Difficult access to the sea made communities which could not compensate for this problem with agricultural lands face more problems than others. Argos may serve as an example:
The city of the Argives is for the most part situated in a plain, but it has for a citadel the place called Larisa.. .and near the city flows the Inachos, a torrential river that has its sources in Lyrkeios, the mountain that is near Kynouria in Arkadia.... ‘Waterless Argos’ [Homer Iliad 4.171] is also a fabrication,... since the country lies in a hollow, and is traversed by rivers, and contains marshes and lakes. (Strabon 8.6.7)
As swamps separated the agriculturally useful land from the coastline (which has extended further southwards since antiquity) and Nauplia did not belong to the polis, access to the sea was difficult from Argos, but the land itself was fertile, and allowed to grow a balanced mix of grain, fruit, vegetables, olives and vines (obviously, today’s main agricultural products of the plain, oranges and tangerines, were unknown in antiquity) providing subsistence for a sizeable community, but not being put to use for export. Argos in fact was so isolated that it missed the trend towards aristocracies or even democracies so prevalent in the century or so before the Classical Age and still had a monarchy in the early fifth century (cf. Worrle 1964; Carlier 1984). Later in the Classical Age, Argos tended to side with Athens against Sparta, or follow a policy of neutrality.
While the sea was close, if difficult to reach, for Argos, most communities which fall into this category are situated inland, such as Mantineia and Tegea in Arkadia. The territories of these poleis, which had only been formed in the fifth century by combining several villages (synoikismos), are at a relatively high elevation (c. 800 m plus) and suffer cold winters. The land, however, is exceptionally fertile; the winter rains and spring runoff from the surrounding mountains provide good irrigation. This enabled the cultivation of grain, fruit and vegetables, and even some vines, for subsistence. The individual poleis remained independent. Mantineia took an antiSpartan stance from 420 onwards. Tegea by contrast was compelled to be a member of Sparta’s Peloponnesian League. Sparta forced Mantineia to be dissolved into villages in 385, but after Sparta’s demise after the battle of Leuktra in 371 the city was refounded. A new pan-Arkadian federation and a new ‘great city’, Megale Polis (known today by its Latin name Megalopolis), were also created; the latter’s territory was as large as that controlled by Argos (cf. Callmer 1943). It can be argued that this foundation was an innovative solution to the problems of the individual poleis’ undersized lands in a part of the Greek world with very difficult access to the sea. To conclude with a quotation from Strabon (8.8.1):
On account of the complete devastation of the country it would be inappropriate to speak at length about these tribes; for the cities, which in earlier times had become famous, were wiped out by the continuous wars, and the tillers of the soil have been disappearing even since the times when most of the cities were united into what was called the Great City. But now the Great City itself has suffered the fate described by the comic poet [Comica Adespota F 913 Kassel &Austin]: ‘The Great City is a great desert’.
It has become clear, then, that difficult access to the sea, when combined with only mediocre agricultural land, enabled the support of self-sufficient communities, but did not allow for any kind of expansion; an innovative way to compensate for the problems was the formation of larger units, such as the Great City, although it did not enjoy permanent success.
World History
