380 the classical review
H
( M . H . ) , N
( T. H . ) (edd.)
. Pp. xvi +
1396. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Cased, £135. ISBN:
0-19-814099-1.
doi:10.1017/S0009840X0600203 4
The polis , few would dispute, is in some sense central to Greek history. Even the old caveat ‘but don’t forget the ethnê ’ has lost much of its force with the growing recognition that most ethnê -regions were quite thickly sown with poleis from quite early. Hordern and Purcell have, it is true, advanced the modest proposal that the
Mediterranean historian should ignore or ‘dissolve’ towns as a distinct category
( The Corrupting Sea [Oxford, 2000], pp. 89–122); but their concern is with economic and ecological history, and when they speak of certain features of urbanism as informative for ‘in·ections in the history of values’ rather than for the history of settlement, they reveal how much they are excluding. Given this, it is odd, as Hansen observes in the Introduction to this Inventory , that no previous attempt had ever been made to describe the known Greek poleis systematically. The task was a huge one, and required the collaboration of 49 scholars (a few of them employed full-time) over a period of ten years. But big projects have been brought to completion in the study of antiquity before now. Perhaps scholars were rather deterred by a belief that the task was impossible. A Gorgias might have summed up the sceptical case in the following propositions: (a) the polis does not exist; (b) even if the polis existed, it could not be known; (c) even if the polis could be known, it could not be communicated to others. ‘ Re (a),’ he might have explained (if he had caught this stylistic tic of H.’s team), no one denies that Athens and Argos and many others were poleis in every sense; the issue is whether the concept of polis has a core, an agreed deμnition, that in marginal cases would allow the question ‘ polis or not?’ to receive a meaningful answer. If so, who established the criteria, and who determined whether they were met in a given case? From the Hellenistic period onwards, various texts illustrate the clear line of demarcation that then existed between a polis and other types of settlement: Eumenes II, for instance, granted to the military colony of Tyriaion ( EA 29, 1997, 3–5), whereas we have just learnt that Didyma had to await the age of Justinian to ‘acquire the rights of a city’, under the name Justinianopolis ( Chiron 34 [2004], 289, lines 4–6: for other
Justinianic cases see Procop.
Aed.
6.6.8–16 and D. Feissel, Chiron loc. cit., 357–8).
Eumenes’ letter to Tyriaion treats as entailing , , , a tribal structure and a gymnasium; and in the Roman period imperial rescripts such as ILS 6090–1 ( MAMA IV 236; VII 305) or ZPE 145 (2003), 263–73 (cf. ibid. 146
[2004], 221–31) reveal much about the expectations associated with the ‘ius et dignitas ciuitatis’.
1
No text from the classical period conμrms the existence of a sharp line of division, or set of deμning characteristics of a polis , in the same way.
Re (b), ‘ polis has many senses’, as Aristotle remarked; even if Greeks agreed on which communities or settlements were poleis according to the core deμnition of (a),
1
I thank Georgy Kantor for these three references. Add now the remarkable letter of Hadrian to Naryx, SEG LI 641.
The Classical Review vol. 56 no. 2 © The Classical Association 2006; all rights reserved

the classical review 381 this does not mean that their usage when not speciμcally attending to such issues of deμnition would be at all a reliable guide.
Re (c), the task of compiling an inventory would anyway be bedevilled by the gross inadequacies and imprecision of our evidence for many regions of the Greek world.
To which H. would reply: re (a), the distinction between a polis and, say, a kômê was a sensitive one, an issue of pride and identity; all Greeks shared these sensibilities, and common understandings must have existed about the distinction.
There were also institutional and organisational contexts in which clear lines were drawn: the theôroi who announced Panhellenic festivals addressed themselves to poleis (so the Inventory : the point is controversial), diplomacy was conducted between poleis , coins were normally issued by poleis and not by their sub-divisions.
Texts comparable to those from Tyriaion or Justinianopolis are absent merely because there existed no external authority to which a community which aspired to polis status could make appeal.
