206 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY. [CHAP.
to be free and to have the best government, and would be capable
of ruling the world if it had a common political organisation1."
In another part of the same work he notices that, while the sea is
an element favourable to democracy owing to the sense of free-
dom which it engenders8, steep places, which might serve as
strongholds to command the town that lay below and the sur-
rounding district, tend to foster oligarchy or monarchy8. But
Aristotle's conception of the best form of state,
based as *fc was entirelv on Hellenic models, pre-
cluded the application of geography to a wider field
of history. This was almost impossible for a writer who main-
tained that the city-state should be of such a size that the citizens
might know one another, because without personal acquaintance
proper persons could not be elected as magistrates4; and also
that the country of which this city was to be the capital should be
as far as possible self-sufficing in its products, and easily taken in
by the eye8. The same remark applies to the other writers of the
period of Greek independence. With one exception, Polybius is
the first Greek author who rightly estimated the importance of
geography in the study of history, and he wrote under the influ-
ence of Roman ideas.
The exception here referred to is Ephorus. This writer, who
Ephorus the ^vec* *n ^e ^rst ^ °f ^ie fourth century B.C., and
Forerunner of therefore two hundred years earlier than Polybius,
Polybius. . , , i i , . /.
may in several respects be regarded as his fore-
runner. This is true of his mode of treating history, as Polybius
himself remarked; for while this writer in the Introduction to his
work claims for himself that he was the first historian who had
taken a synoptic view of history6, he elsewhere admits that
Ephorus, though he alone, had already conceived a comprehensive
treatise on that subject7. This was a universal history in thirty
books, extending from the mythical period to the time of Philip
1 AT. Pol, 7. 7. a. 2 Ibid., 7. 6. 7, 8.
•0#.» 7- "• 5- -4 ^#., 7. 4-13.
* Ibid., 7. 5. i, 3.
«Polyb.,i.4.3,4.
7 Ibid., 5. 33. a ; 'E^o/w, riv Trpurw KcU plow fyripephu&ov rd
ypupev.