Greeks or Romans? You can say, “oh, but without the Greeks the Romans would not have mattered as much,” and this is certainly true, but could any people other than the Romans really have brought Greek concepts out to the whole world? Surely, the Greeks themselves were not capable of doing this. The beauty of the Greeks character is precisely the reason they could never have successfully taken control of the world: their internecine struggles were absolutely necessary to their character.
Another good question: among moderns, which peoples are most like the Greeks and Romans? I would say the Japanese are most like the Romans, but the Greeks? The greatest horror is that some part of me thinks perhaps Americans are most analogous and this depresses me to no end since the Americans are clearly not Greeks.