Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/53

II It is true that they were not always villages, in our sense of that word. The ancient Celts of Britain, for example, did not live in village groups, — a fact which any one may prove for himself by travelling in Wales at the present day. Various forms of the group are in fact found, and the variation may be due to inherent characteristics of race, or to the stage which civilisation has reached in each case, or to other circumstances, such as the influence of a pre-existing civilisation on the invading people. But the most perfect form of the group seems to be that of the village of kinsmen, and for want of a more comprehensive term we may speak of the group in general as the Village Community.

An excellent picture of the way in which these local groups may be supposed to have come into existence is supplied by Sir Henry Maine in one of his most valuable lectures on these subjects. He quotes the words of an Indian poetess, describing the immigration of a people called the Vellalee into that part of India which was once famous as Arcot. "The poetess compares the invasion to the flowing of the juice of the sugar-cane over a flat surface. The juice crystallises, and the crystals are the various village communities. In the middle is one lump of particularly fine sugar, the place where is the temple of the god. Homely as the image is, it seems in one respect peculiarly felicitous. It