of “High Priests,” “Asiarchs,” and “Bithyniarchs,” which became the highest social distinctions in the society of the day. This was his method of securing the allegiance of nations devoted to religion and flattery. Here in the near future was to be the field of that momentous conflict between this State religion and Christianity, with other oriental faiths, such as Mithraism, also claiming their proselytes. As for old Greece, the Romans never denied their spiritual debt to her, and accordingly they regarded Greece with something of the veneration which a man feels for his university. Augustus himself had been educated at Apollonia, he sent his heirs to various Greek cities for their education. It would have seemed sacrilege to educated Romans to put a legate in charge of Athens. Hence we find Greece enjoying quite an exceptional position in the empire, indeed without exception the freest and most favoured part of it. Towns such as Athens, Lacedæmon, Thespiæ, Tanagra, Platæa, Delphi, and Olympia were free and almost sovereign. Athens continued to coin her silver drachms with the old design of Pallas and the owl, elected her own archons and generals, held assemblies and even had a sort of empire extending over all Attica, part of Bocotia and five islands of the Cyclades. One Julius Nicanor, her “new Themistocles,” purchased the island of Salamis and presented it to his city in the civilised manner of empire-building. Sparta, too, though now shrunken to the size of a village, bore rule over Northern Laconia, while in the south there was a free confederacy to keep her in order. Beside these cities of ancient renown stood the new and splendid creation of Augustus--Nicopolis, the city of victory founded on the promontory of Actium in commemoration of the great victory of 31. Nicopolis had its great athletic festival like Olympia and ruled over a considerable territory. In addition to these free cities there were some Roman colonies. Corinth rose again from her ashes as an important commercial city founded by Julius Cæsar. Patras, on the Corinthian Gulf, a new foundation of Augustus, became one of the most important cities of Greece, as it is to-day. The rest of Southern Greece, consisting mainly of obscure villages, formed the new senatorial province of Achaia and was governed by a proconsul at Corinth. It was a poor unmilitary province. The northern part formed the senatorial province of Macedonia. Thessalonica and Apollonia were the principal centres of government and civilisation in this region. In Greece, as elsewhere, Augustus made it his aim to focus a national unity upon religion. The old Achæan league was revived as a religious gathering with Argos for its centre, and the Delphic Amphictyony, the oldest surviving institution in Europe, became the basis of a Panhellenic confederacy which met annually for religious purposes under Roman patronage, a sort of Eisteddfod combining religion with culture.