Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/298



the last chapter we made a rapid survey of the operation of stasis, as the most striking agent of disintegration in the life of the City-State. We saw that under the influence of this disease, which may be described as internal, organic, and natural to this form of State, unity of feeling and of action tended to disappear, and that with it vanished also much of that youthful health and beauty which we associate with all that is Greek in the best days of Greece.

But there were other causes of decay at work, which for want of a better word we may call external; causes, that is, which did not spring so directly from the inner life and the true nature of the City-State as such. These were influences acting from without upon that inner being of the, modifying it and even distorting it, and often combining with stasis to destroy it altogether. In order to make it plain what these external influences were, I must revert for a moment to