Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/32

8 government in the Civil War was carried on at Oxford, and the French government at Bordeaux in 1870-71. It is plain, then, that in a modern State the so-called capital city is not an essential part of the State's life, and has. only grown in course of time, and from reasons of convenience or tradition, to occupy the first place in the minds of the people among all the other towns, as the seat of their central government. It is plain, for example, that by the State called France we mean the whole French people living on French territory, and having their political existence, not as Parisians but as Frenchmen, with a convenient centre, Paris.

But the Greeks and Romans conceived of their State as something very different from this. Athens, Sparta, Miletus, Syracuse, Rome, were themselves cities, with a greater or less amount of territory from which they drew their means of subsistence. This territory was indeed an essential, but it was not the heart and life of the State. It was in the city that the heart and life were centred, and the territory was only an adjunct. The Athenian State comprised all the free people living in Athens, and also those who lived in the Attic territory; but these last had their political existence, not as inhabitants of Attica, but as Athenians, as citizens of the of Athens. So, too, the Roman State, even when it had extended its territory over the whole Italian peninsula, was still conceived of as having its heart and life in the city of Rome, with a tenacity which led to much trouble and disaster, and ultimately to the destruction of this peculiar form of State. It