I will admit, throughout much of the time
I spent learning about ancient civilizations as a child, I always just kind of assumed
that the Greeks were united in their own empire, kind of like… most other cultures you tend to learn about. I mean if Rome, Egypt, Persia, China, and
all the rest had singular unified empires, then why not Greece? Although we may learn about all the people,
culture, history, and accomplishments of Ancient Greece as just… Ancient Greece, the cities surrounding the
Aegean Sea in the 1st millennium BC were of course far from united. What we call “Ancient Greece” was actually
a collection of different city-states all separate yet intertwined through alliances,
religion, and culture. So what were these city-states and how exactly
did they function, both within an without? First, let‘s take a look at what exactly
an Ancient Greek city-state was. The term polis (plural poleis) is often used
as a shorthand for these city-states, as it is the Greek word for city (and indeed what
these cities were classified as in their hey-day), so that’s the term we’ll be going with
purely for simplicity. There were a total of over 1,000 poleis spread
throughout the Mediterranean, dotting the coastlines of not just modern Greece and Turkey,
but also Libya, Egypt, Italy, France and other nearby countries, some even all the way in
Afghanistan. Some of the most well known of these poleis
though included Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, Rhodes, Ephesus, Miletus, Cyrene, and Syracuse. A polis generally encompassed a particular
city, the Asty, as well as its immediate surroundings, including any farms, harbors, or smaller towns
servicing the city, classified as the khôra. At the center of the asty was the central
agora, and often a fortified citadel known as the acropolis-- also sidenote, indeed while
we might call this part of Athens the Acropolis, other poleis had their own acropolises, the
one we all know of today is just the Acropolis of Athens. Poleis frequently featured a central agora,
temples, gymnasia and theaters, and walls to protect themselves, but buildings alone
do not make a city-state. Poleis were effectively independent political
entities, with their own governments (whether democratic or oligarchic or even tyrannical),
their own minted coins, and often even their own colonies. People of a specific polis were also often
granted citizenship within that specific polis-- and indeed the concept of citizenship is said
to have first emerged among the Greek poleis-- the inhabitants of a polis though were also
separated into different classes. At the top were free men born legitimately
to citizen parents, who were entitled with the right to vote, run for office, and bear
arms, though they were also obligated to serve in battle. This was only true after the age of 18 though,
and their female relatives were a step below, offered full legal rights but no political
rights, as it was the adult male citizen who was supposed to represent their interests. Below them were the metics-- not medics, metics,
derived from the Greek métoikoi, meaning “transdwellers”-- who were basically foreign
citizens with full legal and political rights in a different polis, but no political rights
in their polis of residence, and might have also had to pay a tax. Liberated slaves were also given this status
in Athens. Lastly were the non-liberated slaves, who
were basically property with no rights whatsoever. All of the Greek poleis had a common Hellenic
culture and language (eh, more or less, we’ll get to that later), as well as a common religious
tradition. However, the people we collectively label
as “the Greeks” descended from many different Greek tribes, the four major of which were
the Achaeans, Aeolians, Dorians, and Ionians. In Greek mythology the tribes were descendants
of the patriarch Hellen (two L’s, not to be confused with Helen of Troy), the progenitor
of the Greek peoples and terms like Hellenic, and indeed why the people of the Hellenic
Republic call their country Hellada. Hellen had three sons; Aeolus, Dorus, and
Xuthus, the latter in turn having two sons of his own; Achaeus and Ion, hopefully you
can notice a pattern here. The Achaeans and Aeolians originated in and
around Achaea (or the Peloponnese) and Thessaly in Central Greece, though the Aeolians would
be largely pushed out into the Aegean islands, possibly through Doric invasions. Thebes would be a notable example of an Aeolic
polis. The Dorians originated from southern and western
Greece, and up into Epirus in modern-day Albania, near their close cousins the Macedonians. Some examples of Doric cities include Sparta,
Corinth, Megara, Argos, Pylos, and Olympia. Finally the Ionians were perhaps the most
widespread of the four major tribes, spreading throughout Attica, Euboea, and throughout
the Aegean Sea into western Anatolia (or at least the parts not colonized by Aeolians
or Dorians). The most well known Attic-Ionic cities included
Athens, Ephesus, and Miletus. Inevitably even the dialect of Greek spoken
began to change among the poleis, dividing into a Western, Central, and Eastern group. After the conquest of Greece by the Macedonians
however, and the subsequent conquest of the Persian Empire and Hellenization of its former
territories, a common Attic-based Koine Greek dialect was put into use as a lingua franca
of the region, as would continue to be used throughout the Roman era. The ancient Greek poleis also frequently went
into competition with one-another (as humans tend to do), often leading to all out war. These wars however weren’t just Athens and
Sparta duking it out, but involved complex shifting networks of alliances and treaties,
especially once the Persians got involved. By the 540s BC the Achaemenid Persian Empire
had expanded into western Anatolia, and later Thrace, absorbing many poleis like Ephesus,
Miletus, Samos, Byzantion, and Pella into their realm. The leadup to the Greco-Persian Wars is a
story for another time, but nonetheless the Ionian Revolts and the 2nd Persian invasion
of Greece eventually led to the formation of the Delian League in 478 BC. The members of the military alliance now known
as the Delian League spanned throughout the islands of the Aegean Sea and western Anatolia,
but was effectively led by Athens. Members were expected to swear to hold the
same common allies and enemies as the rest of the group, and also pay a tribute in gold,
ships, or grain to maintain the naval fleet. The group initially met to discuss matters
in the sacred island of Delos-- where the group gets its modern name, and where the
tributes were stored-- at least until 454 BC when the treasury was moved to Athens,
in light of a failed expedition to aid an anti-Persian prince in Egypt. The League had already started to look like
a kind of Athenian Empire by the breakout of the First Peloponnesian War in 460 BC,
followed by a short-lived peace and numerous revolts. These revolts lead up to the Second Peloponnesian
War in 431-404 BC, between the Athenian-led Delian League and the much longer-lived Spartan-led
Peloponnesian League, ultimately ending in the collapse of the Delian League. We should perhaps also mention that only 31
of the Greek city states actually fought the Persians, with most staying neutral and some
even siding with the Persians. Honestly, HBO, if you need something to keep
you afloat now that Game of Thrones has ended, make something about all this! On a closing note, this whole setting up independent
city states instead of building an empire thing was not something unique to the Greeks,
nor were they even the first to do so. The Phoenicians also functioned somewhat similarly
to the Greeks, as their civilization consisted of four large city-states in Lebanon who set
up colonies and trading posts all throughout the Mediterranean. In fact, most of the cities of ancient Mesopotamia
were city-states as well, and this can make sense since maintaining an empire can be a
lot more expensive than just maintaining trade and defense agreements with allies… who
you can also demand tribute from. This may or may not also explain the slow
rise of a civilization virtually synonymous to us with huge empires, and yet which spent
its first 400 years as just another lowly Latin city-state… Rome.