Introduction

The Hellenic peoples, better known to us today as the Greeks, by the late fourth century B.C.E., changed the world forever, particularly the West. Their inquisitiveness, experimentation, dedication to harmony, balance and moderation and their quest for excellence left an enduring legacy. The Greek search to answer some of the most profound questions of the human experience and their heroic striving for perfection in the face of obvious limitations, would echo across the ages. In philosophy, science, politics, literature, and art and architecture, in spite of their shortcomings, the Greeks did much to define the set of values we have come to know as "classical."

Hellenistic, or "Greek-like" Macedonians, led by the conquering kings Philip II and Alexander the Great and his successors, swept across the map, through the Greek isles and east to the Indus River, spreading Greek values and practices. This diffusion of Greek influence, "Hellenism," in economics and scientific and intellectual achievement, was characterized by a new cosmopolitanism which guaranteed that the complex of Greek values, good and bad, would provide the bedrock for civilization in the West and would have an important impact eastward to India.