Abstract
The author of the paper wrote earlier about pre-Hellenism in the Greek world of the 4th century BC and expounded his understanding of Hellenism. His ideas soon received a response from colleagues – in particular, from O.L. Gabelko and I.A. Ladynin. In this paper, the author responds to his opponents by developing some nuances of his concept. The Hellenistic civilization, taken in comparison with the polis civilization that preceded it (the archaic and classical periods), according to the author, was in a number of respects a regression. It was characterized by the impoverishment of the creative spirit and the loss of former civilizational positions. The original cultural achievements of the polis and the Hellenistic eras were incommensurable. As shown in the paper, the Hellenistic civilization lived by reflecting on the cultural heritage of earlier epoch: studying it, imitating it, arguing with it. Those creations of Hellenism that can still be attributed to masterpieces are such only to the extent that they retain something of the Classical traditions. If the Greek polis civilization is characterized by an intensive development, the Hellenistic civilization can be characterized by an extensive one.
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