High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The history of Western Civilization traces its roots back to classical antiquity and continues to the present era in Europe, North America and Oceania. The opposition of a European "West" to an Asiatic "East" has its roots in Classical Antiquity, with then Persian Wars where the Greek city states were opposing the expansion of the Achaemenid Empire. The Biblical opposition of Israel and Assyria from a European perspective was recast into these terms by early Christian authors such as Jerome, who compared it to the "barbarian" invasions of his own time. The "East" in the Hellenistic period was the Seleucid Empire, with Greek influence stretching as far as Bactria and India, besides Scythia in the Pontic steppe to the north. In this period, there was significant cultural contact between the Mediterranean and the East, giving rise to syncretisms like Greco-Buddhism. It was only with Christianization of the Roman Empire in the 4th century that the Mediterranean world lost interest in the Eastern cultures.