[eternalban]

Just adding that: That cultural matrix was a point of departure for Rome, and Rome (including the latter Roman Church) was an adaption of the above cultural matrix which then developed independently, distinctly, and now we know it as Western civilization. Western intellectual circles (from beginning) declared themselves from and for the Greeks, but more honestly considered, West is essentially a Roman affair. In any event, until the advent of Islam, there was continual and pervasive mingling of these core cultures and use of the shared language of Aramaic, going back to at least a thousand years before (circa ~500BC).

[kragen]

"West is essentially a Roman affair"? I don't think that's true at all; intellectually, Roman civilization was almost entirely sterile, appropriating the Hellenistic cultural heritage and then totally failing to progress for centuries, even backsliding in many ways. And, despite the importance of Aramaic, Greek was a much more important lingua franca, continuing to be so until the fall of Byzantium.

It's true that the division between the Eastern and Western Roman Empire created a new East/West divide approximately corresponding geographically to the old Greek/Persian divide.