size, but recognizing the oldest male descendant of the forefather as the clan elder or chief. A common kinship and the worship of a common ancestry formed the main bond of union. In time clans or gens united into phratries or brotherhoods. These in turn joined with other phratries, which resulted in the formation of tribes. The idea of kingship was very likely borrowed by the Greeks from the form of government which they found existing on the islands of the Egean Sea at the time of their invasion. Though the chief was the recognized head of the tribe, important matters were decided by a council of old men. The practice prevailed also of calling together an assembly of all arm-bearing men to discuss the advisability of waging war or of moving on to other places of abode. Retaining these primary elements of civic control-chief, council, and assembly-as the tribes joined and settled permanently in southern Europe, the Greeks evolved a form of government characterized as the city-state, and similar to the political organization of the Oriental nations.

As political development progressed in Greece, the citystates came to differ among themselves as to their internal organization. In some, sovereignty is found to have been vested in a direct democracy where every free citizen had an equal voice; in other states, the ultimate power was placed in a restricted oligarchy; and in still others, absolute authority was usurped and held by tyrants. In fact, the majority of the Greek city-states passed through all of these various stages at some time during their existence. In Athens, by a series of reforms, the power of the aristocracy was reduced, and most of the political functions were transferred to an assembly comprised of free citizens. But at best the Greek democracies were little better than oligarchies, for about three fourths of the population were slaves. The free citizens constituted the small leisure class who did no disagreeable work but devoted their time to government, fine arts, and the refinements of life. Although a comparatively small number participated in the active

duties of government, nevertheless, the Athenian constitution represented at that time one of the greatest advances in the direction of popular government. The Athenian ideals are very well summarized in the memorable oration of Pericles.

An essential characteristic in common among all the city-states was that each city was inherently entitled to an independent existence, with the full right to regulate its external relations with other cities. To the Greeks the political ideal was the city; hence the notion of union with other cities was repulsive. This demand for self-realization in the management of internal affairs and external relations with other city-states led in large part to the jealousies, difficulties, and narrow self-centered interests which arose whenever the city-states attempted to confederate. Thus, the citizen was taught to regard himself not as a Greek, but as an Athenian or as a Spartan, and from this narrow patriotism arose the many difficulties and jealousies when the loyalty and the local interests of one city were pitted against the loyalty and local interests of another. The relations of these city-states with one another were determined primarily by considerations of self-interest and security, which took an organized form in various leagues or amphictyonies. The independence and separateness of the Greek city-states were in part overcome by the attempt of a few cities, such as Athens and Sparta, to attain a supremacy over the surrounding cities.

But owing to the inability of the Greek city-states to forget their local differences and jealousies, the Hellenes were never able to unite into one great nation. Such temporary federations as the Achæan League and Boeotian League united groups of cities for a short period, only to have them separate again for an independent existence as a result of jealousies and misunderstandings which led to frequent civil wars.

Though the Greeks derived the idea of centralized power vested in a king from the Orient, they obtained through the

participation of citizens in the political affairs a degree of freedom unknown to the peoples of the East. They failed, however, to develop the principle of representation, and the Greek instinct of separateness finally refused to admit either subject or allies to a common franchise. Although government in Athens and in other Greek cities was democratic in form and based upon the activity and interest of its free citizens, and although great advances were made in the fields of art, literature, science and philosophy, nevertheless, Greece was unable politically to overcome the influences of particularism and decentralization, and finally succumbed to the devastation of internal warfare and to the virile strength of her rising neighbor, Rome.

Contributions of Rome.-While the Greeks were individualistic by nature and lent themselves to philosophy, art, and the speculative sciences, the Romans, in contrast, were practical, well disciplined, and law abiding. After Rome had passed from the village stage into the city-state, it was only natural that, through her aptitude for developing political and legal systems, she should extend her control and jurisdiction over the Italian state and ultimately over a world state.

Like Greece, Rome possessed in her early political organization the threefold division of king, council of chiefs, or senate, and popular assembly, or comitia curiatia. But the king in the Roman state had greater power than had the king of a city-state of Greece. The former had absolute power over the citizens and in calling together the senate and popular assembly. The assemblage of curias was for the purpose of hearing the king's commands rather than of expressing their will, whereas the senate acted chiefly in an advisory capacity. During the regal period, the spirit of subjugating, federating, and Romanizing the outlying provinces through legal control dominated political life.

When the power of the king weakened, Rome entered her second period of political development, that of the Republic. The administrative powers formerly exercised

by the king were now in the hands of a body of men known as consuls, censors, and prætors. And though legislation was still nominally vested in the assembly, it actually rested with the senate, whose consent was necessary to make legislative acts effective. In fact, the senate became the chief source of political administration in Rome during the period of the Republic. Composed of nobles, the senate was aristocratic and its power absolute. Through the struggles which followed between the plebs and the patricians and later between the rich and the poor and between Italy and the outlying provinces, political control in Rome fell into the hands of a few powerful military leaders. Thus the foundation was laid for the Empire with the centralization of power in the hands of a single ruler. Though the senate and assembly were retained, their powers were in large part absorbed by the Emperor. In fact, the Emperor became the source and agency of all legislative and administrative powers. Under the leadership of capable Emperors, the Roman world, comprising a territory "as large as the United States with a population of one hundred millions, rested in the Great Roman Peace for nearly four hundred years. Never, before or since, has so large a part of the world known such unbroken rest from the horrors and waste of war." Nevertheless, even during this period of peace, Rome was a military oligarchy and the people of the provinces were held largely as slaves and exploited accordingly. Few aliens were given the right of citizenship and then only as the power of the Romans weakened.

During the reigns of weak emperors, who experienced difficulty in administering the political affairs of the numerous provinces, came a disintegration of the strong and efficient organization established by the former emperors. Then followed a century of revolution and disorder which culminated in the establishment of an Oriental despotism under Diocletian.

1 W. M. West, Ancient History (Allyn & Bacon, 1902), p. 400.

While the political power and control of the Empire steadily declined, the influence of Roman law and institutions was passed on as a permanent heritage to mankind by the codification of Roman Law under the direction of the Emperor Justinian. The Corpus Juris Civilis was the result of the growth of rudimentary legal ideas which were brought together in the code of the Twelve Tables, the development of which was continued through the thorough work of the prætors sent out to govern the Roman provinces. In the discharge of their duties the prætors depended, as a general rule, for counsel upon the jurisconsults, who condensed their learned and subtle opinions. These were compiled and put in permanent form under the title Responsa Prudentium and represent the fruits of exhaustive research into almost every branch of human knowledge. Thus was built up an artificial body of equitable jurisprudence, a scientific law literature, whose growth occupies a period beginning 100 B.C. and ending 250 A.D., a period enriched by the works of Capito, Labeo, Papinian, Paulus, Gaius, Ulpian, and Modestinus.1

The work of the great jurists, transformed by the principles of reason and equity embodied in the Stoic philosophy, along with the decrees of the emperors, was put into enduring form in the Corpus Juris Civilis. This code was absorbed by the law of the Teutonic tribes of the north as they poured in upon and took possession of the disintegrated empire. For many centuries the Roman law guided the Church in its efforts to establish peace and order out of the chaotic conditions which prevailed throughout the middle ages. Later, the study of Roman law was revived, and, with the establishment of order by the national states, Roman law was used as a basis to form the codes under which a large part of the people of continental Europe are now living. The principles of the Corpus Juris have also been appropriated and put into force in most of

1 Hannis Taylor, The Science of Jurisprudence (The Macmillan Company, 1908), chap. iii.