The Hellenistic period in the western Mediterranean is the red-headed stepchild of ancient history. Because Alexander the Great never set foot in, let alone conquered, any part of the western Mediterranean, many scholars have limited their view of the Hellenistic in cultural terms to material only from the eastern Mediterranean. A few authors have attempted to remedy the neglect of the West, e.g., Pernice in his multivolume assessment of the Hellenistic culture of Pompeii or the publication of the conference Hellenismus in Mittelitalien, but the biased view of the eastern Mediterranean as the Hellenized East as opposed to the western Mediterranean or Roman West has persisted.

The present volume is a significant attempt to reshape the discourse on the western Mediterranean in the third, second, and first centuries BCE. The co-editors have collected thirteen papers that address various aspects of western Mediterranean culture in the three centuries after the death of Alexander with the goal of restoring this half of the ancient Mediterranean world to any discussion of the Hellenistic period.