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The Genesis of the Greek Polis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Fritz Schachermeyr

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For the scholar of ancient history, the ‘polis’ is the most important and most worthy subject of study. By ‘polis’ we mean that well-known type of Greek city which with its territory constituted an autonomous state and, in this respect, was quite similar to the centres of the Italian Renaissance. Ancient Hellas was made up of a great number of such ‘polis’ cities. Each of them had its own freedom, its individual pride as an independent republic. But in the over-all picture we recognise in the institution of the polis the ground that nourished the dynamic and in a sense revolutionary spirit of the ancient Greeks. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Cleisthenes and Themistocles, Pericles and Alcibiades, Protagoras and Democritus, Plato and Aristotle were the sons of polis cities. We may even assert that these men could be what they were only in the emancipated and inspired atmosphere of the polis. No other ancient culture could have given them birth. If we consider the Greek polis from the point of view of universal history we come to a rather astonishing conclusion: the polis differs from all other comparable cultural institutions in Asia, Egypt, and Europe by a very fundamental and special trait: Europe knew only a primitive, barbarian, rustic way of life. People were either roving nomads or tillers of the soil who lived in simple villages.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , September 1953 , pp. 17 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © 1953 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 Cf. my demonstration in La Nouvelle Clio, I, 1950, pp. 567 et seq. Further investigations of this problem will appear i.a. in my treatment s.v. ‘Praehistorische Kulturen in Griechen land' in the Realencyklopœdie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaften and in my new book about the oldest civilisations of Greece.

2 For a basic investigation cf. Braidwood in Archiv fuer Orientforschung, XVI, 1952, pp. 137 et seq., and Garstang, Prehistoric Mersin, 1953.

3 Garstang, Fg. 79.

4 Archiv fuer Orientforschung, XVI, 1952, pp. 151 et seq.

5 Cf. my treatment in La Nouvelle Clio, loc. cit.

6 Cf. Grundmann's map, Athenische Mitteilungen, LXII, 1937, plate 37.

7 Further detail will be given in my ‘Praehistorische Kulturen'. My treatment in Klio, XXXII, 1939. pp. 251 et seq. has to be modified accordingly, since recent investigations have led me to the conclusion that at the beginning of the Early Bronze period (i.e., the beginning of the Early Helladic I) the Greeks were under Anatolian influence only through their metallurgy. Somewhat later such influence seems to have been exercised also through migrations from Asia minor into Greece (at the beginning of Early Helladic II).

8 Blegan-Caskey-Rawson-Sperling, Troy I, 1950; cf. Fg. 417 with Fg. 451.

9 So far we have only preliminary reports, e.g., in Archaeologischer Anzeiger, 1932, pp. 166 et seq.; ibid., 1933, pp. 245 et seq.; ibid., 1934, pp. 181 et seq.; ibid, 1935, pp. 234 etseq.; ibid., 1936, pp. 154 et seq.; ibid., 1937, pp. 167 et seq.

10 A more detailed account will be found in my treatment in ‘Praehistorische Kulturen' and in my forthcoming book.

11 In my opinion these names of places reached Greece from Cilicia and the Mesopotamian and Anatolian border region, partly along with the oldest cultural exchange, partly with the expansion during the Early Bronze period. More will be said on this point in my ‘Praehistorische Kulturen'.

12 Bossert, Altkreta, 3rd ed.; but it remains quite uncertain whether the fragments collected at this place actually belong together at all.

13 Evans, The Palace of Minos, III, plate 18.

14 Bossert, op. cit.

15 Bossert, op. cit.

16 Evans, op. cit., I I, pp. 563 et seq.

17 Boull, Correspondence Hellenique; cf. also Bossert, op. cit.

18 Cf. to this point my treatment in Klio, XXXII, 1939, pp. 261 et seq.; more detail in my forthcoming article ‘Praehistorische Kulturen'.

19 The German, Austrian, and Swiss scholars use the expression ‘Indo-Germanic' with the same meaning, but for objective reasons the expression ‘Indo-European' is to be preferred.

20 On my stay in the Orient from 1917 to 1919 I had an opportunity to observe directly how the principle of personal (tribal) association works among the Mesopotamian Bedouins.

21 In my opinion the house Nr. D of Asine has rightly been claimed as the residence of a lord (cf. Froedin-Persson, Asine, 1938, fgg. 42, 49, 47); the same is true for the central establish ment of Malthi (Valmin, Swedish Messenia Expedition, 1938, pp. 77 et seq., fgg. 19 et seq.).

22 Cf. especially my treatment in Hethiter und Achaeer, 1935, pp. 158 et seq.

23 Nilsson, Geschichte der Grieschischen Religion, I, 1941, pp. 327 et seq.; some further informa tion also in my book on Poseidon und die Entstehung des griechischen Goetterglaubens, 1950, p. 153.

24 In Aristotle this aspect of the politeia has been rather distorted, in as much as he neglects the fact that, basically, membership in the citizenry was assured by the right of domicile, a right which was never contested, not even by the oligarchs, as is well known. Compared to this basic right of belonging to the citizenry, even the right to participate in the assembly of the people must appear as secondary.

25 Pittacus belonged to the nobility at least through his marriage with a woman of the Eupatridae family.

26 Diehl, Anthologia Lyrica Graeca, 1949, Pallas Athena, Fgg. 3, 4; patris, Fgg. 2; 23, 9; 24, 8; eunomia, Fgg. 3, 32.

27 How closely Peisistratos was related to the noble caste is revealed by the assistance which the nobility ofEretria, Thebes, and Argos gave him at his second return to Athens. Further, the Archon lists by Meritt, Hesperia, VIII, 1939, pp. 59 et seq. show that the Alcmaeonids lived unharmed and unmolested in Athens up to the assassination ofHipparchus and that they even held the highest positions.