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A notable start in the direction of uniting city-states legally in a larger whole had been made by Athens during the epoch of her empire. She had then founded many colonies (cleruchies), which, though organized as separate cities, retained for their residents citizenship in Athens. Why not grant citizenship (polity) to the inhabitants of other cities as well? There were some, and among them the comedian Aristophanes,ssss1 who canvassed this idea. "Let us assume," he says, "that our city is a heap of wool, and that each of our allied cities is a fleck of wool. Let us take all the wool and spin it into yarn, and weave the yarn into a great blanket with which to protect our lord Demos against the cold." But for this drastic measure the times were not ripe. It was altogether repugnant to the pride of the Athenians to share with everybody advantages which they had sacrificed so much to acquire; and there was little in the advantages thus diluted to compensate other cities for the at least partial loss of identity which they were bound to sustain on acquiring Athenian citizenship. In the one instance in which this course was taken, the Samians, to whom Athens gave her full civic rights in the supreme agony of the Peloponnesian War, had both earned them and come to appreciate them by sacrificing their own territory rather than desert their ally.