Considering the gods as forces which arbitrarily enjoyed playing with their pawns, humanity, the Greeks found a lot of detachment. They resigned themselves to their fate and so concern was replaced by the search for knowledge. The Ionic natural philosophers of the 6th and 7th centuries BC, as well as their descendants, were convinced that there was a global plan driven by design. The search for recognition of this project by great thinkers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle thus initiated the origin of Sciences. The self-confidence and awareness of these men as observers and creators of their world therefore saw the evolution of fields such as philosophy, physics, mechanics, medicine and biology. These in turn led to the emergence of new and sometimes diverse methods of political thought. Ethics and theories of the state were written as guiding principles for human action. Social conflicts and the existence of individuals are addressed in the Homeric epic and Greek tragedies. The emphasis on individualism quickly became a hallmark of the Western mind and re-emerged again during the Renaissance and Enlightenment period, which took references and influences from Greek philosophy. Politically however, this has led to a state of permanent rivalry and a lack of peace between the different political regimes. A political unification was only successfully achieved by the Macedonians under the leadership of Philip II and Alexander the Great, who in turn spread Hellenism throughout Asia and the Orient through their conquests. Hellenistic cultures and later Diadochoi empires adhered to the ideal of the "cosmopolitan" or world citizen, which combined the thought and way of life of the Orient with middle of paper......stles like Peter and Paul after the death of Jesus. With their rise to the state religion of the Roman Empire, the ambivalence of the close connections and contrast between worldly rules and spiritual rules began in the later Roman Empire. Religion and religious conflict have long had considerable influence on politics, even after the Enlightenment. The Eastern Roman Empire survived attacks from Germanic peoples. Emperor Justinian could reconquer certain Western territories in the 6th century. Greek became the official language under Emperor Heraklion. The Byzantine Empire developed gradually from the Eastern Roman Empire, supported by the Latin Empire. The iconoclastic controversy of the 8th and 9th centuries divided the empire, during which larger areas were lost to the advance of Muslim Arabs in the Mediterranean and Slavs in the Balkans..