These were the relations which the imperial government at its outset found existing in Greece, and in these paths it went forward. The communities freed from the immediate interference of the provincial government and from the payment of tribute to the empire, with which the colonies of Roman burgesses in many respects stood on a level, comprehended far the largest and best part of the province of Achaia: in the Peloponnesus, Sparta, with its territory diminished no doubt, but yet once more embracing the northern half of Laconia,[154] still the counterpart of Athens as well in its petrified, old-fashioned institutions as in its at least outwardly preserved organisation and bearing; further, the eighteen communities of the free Laconians, the southern half of the Laconian region, once Spartan subjects, organised by the Romans as an independent cities-league after the war against Nabis, and, like Sparta, invested with freedom by Augustus;[155] lastly, in the region of the Achaeans not only Dyme, which had been already furnished by Pompeius with pirate-colonists, and then had received new Roman settlers from Caesar,[156] but above all Patrae, which Augustus, on account of its position favourable for commerce, transformed from a declining hamlet,--partly by drawing together the small surrounding townships, partly by settlement of numerous Italian veterans--into the most populous and most flourishing city of the peninsula, and constituted as a Roman burgess-colony, under which was also placed Naupactus (the Italian Lepanto) on the opposite Locrian coast. On the Isthmus Corinth, as it had formerly become a victim to the advantages of its site, had now after its restoration rapidly risen, similarly to Carthage, and had become the richest in industry and in population of the cities of Greece, as well as the regular seat of government. As the Corinthians were the first Greeks who had recognised the Romans as countrymen by admission to the Isthmian games (ii. 79) {ii. 75.}, so this town now, although a Roman burgess-community, took charge of this high Greek national festival. On the mainland there belonged to the freed districts not merely Athens, with its territory embracing all Attica and numerous islands of the Aegean Sea, but also Tanagra and Thespiae, at that time the two most considerable towns of the Boeotian country, as also Plataeae;[157] in Phocis Delphi, Abae, Elateia, as well as the most considerable of the Locrian towns, Amphissa. What the republic had begun Augustus completed in the arrangement just set forth, which was at least in its main outlines settled by him and was afterwards in substance maintained. Although the communities of the province subject to the proconsul preponderated, certainly as to number, and perhaps also as to the aggregate population, yet in a genuinely Philhellenic spirit the towns of Greece most distinguished by material importance or by great memories were set free.[158] [Sidenote: Nero's liberation of Greece.]