Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/50

26 This may be just sufficient to show how, in investigating the history of a modern State, the conditions out of which it grew must be ascertained to begin with. But how are we to discover the conditions out of which the ancient City-State was formed? How can we know anything of Athens and Rome before Athens or Rome came into existence? We have here no Gildas, no Anglo-Saxon chronicle, nothing to answer to the monkish records of mediæval Europe. We have no contemporary literature, no inscriptions, hardly anything but traditions and survivals, as will be seen in the course of this chapter. What we can make out is meagre enough, and is arrived at by no direct road of inquiry. But this unknown country has been explored in the course of the last thirty years or so by three distinct routes, and if we follow these we shall find that the efforts of the explorers have not been altogether fruitless. Taking the route of the comparative method, as it is called, we can first compare the institutions of various peoples who have not yet developed a true State, and so gain some general idea of the way in which such peoples live, and of the conditions out of which a State may grow. Then we may go on to compare our results with what little we actually know about the Greeks and Italians before they reached the State; and thirdly, we may verify these results, by seeing whether the elements out of which we suppose the City-State to have originated continued to survive in any shape after the State was formed. Then we shall be in a position to discover how the