Another cause was in that singular separation of tribes, speaking a common language, and belonging to a common race, which characterized the Greeks.

Instead of overrunning a territory in one vast irruption, each section seized a small district, built a city, and formed an independent people.

Thus, in fact, the Hellenic governments were not those of a country, but of a town; and the words "state" and "city" were synonymous [152].

Municipal constitutions, in their very nature, are ever more or less republican; and, as in the Italian states, the corporation had only to shake off some power unconnected with, or hostile to it, to rise into a republic.

To this it may be added, that the true republican spirit is more easily established among mountain tribes imperfectly civilized, and yet fresh from the wildness of the natural life, than among old states, where luxury leaves indeed the desire, but has enervated the power of liberty, "as the marble from the quarry may be more readily wrought into the statue, than that on which the hand of the workman has already been employed." [153] III.