During the Mycenaean period Greece was divided up into several kingdoms. By the sixth and fifth centuries, however, the more developed regions - central Greece, the eastern Peloponnese, the Aegean islands, and the coast of Asia Minor - are dominated by so-called poleis or “city-states.” In the less developed regions, especially northern and western Greece, there are so-called ethne or “tribe-states” or “league-states.” (For working definitions of both, see box 4.1.) The tribe states are the less complicated since they clearly existed even before the rise of the Mycenaean kingdoms and continued to exist on the periphery of the latter. In the Linear B texts tribes appear sporadically as personal appellations (e. g., Paphlagon, “the Paphlagonian,” in Jn 845), as toponyms derived from the names of tribes (e. g., Akhaiwia, in C 914 - named after the tribe of the Akhaiwoi), and, as relics of an earlier state of affairs, in the names of possibly specialized military units within the Pylian army (e. g., Iwas(s)oi on An 519). The poleis, however, are a new development and require explanation.
First, poleis are not unique to Greece. Many existed in Asia Minor, already in the Mycenaean period. In Lycia the Hittite texts (e. g., the Tawagalawas Letter - Sommer, 2-4) routinely speak of individual cities (as opposed to large states under kings in Arzawa, Mira, and Seha-River-Land farther to the north). In Lycia (Strabo, XIV 3,2-3, Pp. 664-665) and Caria (Hdt. V 118) city-states continued to exist down into the classical period. The presence of a “model” nearby may have encouraged the development of the polis among the Greeks, especially among those who settled along the coast of Asia Minor. Very occasionally one can see a polis arising in the classical period by copying its neighbors: a few years after 480 BC the Eleans (in the northwestern corner of the Peloponnese) decided to reorganize their community as a polis. They built a centrally located town and moved people into it (Diodorus, XI 54). This process is known as synoecism. Many poleis may have arisen in this way, though, strictly speaking, this way of explaining the rise of poleis posits the existence of neighboring, pre-existing poleis: it requires the presence of models (which may well have existed outside of the Greek world).
Second, within the Mycenaean kingdoms there existed structures which on the surface at least bear a certain resemblance to the classical polis. In the Kingdom of Pylos, which was divided into two provinces, these provinces were themselves divided into districts (see chap. 2). These districts are usually named after the chief town within them. In each town stood a functioning
Institutions for managing day-to-day affairs are in the various towns; but affairs affecting the entire tribe are dealt with at a tribal assembly which meets annually or as needed at a centrally located sanctuary2
When the two types of states have dealings with one another at the diplomatic level no practical distinction exists between them. This can be seen in the superscripts to various treaties as well as in the equal reciprocal clauses in the treaty's body. Here several superscripts:
"an alliance between the Boeotians (an ethnos) and the Athenians (a polis) for all time" (SVA 223)
"an alliance between the Athenians (a polis) and the Locrians (an ethnos) for all time" (SVA 224)
"an alliance between the Corcyraeans and the Athenians (both poleis) for all time" (SVA 263)
As one can see, polis and ethnos are treated exactly alike in these superscripts; and likewise the clauses of the treaty themselves make no distinction between the two types of state.
Administrative apparatus (one tablet, Jn 829, has a list of various officials present in a district, including a “district administrator” and a “deputy district administrator”). Moreover, especially in comparison to the large Mycenaean kingdoms, the districts - self-contained administrative units, usually named after their chief town (cf. Box 4.1 for the practical closeness of this to the polis) - were of about the same size as most classical poleis. One can imagine
A situation in which, when the Mycenaean kingdoms were destroyed, some of these districts survived. In other words, it is possible, once again, to draw a line forwards from the thirteenth century as well as one backwards from the classical period, such that the two lines meet.
Third, poleis occasionally arose in the classical period through the dissolution of older ethne or “tribe-states.” In a tribe-state one often finds several towns, none of which, however, was markedly larger than the others. However, each town usually had some form of government for regulating the townspeople’s day-to-day affairs - see, for example, the compact between two towns from the ethnos of the West Locrians (Fornara, Nr. 87). If the tribe-state and its institutions over time became less and less relevant (and concurrently the individual towns were regulating their own affairs more and more) such that at the end the tribe-state for practical purposes ceased to exist, then what remained were the individual towns - indistinguishable from poleis. This happened on several occasions: In the mid-fourth century BC, the ethnos of the Achaians (on the northern coast of the Peloponnese) still existed (SEG XIV 375), but soon thereafter apparently fell apart (Polybius, II 41). The twelve towns which had made up the ethnos then emerged as poleis in their own right. On another occasion the Lacedaemonians forced the ethnos of the Boeotians to dissolve itself in 386 BC. In the place of the old ethnos, towns such as Thespiae became fully fledged poleis (see chap. 15). On a number of other occasions (for example, in Asia Minor with the settlements in the Aeolis, in Ionia, and in the Doris) similar processes probably took place even if the precise details are irrecoverable.
The development of the polis, then, was complex; and a number of developments probably converged to produce a world of scores of often quite tiny poleis. That world already dominates, incidentally, in the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey (see Box 4.2).
World History