Re (b), polis has two main meanings, one urban, one political; but though they are di¶erent in meaning, in the vast majority of cases they coincide in reference (the ‘Lex Hafniensis’, Inventory p. 34). Greek authors very seldom apply polis in the urban sense to a place that is not in fact a polis in the political sense: the knowledge that Eleusis was a deme would discourage a Greek from calling it a polis , however much it might look like one. And there are also (see
[a]) institutional criteria which allow distinctions to be drawn.
Re (c), the total of
1035 poleis listed in the Inventory represents a best guess on the basis of what is indeed in many cases insu¸cient evidence. The grounds on which a decision has been reached are made explicit in each case; but again and again the provisional character of a particular decision is underlined.
I comment in turn: re (a), the scholars who have criticised the Polis Project for the particular criteria that it uses to distinguish between poleis and other entities have in the main, by their very criticisms, accepted that such a distinction exists.
2
What has most blurred its clarity has, paradoxically, been the work of the Polis Project itself on ‘dependent poleis ’, in particular the problematic postulate of an entity which is simultaneously a polis and a kômê ( Inventory pp. 87–95). But there must also be some doubt both chronologically (when does the distinction crystallise?) and geographically. Most of the scholars entrusted with N.W. Greece for the Inventory indicate that they have struggled to handle their material in the terms required by the project (so Rousset on West Lokris, p. 392; Funke/Moustaka/Hochschulz on
Epirus, p. 339; Freitag/Funke/Moustakis on Aetolia, p. 380); the absence of written evidence is doubtless one main reason, but the attempt to apply the standard template to these late urbanised regions may be another. Again, can we really suppose that the poleis of Macedonia or the Bosporan kingdom or Caria hosted political structures closely similar to those of Greece?
Re (b), the Lex Hafniensis, which has been attacked,
3 does not in fact bear huge argumentative weight. More important is the use of diagnostic criteria such as ‘being a member of a federation, striking coins, passing a proxeny decree, appointing a theorodokos to host foreign theoroi , having a victor in one of the Panhellenic games, possessing a prytaneion or a
2 N. Mertens’ argument that the Spartan perioikic communities constitute a tertium quid between ‘ polis ’ and ‘deme’ (in A. Powell and S. Hodkinson, Sparta beyond the Mirage , 2002, pp. 285–303) would, if correct, complicate the taxonomy of the subpolis levels while leaving the polis intact; for a counter see Hansen in T.H. Nielsen (ed.), Once Again: Studies in the Ancient
Greek Polis , 2004, pp. 149–64.
3 And defended, in the article by Hansen cited in the preceding note.

382 the classical review bouleuterion , defeating its neighbour in battle, etc.’ (p. 7). The question must be whether what are certainly norms can also be treated as rules; and here again regional variation appears a possibility. Those responsible for organising the proclamation of Panhellenic games were concerned, one imagines, with arrangements that would work in a given region, not with juridical questions; when
Helisson, for instance, once an independent polis , became a kômê of Mantinea, the
Mantineans apparently assumed that there would be no objection to Helisson continuing to host the sacred embassies that announced the games ( SEG XXXVII
340 = Rhodes/Osborne 14). On the other hand, it is hard to imagine that coining was undertaken at subpolis level, and a surprising number of communities have left little trace of themselves other than their coins. Such cases remind us that there were indeed many authentic poleis of which we know remarkably little.
Re (c), I do not doubt that, of the 1035 poleis , many (particularly but not exclusively those of type
C, which are merely ‘possible’ candidates for polis status) would be exposed as intruders if more evidence were available. The compilers themselves do not doubt it: the problems posed by mixed settlements are obviously particularly acute, and a great number of Carian entries, for instance, end formulaically with ‘it is a moot point to what extent [name of town] can be considered a Hellenic polis in the
Archaic and Classical periods’. Several communities that are mentioned in
μfth-century authors as or the like appear as in
Ps.-Scylax (e.g. nos. 560, 580, 757, all in Thrace or the Propontis); the explanation seems much more likely to lie in the imprecision of Ps.-Scylax than in real change in the intervening period. Clearly to be excluded on other grounds are (e.g.) no. 479, the probably uninhabited island Helene, and 717, Karambis, a promontory; in both cases a notice in Ps.-Scylax has been wrongly allowed to trump better counter-evidence.
