their cities, since these, having the means to organize resistance, could easily revolt. When they did not get satisfaction they might choose some other god-king instead, as the cities in Parthia and Bactria actually did; or they might secure immunity from tribute, as did the cities in Asia Minor in the reign of Antiochus I. Room was, accordingly, left for a large measure of municipal liberty; and, in general, the activities of the citizens were numerous and important. They had to attend to the maintenance of order, the administration of justice, and the collection of taxes within their several territories. Hence the cities gave a stimulus to political interest and ambition such as Asia had never known before. They occupied, in fact, a place in the Seleucid empire quite as important as that of the municipalities in the early Roman empire, of which they were, indeed, the prototypes. The Roman empire, however, had not yet come into existence. It was the Italian federation under Rome's leadership which defeated Hannibal and won the battles of Thermopylæ and Magnesia. When compared with this aggregate of incorporated and allied states, the Seleucid empire demonstrated fatal weaknesses. Rome had, perhaps, not many more citizens on her army list than there were males of military age in the franchised population of the Seleucid cities; and her public land, which, too, was her chief source of revenue, was far inferior in extent and yield to the royal domain of the Seleucids. Her advantages were twofold and their enumeration will help us to understand the disabilities under which the Asiatic monarchy labored. First, apart from the soldiers on Rome's army list there were few males of military age in Italy; in other words, there was no vast native population to hold in subjection. Second, Rome could mobilize her forces much more easily, quickly, and completely than could the Seleucids. The great distances, often of mountain and desert, which separated the cities of Asia from one another; the considerable trading, industrial, Asiatic, and otherwise unwarlike, element in the free population of the Hellenic and Hellenized cities; and the independence of the cities, particularly in the matter of giving or refusing military aid to their suzerain, had no parallel in Italy, where the territory was compact, the population mainly a warlike peasantry, and the cities all bound to provide troops at the call of Rome to the full extent of their power. Like the giant Antæus in his trial of strength with Heracles, Rome with every fall renewed her might from contact with her native soil. The Seleucids ruled over a cosmopolitan, denationalized world. They had no native soil on which to fall. It is of profound significance that there were and could be no fellow-citizens of Seleucus in all Asia. The loyalty of true men in his realm was due first of all to their cities, and it was only by the lapse of time that a secondary loyalty to the ruling