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Ancient Greece was a collection of societies that shared Greek culture. "Alexander's Greece" lasted only a few years and was hardly a society unto itself - it was another example of an empire-by-conquest. The guy at the top dies, and it all falls apart again.

Unless you're trying to tell me that Alexander turned the people all the way to the Indus into greek culture adherents, no, Alexander's empire wasn't a society.

It's important to note here that Alexander created a short-lived empire - he did not create the society we think of as 'ancient greek'. That pre-existed him quite considerably in greece. And just because he gathered Perseopolis into his fold doesn't make the society there 'greek'.




But there was still a civilized Greek culture that formed the backbone of Alexander's organization and army, even if all the conquests weren't assimilated into the same civilization.


"Yes, of course. It came to existence when Ghengis Khan united nomadic tribes"

The original poster posited that Ghengis Khan's activities birthed the society. Alexander's activities did nothing like this - the society was already there, and greek culture was fairly widespread to begin with, though perhaps not in the direction of the Indus. When Alexander died, the Greeks didn't fade away to become background players again - they were a powerful political and especially social force for centuries to come... largely in the opposite direction to Alexander's conquests.

Alexander was an incredible conquerer, but he did not make nor break Greek civilised society.


I'm going back farther than that--to gizmo's contention that civilized societies don't engage in warfare. spindrift made the counterpoint that "only civilized societies can...engage in organized warfare", to which Genghis Khan may or may not be a counterexample, but Alexander's Greece is every bit as much of a counterexample to gizmo's argument.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Mongolica

While the Mongol empire was split up after Genghis Khan's death, it didn't just collapse. There was a fairly long period of stability that followed.




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