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.