ABSTRACT
The exception is Old Sarum, Old Salisbury, reoccupied for a time by folk fleeing from Wilton in the Danish raids of the opening of the eleventh century. In Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries before the Macedonian conquest, in the richly documented golden classical age, contemplated federations and empires of cities grouped under one of their greater neighbours, Athens, Sparta, Thebes or another. The Pope was father in God to the Romans, and to all men. The other eccentric giant is Venice, and for an opposite reason, for it is the only great city of Italy which had no classical past. London, like Verona, had been planted by the Romans at the critical point in the progress of a great river towards the sea. But what is especially characteristic of Todi and San Gimignano is that their golden age, their period of most notable prosperity, came to an end.
