HISTORICAL DICTIONARIES OF EUROPE Jon Woronoff, Series ...

xxxviii • INTRODUCTION
son, Alexander the Great. Having united the old Greek world under
Macedonian authority, Alexander defeated and conquered the Persian
Empire. His main achievement was to further spread the Greek civilization
and language throughout the Middle East, creating a common cultural
space where Christianity, four centuries later, would flourish. In
a sense, Christianity is a Hellenized reinterpretation of Judaism, and it
was the ecumenical spirit of classical Greece that turned it into a global
religion. St. Paul himself, the primary Christian messenger, was a Hellenized
Jew who was deeply immersed in the classical Greek traditions.
The very concept of “love” that distinguishes Christianity from all other
monotheistic religions had first been developed by Greek philosophers
from the time of Plato and after.
However, after his early death, Alexander’s empire fragmented
among its successors. Finally, after the battle of Corinth in 146 BCE,
the Greek world came under the control of Rome. Having lost its independence,
Greece fertilized the emerging Roman Empire with its
culture and ethos. When the imperial capital moved eastwards to Constantinople
in 330 CE and the western half was lost forever after Justinian
in the sixth century CE, the eastern Roman Empire progressively
Hellenized. Later called Byzantine by Western scholars, the empire
rested on the synthesis of the Roman imperial legacy and administration,
and on Christianity—a product of Jewish monotheism and Greek
culture and language. Byzantium, an astounding if often misunderstood
medieval civilization, succumbed to the Crusaders in 1204 CE and was
completely destroyed by the Ottoman Turks who conquered Constantinople
in 1453 CE.
The Ottomans incorporated Byzantine traditions into their empirebuilding
project and, as time passed, Greeks came to play an increasingly
important role in the administration of parts of the Ottoman state
and lands. However, beginning in the late 18th century, nationalism,
a modern ideology that had originated in the West for the creation of
an independent state (separated from the Ottomans), came to dominate
politics in the Greek lands.
Modern Greece emerged from a long and multifaceted process that
included a cultural revival, economic modernization, war, gradual
territorial expansion, the rivalry of great powers, and the decline of
Ottoman power. Starting in the second half of the 18th century, Greek
Enlightenment carried the European spirit of nationalism and liberal-
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