand, learned to read (and think in) Greek and used this knowledge to advantage both to conquer hellenistic Greek lands and to consolidate Roman Italy, as well as to learn about Parthians, Jews, and Celts, conquering the latter two and maintaining detente with the former. Polybius was a companion of Scipio Aemlianus on his campaigns, as was Posidonius with Pompey, and Julius Caesar carried a copy of Posidonius into Gaul.
Reading the work of Arnaldo Momigliano is an intellectual delight. He is a Classicist of extraordinary range and learning, and is able to marshal all relevant sources whether fragments, inscriptions, epitomes, scholia, or more fully preserved ancient authors such as Herodotus, Polybius, and Josephus. "Alien Wisdom" is to be recommended to all readers with a cursory knowledge of the historical currents of the Hellenistic Age.

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