'No doubt when Rome was a party this liberty shrank into small dimensions. The ancient institutions of the peoples were reduced to the dimensions of municipal charters, their magistrates became lieutenants of police, their areopagus an _hôtel de ville_. But still, conquered Athens retained its areopagus, the Greek cities had still their senates, their popular assemblies, Marseilles retained that constitution which had been so much admired by Cicero. Some cities, such as Marseilles, Nismes, and Sparta, were not merely free, but sovereign; others remained under their own laws. Leagues which really meant anything, powerful confederations, had been dissolved, but when Greece, in memory of its ancient amphictyonic councils, met at Elis or Olympia to hold dances in honour of her gods, when all the Ionian peoples gathered in the Temple of the Panionium for sacrifices and games, these innocent memorials of a common origin or of hereditary alliances mattered nothing to Rome. More than this, the towns of Caria, or the three and twenty cities of Lycia, assembled their deputies not only for feasts and games, but to deliberate upon their affairs, and, provided they did not discuss peace or war, these traces of political liberty gave no offence to the liberalism of Rome. Rome had a marvellous power of perceiving how much of independence would suffice to content nations without being dangerous; and I doubt whether any free and sovereign city of our modern Europe, Cracow for instance [a note added here gives the date of the first publication of the passage, 1842], is so completely mistress at home, as Rhodes and Cizicus were allowed to be under Augustus; whether there is any senate so much respected as the curia of Tarragona or the council of six hundred at Marseilles; or a burgomaster whose powers of police are so sovereign as those of the suffete at Carthage or the archion at Athens were allowed to be.' ('Les Césars,' vol. ii. 338.)