history of Greece may well seem remarkable to modern readers, since
it brings us in contact with conditions which have ceased to exist
anywhere upon the earth. To gain some idea of its character, we should
have to imagine each of the counties of one of our American States to be
an independent nation, with its separate government, finances, and
history, its treaties of peace and declarations of war, and its frequent
fierce conflicts with some neighboring county. Each of these counties
would have its central city, surrounded by high walls, and its citizens
ready at any moment to take arms against some other city and march to
battle against foes of their own race and blood. In some cases a single
county would have three or four cities, each hostile to the others, like
the cities of Thebes, Plataea, Thespiae, and Orchomenos, in Boeotia;
standing ready, like fierce dogs each in its separate kennel, to fall
upon one another with teeth and claws. It may further be said that of
the population of these counties five out of every six were slaves, and
that these slaves were white men, most of them of Greek descent. The
general custom in those days was either to slay prisoners in cold blood,
or sell them to spend the remainder of their lives in slavery.

This state of affairs was not confined to Greece. It existed in Italy
until Rome conquered all its small neighbor states. It existed in Asia
until the great Babylonian and Persian empires conquered all the smaller
communities. It was the first form of a civilized nation, that of a city
surrounded by enough farming territory to supply its citizens with food,
each city ready to break into war with any other, and each race of
people viewing all beyond its borders as strangers and barbarians, to be
dealt with almost as if they were beasts of prey instead of men and
brothers.

The cities of Greece were not only thus isolated, but each had its
separate manners, customs, government, and grade of civilization. Athens
was famous for its intellectual cultivation; Thebes had a reputation for
the heavy-headed dulness of its people; Sparta was a rigid war school,
and so on with others. In short, the world has gone so far beyond the
political and social conditions of that period that it is by no means
easy for us to comprehend the Grecian state.

Among those cities Sparta stood in one sense alone. While the others
were enclosed in strong walls, Sparta remained open and free,--its only
wall be