This culture had the same attraction for those outside it as, in later centuries, the material order and prosperity of the Roman Empire had for the Germanic tribes beyond the frontier. It assisted the development and spread of Greek mystery religions from Italy to Egypt and the Caucasus. It favoured the gradual introduction of Eastern cults into the Greek world. Hellenism produced, also, romances and fairy tales, influenced here by the East. Historians especially flourish, are in demand even, and each monarchy, each city has its official historiographer.
Translations are popular and translators busy.
One subject that occupies them is the Sacred Books of the Eastern Religions. It is an age of learning, and an age where learning becomes the concern of the State. All this is, in the main, he product of Greek culture working in an immensely wider field, and in that field influencing, slowly and never completely, but influencing none the less, the ancient East. Here Hellenism truly is debtor to the East. Reid, The Municipalities of the Roman Empire.