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William Smith,
A Smaller History of Ancient Greece|
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CHAPTER ΙII
General Survey of the Greek People. National Institutions
Page 5
A further element of union among the Greeks was the similarity of manners and character. It is true the difference in this respect between the polished inhabitants of Athens and the rude mountaineers of Acarnania was marked and striking; but if we compare the two with foreign contemporaries, the contrast between them and the latter is still more striking. Absolute despotism human sacrifices, polygamy, deliberate mutilation of the person as a punishment, and selling of children into slavery, existed in some part or other of the barbarian world, but are not found in any city of Greece in the historical times.
The elements of union of which we have been speaking only bound the Greeks together in common feelings and sentiments: they never produced any political union. The independent sovereignty of each city was a fundamental notion in the Greek mind. This strongly rooted feeling deserves particular notice. Careless readers of history are tempted to suppose that the territory of Greece was divided among comparatively small number of independent states, such as Attica, Arcadia, Boeotia, Phocis, Locris, and the like; but this is a most serious mistake, and leads to a total misapprehension of Greek history. Every separate city was usually an independent state, and consequently each of the territories described under the general names of Arcadia, Boeotia, Phocis, and Locris, contained numerous political communities independent of one another. Attica, it is true, formed a single state, and its different towns recognised Athens as their capital and the source of supreme power; but this is an exception to the general rule.To Chapter IV : Early History of Peloponnesus and Sparta to the end of the Messenian Wars, B.C. 668
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Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/history-of-ancient-greece-3-institutions.asp?pg=5
