Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/31

I swallowed up in a vast political union of a totally different kind. In subsequent chapters some attempt will be made to sketch its history, and to show where this necessary knowledge may be looked for. At present we must be content to point out the most obvious difference between the modern State and that of the Greeks and Latins, and the one which will best serve to show the reader that the study of Greek and Roman history is a very different task from the study of the growth of modern European States — a task, too, which, in some respects at least, is more fruitful and more suggestive.

By a modern State we mean a country or territory with a central government and a capital town; or a group of such territories, each with its government and its capital, bound together in a federal league, like the United States or the cantons of the Swiss Republic. In this form of State the capital city is a convenient place for carrying on the central government, but does not in and by itself constitute the heart and life of the State. The history of modern States shows that, while the State is growing, the question is an open one as to where the acts of government may best be performed. In England this in the middle ages was just where the king happened to be, at Winchester, at Marlborough, at the now obscure Clarendon, as well as in London or at Windsor. Even in much later times, after the complete consolidation of a State, it has been found perfectly possible to transfer the government to other centres besides the capital city; as the King's