ABSTRACT
A multifarious experiment in small-scale and decidedly amateur public administration was under way in the rest of the Mediterranean area, particularly among the cities of the Greeks, widely scattered along its shores. The comparatively easy sea-communications between otherwise isolated communities in the great land-enclosed Mediterranean sea undoubtedly facilitated the migration of peoples and the transmission of their ideas. During the first millennium B.C. the Greeks planted city colonies throughout the Mediterranean, each of which took with it the governmental pattern of the colonizing city. Greek ideas flourished in Egypt, the Middle East and far into Asia, under the impact of an impressive inflowing of Greek colonists. While all the things were happening in Greater Greece the stage was being set on a geographically suitable site on the Mediterranean shore for the birth of a great world power and the shifting of the centre of political gravity westwards.
