Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The state of the sources of information at our disposal makes it impossible for us to follow step by step the inner development of the people in connection with each particular institution that comes under consideration. We are therefore under the necessity of appending to the outline of the political history a description of the inner condition of the people in a separate division. The political history falls into two main periods: the period of independence, and the period of the Roman domination. In reference to the internal conditions, the following points should be kept prominently in mind.