A quote from an essay by Nietzsche: " The Greeks never lived in proud isolation; their “culture” was for a long time much more a chaos of foreign, Semitic, Babylonian, Lydian, and Egyptian forms and ideas." Could someone elaborate on this?

I'm interested in what specifically the Semitic, Babylonian, Lydian, and Egyptian forms and ideas were, and how the Greeks synthesized these diverse ideas.

Alternatively, if the quote is inaccurate, I would still like to know the cultural forms and ideas of the above places, and why they weren't as influential as Nietzsche suggests.

Posted Feb 21, 2016, 10:10 PM UTC

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