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The Unique Position of Crete in the Hellenistic World
March 24, 2023 @ 4:00 pm
Download or Print PDF Handout for the Lecture
Join us for a lecture by Michael Gagarin (University of Texas) on Friday, March 24 at 4:00 p.m. at the Keene Faculty Center in Dauer Hall.
This lecture is part of the UF Center for Greek Studies Polopolus Lecture Series 2023. The lectures are open to the public.
Abstract
When Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world – from mainland Greece east to India and south to Egypt and Cyrene – he (and after his death in 323 his successors) left the island of Crete alone. Thus the roughly fifty poleis or city-states on the island remained independent from one another and from the rest of the Greek world until the Romans invaded in 67 BCE. Why was this, and how did these Cretan poleis differ from those elsewhere in Greece?
Our evidence for this period consists largely of inscriptions, which show that the democratic governments of the Cretan poleis sometimes fought against each other but almost never conquered one another, preferring to make often elaborate military and political agreements. They also made such agreements with Hellenistic kings and other powers outside of Crete, and these seem to have served the needs of these powers, which primarily involved trade routes. By examining the texts of some of these agreements, as well as some other documents, we can begin to understand how the island managed to prosper during these turbulent times.