How and why were the Greeks able to influence later civilizations, like the Romans?

Greeks were able to influence later civilization for following reasons :

the answer to fill in the blank in this question would be the word resource, it is defined as the money, material or people (since human resource is a very valuable good) that a company or a person has at disposition (meaning they can use the resource as they see fit), to be able to complete a task or achieve a goal.  

china has confucianism thats everywhere in asia but it isn't really a religion.