Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/62

26 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE in size by their enclosing walls and because there was little traffic except that of pedestrians. In a prosperous city-state there were usually numerous slaves, who of course were not citizens, but whose toil enabled those who were citizens to devote more of their time to war, politics, and culture. Every citizen took an active personal share in the government unless he lost his rights through the rise to power of a tyrant or an oligarchy, or through conquest of his city by some neighboring town, which would either leave a garrison and governor of its own, or establish the rule of a few persons favorable to its sway. The ancients seldom practiced representation in govern- ment; the citizen was supposed to vote and fight in person, and to plead his own case in court. But it was evidently impracticable for the inhabitants of one town to attend popular assemblies and law courts and religious festivals in another town many miles away. Therefore, either each city had to be left some government of its own, or, if its inhab- itants were to be admitted to real citizenship in another town, they must be transplanted thither and their old walls and city destroyed. Syracuse often did just this to the other Greek cities of Sicily. Rome itself was a city-state, and, although more liberal than the Greeks in bestowing its citizenship on others, its Municipals ru ^ e * n ^ a ^Y was essentially a league of cities, ties in the Moreover, Alexander the Great and his suc- cessors had founded scores of such cities through- out the eastern end of the Mediterranean world. Rome, through her colonies and municipalities, now spread the system in the West. Of course the cities now lost their precious privilege of fighting with one another, and the inhabitants were no longer so closely related. But many of the features of the city-state continued, and the town was the fundamental local unit throughout the Roman Empire. The municipality was now almost always organized with an aristocratic government, with duumvirs, who corresponded to the Roman consuls and decurions or curiales (members of the curia), who resembled the Roman senators. But these