When it is said however that Asia became hellenized under Alexander’s successors, the phrase requires explanation. Hellenism, properly so called—the aggregate of habits, sentiments, energies, and intelligence, manifested by the Greeks during their epoch of autonomy[649]—never passed over into Asia; neither the highest qualities of the Greek mind, not even the entire character of ordinary Greeks. This genuine Hellenism could not subsist under the overruling compression of Alexander, nor even under the less irresistible pressure of his successors. Its living force, productive genius, self-organizing power, and active spirit of political communion, were stifled, and gradually died out. All that passed into Asia was a faint and partial resemblance of it, carrying the superficial marks of the original. The administration of the Greco-Asiatic kings was not hellenic (as it has been sometimes called), but completely despotic, as that of the Persians had been before. Whoever follows their history, until the period of Roman dominion, will see that it turned upon the tastes, temper, and ability of the prince, and on the circumstances of the regal family. Viewing their government as a system, its prominent difference as compared with their Persian predecessors, consisted in their retaining the military traditions and organization of Philip and Alexander, an elaborate scheme of discipline and manœuvring, which would not be kept up without permanent official grades and a higher measure of intelligence than had ever been displayed under the Achæmenid kings, who had no military school or training whatever. Hence a great number of individual Greeks found employment in the military as well as in the civil service of these Greco-Asiatic kings. The intelligent Greek, instead of a citizen of Hellas, became the instrument of a foreign prince; the details of government were managed to a great degree by Greek officials, and always in the Greek language. [649] This is the sense in which I have always used the word Hellenism, throughout the present Work. With Droysen, the word _Hellenismus_—_Das Hellenistische Staatensystem_—is applied to the state of things which followed upon Alexander’s death; to the aggregate of kingdoms into which Alexander’s conquests become distributed, having for their point of similarity the common use of Greek speech, a certain proportion of Greeks both as inhabitants and as officers, and a partial streak of Hellenic culture. I cannot but think that such an employment of the word is misleading. At any rate, its sense must be constantly kept in mind, in order that it may not be confounded with _hellenism_ in the stricter meaning.