The third dependent state was ACHAIA (Phthiotis). We are surprised to find this name here again; and the ancients unhesitatingly assume that emigrants from Peloponnesus had come to these parts, for which there is no authority at all. A thoughtful ethnographer is content with the observation that people of the same name lived in both countries, and that accordingly they were of the same origin, but he refrains from the attempt to explain the particular manner in which they were connected. Achaia formed a state under Thessalian supremacy, and it may have been somewhat more or less important than Brescia, Verona, or Padua under the supremacy of Venice. Brescia, _e.g._, was governed by a senate of forty persons, consisting of its own nobility; but the town was obliged to pay a certain tribute to Venice. The territory of Brescia again consisted of smaller states under the supremacy of Brescia. The government of Brescia in regard to the administration of justice, was subject to Venice, to which an appeal was open in criminal cases, and which, when appealed to, sent commissioners (_proveditore_) to re-examine the case. These gradations of dependence are quite obscure to us, and we cannot see our way clearly in them. We are apt to think only of a government from above, which makes the laws, but such was not the case in antiquity nor in the middle ages. Thus previously to the year 1798 there existed within the papal dominions several places, which stood indeed under the protection of the popes, but had their own laws, and even carried into execution sentences of death without the sanction of the sovereign. A person making himself familiar with the variety of the Swiss constitutions is going through an excellent course of preparation for a profound knowledge of ancient history. The case of Achaia was precisely the same: it had the administration of its internal affairs, but no political independence; it was not allowed to carry on war on its own account, but was obliged to serve in the armies of Thessaly, and to pay a certain tribute according to the terms of its capitulation, and in extraordinary cases even more. THEBE, the only important town of Phthiotis, was one of the strongest fortresses of Greece, being well fortified both by nature and by art. For a time it belonged, like the rest of Phthiotis, to the Aetolians, but was taken from them by Philip, and was one of the places out of which the Aetolians wanted to cheat the Romans, although the latter had well-founded claims to it. Hence their exasperation was natural enough, but the manner in which they gave vent to their rage and fury was senseless.