[36] “Possumus quo minus habeant non impedire, eo facilius si tali conlatione non ad turbas et ad inlicitos cœtus, sed ad sustinendam tenuiorum inopam utuntur.” It is not at all wonderful if most of the business done by the assemblies of these commonwealths had to do with religious and social matters, and again with formal and trifling matters, with votes of honours, statues, and the like. As Diôn several times tells them implicitly, as Plutarch tells them more directly, the decision of greater matters had passed into other hands. The point is that these cities still kept the form of commonwealths, commonwealths that must have passed most of their lives in fear and trembling, but still commonwealths, even if in fetters, not mere municipalities, such as we are used to in our own day. In Eastern Europe and Western Asia this state of things is the direct and necessary consequence of the events of the Polybian age. The history of the Roman power in Western Europe is a wholly distinct subject. There Rome did not enslave or destroy, but created. The towns of the West looked forward, while the Greek commonwealths looked backward. The gradual extinction of these last was the necessary consequence of later changes, of changes which followed on the centralizing and despotic tendencies of the later Empire. Much of local independence had vanished between Strabo’s day and Pliny’s; the Lykian League itself was a thing of the past when Trajan respected the privileges of Amisos. How late any traces of freedom lingered we need not here inquire. My present object is to show the long abiding effects of the peculiar process by which the Roman dominion was definitely formed in that great determining period of the world’s history which is marked by the second century before Christ. INDEX. A. _Abyssinia_, Christianity of, 67. _Achaia_, dealings of Rome with, 218. _Ælfred_, his view of early Greek history, 18. _Africa_, Saracen conquest of, 133. _Agamemnôn_, his imperial position, 18, 19. _Agathoklês_, two sides of, 33. _Akarnania_, its position in Homeric times, 19; becomes Greek, 24. _Akragas_, its time of greatness, 25. Ἀλαμανῶν ῥήξ, title of, 107. _Alans_, their history and settlement, 87, 88; 122. _Alaric_, his career, 78. _Albanians_, their origin, 119. Ἀλβανοί, opposed to Ῥωμαῖοι, 141. _Alexander_, founder of the modern Greek nation, 16; his work in the East, 17; his dealings with the Greek cities, 179. _Alexander of Epeiros_, 17; his designs, 34. _Alexandria_, its relation to older Greek cities, 23. _Alexios Komnênos_, compared with Henry the Fourth, 162. _Allies_, Roman, their relations to Rome, 82, 83; 218-220; their slow incorporation, 84, 85; 219-221. _Ambrakia_, its beginnings, 24. _Amisos_, dealings of Trajan and Pliny with, 237, 238. _Amphiktyonic Council_, nullity of, 178, 179; its reform by Augustus, 225. _Andorra_, relations of, 217.