3 - The Polis and Federalism

Summary

The Polis in the Classical Period and After

Classical Hellas - both Old Greece and the wider world of Hellenic colonies in the Mediterranean and Black Seas - has often been called “a world of cities” and with good reason. The polis (city-state; plural poleis) was one of the central institutions of Greek society. Yet, modern historians have sometimes claimed that there was a fundamental change in the Hellenistic period. It has even been asserted that “the” polis ceased to exist - perhaps at the battle of Chaironeia (338), at the end of the Lamian war (321), at some point during the wars of the Successors (323-281), at the end of the Chremonidean war (ca. 262), or after the defeat of the Achaian league by Rome (146).

In the face of these rather black-and-white views, recent scholarship has taken a different line. Greek cities, as physical and social entities, patently remained in use and continued to be built throughout the Hellenistic period and beyond. More importantly, the social entity that was the classical polis did not lose all its defining features. Rather, it was transformed in practice. As a model, or concept, of social organization, its components were modified in different ways at different times.