4
A substantial number of entries derive, unpersuasively, from the
Athenian tribute lists alone.
While the preparatory work of the Polis Centre was appearing year by year in a succession of Acts and Papers , reactions to it focussed on these questions of deμnition and delimitation. They remain important, and much more could, and doubtless will, be said on both sides. (The elevation of various Athenian cleruchies to poleis , for instance, should not pass undiscussed.) But now that we have the actual Inventory , it is possible to step back from problematic particulars and judge the full scope and achievement of the work. What we have before us is a comprehensive gazetteer of the classical Greek world, from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Black Sea, written either by scholars with acknowledged expertise in the relevant region or by highly skilled members of the Copenhagen Polis Project. The absence of maps is extremely inconvenient but also completely understandable; instead, sites are systematically keyed to the maps in the Barrington Atlas – these two richly-funded projects collaborated from an early stage, in a for once beneμcial instance of the attraction of wealth to wealth. Archaeologists may want to observe that to study the settlement pattern of the Greek world is one thing, to study securely attested poleis is another, and the point has particular force with reference to the archaic period.
5
But all chapters catalogue ‘pre-hellenistic settlements not
4
The former notice falls in fact in a class of testimonia from Ps.-Scylax explicitly declared unusable by Hansen and P. Flensted-Jensen in Hansen and K. Raaflaub, edd., More Sudies in the
Ancient Greek Polis , 1996, pp. 140–3.
5
Cf. e.g. C. Morgan and J.J. Coulton, ‘The Polis as a Physical Entity’, in Hansen ed., The Polis as an Urban Centre and as a Political Community , 1997.

the classical review 383 attested as poleis ’ before turning to the poleis themselves, and many also list
‘unidentiμed settlements’. (Paula Perlman triumphantly identiμes precisely 100 settlements on Crete, though only 49 are poleis : p. 1145.) ‘When the project started in 1993, some colleagues suggested that we should print all the poleis in alphabetical order, starting with Abai in Phokis and ending with Zone in Thrace. Instead we have preferred to list the poleis region by region’ (p. 4). We must give hearty thanks that that crucial decision went the right way. So arranged, the Inventory allows one to read oneself into a region, and provides immediate access to hugely useful regional bibliographies. My dependence has already become so great that to adopt any other
μrst approach to a region would seem rather like sitting down to write a book without use of a word-processor.
The Editors issued guidelines to contributors on topics to be handled in each entry, but only in dealing with certain formal questions (is it described as a polis in any source? has it a city-ethnic? and so on) did they demand strict uniformity of treatment
(p. 6). Here too they showed great wisdom; this is the way to μnd willing collaborators.
Like Cato the Elder chronicling the populi Romani gesta in the last four books of his
Origines , I am reluctant to assign individual praise within a great collective achievement; nor could I claim more than intermittent competence to do so. (I must, however, stress the contribution of the members of the Copenhagen Polis Project,
Thomas Heine Nielsen, Pernille Flensted-Jensen and Tobias Fischer-Hansen; the
μrst-named wrote more of the volume than any scholar other than H., and co-edited the whole.) In matters that I can judge,
6 many chapters are outstandingly good, none worse than serviceable; the general level is extremely high. For continuous reading, it must be admitted, the work is a little austere. Picturesque details are shunned resolutely: the reader of the article on Kyme, for instance, will not learn the extraordinary facts reported by Aristotle about homicide trials there ( Pol.
1269a 1–3), nor is there anything about the peculiar conditions to which the proposer of a new law in Locri was supposedly subjected (Dem. 24. 139–141).
