HELLENISTIC WORLD

The Age of Hellenism came in Anatolia with Alexander the Great’s conquest ofthe region. The youthful conqueror, twenty four years old at his rise to power following the death of his father, Philip of Macedonia, was indeed an interesting personality . He wasb educated by Arisyoyle, who was responsible for Alexander’s fine understanding and appreciation of Greek civilization. His one aim was to Hellenize the known world ,to spread the Greek or Hellenic way oflife in the wake of his conquesys. He established some seventy cities across the surface of the vast empire he accumulated and persuaded his soldiers to settle in them.
The empire of Alexander extended from his homeland of Macedonia to the Indus River-all in dozen years of campaigning. He was dead at the age of thirty - three. The native Anatolians, for the most part, maintained their identities in spite of Alexander’s effort to change them. They lived as they had always lived, observed the same customs and spoke the what policy-makers were up to. These were the common people. The Greeks became the new class of rulers,and Greek became the language of culture, business and government.
As time wore on and these two dissimilar peoples lived together, a little part of each became the whole- the cultures were combined. This was the age of Hellenism.

ROMAN EMPIRE

Near the present-day Manisa, at ancient Magnesia ad Sipiylum, abattle was fought between Roman legios and the Seleucid Antiochus III. The years was 190 B.C., and the battle was called the Battle of Magnesia. This was one of theturning points of history, the start of along period of Roman power in Anatolia, The Seleucids were driven beyond the Halleys River. Slightly more than a decade later, Hannibal, having found refuge with Prusias, King of Bithynia, commited suicide rather than submit to a demand by the Romans that he be surrendered to them. He was buried in Gebze.
The Romans pushed on across Anatolia moving into territories controlled by Carthaginians, Greek, syrians, Parthians and even Egyptians. With the victory over theSeleucids, there was little to keep the Roman expancion in check. Thes movement had started with Emperor Trajen; before his time no Roman leader had felt the urge the conquer the world.

BYZANTINES

The era of the Byzantines,or Byzantium, inaugurated on May 11, 330,when Constantine moved his seat of government to the city on the Golden Horn, at the spot where the continent of Europe meeets Asia, lasted for exactly eleven hundred and twenty three years and eighteen days.
The city, formerly known as Byzantium, was named Costantintinople after Constantine, and was called New Rome, the eastern capital. A Greek navigator, Byzans, is said to have founded the city some 600 years before the birth of Chirst. And, as was the usual custom, Byzas lent his name to the new city.