ABSTRACT
All contributors were invited to think about the four characteristic features of Hellenism (blood, language, religion, and customs) listed by some anonymous Athenian speakers at the end of Herodotus VIII, in the caption of this chapter. Some of the questions the contributors were asked to explore
are: How far has it been true historically that these four features have acted as the wheels on which the vehicle of Hellenism has traveled, and where inside the vehicle has the weight of the “passenger” been distributed?
