Hellenismos tends to focus its attentions most usually on the period of Greek cultural and religious development from the time of Homer to the death of Alexander, son of Phillip. The period of time between Alexander and the conquest of Greece by the Romans, however, is called the Hellenistic.
During this time, a great many lands that were not Greek were being ruled by Greeks, and even after Roman conquest, lands such as Egypt were still being ostensibly ruled by Macedonian and Greek royalty. The last Egyptian Pharaoh, for example, was the Macedonian Cleopatra whose political machinations are legendary for destroying the office of Pharaoh which may have succeeded in surviving the Roman Empire had it not been for her.
But this is not about history, but about our place, as a religion that is basically reconstructionist in nature, in the vast melding of religions of cultures that was the Hellenistic Era of Hellenic history.
The Greeks were not an isolated people. They traded, through most of their history, with a wide variety of cultures all over the Aegean and Mediterranean. The very alphabet they developed was based on their contact with the Phoenicians, but in Hellenistic times, Greek culture became the Cultura and Lingua Franca of the Mediterranean world. Large portions of the Middle East, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Sicily, Syria, etc., were ruled by either Hellenistic Kingdoms or had large numbers of Greeks living in their cities, and after Alexander, the European city states were about to change from small city states to Empires, and unfortunately for the Greeks, their inability to emerge as a unified nation would give Rome the time and political power it needed to conquer the world, and at the same time, Rome was being changed by Hellenic culture and religion so much so that their own religion and culture began to be almost an imitation.
What Hellenistic times and modern times have in common for us, however, is the multi-cultural and multi-lingual forms of the cultures involved, for today in many parts of the world, and especially here in America, the great melting pot that was the Hellenistic era of religion could prove the most important example of religious tolerance and co-existence in our emerging faith. Especially today, when Christians are rising out of their doldrums the way they did in ancient times, destroying anything they see as different from themselves and taking us down with them into their religions of fear and death.
There are even modern Hellenistoi who refer to themselves as Hellenistic Pagans, using the word as a way to point to a part of history they believe important to reconstruct.
Our problem today, of course, is that when speaking of Greece, there are well over two thousand years of religious tradition and evolution to consider, and what may have been true in 677 BCE may not have been true in 577 BCE or 477 BCE, making it difficult to speak of the Hellenic Religion in any cohesive way.
We hope, however, that this Hellenistic Age, the Second Hellenistic Age, will not lead to our destruction at the hands of rabid insane monotheistic zealots like the rising tide of Christian Fundamentalists and the insane Moslem Fundamentalism that has taken over Islam.
We can hope that it will lead to a new Enlightenment, not a new Dark Age.