But instead of it there arose DEMETRIAS, on the modern bay of Volo, a splendid harbour in the neighbourhood of Iolcos: this town is one of those creations which shew the practical and keen eye of its founder. We have seen that the establishment of Megalopolis was an unsuccessful undertaking; Demetrias was a rude, immoral, detested, and odious man, but of uncommon ability, which he shewed in his great discoveries in mechanics and in the art of engineering; the same talent was manifested here also, for he chose a spot which had been neglected for centuries for the purpose of founding a capital of Greece, which he intended to govern as a kingdom. The fact that his son, Antigonus Gonatas, was enabled to maintain himself as king, without having a definite kingdom, was owing to Demetrias, for it was his place of residence, and his whole strength lay there; it became the capital of Magnesia which was governed by Macedonia as a province in a manner which is somewhat strange to us; for under those despotisms, small countries often had a republican form of government, in which the kings interfered but seldom. In like manner, the small islands of the Archipelago, before the outbreak of the present war, were governed by Constantinople: when a Turkish vessel appeared, the people trembled, the magistrates were called out, and if the commander was so minded, he put them to death. The relations in the Macedonian empire were of a similar kind; the provinces were bound to pay tribute and furnish troops, but otherwise they lived quite under democratic institutions; and when a king founded a city like Antioch or Alexandria, it received a mixed population of Greeks and Macedonians, and a republican municipal constitution. Demetrias, as I have already said, became the capital of Magnesia, when after the war of Philip the country became free, but it then threw itself into the arms of Antiochus. As a punishment for this, the Romans allowed it again to be subdued by Macedonia, and we find Perseus still in possession of it. We are perfectly ignorant as to the manner in which the Romans decided the fate of Magnesia and Demetrias because the last book of Livy has come down to us incomplete; it is not probable that they incorporated it with Thessaly or with Macedonia; it is more likely that, on account of the strength of Demetrias, they reserved for themselves the supremacy over it, and occupied it by a garrison.