The
definition of the polis, as understood by the Greeks themselves, and as
transmitted to us, is far from clear; its origins and archaic development seem
to be beyond recovery. We can say a few things with certainty: that it is the
central institution of Greek society, and that there could be no politics
without the polis. According to Aristotle, it is an entity which is not too
large or too small, and other ancient sources have been taken to imply the
necessity of the agora. In addition it must be an autonomous entity with
surrounding territory (chora). However, it is misleading to think of the polis
as a city-state along the lines of the Italian city-states of the Renaissance,
for instance, because some possessed a population of no more than 600 citizens.
One
of the oldest references to the polis appears in the Iliad [Bk xviii],
in Homer's description of the shield of Achilles wrought by Hephaestus. On this
shield was represented the world, the earth, the heaven, the sea, the sun, the
moon, the constellations, and:
In it likewise he wrought two
fair cities of articulate speaking men. In the one... there were marriages and
feasts; and they were conducting the brides from their chambers through the
city with brilliant torches... and the people were crowded together in an
assembly, and there a contest had arisen; for two men contended for the ransom
money of a slain man: the one affirmed that he had paid all, appealing to the
people; but the other denied, declaring that he had received nothing: and both
wished to find an end (of the dispute) before a judge. The people were
applauding both, the supporters of either party... the elders sat upon polished
stones, in a sacred circle, and (the pleaders) held in their hands the staves
of the clear-voiced heralds; with these... they arose, and alternately pleaded
their cause.
This passage contains details which appear in classical definitions of
the polis: the physical city, the joining together of people, an assembly, the
orderly resolution of disputes, appeal to the people and arbitration by a
judge. The elders sitting in a sacred circle probably prefigure the council(s)
of the polis. The second city appears to be the reverse of the former in its
essence: a place of discord and distrust, of war and ambush. Not at all
desirable, but a place to be included in a representation of the world.
A
description of a polis appears in the Odyssey [bk. vi. 262ff]. It
mentions a high wall and gates on each side of the city, stations for ships, a
market-place around a temple of Poseidon, "fitted with large stones dug
out of the earth". This passage indicates the existence of large conurbations
at a relatively early period, but it would be unreasonable to infer from this
description of a particular polis that each of the features described are
essential features of the polis (i.e., a polis situated far inland cannot have
stations for large ships).
Further
evidence that the polis was a defined concept in Homeric times is indicated in
Bk. vi, 4-10, where the foundation of a colony is described. Men were settled
"in Scheria far away from enterprising men... (the Phoenicians); and ...
("godlike Nausithous") drew a wall around the city, and built houses,
and made temples for the gods, and divided the plains". This foundation of
an "apoikia" is echoed in its details in a passage found in Plato's Laws
[745b-e] which describes the just foundation and layout of a polis, "as
far as possible in the centre of its chora"; and the division of the whole
into twelve parts, after an area has been designated for the principal gods to
be called the "acropolis. A wall is to be built around it; "then it
is possible to lay out the twelve parts, both in the polis itself and in the
chora as a whole", And after the creation of the tribes and their
allocation to the twelve gods, and the distribution of the land, the foundation
is said to be complete.
Negative
evidence for the nature of the polis in Homeric times appears in the account of
the Cyclops given by Odysseus [Od. Ix., 106ff] who says that
they have no laws, who, trusting in the
immortal gods, neither plant a plant with their hands, nor plough: but all
these things unsown, untilled, spring up, wheat and barley, and vines, which bear
wine from large clusters...
The real horror of the Cyclops' situation is that "there are
neither assemblies for consulting, nor rights". In short the Cyclops live
without the principal features of the polis, inhabiting " the summits of
lofty moutains in hollow caves", unlike the citizens who live in the
plains, "and everyone gives judgement to his children and wives", as
opposed to the Greek practice. Finally, we are told that the Cyclops have no
care for one another.
In the Works and Days Hesiod too sees the polis as a place where
justice should reign and where fair arbitration ought to be obtainable:
When judgements are fair -
alike for strangers as for the local folk - and the judges undiverted from what
is right, then a polis blooms and the people in it prosper. For such a place
Zeus, all seeing, does not ordain the misery of war (recalling the inverted
polis on the shield of Achilles), so the young men grow up in the land in
peace. Men of justice know nothing of famine or ruin, as they feast upon the
produce of their fields: the earth offers them a life of plenty... As for the
women, they bring forth sons to match their fathers.
Thus says Hesiod, "their blessings are perpetual: the fertile land
yields up its crops - and they never set foot on a ship". By this Hesiod
seems to be referring to one of the most probable causes of colonization:
shortage of land, or its infertility. But, in common with most Greeks he sees a
relation between fact and value, so that bad times for a polis are likely to be
the actions of bad citizens:
often a whole polis has
suffered because of the evil of one man who is a sinful and wicked schemer: the
son of Kronos sends down from heaven a great and universal calamity, famine and
plague at the same time, so that the people waste away; no children are born to
the women, and oikoi die out; such is the decision of Olympian Zeus*[1].
