Page:Lesser Eastern Churches.djvu/42

20 another equally real one all over the East is religion. It seems an odd criterion by which to measure races; yet, for practical purposes, the bond of Church membership is perhaps the nearest thing they have to our idea of race or nation. The Turk is not altogether wrong in considering each sect as a "nation."

After Alexander, then, we have outposts of Greek civilization and language thinly scattered among the native population. These are, of course, only small centres—a Greek court, a more or less Greek-speaking city, amid vast territories where all the peasants are barbarians. It is the same in Syria and Egypt. We shall understand the situation best by thinking of the little colonies of English amid the millions of natives in India. Moreover, just as we have taught many of the more educated natives to talk English, as we use English influence on the upper classes, whereas the crowded millions below remain unchanged; so many Syrians in towns learned to talk Greek, and Greek ideas filtered into their life, although the great mass of the people went on speaking their own language, worshipping their own gods, hardly touched by the aristocratic foreign element. But we must note too that even this partial Hellenization took place practically only in Western Syria. Of Alexander's generals, Seleukos Nikator ( 312–281) inherited Syria and the East. He founded the Seleucid dynasty of Greek sovereigns, who reigned till 64. At first he set up his capital at Seleucia on the Tigris, opposite to which (on the left bank) later the city of Ctesiphon arose. But the capital was soon moved to Antioch on the Orontes. Antioch then became the chief centre of Hellenism in Syria. The Eastern part, with which we are concerned, was hardly affected by Greeks at all. However, Greek, in a later form of the language, the that we know best in the New Testament, became the recognized international language among educated people throughout the East Mediterranean lands. Of the Seleucid kings the most famous—or infamous—is Antiochos IV, Epiphanes (175–164), against whom the Maccabees fought. During the reign of the third Seleucid king (Antiochos II, 261–246) a new monarchy arose in the East which deprived their empire of Persia and brought a disputed