Greek Culture and Its Hellenistic Diffusion 59man experience was coupled with an extraordinary
spirit of inquiry. Other ancient societies, notably the
Egyptians and Mesopotamians, had rich speculative tra-
ditions, but the Greeks were unique in insisting upon a
rigorous form of logic in which the connections be-
tween each part of a statement had to be made per-
fectly clear.
These habits of thought, together with a mass of
learning and speculation drawn from the most diverse
sources, were the Greek legacy to Western society.
From the beginning the Greeks were borrowers. They
had a rare ability to absorb the ideas and beliefs of oth-
ers without threatening their own sense of what it
meant to be Greek. When, in the Hellenistic age, they
penetrated to the edges of the known world, this ten-
dency accelerated. Elements from every ancient culture
were adopted and transformed according to their own
needs and preconceptions. In so doing they imposed a
kind of intellectual unity that, if it distorted some
things and neglected others, was passed on intact to the
Romans and from the Romans to the modern Western
world. For good or ill, the ancient world is viewed
through Greek eyes.