Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/432

 416 HISTORY" OF GREECE. intercommunion, if not a double origin and incorporation. Wars, or voluntary secessions and new alliance?, would alter the boun- daries and relative situation of the various tribes. And this would be the more easily effected, as all Epirus, even in the fourth century B. c., was parcelled out among an aggregate of villages, without any great central cities ; so that the severance of a vil- lage from the Molossian union, and its junction with the Thespro- tian (abstracting from the feelings with which it might b< connected), would make little practical difference in its conditior or proceedings. The gradual increase of Hellenic influence tended partially to centralize this political dispersion, enlarging some of the villages into small towns by the incorporation of some of their neighbors ; and in this way, probably, were formed the seventy Epirotic cities which were destroyed and given up to plunder on the same day, by Paulas Emilius and the Roman senate. The Thesprotian Ephyre is called a city, even by Thu- cydides. 1 Nevertheless, the situation was unfavorable to the formation of considerable cities, either on the coast or in the interior, since the physical character of the territory is an exag- geration of that of Greece, almost throughout, wild, rugged, and mountainous. The valleys and low grounds, though frequent, arc never extensive, while the soil is rarely suited, in any contin- uous spaces, for the cultivation of corn : insomuch that the flour for the consumption of Janina, at the present day, is transported from Thessaly over the lofty ridge of Pindus, by means of asses and mules ;- while the fruits and vegetables are brought from Arta, the territory of Ambrakia. Epirus is essentially a pastoral country : its cattle as well as its shepherds and shepherd's dogs were celebrated throughout all antiquity ; and its population then, as now, found divided village residence the most suitable to their means and occupations. In spite of this natural tendency, how- ever, Hellenic influences were to a certain extent efficacious, and 1 Livy, xlv, 34 ; Thucyd. i. 47. Phanote, in the more northerly part of Epirus, is called only a custcllum, though it was an important military post (Livy, xliii, 21). s Leake's Travels in Northern Greece, ch. xxxviii, vol. iv, pp. 207, 210 233; ch. ix, vol. i, p. 411 ; Cyprien Kobert, Les Slaves de Turquie, book iv, eh. 2. i iroZvec efojot Pindar, Nem. iv, 81 ; Crcsar, Bell. Civil, iii, 47