[170:1] This judgment seems likely to be reversed by the wonderful accession of new materials upon the Ptolemaic age, the first instalment of which I have published in a monograph upon the Petrie Papyri (with autotype plates, Williams & Norgate, 1891). We shall presently know the conditions of life in one province at all events, the Fayoum, which was peopled with Greek veterans along with Jews and Egyptians. I have now under my hand their wills, their private letters, their accounts, their official correspondence in hundreds of shreds and fragments. [171:1] The best special work on the conflict of the Greek settlements with the Jewish population, and with the Asmonæan sovrans all along the coast of Palestine, is B. Stark's _Gaza und die Philistische Küste_. [172:1] Cf. Plutarch's _Life of Cleomenes_, cap. xi. [173:1] Cf. the cases quoted in my _Greek Life and Thought_, pp. 394, 537, 541-543. [173:2] Above §§ 35 _seqq._ [173:3] _Florilegium_ (ed. Teubner), ii. 247-284. [178:1] The momentary acquisition (in 190 B.C.) of two unimportant towns, Pleuron and Heraclea, in northern Greece, need hardly count as a correction of this general statement. The acquisition of the island Zacynthos was prevented by the Romans. [179:1] _Hist. des Grecs_, chap. xix. [180:1] I need not pause to remind the reader that each Greek city, or [Greek: polis], was in every constitutional sense a separate and independent State, just as much as the largest country is now. These cities severally made frequent treaties even with Rome, to which they stood in the same relations as a foreign king. [181:1] These points were suggested for the first time in my _Greek Life and Thought_, pp. 7 _seqq._ [181:2] This voting by cities seems to me the nearest approach to representation that the Greeks ever made in politics, as distinct from religious councils, such as the Amphictyonies; for of course a city far from the place of assembly could agree with a small number of its citizens that they should attend and vote in a particular way. Every citizen, however, might go if he chose, so that this would be a mere private understanding. [182:1] The Greek _city-polity_ ([Greek: polis]) was a perfectly clear and definite thing. A _nation_, on the contrary, may mean anything, for it may be determined by race, religion, language, locality, or tradition. Any one or all of these may be utilized to mark out the bounds of a nation according to the convenience of the case. I have often heard it asserted, and seen it printed, that in Ireland the Protestants of the North and East are quite a separate race. Such a statement, generally made to justify harsh measures against them from a Parliament of Roman Catholics, would also justify them in seceding from the rest of Ireland.