Quote Originally Posted by bobbin View Post
I don't believe greek culture was particularly more "porous and assimilative" than others, the greeks just physically spread themselves out a lot more than most peoples and so they had the chance to interact with a greater number of different cultures
I approve what you say when I remember the high number of colonies they founded (Cyrene, Magna Graecia...); but I also ask myself this: the greek colonies met native population and their culture. Maybe there's a deeper reason if the native population often (not always, it's clear) assimilated greek culture and not the opposite (I think about the diffusion of the Greek language, it was a lingua franca like the more ancient akkadian language).