<P> Post-compulsory Secondary Education also includes the Vocational Training Institutes (IEK), which provide formal but unclassified level of education . These Institutes are not classified as an educational level, because they accept both Gymnasio (lower secondary school) and Lykeio (upper secondary school) graduates according to the relevant specializations they provide . Public higher education is divided into Universities and Technological Education Institutes (TEI). Students are admitted to these Institutes according to their performance at national level examinations taking place at the third grade of Lykeio . Additionally, students are admitted to the Hellenic Open University upon the completion of the 22 year of age by drawing lots . </P> <P> Nea Dimokratia (New Democracy), the Greek conservative right political party, has claimed that it will change the law so that private universities gain recognition . Without official recognition, students who have an EES degree are unable to work in the public sector . PASOK took some action after EU intervention, namely the creation of a special government agency which certifies the vocational status of certain EES degree holders . However, their academic status still remains a problem . The issue of full recognition is still an issue of debate among Greek politicians . </P> <P> The Institute of Entrepreneurship Development (iED) is a Greek Non-governmental organization formed for the promotion of innovation and for enhancing the spirit of entrepreneurship intending to link with other European initiatives . </P> <P> The origins of Western literature and of the main branches of Western learning may be traced to the era of Greek greatness that began before 700 BC with the epics of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey . Hesiod, the first didactic poet, put into epic verse his descriptions of pastoral life, including practical advice on farming, and allegorical myths . The poets Alcaeus of Mytilene, Sappho, Anacreon, and Bacchylides wrote of love, war, and death in lyrics of great feeling and beauty . Pindar celebrated the Panhellenic athletic festivals in vivid odes . The fables of the slave Aesop have been famous for more than 2,500 years . Three of the world's greatest dramatists were Aeschylus, author of the Oresteia trilogy; Sophocles, author of the Theban plays; and Euripides, author of Medea, The Trojan Women, and The Bacchae . Aristophanes, the greatest author of comedies, satirized the mores of his day in a series of brilliant plays . Three great historians were Herodotus, regarded as the father of history, known for The Persian Wars; Thucydides, who generally avoided myth and legend and applied greater standards of historical accuracy in his History of the Peloponnesian War; and Xenophon, best known for his account of the Greek retreat from Persia, the Anabasis . Outstanding literary figures of the Hellenistic period were Menander, the chief representative of a newer type of comedy; the poets Callimachus, Theocritus, and Apollonius Rhodius, author of the Argonautica; and Polybius, who wrote a detailed history of the Mediterranean world . Noteworthy in the Roman period were Strabo, a writer on geography; Plutarch, the father of biography, whose Parallel Lives of famous Greeks and Romans is a chief source of information about great figures of antiquity; Pausanias, a travel writer; and Lucian, a satirist . </P>

Who spread greek culture through much of the middle east