Describe hellenistic culture

The Hellenistic world is that world that was created after the conquests of the near east by Alexander the Great at the end of the fourth century B. C. And his conquest, which extended from India all the way through Egypt, [was] divided into three main areas within 20 years after his death. And the two major areas that survived down to the first century B. C. would have been the Syrian kingdom, the Seleucid kingdom, and the Ptolemaic kingdom which survived in Egypt, which was finally taken over by Rome in 31 B. C.

Hellenization, or Hellenism, refers to the spread of Greek culture that had begun after the conquest of Alexander the Great in the fourth century, B. C. E. One must think of the development of the eastern Mediterranean, really, in two major phases. The first, the conquest by Alexander, which brought Greek culture to the middle eastern territories. And then, subsequent to that, the Roman imperial expansion, which would take that over politically. But, Rome didn't immediately transform everything into a kind of Latin-Roman culture. Rather, they worked with the Greek idiom. And so, much of what we see in the culture of these cities, like Caesarea Maritima, is a kind of Greek city structure with a Roman political organization, playing off between the different elements of Roman and Greek city life.