Thus, though calamity might seem like sufficient practical reason for
the foundation of an "apoikia", this pattern of belief suggests
strongly that colonists might be expelled for fear of contagion if they were perceived
to be tainted with the evil which had befallen the polis (it seems that
colonists were chosen to go by the polis, and it was not up to to the choice of
the individual), whether or not the continued presence of the colonists would
have prejudiced the survival of the polis in strictly causal terms. In practice
this would have been an excellent way of settling old scores and redistributing
land, principally in favour of the rich*[2].
Turning to the archaeological evidence, there exists an inscription from
the Cretan city of Dreros, which gives some insight into the structure of a
polis in the archaic period*[3]. It tells
of a decision made by the polis about the office of "Kosmos"
(apparently a chief magistrate), limiting its tenure and laying down specific
conditions for the holder of the office (Aristotle claims a parallel
significance for Spartan Ephors and the Cretan Kosmi, to which I shall return
later). The seventh century Draconian Law on Homicide is the oldest extant
Greek law code, and has been used in the past to suggest a drift towards
written and therefore public law, at least in some parts of Greece*[4]. However,
according to Crawford and Whitehead [op. cit., p65], modern scholars regard the
Constitution of Drako as the result of fifth century pamphleteering. Another
stele, the Law from Chios, contains "the earliest secure reference to a
Boule... of the people", and, it is argued, its power to levy fines and
judge appeals (c600-550 B.C.) "attests the growth of the popular element
within the state at a relatively early period"*[5].
Later sources, naturally, are retrospective. Thucydides gives some
information on the "synoikismos" of Attica (settling together). In
Bk. ii. 15 he says that, from the time of the first kings "down to Theseus
(the legendary founder of Athens, whose name is probably related to the verb tithemi,
"to set in place") the people of Attica
always lived in (their own) poleis, each one with its own
administrative buildings and officials; unless there was some common danger
they would not come together in council with the king, but each individual
polis would govern itself in accordance with its own decisions.
In this case it is clear that the
foundation of the Athenian polis did not involve the inauguration of basic
institutions: each polis had its administrative buildings and officials, and
took its own decisions. When Theseus came to the throne (as the Athenians
wished to believe) he
organised the chora on a
proper basis, chiefly by doing away with the multiplicity of poleis and their
separate councils and governments; on his scheme there was only one polis...
and one seat of decision making and administration.
So the synoikismos of Theseus had nothing to do with the foundation of
the polis as an idea, but was instead a particular exemplification of the idea.
What was his motive? This was total synoikismos:
everyone was free, just as
before, to look after his own affairs, but there was now only one place -
Athens - which Theseus allowed them to treat as a polis.
The synoikismos of Theseus was the completion of a unity: the population
was not moved, but the political unit was now Attica instead of a multitude of
"poleis".
There is a tendency among scholars to conflate synoikismos (interpreted
here as the process leading to the creation of the polis) and the development
of urbanism. The two are emphatically not the same and to assume that they are
does not much illuminate the emergence of the polis. Aristotle's view of the
development of the polis [Politics 1, 1252-3] is, on one level an
example of this kind of error: his account is warped by a combination of two
factors: his view of the world in teleological terms, leading him to postulate
an evolution of the polis; and his systematic programme (which surfaces in all
of his work) of leading the Greeks to virtue through common sense, which
determines the character of that evolution. He sees the polis as the natural
outcome of a teleological process which he outlines as follows: first the oikos
which is the
natural unit established to meet all man's
daily needs... then, when a number of oikia are first united for the
satisfaction of something more than day-to-day needs, the result is the
village... finally the ultimate partnership, made up of numbers of villages and
having already attained the height... of self sufficiency - this is the polis.
I.e., it has become complete. "It has come into being in order,
simply that life can go on; but it now exists so as to make that life a good
life". Each of its constituent parts (the villages) are seen as leading up
to the polis and, "for a process to reach its consummation is only
natural".
Aristotle
argues that the oikos is built out of two unions: that of male and female and
of master and slave, and the latter are joined together out of mutual interest.
He explains the relationship between master and slave by saying that
intelligence and foresight naturally belong to the ruling element, and the
partner with the capacity for physical labour will naturally be subject. Thus
kings are explained as the outcome of master and slave within the oikos. The
relationships between male and female and master and slave, he argues, are
different, except in the case of the barbaroi: "among the barbaroi...
female and slave... fill the same
position. The reason for this is that the barbaroi possess no naturally ruling
element". Hence the Greeks have as much right to rule the barbaroi as
their own slaves.
