Why an ancient Greek world still resonates today

With a primary research interest in the Hellenistic world, Alex McAuley spends his working life exploring a world more than 2,000 years in the past.

But the period, which spans from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC to the death of Cleopatra in 30 BC, has more in common with today than you might expect.

“The Hellenistic world is remarkably similar to the twenty-first century in a lot of ways,” says Alex, a senior lecturer in Greek history and language at the University.

“There is no one empire ruling over all, but rather different powers and groups vying for land and resources. It’s messy, oftentimes brutal, and fundamentally divided, but underneath is a common language and a common way of speaking.

“There’s no political unity, but there is a cultural unity. What can we learn from that? How does it make us rethink what is happening in the world around us?”

They’re questions that will be the focus of Alex’s upcoming Raising the Bar talk, ‘Lessons from the ancient Greeks for today’s global world’. An annual event, Raising the Bar features 20 talks by academics across ten bars, and Alex says audiences can expect his talk to be “human, diverse and maybe eerily familiar”.
 

Alex has spent more than a decade researching the intricacies of the ancient world, which first captivated him as a first-year university student in Canada.

Alex, who grew up in Ottawa, was studying a Bachelor of Commerce at McGill University in Montreal when a friend convinced him to take an ancient history paper.

“It changed my life,” he recalls. “I realised commerce wasn’t really my thing, and that the subjects in the arts were far more intellectually stimulating and engaging.”

He switched to an arts degree and has never looked back.

Following his undergraduate studies, he learned Latin and Greek, completed a masters in classics at the University of Edinburgh, then returned to McGill for his PhD. In a full-circle moment, his doctoral supervisor had been the lecturer in that history paper he took by chance as a young commerce student.

Alex subsequently taught classics at the University of British Columbia and Hellenistic history at Cardiff University.

He has been at the University of Auckland since moving to New Zealand with his Australian wife in 2023. Alongside teaching ancient history at all levels, he is a postgraduate supervisor and the Bachelor of Arts programme director.

The shift to New Zealand has also allowed him to reconnect with an element of his Canadian roots – refereeing and playing ice hockey, a sport that he pursued seriously as a teenager until an injury forced him to stop.

“Within about three weeks of arriving in New Zealand, I got back on the ice for the first time in ten years,” he says. “It’s been a dream to unlock that part of my life again.”

Alex is also working on two books, to add to his previously published works: one about the Hellenistic queen Stratonike, and another about the connection between 9/11 and perceptions of the ancient world.

So what is it about these ancient times that has sustained his interest?

“With Rome, we know how the story ends. There is the idea – right or not – of a linear trajectory. Rome always had a monolithic character and a centre of gravity to it that was interesting to me,” he explains.

“The Greek world was both very unified and very diverse. It had hundreds of different cultural and mythical traditions, civic and social worlds that were distinct and fractious, but ultimately still part of a coherent whole.

“In moments where Greek communities came together – like at the Olympic Games – they would recognise that they were part of a unified culture.

“I’ve always found that unity and diversity fascinating."

– Nikki Addison