Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/254

 232 HISTORY OF GREECE. nonclas ; destined to sustain each other in neighborly sympathy and in repelling all common danger from the attacks of Sparta ; a purpose, which, even two centuries afterwards, remained engraven on the mind of a Megalopolitan patriot like Polybius. 1 Megalopolis was intended not merely as a great city in itself, but as the centre of the new confederacy ; v, r hich appears to have comprised all Arcadia, except Orchomenus and Heraea. It was enacted that a synod or assembly, from all the separate members of the Arcadian name, and in which probably every Arcadian citizen from the constituent communities had the right of attend- ing, should be periodically convoked there. This assembly was called the Ten Thousand, or the Great Number. A body of Arca- dian troops, called the Epariti, destined to uphold the federation, and receiving pay when on service, was also provided. Assess- ments were levied upon each city for their support, and a Pan- Arcadian general (probably also other officers) was named. The Ten Thousand, on behalf of all Arcadia, received foreign envoys, concluded war, or peace, or alliance, and tried all officers or other Arcadians brought before them on accusations of public mis- conduct. 2 The great Athenian orators, Kallistratus, Demosthenes, JEschines, on various occasions pleaded before it. 3 What were its times of meeting, we are unable to say. It contributed seriously, for a certain time, to sustain a Pan- Arcadian communion of action and sentiment which had never before existed ; 4 and to prevent, or soften, those dissensions which had always a tendency to break out among the separate Arcadian cities. The patriotic enthusiasm, however, out of which Megalopolis had first arisen, gradually be- came enfeebled. The city never attained that preeminence or power which its founders contemplated, and which had caused the city to be laid out on a scale too large for the population actually inhabiting it. 5 1 See a striking passage in Polybius, iv, 32. Compare also Pausan, T, 29, 3 ; and viii, 27, 2. 8 Xenoph. Hellen. vii, 1, 38; vii, 4, 2, 33, 34 ; vii, 3, 1. 3 Demosthen. Fals. Legat. p. 344, s. 11, p. 403, a. 220, ^Eschines, Fal& Leg. p. 296, c. 49 ; Cornel. Nepos. Epamin. c. 6. 4 Xenoph. Hellen. vii, 1, 3 ; vii, 4, 33 ; Diodor. xv, 59 ; Aristotle 'Ap naduv UoXtTeia ap. Harpokration, v, Mvptof, p. 106, ed. Neumann. 6 Polybius, ii, 55.