Equally exaggerated are the statements as to the linear and lateral extent of the catacombs, and their intercommunication with one another.
Intercommunication no doubt takes place; men working together in quarry, brickfield or barrow-run, and out of earshot of their guardians, may and do converse at times.
When conditions so changed that government could free itself from its dependence on the baron, feudalism disappeared as the organization of society; when a professional class arose to form the judiciary, when the increased circulation of money made regular taxation possible and enabled the government to buy military and other services, and when better means of intercommunication and the growth of common ideas made a wide centralization possible and likely to be permanent.
Trading intercommunication in the Levant and the constant passage to and fro of merchants brought Egypt to the front, and, in an age of archaic revival, the effort was made to re-establish the ancient supremacy over Palestine and Syria.
Eberian influence in the south-west, Ligurian on the shores of the Mediterranean, Germanic immigrations from east of the Rhine and Scandinavian immigrations in the north-west have tended to produce ethnographical diversities which ease of intercommunication and other modern conditions have failed to obliterate.