Slavery of the chattel kind now grew rapidly, with the result that the usufruct of the land became much more valuable, as raw material was worked up by the constant labour of slaves into marketable wares. This growing wealth created a narrow aristocracy, the members of which were the freemen of the old clans. These were imbedded in a population composed to a great degree of slaves as aforesaid, but also of men who, though not in a servile condition, did not share in the privileges of the original kinship and founders of the city. These were the fragments of broken-up clans of the neighbouring country, or emancipated slaves who had drifted towards the paramount city. The great historical instance of this is the story of the Roman plebs, which, it must be remembered, is not an accident peculiar to Roman society, but was going on at various periods throughout the whole of inchoate ancient civilisation, and also in the Teutonic countries of Early Medieval Europe.
We believe that this, or something 37 like it, was the origin and condition of all the great cities of antiquity, alike of the great oriental empires, Egypt included, and of the Greek and Italian communities. As for the empires of the East they were originally only federations of great cities, just as the cities themselves originated in federations of clans and tribes. The semi-godlike position of the king in these empires was doubtless a recurrence of the worship of the tribal ancestor, now transferred to the embodied symbol of the collective ancestor-worship of the federation. As the progressive races issue from the prehistoric times, we find them segregated into four great sections, or civilisations, the first and most important dwelling in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates; the next in importance in the valley of the Nile; the third on the Yang-tsze-kiang; and the fourth on the Ganges.
At a later period, when the energies of the progressive races required fresh developments, the shores of the eastern portion of the Mediterranean were 38 peopled by the most adventurous and most progressive of those races, to whom we will now turn as affording the