and the mighty reality, is pointed out by Thucydides.[418] The
inhabitants of the small territory of Pisa, wherein Olympia is
situated, had once enjoyed the honorable privilege of administering
the Olympic festival. Having been robbed of it, and subjected by the
more powerful Eleians, they took advantage of various movements and
tendencies among the larger Grecian powers to try and regain it; and
on one of these occasions, we find their claim repudiated because
they were villagers, and unworthy of so great a distinction.[419]
There was nothing to be called a city in the Pisatid territory.
[415] Thucyd. i. 5; iii. 94. Xenoph. Hellen. iv. 6, 5.
[416] Pausanias, x. 4, 1: his remarks on the Phokian πόλις
Panopeus indicate what he included in the idea of a πόλις: εἴγε
ὀνομάσαι τις πόλιν καὶ τούτους, οἷς γε οὐκ ἀρχεῖα, οὐ γυμνάσιόν
ἐστιν· οὐ θέατρον, οὐκ ἀγορὰν ἔχουσιν, οὐχ ὕδωρ κατερχόμενον ἐς
κρήνην· ἀλλὰ ἐν στέγαις κοίλαις κατὰ τὰς καλύβας μάλιστα τὰς ἐν
τοῖς ὄρεσιν, ἐνταῦθα οἰκοῦσιν ἐπὶ χαράδρᾳ. ὅμως δὲ ὅροι γε τῆς
χώρας εἰσὶν αὐτοῖς ἐς τοὺς ὁμόρους, καὶ ἐς τὸν σύλλογον συνέδρους
καὶ οὗτοι πέμπουσι τὸν Φωκικόν.
The μικρὰ πολίσματα of the Pelasgians on the peninsula of Mount
Athôs (Thucyd. iv. 109) seem to have been something between
villages and cities. When the Phokians, after the Sacred War,
were deprived of their cities and forced into villages by the
Amphiktyons, the order was that no village should contain more
than fifty houses, and that no village should be within the
distance of a furlong of any other (Diodor. xvi. 60).
[417] Aristot. Polit. i. 1, 8. ἡ δ᾽ ἐκ πλείονων κωμῶν κοινωνία
τέλειος πόλις ἡ δὴ πάσης ἔχουσα πέρας τῆς αὐταρκείας. Compare
also iii. 6, 14; and Plato, Legg. viii. p. 848.
[418] Thucyd. i. 10. οὔτε ξυνοικισθείσης πόλεως, οὔτε ἱεροῖς καὶ
κατασκευαῖς πολυτελέσι χρησαμένης, κατὰ κώμας δὲ τῷ παλαιῷ τῆς
Ἑλλάδος τρόπῳ οἰκισθείσης, φαίνοιτ᾽ ἂν ὑποδεεστέρα.
[419] Xenophon, Hellen. iii. 2, 31.
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