Geographic and Political Divisions. Greece itself is a terrain divided by the Pindos mountain chain into small sections of land (the mountain chain extends out into the Aegean Sea as well, forming small islands). These mountains create natural pocketlike regions, often large enough to contain just one settlement. The geography of Greece, therefore, had important ramifications for the development of political structure: Greece did not develop as a "nation" with a unified purpose and common outlook, but as a collection of small and dissimilar settlements, each with its own customs, ways of life, and dialect. The Greeks, in fact, did not speak of their country as "Greece," but merely in terms of individual city-states (poleis) such as Athens, Thebes, Sparta, and so on. Poleis would sometimes band together for a limited period to unite against a common enemy, as when Greece fought...