The East Mediterranean area comprised the old Greek heartland of Greece itself, Asia Minor and South Italy, plus other areas brought into the Greek world by the conquests of Alexander the Great. Once incorporated into the Roman Empire, these areas continued to be Greek in culture and language and remained the wealthiest part of the Empire right down to Byzantine times.

Cities throughout this region had a fierce local patriotism, as exemplified by a coin with a Greek inscription struck at Antioch in Syria in AD 53 (and found with Anglo-Saxon balance scales at Watchfield in Oxfordshire, England).

The East Mediterranean area contributed enormously to the art of the Roman world, and was also the origin of many cults which were introduced to the West, including Judaism and its daughter religion Christianity. Jesus, a Galilean Jew born at the start of the millennium, founded a religion destined to become the state religion of the Roman Empire by the 4th century AD, and also the basis of cultural life in the Byzantine Empire.