Greek Polis
Lecturer: Wu Shiyu
Email: shiyuw@sjtu.edu.cn
http://sla.sjtu.edu.cn/bbs
Ancient Greece
Minoan civilization(2000-1200B.C.)
Homeric Age
Mycenacan civilization(1500-1200B.C.)
The Dark Age (1150-700B.C.)
Greek Archaic Age(700-500B.C.)
(Greek Renaissance)
Greek Golden Age(500-300B.C.)
(Classical)
Creation of Myths
Greek Archaic Age
From about 750 to 500 B.C.
 An age of experimentation and intellectual ferment, laid
the foundations for much of Western thought and culture.
 Increase of prosperity and the expansion of its population.
 Came together (Delphi and Olympia).
 In political theory, and the rise of democracy, philosophy,
theatre, poetry, as well as the revitalization of the written
language.
 The Greek Renaissance.

Two Important Features
 The
Emergence of Polis (city-states);
 The
beginning of colonization.
1. Greek Polis
 How
it emerges (a vacuum of power);
 Increased contact with the East and the South;
1. Greek Polis (Features)
 Small
size (an urban center, the surrounding
countryside with its various small settlements).
 An open area (AGORA) and a place for the cult
(urban center)
Aristotle: “The right size is a place where all of the
citizens (male adult citizens) could come to a
central place and hear a speaker and that number
comes out to be 5,000 male adults.”
Plato: 5,040
(384-322 B.C.) in his book politics : “It is
necessary for the citizens to be of such a number
that they knew each other's personal qualities and
thus can elect their officials and judge their fellows
in a court of law sensibly".
 Aristotle
1. Greek Polis (Different from a Modern City)
 Two
important aspects:
 Self-governing;
 The
possession and control of a territory.
1. Greek Polis (Different from a Modern City)
 The
polis is something more than a place, some
kind of a thing that is spiritual.
 Phocaea
 Themistocles
(Athens)
1. Greek Polis (Significance)
in his Politics : “As man is the best of the
animals when perfected, so he is the worst of all
when he is divided away from the law and justice."
“… human justice can be found only in the polis,
because man is by nature an animal of the polis,
and a man who is without a polis by nature is
above or below the category of man.”
 Aristotle
1. Greek Polis (Significance)
 The
establishment of the polis was regarded as the
single greatest political innovation of the ancient
Greeks. This form of social and political
organization based on the concept of citizenship
guaranteed a shared identity, rights, and
responsibilities to a city-state’s free men and
women.
1.1 How Polis Functioned
 In
the beginning, basileus (noblemen) ruled.
 An aristocratic republic (no king).
 Kings were despots, dictators, and rapists.
 Go by the path leading to justice. Zeus orders
severe punishments for them. Often, even a whole
polis is paid punishment for one bad man.
 The only place where justice exists or can exist is
in a polis.
1.1 Citizen
word citizen drives from polis. (He’s
somebody who lives in a polis.)
 There never was a citizen in the world before the
polis. (subjects, to a god, or to the king)
 Citizenship guaranteed important rights, such as to
vote and speak in the assembly, hold office, serve
as judges, fight in the army.
 Citizenship ensured the general legal equality.
 The
1. Greek Polis: Citizen
 In
Greece you have a lot of war and you have a lot
of freedom, and all of that is tied up with the
development of this very special thing called the
polis.
1. Greek Polis: Slavery
 The
polis will see the invention of freedom, and
oddly enough, it is accompanied by the growth of
slavery at the same time. Both slavery and freedom
come along at the same time in the Greek world.
1. Greek Polis: Slavery
 Two
important sources of slaves: to capture in the
war and to import from abroad.
 The Greeks lumped all foreigners who did not
speak Greek as “barbarians”
 Aristotle categorized slaves: a “sort of living
possession” (without property, without legal or
political rights ) .
 (Old
aristocracy-----tyranny)------oligarchy (rule of
the few)----democracy (rule of the people)
2. Wide Spread of Colonization
As early as in the mid-eighth century B.C., Greeks had
begun their widespread emigration from their Aegean
homelands.
 Around 500 B.C., colonies in today southern France,
Spain, Sicily and southern Italy, and along North Africa
and the coast of the Black Sea.
 A process of urban foundation and continued for more
than two centuries.
 The Mediterranean and Black Sea world.

2.1 Why they colonize?
 Driven
by two needs:
 commercial
interests (for imported goods, especially
scarce metals )
 and population explosion in the late Dark Age.
2.2The Process of Colonization
 choosing
a site
 obtaining divine approval for it,
 planning out the new settlement,
 and choosing its “oikist” (founders)
2.2 The Process of Colonization
 If
anyone is unwilling to sail when the polis
decides to send him, he might be subject to the
death penalty and his property shall be confiscated.
Whoever shelters or hides such a person, whether
he is a father helping a son, or a brother aiding his
brother, is to suffer the same penalty as the man
who refuses to sail.
2.2 Two Important Phases
 Underwent
two important phases, each lasting a
little over a hundred years:
 The
first, starting from the mid-eighth century, was the
westward process, directed to Italy and the western
Mediterranean; the second began about a century later
and was concentrated on the north Aegean and the
Black Sea.
The Hellespont (where the Persian king Xerxes crossed in
the Persian Wars) and the Black Sea, with their good
fishing grounds, fertile land, abundant minerals, and
trading opportunities that attracted the Greeks the most.
 Miletus alone, according to the ancient sources,
established ninety colonies.
 The Black Sea was almost entirely lined with Greek poleis.
 Many colonies became wealthy and powerful, among
them Byzantium, which a thousand years later, with its
new name, Constantinople, would become the capital of
the Roman Empire.

Northern coast of the Black Sea
 The
transplanted city-states proudly proclaimed
their Greekness, building temples, patronizing
Panhellenic institutions such as the Delphic oracle
and the Olympic games, and eagerly staying
abreast of cultural developments in the Aegean.
2.3 Mother-city and Colony
 Self-sufficient
polis. Full-fledged polis
 A colony maintained significant ties of cult and
kinship with their “mother city” (metropolis in
Greek).
 Colonists’ relations with the local people were
complex.
2.4 Significance of Colonization
Colonization prepared the Greeks for the participation in
international trade and it also increased their contact with
different peoples like Anatolia, Egypt, and the Near East.
 Knowledge of writing was the most dramatic contribution
of the ancient Near East to Greece as the Greek world
emerged from its Dark Age.
 Participation in the international commerce affected the
fortunes of Greek city-states.

Homework
 Exercise
on the textbook
Questions to Consider
 With
hundreds of separate poleis, how did the
Greek world define themselves not only as
members of a particular polis but as Greeks, as
Hellen? (Maintain the common bond)