ABSTRACT
When a city rules an empire, it is natural to ask whether the imperial city was specially geographically favoured from the rst. Rome, for instance, was sited on the rst crossing of the river Tiber, controlling the route from Latium to Etruria; Corinth was a colonial power in the archaic period thanks largely to its position on the Isthmus (p. 117); and explanations of the greatness of Byzantium, from Polybius (4. 38) to Gibbon, have begun with geography. Sparta, as we saw in the previous chapter, is an exception, in that human factors, above all the ag?g? or system of military training, were even more important than geographical, but Athens is not. Athens’ natural advantages were enormous.
