| Summary: | ‘Encounters’ travels to the outermost limits of Hellenistic civilization, where Graeco-Macedonian societies of the Mediterranean and western Asia interacted with sophisticated and powerful non-Greek neighbours. In the Far East, it visits the Greek city of Aï Khanoum, on the banks of the Oxus in north-east Afghanistan. To the south, it follows Eudoxus of Cyzicus on his explorative journey across the Southern Ocean, forging the first direct link between Ptolemaic Egypt and the Indian subcontinent. To the north, it visits Olbia in southern Ukraine, a Greek city under constant pressure from Scythian steppe nomads, and in the far west, it examines the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, the dwelling of a mid-1st-century <sc>bc</sc> Roman aristocrat.
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