Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/60

 24 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE province of Britain beyond the English Channel. Italy had once been the western frontier of the ancient civilized world and the Latins had been far inferior in culture to the Greeks. But they had now adopted Greek mythology and Greek philosophy ; copies of the masterpieces of Greek sculpture were to be seen in the houses of the rich Roman nobles ; and the various forms of Greek literature were paralleled and imitated in Latin. Terence corresponded to Menander; Seneca, to iEschylus; Cicero, to Demosthenes; and Vergil, to Homer. Pliny the Elder in his Natural History tried to combine all the science of antiquity in a single encyclopaedia. This Latin version of Greek culture the Romans spread among the barbarians whom they subdued. Thus we have already begun to pass from the history of the Mediterranean Basin to the history of western and northern Europe. There is a key to classical civilization and to the daily life of the Greeks and Latins which has not yet been men- The tioned, the ancient city-state. Our word "poli- aty-state tics" comes from the Greek word for a city — polls. This was the fundamental political, social, and religious unit among the Hellenes, the Latins, and several other ancient peoples. Such a state consisted normally of a walled town and a small surrounding area under its govern- ment. Peasants who lived outside the walls might perhaps be citizens, but they would have to go to town to vote and to obtain justice. One reason for the existence of such states was that the mountains or seas shut the Greeks off from one another in small compartments, or on islands, or on a distant shore as a colony amid an alien population. But geography was not the sole reason for the existence of the city-state. Its citizens believed that they were all related to one another and that they were descended from a com- mon divine ancestor whom they worshiped. Their fathers and grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers had lived in that same little town or plain or island as far back as they could remember. Consequently the citizens were well acquainted with one another; had the same customs and ways of doing things ; and had no desire to admit strangers