And what emerges at the level of general propositions about the polis ? In a sense it was the job of the project to provide the data, and it is now up to us to build generalisations on that foundation. But H. has been there before us, and the long Introduction written by him is full of challenging arguments. Two major revisions of received opinion I regard as proved beyond question: the polis as a political community was almost always based upon an urban centre (the constantly cited counter-case of
Sparta is a rare exception); and cities politically dependent on other cities (
, a good Greek phrase) were not uncommon, as indeed should always have been evident from expressions such as ‘ poleis of the Thasians’ (Hdt. 7.108.2, 109.2) and many others. The exact nature of such dependency is unfortunately very seldom clear, and was surely, as H. emphasises, of many di¶erent types, even if not all his
μfteen classes are completely convincing. A qualiμcation, however, which deserves more emphasis than it receives is that the condition of dependency was in most cases resisted and resented; to that extent the old conception of the polis as possessing full autonomia represents a real ideal. Things often went much less easily between communities than H. in some of his formulations allows. (About life within communities, on the other hand, he has no illusions: a chapter on ‘ Stasis as an essential aspect of the Polis ’ includes a refreshing rehabilitation of the views of de Ste.
6
A friend who knows the region well tells me that some of the site-identifications accepted in the chapter on Thessaly are controversial. Only the collective experience of users will establish how many such scorpions lurk under stones.

384 the classical review
Croix, p. 127 n. 35.) He claims the ‘surprising success’ of many synoecisms, artiμcial interventions against ‘what can be called natural growth of communities’, as ‘yet another aspect of the rationality of the Greek polis’ (p. 118). Louis Robert, by contrast, repeatedly stressed how often synoecisms came unstuck (see e.g.
Études de numismatique grecque , 1951, pp. 5–36).
There are, it must be confessed, many aspects of the Greek polis which even the assemblage of 1035 case-histories cannot greatly illuminate: we still have detailed knowledge of the constitution of only a tiny handful of poleis , and in the very important matter of (into which Isocr.
Aegineticus 13 provides a fugitive insight) the situation is still worse. But on issues concerning the relation of the polis to its chôra the accumulation of evidence on an unparalleled scale has set study on a new basis. The Inventory divides territories into μve broad bands (below 25 km
2
, 25–100 km
2
, and so on), and puts 635 out of a total of 869 located poleis into one, or a choice between two, of these bands (p. 71). One must certainly enter the twin caveats that size of territory and productive potential are quite distinct, and that unargued estimates of territory such as those of the Inventory must not be taken as deμnitive. Even so, the data now presented are extraordinarily suggestive. On city-walls too, more information is now available between two covers than ever before. H. argues that most poleis were already walled in the archaic period (pp. 135–7); he also argues that the wall-circuit of most ‘small’ poleis was su¸ciently large to allow a majority of the politai to live within them, and walk out each day to their μelds (like the south Italian peasants so memorably described in Carlo Levi’s Cristo si è fermato ad Eboli ). The dispersion of much of the population of (e.g.) Attica in second-order settlements represents a di¶erent and less common ‘large polis ’ type (pp. 77–8). As for the
‘consumption city’ of Sombart, the only Greek instance is, paradoxically, Sparta.
7
Bringing a major collaborative work to timely completion requires a rare mix of commitment, persistence and charm. ‘He actually came to my rooms and began writing the article with his own hand at my dictation or from my notes to oblige me to make a start on it.’ This is J.G. Frazer describing W. Robertson Smith as editor of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica ,
8 but oral evidence suggests that similar methods have served the Copenhagen Polis Centre well. The work is a superb achievement at many di¶erent levels, and it is only to show o¶ my own alertness that I note that one obscure place, Apros, is listed twice under two di¶erent regions of Thrace (892 and 912), di¶erently classiμed (once as a polis , once as a ‘pre-hellenistic settlement not attested as a polis ’) in the two cases. Even H. nods.
New College, Oxford ROBERT PARKER robert.parker@new.ox.ac.uk
7 This point is drawn out in H.’s ‘The Concept of the Consumption City applied to the Greek
Polis’, in T.H. Nielsen, op. cit. pp. 9–47.
8 Selected Letters of Sir J.G. Frazer , ed. R. Ackerman (2005), p. 103.