This
preposterous argument serves a crucial function, for his argument about the
development of the polis makes it virtually indistinguishable from the
development of the city, making the development of the polis universal, given
the same conditions. Thus the polis ceases to be a uniquely Greek phenomenon.
To restore its uniqueness Aristotle has to assert the racial superiority of the
Greeks over the barbaroi: only the Greeks can develop the polis, since only they
are truly human. Further, Aristotle is forced to deny the obvious, in that his
argument implies that no urban developments of the kind described had occurred
elsewhere. Not only is this nonsense, but the absurdity is underlined by the
fact that in the same book he describes the Carthaginian political system,
showing it to parallel closely many aspects of the polis*[6].
Roebuck,
in his article "Some aspects of urbanization in Corinth"*[7] also
presents a case for synoikismos: i.e., he attempts to understand the
development of the polis there in terms of an evolution (though naturally not a
teleological one). Thus he interprets the archaeological remains as marking the
development of the synoikismos towards the polis, as if the concept of the
polis necessarily bears a fixed relation to its concrete remains. He discusses
the relative merits of whether or not the material development of Corinth was
the result of agriculture or commerce, and sees the presence of temples and
other structures as stages in the upgrading towards the status of polis,
confusing the remains with the institutions, which did not necessarily have a
parallel evolution. For instance, if the synoikismos of the expanded Athenian
polis reflects an actual occurence, and it came into being of a piece as the
result of the imposition of an idea, then there was no evolution as such. No
people were moved (unless we credit Plutarch's account) and the material
remains would hardly reflect the change. Unless it turns up inscriptions and
documents, archaeology can tell us little about this kind of change.
If
the polis is neither the same thing as a city, nor its material infrastructure,
we should decide what it is that the polis could be:
1. A passage from Thucydides makes it quite clear that the polis is not
the same as the city, but that it is wherever the citizens are [vii. 77. 4.].
Why the citizens constitute a polis remains to be determined.
2. Is the polis a tribal entity? It certainly involved the tribes but
did not depend on particular tribal arrangements, for the polis continued to
exist after Cleisthenes' reforms and the breaking up of the old tribes.
3. Is it a place of law under which the citizens live? Yes. However this
is not unique to the Greeks: the Carthaginians lived under law, and the
Assyrians also (the kings' word was law). Is it written law? No, for the
Spartans were accredited as Greeks and the Lycurgan rhetra were specifically
unwritten. Yet they lived as citizens of a polis. Certainly according to Hesiod
the polis was a place where justice ought to be had (though he was cynical
about the likelihood of getting it).
4. Is the polis necessarily democratic? Not in the late archaic and
classical sense, though the presence of democratic arrangements did not destroy
the polis considered as a physical entity. The polis existed as a concept
before the existence of democracy, being mentioned by both Homer and Hesiod. It
also existed under oligarchic control.
5. Is the polis an ordered, hierarchical community? Yes, but this does
not distinguish it from other cities in antiquity.
6. Is the polis a concept associated with the making of decisions? It is
a characteristic of the polis that decisions are made, whatever the character
of its rulership. A tyrant decides for his pleasure, an oligarch decides for
"the best", and the demos, according to one's inclination, either
falls prey to whatever seizes its imagination at the time, or else functions as
the voice of the gods; a king, like the oligarchs, decides for the best on
account of his supposed proximity to the divine.
7. Does the polis enshrine freedom? Yes, for it is only with freedom
that decisions can be made, and therefore, according to Aristotle, virtue
acquired [cf. the Nicomachean Ethics, particularly concerning the
distinction between voluntary and involuntary acts]. The polis makes men free,
and therefore where men are free there is a polis. The corollary of this is
that where men can acquire virtue and have honour, they are free. Each of the
Greek states has in common - apart from linguistic affinities - a common
interest in honour and virtue. They differ from each other in the manner in
which honour and virtue are achieved (i.e., the Spartans emphasised narrow
military virtues).
8. Is the polis a place where there is specialization of official
functions? To some extent, although most of the Greeks prided themselves on the
amateur nature of their offices, almost as a guarantee of the purity of their
institutions. At any rate, arguments for specialization of functions again
blurs the distinction between the development of the polis and the rise of
urbanism.
9. Does the polis promote attachment to something beyond the individual
- i.e., the polis before the individual and his purely personal obligations?
Yes, but pressure in this direction also comes from tribal association and
obligation to a king, as well as being a sporadic feature of the development of
urbanism.
10. Is assembly a necessary feature of the polis? Judging by the horror
at the Cyclops lack of assembly, yes.
