ABSTRACT
There may have been times when the tremendous importance of the relationship between East and West – in Europe or on the whole earth – was not realized. In the lifetime of the last two or three generations everyone will have felt the impact of the contrasts and conflicts between East and West. I believe it was more or less the same in antiquity, and there will be few people who might prefer a theory recently fashionable: that the invasion of Northern, i.e. Indo-European, intruders into the Mediterranean was of greater impact than continuous relations – friendly or hostile – between East and West.
