Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/44

whelm us. The division of labour has become so complex that it is rare to find any scholar who has a wide knowledge of antiquity, or can gather it up in his mind and reason on it as a whole. We live in an age of specialisation, and it is inevitable that it should be so. But for that very reason an outline of the history of that peculiar form of State which was developed both by Greeks and Romans may possibly be neither unwelcome nor unprofitable. If those who are beginning to read Greek and Roman history with some serious purpose can have their attention once directed to the unity of the whole story, it is possible that they may never altogether lose themselves in detail, or forget the true relation of the whole to its various parts. And there is perhaps no better way of thus widening their powers of vision, and saving them from that short-sightedness which is the bane of all workers in minute detail, than by selecting one thread, and that the strongest and most easy to follow, and tracing it steadily throughout what we cal] ancient history. For as we follow the fortunes of the πόλις, we shall be following also the development and the decay of the thought and the social life of the peoples whose political instincts it expressed. We shall be following the safest clue, because in the life of the πόλις was gathered up all that was best and most fruitful in the civilisation of two wonderful peoples. As it grew to perfection, their social instincts and their power of thought grew with it; as it slowly decayed, their literature, art, and philosophy decayed too.