Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/75

II disposition of the people, the nature of their land, the force brought to bear on them, or the objects to be gained by union. In one or two cases such as that of Elis, where the "synoikismos" did not take place till after the Persian wars, we have traces of a form of union closely resembling that of Attica. But in many others, where the territory was smaller, the inhabitants of the pre-existing villages or groups of villages seem to have been actually transferred to the new city. For example, the two Arcadian towns of Tegea and Mantinea, which lay at the southern and northern ends of a single long, flat plain among the hills, were made up of communities which probably ceased to exist when once the city had been formed; for the territory on which the two towns subsisted was all of it within easy reach of the walls, and could be cultivated by the inhabitants without residing in the country. It is possible that the City-State of Argos came into existence as such in the same way, though her territory was much larger. But the most famous instance of this kind of union — the one of which we know by far the most — is that of Megalopolis, the great city built in B.C. 370 under the auspices of Epaminondas, to overawe Sparta. It is true that it was rather an artificial than a natural union, born as it were out of due time; but it shows plainly the way in which the Greeks would naturally go to work when a city had to be created out of disconnected units which were in no true sense of the word a State. Forty-one