Briefly stated, my thesis is this: The city-states of Greece were unicellular organisms with remarkable insides, and they were incapable of growth except by subdivision. They might reproduce their kind indefinitely, but the cells, new and old, could not combine to form a strong nation. Thus it happened that after Athens and Sparta had tried in vain to convert their hegemonies over Greece into empires, a cancerous condition arose in Hellas, for which the proper remedy was not to change the internal constitutions of city-states, as Plato and Aristotle taught, but to change the texture of their cell walls so as to enable them to adhere firmly to one another. With a conservatism thoroughly in harmony with the later character of the Greek people, the Greeks struggled against this inevitable and salutary change. But in the end they had to yield, saving, however, what they could of their urban separateness, while creating quasi-territorial states, by the use of the federal system and deification of rulers. These two contrivances were, accordingly, rival solutions of the same great political problem. Nothing reveals more clearly the limitations of Greek political theory than that it takes no account either of them or of their antecedents. Cambridge, Mass., June, 1913. CONTENTS I. IMPERIALISM AND THE CITY-STATE I. DEFINITIONS 1-5 1. Of empire, 1. 2. Of emperor, 3. 3. Of imperialism, 4. II. THE CITY-STATE 6-19 1. Its origin, 6. 2. Its characteristics, 9. _a._ Fusion of agricultural, trading, industrial, and commercial classes, 9. _b._ Theory of common descent of citizens, 13. _c._ So-called worship of the dead, 14. _d._ Educative power of the laws, 16. _e._ Municipality and nation in one, 17. III. MEANS OF OBSCURING IMPERIALISM 19-25 1. Symmachia the basis of the Peloponnesian league, 20. _a._ Support of oligarchies, 21. 2. Stasis, or civil war, 22. 3. Symmachia the basis of the Athenian empire, 23. _a._ Support of democracies, 23. _b._ Maintenance of the union, 24. IV. FAILURE OF HEGEMONIES 25-30 1. The idea of proportionate representation, 27. V. MEANS OF EVADING IMPERIALISM 30-34 1. Grant of Polity, or citizenship, 30. 2. Grant of Isopolity, or reciprocity of citizenship, 31. 3. Grant of Sympolity, or joint citizenship, 32. VI. MEANS OF JUSTIFYING IMPERIALISM 34-37 1. Deification of kings, 35. II. ATHENS: AN IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY I. ORIGIN OF THE IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY 38-41 1. Themistocles, 39. 2. Pericles, 41. II. SIZE AND POPULATION OF ATHENS AND ITS EMPIRE 42-43 III. THE FUNERAL ORATION: THE IDEALS OF PERICLEAN DEMOCRACY 43-48 IV. THE INSTITUTIONS OF DEMOCRACY 49-65 1. Ecclesia and heliæa; their conjoined activity, 49.