Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/38

14 could not, and would not, desert it except under conditions too terrible to be contemplated, and who were indissolubly connected with all its history and fortunes. No wonder, then, that besides race, language, and religion, that other tie of common sentiment, or, as the Greeks called it,, which in modern times is a powerful factor in nationality, should have been doubly strong in the ancient world. It was far less vague, far more distinctly conceivable, then than now; for as the city was itself the State, and all the citizens were brought up on the same plan, and for a common end within a limited space, it was natural that they should look on themselves and their city, on their duties and delights as citizens, with a common pride and exclusiveness which we of the modern world can hardly realise. And if we add to all this the unifying power of the artificial ties, of law and custom and government, which in the were at least as strong as in the modern State, and in some cases even stronger, we get a picture of a Statehood — if the term may be used — as perfect, it would seem, as man can ever expect to live in. That there were indeed weak points in this form of State is true enough, as we shall see later on; every organism is liable to its own special diseases or parasites. The very intensity of the State-life within the led in many cases to intense bitterness of faction when faction had once broken out, and to a corresponding weakness in the relations of the State to other States, or to the less civilised peoples beyond the Græco-Italian world.