"This volume focuses on the eastern Mediterranean seaboard and hinterland, from the Aegean to Egypt, Mesopotamia and Iranian plateau, during the time of Alexander in the 320s BC to the beginnings of Roman domination three centuries later. This period and place have a great diversity of cultures as well as being rich in documentary sources and so provide the scholar with a wonderful 'world' in which to explore changing patterns of behaviour, evolution of institutions, and the circulation and exchange of materials and services over a period and region large enough to allow a number of economies to flourish."