Alexander the Great's Relation to Sophistry and Greek Oratory and Their Contribution to Alexander's Image by Alexandrian Hellenistic Culture

Abstract

As a cultural term Hellenism also refers to the large cultural movement that expanded in this empire. This epoch produced a new view of humankind because of the esteem of education. One of the educational aspects is the Greek sophistry, which expanded from Greece over the Mediterranean up to Alexandria. Using extant sources and non-extant sources on Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic sophistry and philosophy in Alexandria we will focus in this article on the cultural efforts introduced in the time of Alexander's conquest of Egypt and later Hellenistic time especially in terms of sophistic knowledge. We will focus on the institutionalization of sophists under the reign of Alexander explaining how Alexander employed them as court writers, counselors, diplomats, and historians and the relationship between the emperor and this kind of educated men. As a special feature we will discuss the surviving names of historical works on Alexandria and Alexander, a topic of writing initiated by the emperor himself as assignments for the sophists around the emperor. We will see that the sophists around Alexander had a different position compared with the contemporary Greek orators that -as the case of Demosthenes exemplifies- were controversially opposed to Alexander's politics. Most research done considers the sophists a group of educators. But the sophists we investigate in show clearly that sophistry was a skill associated with different professions. We can clearly claim that the sophists were in terms of their function not bound to teach writing and speaking, but held public positions.