To hear some more interesting facts, Bored Panda reached out to Dr Elke Close. Dr Elke Close is a Belgian Classical Languages and History Teacher with a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in the Netherlands who has created her own online education tool related to ancient history, as well as started informative and topic related pages on Instagram and Facebook (@hellenistichistory). She also makes illustrations (@drawingancienthistory on Instagram) inspired by the classical world and is currently working on a colouring book and podcast related to Ancient Greece!

You might be wondering what exactly is Hellenistic age, just like Elke did all those years ago. Interestingly enough, the historian became interested in the Hellenistic Age by accident.

“My interest in the Hellenistic Age (i.e. the period of Greek history after the death of Alexander the Great), came about by accident. I had always been interested in Ancient Greece and Rome while in high school, so at University I decided to study Ancient History.

For one of my courses of my bachelor, I had to write about a random revolt that happened to take place during the Hellenistic Age. When I then went on Erasmus to Greece, I had a single course dedicated to the period which was so enthralling that I ended up writing my MA thesis on the Graeco-Roman interactions in the 3rd and 2nd century BC. When I realized that I wanted to pursue a PhD in Classics, needless to say it was going to be about a topic related to Hellenistic History. Now that I’ve finished that project I wanted to keep learning more about the period, as it such a fascinating time period.”

A lot of you Pandas may be interested in learning about the key events and developments that took place during the Hellenistic period, so we kindly asked Dr Elke to share some interesting facts with us.

“The Hellenistic period is marked by several events and developments that changed the Ancient World forever. The conquests of Philip V of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great had already changed the Greek world before the start of the Hellenistic period and the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC without a proper marks the beginning of the Hellenistic period and leads to a series of wars among his successors (the Successor Wars 322 -275 BC) that saw his large empire crumble into the three large Hellenistic Kingdoms: the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Seleucids in the East and the Antigonids in Macedon.” She explained to us.

“From that point onwards, the Hellenistic kingdoms and Rome, for this is also the period in which the Romans turned their interest to the East, become the most important players in the Greek speaking world. The Roman conquest of Macedon in 168 and Greece in 146 BC is the start of a long process in which step by step the Hellenistic world becomes part of the Roman empire. This ends with the defeat of the last of the Hellenistic rulers, the famous Cleopatra VI, at Actium by the soon-to-be-emperor Augustus. Even though the defeat of Cleopatra and Marc Anthony in generally considered to be the end of the period, there is some discussion among scholars for alternative dates such as 146 BC.”

Following our previous question, we asked Close to describe how the Hellenistic world differed from the classical world that preceded it. “The Hellenistic World was different form the classical period in several ways. The Greek mainland was no longer the centre of influence, this position had been taken up by new cities such as Alexandria. These new centres of power and learning resulted in progress in science, literature and art which are marked by a new more complex, individual nature. Because of Alexander’s vast expansion of his empire, the ‘Greek’ world had become so much bigger and the interactions between Greek society and the indigenous people created a new and multicultural society and world that was vastly different than that of the 5th century. 

Greek culture and language became more widespread than before and the Greek gods were often syncretised with local gods, creating new deities such as Greco-Egyption god Serapis. Even though there were plenty of Greek poleis, the world was now ruled by kings and consuls in stead of the smaller Greek democracies – which does not mean however that they ceased to play a role in the Hellenistic period. If we compare the Hellenistic and Classical world, one can say that the conquests of Alexander created a cosmopolitan, multicultural society which transcended classical Greece.”

Dr Close also opened up about her approach to research and writing about historical events and figures. “This kind of depends on the topic I am planning to write about. If it is something that I am completely new to, I tend to start by compiling some basic information – I am not afraid to say that Wikipedia has been rather useful here.” She told Bored Panda. “Then I start to look at more specialized works such as academic books and articles or blog posts which I combine with different kinds of primary sources such as ancient authors, epigraphic texts or numismatic evidence. Due to the fragmentary nature of a lot of the ancient source material, I have found it to be necessary to combine as much of the material as possible in order to get the full picture.”

When asked about what she found most rewarding about her work as a historian, Dr Elke told us this, “Working as a historian – and a Classical language teacher – allows me to write and talk about topics that personally interest me and share those interest with others. Every day I am able to find out more and more things about the ways people live thousands of years or about the ways in which they organised their lives, and to me that is absolutely amazing. There is nothing better than going on holiday to search for traces of those people among long forgotten ruins.”

The historian also discussed with us how she integrates different perspectives and interpretations of historical events and figures into her work.

“Sometimes it is easy to forget that our historical sources were also made from a certain perspective. While is true for any kind of source, including the less obvious ones such a 19th century photo, I find that when creating a narrative, it can already be enough to give an overview to your readers of the different interpretations that exist in the modern scholarship about a certain event or figure. Of course, this rather depends on what kind of work you have to produce, sometimes you just do not have the room to do so as can be the case with shorter blogs or social media posts.” She said to us.

The historian also told us how she thinks the study of history can inform our understanding of the present day. “The study of history is a tool for those of us who want to understand how certain things today were shaped by events in the past. It provides us with analytical tools and empowers our critical thinking, so that by looking at what came before, we can more easily understand what kind of patterns lead to certain problems and how can we avoid or solve them. Studying the past is looking at ways in which our society changed over time and how these changes not only had an impact on humanity in general but on us as individuals as well. History is everywhere and if you learn how to interpret it, it can be the greatest tool to understand the present society.” Dr Elke shared with Bored Panda.

When asked for advice on pursuing a career in the field of history, Dr. Elke Close emphasized the importance of not allowing others to discourage you from pursuing your passion, and to have confidence in your ability to succeed. “Do not let anyone discourage you from pursuing your passion, you just have to know how you want to get started.” She said. “Aside from the traditional careers such as history teacher or university lecturer, there are so many exciting ways in which you can work with history: you can create your own projects, apply for a heritage job, produce books and podcast, become an advisor for historical games… The list is endless. Just be sure to keep on reading and developing your knowledge about your area of interest!”

Dr Close expressed her excitement about the increasing use of social media and digital tools to make history more accessible and engaging for a wider audience. “I love that there are more and more people using social media and digital tools to tear down the barrier that history has to be boring or is only applicable for a certain group of people. Those stuffy lessons from high school or boring documentaries belong to the past. Why not use games or AI to teach subject in classes or give workshops in museums?” She shared at the end of the interview.

We hope you found our exclusive interview with the renowned hellenistic period historian, Dr Elke Close, to be informative and enjoyable. We also hope that the accompanying article provided a deeper understanding and appreciation of the fascinating topic of history that surrounds our world. Thank you for joining us for this engaging and educational discussion, dear Pandas!