Several of the nations of Greece had, even as early as that time, begun to feel an instinctive want of uniting with each other for the purpose of increasing their strength. Such had been the case in Arcadia and Thessaly (where Jason of Pherae fostered the feeling) before, and it was now awakened among several other nations. From this time forward two political terms acquired importance in history; the relations they designate were not indeed new, but their import in an extended sense was. At an earlier period, I mean at the time of the Peloponnesian war, this tendency to unite had shown itself at Olynthus on the coast of Thrace, where the Chalcidian and Bottian towns, which until then had stood isolated, united with that city which had become great; and thus they became καθάπερ δῆμος. This is the relation called by later writers ἰσοπολιτεία[63], which two towns established between each other, as was the case in Switzerland and in the league of the Swabian towns; in former times it had been called πολιτεία. A citizen of such a place was entitled to take up his abode in the other, without becoming a mere resident alien; the ancient Italian law was of the same kind. There can be no doubt that in earlier times the Aetolian tribes were united only by the relation of a common πολιτεία; but they did not form one state, the establishment of which, with one common strategus and one common council (ἀπόκλητοι), belongs to a much later period; it was probably not till after the war with Antipater that the Aetolian state was constituted; but we do not know much about its origin.