The Classical World

The Classical World Read Free Page A

Book: The Classical World Read Free
Author: Robin Lane Fox
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BC .
    Its definition is also rather fluid, varying between a ‘settlement’ or a ‘community’, usages which are both well attested in Greek. The distinctive sense of
polis
is, in my view, a ‘citizen-state’. The leader of the most recent research group to have specialized in it defines it as ‘a small, highly institutionalized and self-governing community of citizens, living with their wives and children in an urban centre and its hinterland, together with two other types of people: free foreigners (often called “metics”) and slaves…’ 1 Correctly, this definition reminds us that a
polis
was not a ‘city’ (it could be very small) and that it was not simply a town: its population was distributed over a rural territory which might include many villages (the Athenians’ territory had about a hundred and forty such villages by
c.
500 BC ). It also emphasizes people, the ‘citizens’, rather than their territory. Impressively, a
polis
could persist in this sense while outside its original territory: for some forty years in the fourth century BC , the men of Samos were exiled from their home island, but they still represented themselves as ‘the Samians’. Or so the men did: women lived in
poleis
, and their descent from citizen-families was often important, but they were not full citizens with political rights.
    If we stress the sense of the word
polis
as a community, we can follow the changing political rights of its male population: a ‘citizen’ in the ninth century BC certainly did not have the same rights as many enjoyed in the classical fifth century BC . The themes of ‘freedom’ and ‘justice’ play an important part in these changes. Essentially, the
polis
was a community of warriors, males who would necessarily fight for it. Again, there were changes in who fought most, and in what style: ‘
polis
-males’ were not only warriors, nor often very war-like, but most of them did have to face the probability of a battle or two for their
polis
’s sake. In their changing styles of fighting, ‘luxury’ at times played a role.
    In my view,
poleis
‘rose’ at different times in different parts of

Greece, but they certainly arose before the 730s BC and are most likely to have formed
c.
900–750 BC . By the time of Hadrian, a thousand years later, ‘city-states’ of the
polis
type have been estimated to have contained about 30 million people, about half of the estimated population of the Roman Empire. The combination of a main town, a country-territory and villages remained typical, although the political rights of these elements varied over time and place. If Hadrian had ever counted, he would probably have reckoned up about 1,500
poleis
, of which about half were in what is now Greece and Cyprus and on the western coast of Asia Minor (now Turkey). These 750 or so were mostly city-states of the Greeks’ earlier classical age. The others had been settled in lands ranging from Spain as far (with Alexander) as north-west India.
    During the ninth and eighth centuries BC Greeks in Greece and the Aegean islands settled many more villages in the territories of what were increasingly identifiable
poleis
. This process was one of local settlement, not long-range migration. Then several of these
polis
centres began, from
c.
750 BC onwards, to send settlers to yet more
poleis
overseas. Settlement overseas was an enduring aspect of Greek civilization: by Hadrian’s time, as now, more Greeks lived outside poor, sparse Greece than lived in it. In the age of the Mycenaean palaces, too, Greeks had already travelled to Sicily, south Italy, Egypt and the coast of Asia, settling even on the site of Miletus. 2 Afterwards,
c.
1170 BC , emigrants from the ending of the palace-states had gone east and settled especially on Cyprus. Later, perhaps
c.
1100–950 BC , yet more migrants from the eastern coastline of Greece had crossed the Aegean, stopped on some of the intervening islands and then settled on the

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