Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/70

42 cities in Asia Minor were not behind those of Europe. Miletus in Asia and Megara in Greece were perhaps the most prolific of all, but most of the chief cities both in Europe and Asia played a part in it.

Greek colonies had this common feature. Though they retained a certain union of religion and sentiment with their mother cities, they each became a separate and independent state. The tie between them was, indeed, one of sentiment, and was easily snapped by any opposition of interest. These colonies, therefore, though they extended the area of Hellenism, did not help to knit it together. Yet surviving treaties, legal and religious formulas, epitaphs, and the like, show how many things there were which made for unity.

Among them we may reckon the Oracles. The oldest, perhaps, was that at Dodona, connected with the earliest settlers of Hellenic or Pelasgic stock. But about the time of this wave of colonisation Delphi became the most important of all. Private persons from all parts, and deputies from all states, visited this place to consult the god by his priestess or Pythia on every kind of question, personal or public. Delphi became the great religious centre of Greece, the independence and impartiality of which, and the free access to its shrine, concerned all the Greek world. It became also the national banking-house, in which most of the leading states had treasure-houses, the safety of which depended on the inviolability of the temple and its precincts, which accordingly were of the highest importance to all alike. Another element of union was furnished by