The result of the adoption of the Greek language and culture by non-Greeks. (Hellas, an area of southern Thessaly, was synonymous with Greece from the 7th century bc.) It has come to refer specifically to the civilization that arose in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great. The many cities founded by him and his successors were the centres for a fusion of Greek and ‘barbarian’ ways of life, with Alexandria in Egypt becoming the literary focus of the Mediterranean world.