chapter 4._

GREECE: Ancient political and geographical divisions.

"Greece was not a single country. … It was broken up into little districts, each with its own government. Any little city might be a complete state in itself, and independent of its neighbours. It might possess only a few miles of land and a few hundred inhabitants, and yet have its own laws, its own government, and its own army. … In a space smaller than an English county there might be several independent cities, sometimes at war, sometimes at peace with one another. Therefore when we say that the west coast of Asia Minor was part of Greece, we do not mean that this coast-land and European Greece were under one law and one government, for both were broken up into a number of little independent States: but we mean that the people who lived on the west coast of Asia Minor were just as much Greeks as the people who lived in European Greece. They spoke the same language, and had much the same customs, and they called one another Hellenes, in contrast to all other nations of the world, whom they called barbarians … , that is, 'the unintelligible folk,' because they could not understand their tongue."

_C. A. Fyffe, History of Greece (History Primers),