The concept of Hecke operators was so simple and natural that, soon after Hecke's work, scholars made the attempt to develop a Hecke theory for modular forms, such as Siegel modular forms. As this theory developed, the Hecke operators on spaces of modular forms in several variables were found to have arithmetic meaning. Specifically, the theory provided a framework for discovering certain multiplicative properties of the number of integer representations of quadratic forms by quadratic forms. Now that the theory has matured, the time is right for this detailed and systematic exposition of its...