It might be argued that what we see in the institution of the polis is a
secularization of decision making, the decisions no longer being made in
consultation with the divine (through oracle and sacrifice), but now made by
the community via the institutions (various councils; the ekklesia). In this
respect it might be significant that (as far as I am aware) there were no
oracular seats in Attica. However, the secularization argument is probably
mistaken: oracles continued to be consulted. Perhaps it would be better to see
the citizens functioning as a kind of "college of cardinals" (vox populi,
vox dei), so that the style of man's relation to the divine has changed, rather
than the connection being attenuated or abandoned altogether. If so, we might
expect the carrying over of institutions and titles from an earlier system,
i.e., "Kosmos"*[8],
"Basileus"*[9],
"Archon", etc. As Aristotle noted, Kosmos was a title of Cretan
officials, and he equated this office with that of the Spartan Ephorate. The
Kosmos may originally have had a sacred function: the word signifies order,
arrangement, regularity, institution, discipline, and also the world, the
universe, and mankind. The text of the inscription from Dreros has been
interpreted in secular terms, but the reference to the Kosmos being
"useless as long as he lives" might well refer either to a ritual
uselessness, or to his being "marked off" from the rest of humanity
as a man with a foot in both worlds, the sacred and the profane*[10]. The
Spartan Ephors (elected by the assembly of Equals) had responsibilities which
included the giving of permission to foreign ambassadors to cross the border
into Spartan territory; permission to address the Spartan assembly; they were
also responsible for summoning the assembly. They were the essential
intermediaries between the Spartans and the outside world, functioning in much
the same way as a priest or prophet: as a gate to the other (the etymology of
ephor is probably epi horos: i.e., "on the frontier").
Xenophon [Lak. Pol. 13, 1-5] indicates some of the religious
associations of the boundaries of the chora.
The polis appears to revolve around two central ideas: that of assembly,
and that of judgement (in a wide sense, including "separation"
and "balance"). From Plutarch's life of Theseus we can gather that
the assemblage was to be as large as possible, whether or not the synoikismos
actually took place in this way:
daring yet farther to enlarge the city, he
invited all strangers to equal privileges in it: and the words "come
hither, all ye people", are said to be the beginning of any proclamation
which Theseus ordered.
Plutarch also tells us that:
the nobility (selected by Theseus) were to
have the care of religion, to supply the city with magistrates, to explain the
laws and to interpret whatever related to the worship of the gods. As to the
rest, he balanced the citizens against each other as nearly as possible; the
nobles excelling in dignity, the husbandmen in usefulness, and the artificers
in number...
(which recalls Plato's remarks about the distribution of equal plots of
land: the actual size of the plot depended on its fertility. A good plot would
be very small). This view of the polis makes it a moral universe, containing
all good things in strict proportion, with all the people of Attica in
communion with the king.
A fragment from the beginning of Aristotle's Athenian Constitution
[no. 5] also points to the significance of total assemblage for the idea of the
polis. He says that the Athenians
were
grouped in four tribal divisions in imitation of the seasons of the year, and
each of the tribes was divided into three parts, in order that there might be
twelve parts in all, like the months of the year, and they were called thirds
and brotherhoods; and the arrangement of clans was in groups of thirty to the
brotherhood, as the days to the month, and the clan consisted of thirty men.
One can argue that the significance of the assembly of the citizens is
that it makes council and judgement possible among the largest number of
participants. But there may be a deeper reason behind the desire for the total
synoikismos. The reason may be theological, involving the idea of completion.
As Aristotle said of the polis, it is an end, and once it is reached it
begins to serve an entirely different function, allowing the passage of the
citizens from the world of subsistence to the world of the good life, the life
of virtue. The polis can do this only because it is complete and has reached
the limit of what it is: its completion marks it off from the rest of the world
(with which it is contrasted on the shield of Achilles), so that it stands in
relation to the world as does a priest or priest-king - of the world,
but set apart.
The importance of the polis therefore, given the validity of this argument,
was its completeness, so that it stood like a gate between the world of
subsistence and a world of possibilities beyond; a place of transaction (hence
commerce and the agora), both between man and man, and man and the divine. It
served as the intermediary, as the point of exchange (hence the presence of
strangers). Its completeness did not depend on particular buildings,
institutions, and social arrangements, beyond the assembly and the principle of
counsel, and so it was possible for the polis to be wherever the citizens (the
free) happened to be.
The real polis, of course, was never like this: the average citizen's
liberty and leisure to acquire virtue was never quite what Aristotle had in
mind. The history of the polis, and its emergence into history, might be
characterized as the struggle to be what it ought to have been, but never was.
[2] I.e.,
the aristocracy: decisions were always confirmed by an oracle of Apollo, and
the aristocracy had charge of religious matters, and corruption is likely to
have been a great temptation. However, to look at this kind of power as
corruption is to retroject modern cynicism about political elites: the
teleological view of the world equates fact and value, and therefore it follows
as the corollary of social position that the judgements of the aristocracy are
of a better calibre than the judgements of anyone else.
