1. What were the achievements of the Age of Pericles?
2. Which are more important to civilization, Greek ideals or Greek practice?
4. The characteristics of the city-state of Athens.
6. Why did the Greeks fail to make a strong central nation?
7. The causes of the decline of Greek civilization.
8. Give a summary of the most important contributions of Greece to modern civilization.
[1] Some authorities state forty assemblies were held each year.
[2] The Confederation of Delos, the Athenian Empire, and the Peloponnesian League were attempts to federalize Greece. They were successful only in part.
_The Romans Differed in Nature from the Greeks_.--Instead of being of a philosophic, speculative nature, the Romans were a practical, even a stoical, people of great achievement. They turned their ideas always toward the concrete, and when they desired to use the abstract they borrowed the principles and theories established by other nations. They were poor theorizers, both in philosophy and in religion, but were intensely interested in that which they could turn to immediate and practical benefit. They were great borrowers of the products of other people's imagination. In the very early period they borrowed the gods of the Greeks and somewhat of their forms of religion!
Later they borrowed forms of art from other nations and developed them to suit their own, and, still later, they used the literary language of the Greeks to enrich their own. This method of borrowing the best products of others and putting them to practical service led to immense consequences in the development of civilization. The Romans lacked not in originality, for practical application leads to original creation, but their best efforts in civilization were wrought out from this practical standpoint. Thus, in the improvement of agriculture, in the perfection of the art of war, in the development of law and of government, their work was masterly in the extreme; and to this extent it was worked out rather than thought out. Indeed, their whole civilization was evolved from the practical standpoint.
_The Social Structure of Early Rome and That of Early Greece_.--Rome started, like Greece, with the early patriarchal kings, who ruled over the expanded family, but with this difference, that these kings, from the earliest historical records, were { 251} elected by the people. Nevertheless there is no evidence that the democratic spirit was greater in early Rome than in early Greece, except in form. In the early period all Italy was filled with tribes, mostly of Aryan descent, and in the regal period the small territory of Latium was filled with independent city communities; but all these cities were federated on a religious basis and met at Alba Longa as a centre, where they conducted their worship and duly instituted certain regulations concerning the government of all. Later, after the decline of Alba Longa, the seat of this federal government was removed to Rome, which was another of the federated cities. Subsequently this territory was invaded by the Sabines, who settled at Rome, and, as an independent community, allied themselves with the Romans.