It may be well, before leaving the subject, to meet the important criticism of the geographical principle by Fustel de Coulanges (_La Cité antique_, liv. iii, ch. xiv, p. 238, édit. 1880). Noting that the incurable division of the Greeks has been attributed to the nature of their land, and that it has been said that the intersecting mountains established lines of natural demarcation among men, he goes on to argue: "But there are no mountains between Thebes and Platæa, between Argos and Sparta, between Sybaris and Crotona. There were none between the towns of Latium, or between the twelve cities of Etruria. Physical nature has doubtless some influence on the history of peoples, but the beliefs of men have a much greater. Between two neighbouring cities there was something more impassable than a mountain--to wit, the series of sacred limits, the difference of cults, the barrier which each city set up between the stranger and its Gods." All this, so far as it goes, is substantially true, but it does not at all conflict with the principle as above set forth. Certainly all cities, like all tribes, were primarily separatist; though even in religious matters there was some measure of early peaceful inter-influence, and a certain tendency to syncresis as well as to separateness. (Cp. K.O. Müller, _Dorians_, Eng. tr. i, 228.) But the principle is not special to the cities of Greece. Cities and tribes were primarily separatist in Babylonia and in Egypt. How, then, were these regions nevertheless monarchised at an early period? Clearly by reason of the greater invitingness and feasibility of conquest in such territories--for their unification was forcible. The conditions had thus both an objective and a subjective, a suggestive and a permissive force, both lacking in Greece. Again, the twelve cities of Etruria _formed a league_. If they did so more readily and effectually than the Greeks, is not the level character of their territory, which made them collectively open to attack, and facilitated intercourse, one of the obviously probable causes? No doubt the close presence of hostile and alien races was a further unifying force which did not arise in Greece. Etruria, finally, like Latium, was unified by conquest; the question is, Why was not Greece? There is no answer save one--that in the pre-Alexandrian period no Greek State had acquired the military and administrative skill and resources needed to conquer and hold such a divided territory. Certainly the conditions conserved the ideal of separateness and non-aggression or non-assimilation, so that cities which had easy access to each other respected each other's ideal. But here again it was known that an attempt at conquest would probably lead to alliances