Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/743

 THE CITY IN HISTORY 727

Athenian citizens were copied throughout Greece ; the patricians of Rome were the models to the ruling classes in other cities of Italy ; just as today the man of leisure of Lyons apes the man- ners of the boulevardier of Paris. The more polished manners of the wealthy and leisure classes gradually filter down from stratum to stratum. With each class the form of intercourse is modified, until some traces of it are to be found even in the lower classes. Babylon, Athens, Rome, Constantinople, each in turn served as model for the provincial towns, in much the same way as Paris, Berlin, and London serve at the present time.

With these primary results of city growth in mind we can readily appreciate the significance of city life in the history of civilization. It creates new economic activities, new political ideas and ideals, new forms of social intercourse, new possibili- ties of interchange of ideas. Discussion, the contact of mind with mind through which the general level of intelligence is raised, becomes one of the prominent factors in the political life, first of a class, then of the whole people. A constant and ready audience is furnished to the orator, the poet, and the philosopher. Although it required centuries to develop all these possibilities, they were in process of formation from the time the inclosing walls of the first cities were built.

THE CITIES OF GREECE.

The records of Greek civilization begin and end with its cities ; no other nation has so completely concentrated its life and thought upon the perfecting of city life. To the Greek mind the history of the race begins with the founding of the city. The facts of historical development are made to harmonize with this view by means of a kind of social-compact theory according to which primitive tribes were brought together by some supernatural power, and as the result of their union the city was formed. Though this explanation of the origin of the city may lack foundation in fact, it is interesting as an indication of the dominant position occupied by the city in the thought of the time. This early form of the social-compact theory was used at