ABSTRACT
For centuries Greece had been moving from patriarchal institutions, which knew only collective ownership and household economy, towards an order of things which proceeded to split up the land, added the resources of trade and industry to the fruits of the earth, and found a supreme guarantee for personal liberty in the omnipotence of the city. The work was on a way to completion when it nearly perished under the repeated blows of the Persians. Greece was victorious. Henceforth it would act entirely in the line of its natural development, and would direct all its political and social forces towards the ideal of a democratic city.
