Polis

Fundamentally, the discussion of the character of the polis is complicated by the fact that precisely that city about which we know by far the most with regard to the Classical period (c. 500 to 330 BC), Athens, seems to have been an exception in many respects. Only in recent years, thanks largely to epigraphy, is our knowledge of other poleis, that is, the "third Greece" beyond Athens and Sparta, growing. Nevertheless, the political development of many poleis often seems to have followed a common pattern: since the Homeric epics and the beginning of the archaic period of Greece, the poleis were often ruled by a large landowning aristocracy. This soon met with resistance from non-noble strata of the demos, especially as the gap between rich and poor evidently widened after the advent of the money economy and the accumulation of profits it made possible. The acute crisis of the aristocratic polity, which often erupted in civil wars (staseis), was in any case exploited by individual aristocrats who, from the middle of the 7th century BC, placed themselves at the head of various poleis as tyrants. Initially, "tyrannis" was still a largely neutral term for individual rule; however, as Solon's criticism in Athens around 570 B.C. shows, at that time it already slowly acquired the same negative meaning that we can still grasp today in the modern term of tyranny and that became generally accepted from the 5th century onwards.

Regardless of the appearance of tyrants, the institutionalization of the polis, at least in Athens around 600 BC at the latest, was already so far advanced that it was conceived as a politically acting subject and the citizenry as a unit. The three organs of state developed, which were ultimately typical of all poleis, albeit in very different forms: People's Assembly, Council and Magistrates.

At the end of this process there was usually a constitution in which all wealthy citizens capable of serving as heavy-armed men (hoplites) were recognized as politically entitled citizens with equal active and passive voting rights (the latter graded according to the amount of agricultural income, but no longer tied to noble birth) and political tasks were discussed in council bodies (bulé), decided in a people's assembly (ekklesía) by a majority of votes, and carried out by annually changing officials. If the mass of poorer peasants and the landless (thetes), who performed military service as lightly armed men, also participated at least with active voting rights in the votes in the people's assembly and in the people's court, as in Athens after Solon's reforms in 594/93 B.C., this constitution is defined according to Aristotle's criteria as a "democracy" "tempered" by oligarchic and aristocratic elements. The most important characteristic of a truly democratic order was the drawing of lots for most offices; if, on the other hand, elections were held, this was considered an indication of an oligarchic constitution.

Due to the extraordinary circumstances of the Persian Wars, Athens developed from a land power to a sea power, in which the Thetes provided the bulk of the rowers and, with their military prowess in the naval battle of Salamis in 480 BC. and the expeditions of the Delish-Attic League, founded in 478/77, the Athenians strengthened their political consciousness to such an extent that from 462/61, with the reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles, the moderate democracy in Athens changed into the so-called radical democracy with the disempowerment of the Areopagus and the granting of the passive right to vote to the Thetes.

With the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, the world of the Greek polis was increasingly plunged into an existential crisis. The striving for hegemony of the larger city-states resulted in a century of almost permanent wars. Attempts to reach a lasting peace solution on the basis of a koiné eiréne, a general peace, while preserving the respective autonomy, failed several times in the first half of the 4th century BC. In the end, all the poleis had to submit first to Macedonian, then to Roman domination. However, the poleis continued to exist in Hellenistic and Roman times with their characteristic institutions and were able to enjoy a certain local autonomy and freedom, admittedly under the direct or indirect control of a king or the Roman governor and later the princeps. In recent research, early Hellenism in particular is even regarded as the heyday of the polis. An indication of the continuing relevance of the cities for the everyday life of their citizens is the fact that between Alexander and Augustus there were still frequent staseis, i.e. civil wars over the control of the polis.

The emerging Christianity found its first missionary centers in these old urban centers in the eastern Imperium Romanum. However, membership in the most important bodies, especially the city council, had become hereditary by the 2nd century AD at the latest, which meant that the old democratic tradition in the poleis had definitely come to an end.

Similar to Rome or the cities of the Carthaginians and Etruscans, each polis had popular assembly(s), council and magistrates. The form of political organization, which was typical for Greece and the regions populated by Greeks in the first half of the first millennium B.C., exhibits the following essential ideals, which were striven for in many poleis from about 600 B.C. onwards:

1. Political self-administration and self-government by the free male citizens. While in the beginning also supporters of an oligarchy appeared openly in many cities, from Hellenism on democratia (at least in political theory) was considered indispensable for a polis.
2. Equality of all citizens before the law (isonomia).
3. The pursuit of internal independence through their own laws (Autonomía) and political institutions. Offices were awarded by election or lot, with only the latter being considered truly democratic. Enforcement bodies such as a police force, on the other hand, did not exist, which is one of the main arguments of those researchers who deny that the polis can be considered a state.
4. The principled striving for external independence through conscription on the basis of universal conscription and self-equipment (eleuthería = freedom).
5. The greatest possible economic independence of the households of the individual citizens (autarkia) through ownership of a parcel of land (kléros), which could be worked agriculturally and was intended to secure the existence of the farming families with its yields. The ownership of land was in principle freely alienable, lendable and inheritable. This fundamentally distinguished the land law of the ancient and also medieval city of the Occident from the city of the Orient. For the ancient city, the unity of the urban centre and the surrounding land area (chóra) was also constitutive, in contrast to the medieval city. Here it must be remembered that ancient societies were agrarian societies in which more than two-thirds of the population worked the land. They produced food for themselves and for the urban population, but also raw materials such as wool. The farming families covered their own needs (subsistence production) primarily from the yields of their fields and herds. This also applied to the households of wealthy upper-class families. Markets therefore had only a limited function. Only in larger cities, whose inhabitants had no direct relationship to agricultural production, was self-sufficiency no longer possible, so that here many were forced to buy all the necessities of life at the market. Accordingly, the term oikonomía comes from oíkos = house and originally meant "household economy" as opposed to the modern "national economy". Today's economic system only came into being in the course of industrialisation, so that its structures should by no means be projected onto antiquity without further ado.
6. The poleis had public buildings (e.g. council buildings) and a central meeting place (agora).
7. They had a specific calendar.
8. Their own festivals and sanctuaries; for each polis was also a religious community with a patron deity (e.g. Athena Polias for Athens).
9. Own means of payment (coins) as well as an own army and sometimes also a fleet.
10. Only the male, adult part of the population, descended from citizens and sometimes capable of holding office due to a certain property qualification (offices were usually unpaid honorary positions), participated in the political decision-making process of a polis. As was customary in pre-modern times, women were not entitled to participate in elections or to hold office, but in most poleis they were considered citizens.