Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/747

 THE CITY IN HISTORY 73 1

The ideals which dominated the period are so different from our own as to make the contrast suggestive and profitable. In Athens, as in most of the cities of the ancient world, the indi- vidual was completely subordinated to the communitv. His welfare had no existence independent of the welfare of the city as a whole. The Greeks could not conceive of an opposition of interest between the individual and the group, or, if such opposi- tion did arise, there was no question as to which should prevail. Ideas of imprescriptible, inalienable rights were foreign to Greek thought until the time of the Stoics. Adjustment of individual activity to the harmony of communal life seems to have been the guiding principle of social conduct. The contrast between the splendor and attractiveness of social life and the relative crudity of family life is difficult for us to grasp at the present time. This is largely due to the fact that in modern communities the welfare of the family rather than that of the community com- mands the best energies of the individual. With us the common, inexclusive pleasures of communal life play a very small part com- pared with the intense pleasures of home life. In the cities of Greece, however, these public pleasures strengthened the feeling of local attachment which found expression in an inexhaustible local patriotism.

ROME AND THE CITIES OF IT.-^LY.

The fact that the conditions of soil, climate, and immediate physical environment were less favorable to Rome than to Athens was far outweighed by the commanding position of the former in the Italian peninsula and its more favorable geo- graphical relation to the other countries of the Mediterranean basin. Although the plain of Latium — of which Rome occupied the strategic position — did not offer the variety of soil and climate of the central plain of Attica, it was sufficiently fertile to attract and furnish support for a large population. With the Sabine mountains to the east, the Volscian to the south, the hill lands of Etruria to the north, and the sea to the west, its position combined to a remarkable degree security with accessibility to other portions of Italy, Europe, and Africa. The desire to protect